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Inside the Gunman's Mosque
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The alleged Fort Hood gunman had revealed a hard-line Islamist streak to acquaintances in the Muslim Community Center that he made his mosque. The Daily Beast's Asra Q. Nomani reports.
Not long ago, inside the quiet library of the Muslim Community Center here in Silver Spring, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C., Golam Akhter, a local Bangladeshi-American civil engineer, 67, got into a fierce debate with a young Muslim doctor over how to interpret the concept of “jihad” within Islam. Akhter argued, “Jihad means an inner struggle, fighting against corruption and injustice.”
The young doctor responded. “That’s not a correct interpretation. Jihad means holy war. When your religion isn’t safe, you have to fight for it. If someone attacks you, you must fight them. That is jihad. You can kill someone who is harming you.”
A closer look reveals a complex picture of a young first-generation American Muslim man living a life of dissonance between his identity as an American and his ideology as a Muslim who had accepted a literal, rigid interpretation of Islam.
The conversation would be just another theological debate, interesting but irrelevant, except that the doctor was Maj. Nidal Hasan, 39, the gunman in the tragic Fort Hood rampage. After being posted to Walter Reed Hospital as a psychiatrist, Hasan called the Muslim Community Center his local mosque. It’s just a short drive away from Walter Reed.
In interviews with the media, leaders of the Muslim Community Center have painted a portrait of Hasan as a quiet, unassuming Muslim more interested in finding a wife than debating world politics. They express shock at his killing spree and, appropriately, condemn it. But a closer look behind the doors of the mosque and inside the conversations between the engineer and the doctor reveal a more complex picture of a young first-generation American Muslim man living a life of dissonance between his identity as an American and his ideology as a Muslim who had accepted a literal, rigid interpretation of Islam, akin to the puritanical Wahhabi and Salafi interpretations of Islam that define the theology of militancy inside the Muslim world today, according to community members who knew Hasan.
“So many times I talked with him,” said Akhter, a community leader who is sort of like a mosque gadfly, challenging congregants to reject literal, rigid interpretations of Islam. “I was trying to modernize him. I tried my best. He used to hate America as a whole. He was more anti-American than American.”
Despite all the conversations, Akther said, “I couldn’t get through to him. He was a typical fundamentalist Muslim.”
It wasn’t a label assigned lightly. Rather, it emerged after many one-on-one conservations between the engineer and the doctor in quiet spots from the library to the lobby to the prayer hall, discussing issues of interpretation like jihad, polygamy, assimilation, foreign policy, and the cutting of hands for theft. Other members of the community confirm this portrait of Hasan.
The story of Hasan at his local mosque is a cautionary tale to all Muslim communities about the consequences when we fail to win the war of ideas in the Muslim world with moderate interpretation of Islam over rigid, literal interpretations. Part of the problem is that many Muslims are clinging to the notion of an “ummah,” or “community,” with a capital “U,” a view that inhibits dissent and encourages blind loyalty to a global Islam.
In that struggle, we whitewash the truth of men like Hasan responding defensively, rejecting any links to Islamic teachings and, ultimately, I believe, denying the reality of a radicalized ideology of Islam that sanctions violence. In this ideology, men like Maj. Hasan believe they are betraying their fellow Muslims if they fight for the U.S. Army in wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
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Asra Q. Nomani is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She is co-director of the Pearl Project, an investigation into the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Her activism for women’s rights at her mosque in West Virginia is the subject of a PBS documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown. She can be found on Facebook, and reached at asra@asranomani.com
Why Honor Killings Happen
Asra Q. Nomani is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She is co-director of the Pearl Project, an investigation into the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Her activism for women’s rights at her mosque in West Virginia is the subject of a PBS documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown. She can be found on Facebook, and reached at asra@asranomani.com
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Asra Q. Nomani is the author of Standing Alone: An American Woman’s Struggle for the Soul of Islam. She is co-director of the Pearl Project, an investigation into the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. Her activism for women’s rights at her mosque in West Virginia is the subject of a PBS documentary, The Mosque in Morgantown. She can be found on Facebook, and reached at asra@asranomani.com
dooreen
This is a very good article.
syndicatenyc
Thank you for such an insightful and heartfelt article. Religious extremism, regardless of religion, contradicts the very point and purpose of faith and faithful communities. I am constantly reminded that more people have been killed in the name of God than for any other reason. Serious and rational discussion is needed in regards to this issue, particularly as it pertains to the role and monitoring of organized religion in the United States. Unfortunately the very nature of religious extremism is to prevent the possibility of any such discussion. Politicians routinely bow to the wishes of radicalized minorities of so-called Christians and simultaneously condemn the same sort of gutless kowtowing in the muslim world. I don't imagine much will change or any progress will be made in any area of life until extremists (political and religious) are marginalized to the fringes where they exist (and belong) rather than being given consideration greater than is warranted or deserved. The squeaky wheel sometimes needs to be thrown out.
jburrey2
There's another side to this story. Osman Danquah, co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen near Ft Hood thought that the military's chain of command knew about Hasan's anti-american jihad beliefs which had been known for more than year to his classmates in a graduate military medical program. His fellow students complained to the faculty about Hasan's "anti-American propaganda" but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint. I'm planning to lobby my congressional and senator representatives for public hearings on why Hasan's long paper trail of anti-american propaganda in his personnel record went unnoticed by Commanders at Ft Hood, but instead rewarded with a promotion to Major this past May.
idealist707
Without knowing what the actual content of Hasan's views were, I feel you are unwarranted in labelling them as "anti-american propaganda"----although you claim, perhaps rightly that this labelling was done by his classmates in their complaints.
However that may be, his views may well be such that there is support in fact for them.....but it's unlikely that the facts as to what his views were will ever come out.
Whatever he thought, or felt, he had taken an oath. And if he could not function with that, then he obviously should have found another way out.
If he wanted to fight Americans, then he could have joined Al Quaeda in Pakistan for combat training. Not the cowardly way of bringing weapons into a guaranteed weapons-free area to assault American soldiers (and a civilian).
escomments
I'm sorry, radicalized Christians?
I wasn't aware they were killing people on a grand scale, flying planes into buildings, chopping off heads, strapping bombs onto their children to go out and blow up innocent people, or destroy an entire race of people known as the Jews.
The attempt at Moral Relevance is stunning!
brownjackson
Ignoring your inability to see the connections, suppose you are right. Muslims are terrible and evil blah, blah, blah. What do we do? Start a "War on Islam"? Acknowledge that only "muslims are terrorists"? All this fingerpointing and group-hating gets us nothing accept more potential enemies. Do we stick our head in the sand? No. But neither do we declare a "holy war" against a couple BILLION adherents of a particular religion. The results would be catastrophic.
syndicatenyc
You're right. They usually start with taunting frightened women at clinics (which I believe Jesus covered on the sermon on the mount, was it? It was right after "The meek shall inherit the earth" I believe) before they shoot doctors. But no, so far, in this country, they haven't strapped any bombs to anybody...yet. In Northern Ireland, on the other hand....
If you want to be a bigot, fine. Be a bigot. Fear Islam, hate muslims, do what you need to do. But let's not pretend that you're religion has any less blood on its hands than any other. The attempt at Moral Superiority is...sad.
escomments
syndicatenyc-
I'm just addressing the reality of the situation.
You can bury your head in the sand and speak all of this holier then thou crap if you want to but the truth is, Islamofascism is on the rise and they are in a world wide war against Western Civilization. Reason being, we are infidels. They have stated that as their mission. Somehow I believe them over your sanctimonious BS. For you to not be concerned about this growing problem is the height of stupidity!
To compare them with modern day Christians where you have a few wackos who are off the reservation out of millions is absurd. Christianity doesn't call for jihad against the infidels. Their stated mission is about love not death.
Anyway, I don't recall telling you "My Religion"
They are taunting women at abortion clinics because they believe that those women are Killing their unborn babies. We have laws against killing. If you kill an expectant mother, guess what? You get charged with two murders! Which is it, life, or not life. You can't have it both ways.
You are probably one of those pro abortion zealots anyway so what's the point.
You can call me a bigot if you want to. I take that with the rest of your comments for what they are worth coming from you. Illogical Clap Trap!
escomments
brownjackson-
The first thing I would do is disavow this Political Correctness that is absolutely killing the debate and allowing this problem to fester. People just refuse to admit that radical Islam is a growing problem in this country despite the evidence to the contrary.
As you. "Muslims are terrible and evil blah, blah, blah."
This guy who did this "Act of Terrorism" at Fort Hood was a member of the same Mosque as three of the 9/11 hijackers!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6521758/Fort- Hood-shooting-Texas-army-killer-linked-to-September-11-terrorists.html
Call me kooky but I think a reasonable place to start would be to investigate that Mosque and find out what the Imam over there is preaching. If he is brainwashing people to hate Americans and to perform Jihad then it's time to take this guy out.
Ankhorite
@escomments, SyndicateNYC is right and you're wrong. Christian extremists do indeed blow up buildings and murder people here in the U.S. (and Ireland, and Bosnia, and... )
You're also wrong about the charges when a pregnant woman is killed. In no state in the nation is this charged as a double homicide.
Sure, there are extremist sects of Islam which are anti-American, etc. But there are extremist sects of Christianity which are anti-American, too, opposing equal rights for women, for gay people, for racial minorities, and for non-Christians. Here in DC, an elderly Christian extremist walked into the Holocaust Museum a few weeks ago and shot a guard dead.
You want to paint "islamofacism" as if it is something unique, and it isn't. Trying to pretend that it is weakens your arguments. Tim McVeigh would have killed just as many people as Osama bin Laden if he'd had the money and the crew. People in Oklahoma City haven't forgotten that. Neither should you.
Every religion has extremists guilty of bloody crimes; every religion has its eras of genocide. In the 1192-1995 war in Bosnia, the U.S. fought on the Muslim side, trying to protect them from genocide perpetrated by Serbian Christians. You say you weren't aware; well, now you are.
Ankhorite
1992-1995; my keyboard done me wrong.
This user is no longer registered.
n--Y--Schotmanidealist707
Until we find a solution to religiously inspired terrorism, whether Ft. Hood type or wayward nukes, the extremists will command a center place in our attention.
patriotchick
Very good article. Thank you. I just wonder why when there is a serial killer or a spree killer, we never hear what religion these people were raised -- until now. This guy who just had the 10 bodies in his basement in Ohio -- was he christian, Buddhist, Jewish? What about Andrew Cunanan, or Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer.
I am sorry, I am not particularly religious (between agnostic and athiest), but it just seems that this is quite unfair. The guy clearly lost his mind. Perhaps his religion helped him to deal with his issues for months while he lived in DC and could attend his local parish or mosque, and when he went to Texas, the disconnection from the tenants of his faith left him ungrounded, without community, without support and he cracked.
Aranxa
The issue is not what religion a person practices, but if their actions are perpetrated in the name of or in furtherance of their religion. Bundy did not kill people in the name of Christ. Dahmer did not kill people in defense of Christianity. Their motivations were completely different from "Christian" abortion clinic bombers and "Muslim" defenders of the faith murderers. This is why the religion of the murderer is relevant.
brownjackson
Again genius, what does it matter why he killed? You think if he was a christian instead of a muslim he wouldn't have went on a rampage? People like this could be buddhists and would go on a killing spree. Religion is the rationalization, it's not the cause nor the impetus force.
Aslanleon
It doesn't make much difference what religion a person is raised in. What makes the difference is what religion the person lives in. Religion is not like skin color. It requires commitment and action.
loloo33
is your name from Narnia?
patriotchick
OK. I checked. Jeffrey Dahmer was a Church of Christ (Stone Campbell) Christian. Ted Bundy was a Methodist who even served as a vice-president of the Youth Fellowship. David Berkowitz (son of sam) was born Jewish but became born again Christian. John Wayne Gacy was Catholic. i couldn't find out about spree killer Andrew Cunanan. My super-creepy point is that people of the Islamic faith don't have a monopoly on being crazy serial or spree killers.
whipmawhopma
I would also suspect that most if not all of these people were...
a) a lot more mentally ill than the rest of us
b) not very good at following the teachings of whatever faith community they were attached to
c) able to twist elements of their faith, if they actually had one, to rationalize their behavior
aibeta18
Patriotchick,
The difference between Dahmer, Berkowitz, Bundy, Gacy, Cunanan and Hasan is that the former did not commit their horrible crimes with faith as a justification. Hasan on the other hand used his faith to justify his actions, as many misguided terrorists do.
To my knowledge Islam itself does not allow for any crimes like the one that Hasan committed. But Islam does seem to leave itself open to interpretation that often rationalizes and justifies these awful acts. Furthermore, in Islam, questioning these "rationalizations" can be interpreted as a sin making it very difficult to snuff out extremism.
idealist707
speaking of rationalization of violence.....you obviously haven't read the Old Testament of the Bible. Read forward Joshua "claiming" the land for the Israelites. Among other thiings, Jehovah (God) commands Joshua to "grasp the babes by their ankles and bash their heads against stones."
Another example from history: the first crusade ended with the slaughter of all Muslims and Jews in Jerusalem.
The list is long.
Long before Islam was founded in 7th century, Christians supported their faith by immolating themselves----which is a fancy word for saying that they committed suicide to demonstrate their faith. So muslims have no monopoly on religiously inspired violence.
Ankhorite
@aibeta18: "The difference between Dahmer, Berkowitz, Bundy, Gacy, Cunanan and Hasan is that the former did not commit their horrible crimes with faith as a justification."
I see your point about D, B, B, G & C, but Tim McVeigh did. So did Scott Roeder, James Kopp (murder and multiple attempted murders), Eric Rudolph (multiple murder and attempted mass murder), John Salvi (multiple murder), Paul Hill (multiple murder), Rachelle Shannon, Michael Griffin, Jim Jones in Guyana (mass murder), and, most recently, James von Brunn down at the Holocaust Museum this summer. The KKK claims to be a Christian organization, too, "defending their faith."
Don't kid yourself. Christianity is just as open to Islam as being "open to interpretation [which] often rationalizes and justifies these awful acts." In the hearts and mouths of murderers, any faith can be used as an excuse.
gameon
Stop making excuses for suicide bombers by quoting old testament.You obviously have no understanding of Christianity or the bible seeing that you don't even know that Christianity is based on the New Testament and islam draws from the Old Testament.
In Iran they finish every prayer session by chanting "death to Israel and America".That's happening today,not the seventh century,today.You live in a liberal fantasyland that won't allow you to recognize that militant Islam is the main force of evil in the middle east and is promoted by entire Governments with militaries and aspirations for nuclear weapons.
No legitimate government or person praises any act done in the name of Jesus.But you have to look no further than this comment board to find moral justifications being made for the Fort Hood idiot.
10% too 20% of Muslims see nothing wrong with suicide bombers.That's millions of people driven to murder for their religion.
Christianity may be open to violent interpretations by some,but they are so minute that to compare them to radical Islam is intellectually dishonest.
The irony of your equivocations is that you libs. would be the first ones killed by an islamic theocracy.
LIBERALS,WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE !
gluteusmaximus
dissent is a fundamental human right. if any "community" tries to suppress dissent it is no community at all. Islam has to learn this and stop drawing a line between "believers" and "non-believers" and view all people equally. other religions have made this transition. the leaders of islam should consider this very important question
brownjackson
I agree. If Islam didnt exist there would be almost no violence or very little in this world. We would at least be able to get the oil.
idealist707
Dear friend,
I agree-----but! In about the 12th century, muslim sufis launched the idea of the equality of all religions. And the right of all to practice as they wish.L
Like many other Sufi ideas, this one was widely accepted. Prior to that, Jews and Christians were allowed to pay an extra tax under muslim rule and have full religious freedom.
Pick up Karen Armstrong's book "Islam" and take a look.
gobbycoot
Shame the Sufis aren't a important players in the Ummah. The Sufis (and Ismailies) are wonderful, happy, laissaiz-faire (sp?) people who have nothing to do with the terrorist elements of Islam. Implying that the Sufi philosophy has any real influence in the modern Sunni/Shia Ummah is a very Karen Armstrong fluffy attempt at encouraging head burial in sand.
mohammed
a very thought provoking article indeed..... true that mr hasan wrongfully used Islam as his shield to justify the horrendous act which he committed.... one aspect though which was left untouched was the fact that the shooting spree was a reaction too.... it was a response to the treatment he was meted out by his fellow army men...reminds me of the Virginia tech University Shoot-out and a movie called the Dark Matter... hope this part of the story too is highlighted....
RomeoHotel
This is a sick comment -- blaming the victims for their own murders.
rowland
And yet so common a point among those who rationalize murder.
rowland
It should be known as "The Little Eichmanns Defense."
mohammed
i am not blaming the victims and not defending hasan.... what i am saying is that the incident has another aspect to it... and it needs to be highlighted too...
gameon
Where's Dick Cheney when you need him.
escomments
Do you also blame American foreign policy for 9/11?
atushia
Very good article that gives us some insight into Hasan's mind.
viewfromhere
Imagine Hasan's shock when he woke up and he wasn't surrounded by sixteen virgins.
aaghaz
Why the article seems bit confusing, is it because its full of religious arguments, which seems to be biased as they are just put up for the sake of proving one's opinion, or because it quotes the statements from a character who never spoke, when he could have stop this to happen. Any ways, Islam does have many interpretations, and its not the only religion that has it. What Maj. Hassan did is still a question, whether it is religiously motivated or it was because of the anger or sense of insecurity, or disrespect to him by his colleagues, we all do not know. It will be definitely very hard to convince either side from stop killing the innocent, which obviously both sides do, and one does it in high numbers.
RomeoHotel
My God .. Another comment that suggests maybe we should blame the victims!
gameon
He yelled allahu akbar as he mowed people down,I would say there's a chance it was religiously motivated! Islam has many interpretations?
I'm looking for cheney's telephone number.
mohammed
@ game on... that means that any religious man who goes mad and kills innocent people is not a killer but a JIHADIST of his religion.... come on grow up buddy.... the story has two faces
gameon
No, it means that any man who contacts Al Qaeda ,declares he's a "soldier of Allah and then proceeds to execute soldiers,including pregnant women while screaming Islamic phrases is an Islamic Jihadist.What do you think the victims were thinking as he was murdering them? I'll bet ya they thought he was an Islamic Jihadist also.
T1Brit
What kind of woman who is free to choose, living as she does in the free society that she does, enjoying the freedoms that she does, hard won as they are, could possibly want to encourage in others, or attempt to reform, or have anything to do with the absurd hateful misogynistic superstition of an old bedouin soothsayer is beyond me.
You are a fraud, a joke. Like all 'ordinary people' who allow such muck to still pollute the air of free-thinking scientific liberalism that is possible in western societies. You don't deserve the space on this web page that you have been given. Take your equivocation and intellectual cowardice and get lost. Take the bible thumpers with you when you leave.
loloo33
What right you have to judge? and why all these white freaks not just join the army if they want to do something? either drug addicted, or too fat, they are worthless at the end of the day they are all just go back to steal money from their grandma.
RomeoHotel
Racist loon alert.
gameon
Your comments are always racist and have an incredibly poor use of the english language.
Willabay
About the only thing I can understand from your comment is that you're a racist. Other than that, it's incomprehensible.
Willabay
Actually, why don't YOU leave and take your "free-thinking scientific liberalism" with you."
The majority of us, unlike rigid freaks like you, prefer good ol' FREE-THINKING!
loloo33
Willaboy--stupid name. The majority of us blah blah blah...free thinking..blah blah blah.....rediculous.
idealist707
Don't know where you get the idea that Mohammed was against women.
Fact: Prior to Mohammed, women in Arabia had the status equivalent to slaves.
Fact: Mohammed gave women the right of divorce, the right of inheritance, and the full right to worship God on a equal footing with men. (Koran sura 33, verse 35)
Fact: With the expansion of muslims they came in contact with Christians, Jews and Persian Zoroastrians, who with their customs of covering up women and hiding them in harems had great inflrence on the muslims. Paternalistic suppression of women is a universal custom since time eternal.
gameon
A bunch of throwbacks who make their women live like animals.Nice try with the jews made them wear burqa thing,get real.Whens the last time you saw a christian treating their wife like that?It's because everybody else has progressed except for muslims.
Beethy
Having an internal debate over differing religious interpretations is one thing, but killing innocent people is entirely different, and criminal (no longer religious, fundamentalist or moderate).
Suicide bombers in Pakistan, Afhanistan and Iraq
kill mostly their own people (ummah, with or without Captal 'U'), or shia killing Sunnis and vice-versa.
Maybe they can justify that too. Religion is supposed to be based on love, not hate This is the 21st century, not 7th.
A very disturbing regressive trend !
This incidence and this article on it just another sad reminder.
loloo33
Religioins are stupid, period. They are irrelevant to this society, we are no longer in the cave and afriad of lightening. We don't have to pray for rain anymore, and knowing that Santa Clause is not real---why are we still talk nonsense in this day and age? Are we still that stupid?
Aranxa
Religion may be stupid to you, but to some of us well educated, deep thinking people it is very important. Maybe, if you were more informed about religion you wouldn't be so hostile. If you were more informed you'd know that Santa Claus is only a feature of the Church of Shopping.
Aslanleon
Still that stupid from someone who can't spell religions and Santa Claus! All righty then... Billions of educated, intelligent people, many of whom can spell, are adherents of the various world's religions.
TheGreatGrayFox
Religion is a plague on humanity. I hope that at least some good can come of this atrocity and we begin to dismantle all religions, everywhere. Islam and Scientology are among the most dangerous and should be the first to go, but the other major religions like Judaism and Christianity must be abandoned if we, as a society, can ever hope to be ruled by reason, logic, and wisdom. Folks, no matter which way you slice it delusion is delusion and we have too many other issues to be concerned with to be dealing with warrantless barbarism.
Don't let anyone ever tell you they know what happens after you die, because they don't. Anyone who claims to know is 1) lying and 2) psychotic.
Be strong enough to know the universe isn't that small or simple. Use your own thoughts and convictions to give rise to spirituality unique to yourself and make your own reasons to live life as a good person. It's time we, as a nation, stop clinging fearfully to these ancient fictions and start being spiritually self-sufficient.
escomments
TheGreatGrayFox-
No Religion isn't a plague on humanity.
That would be KNOW IT ALL PROGRESSIVES!
TheGreatGrayFox
Did you read what I wrote at all? The point is we don't know. None of us. The point is to do the hard mental work it takes to forge a strong spiritual foundation, without the gimmicks and myths and whatnot. Atheism is just as wrong as any other religion because it claims to know absolutely that nothing exists after death.
And no, this idea is not progressive at all. In fact, it's incredibly conservative in nature. Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps, spiritually.
Religion would not be a problem if everyone understood these ancient books are meant to be metaphorical. This is to say that none of these "miraculous" events actually happened. They're stories, and that is /ok/. Their hyperbolic nature is meant to make abstract ideas concrete. Just because they aren't true doesn't mean they're trivial or unimportant. For goodness' sake just don't take them literally and things will improve greatly.
LeRoi35
ThatGreatGrayFox -
Although some atheists may claim to know that nothing exists after life, there is no god, etc, atheism per se only refers to belief, not knowledge. Gnosticism has to do with knowledge. I am agnostic (as it sounds you are) because I don't know whether or not there is a god. I am an atheist because I don't believe that there is a god. Atheism and agnosticism are not mutually exclusive.
LeRoi35
P.S. other than that I completely agree with you, Fox.
fusundo
Lets stop making excuses for this looser. We, the taxpayers, pay for his college, medical school, training, housing and food while in the base. We asked him, in exchange, to provide services to soldiers in need of psychiatric treatment. But he leeched as much as he could and "surprise, surprise" one day he realized that America is "evil". This guy is a looser, a loner, a fanatic that killed people because this is what religious fanatics do and lately it seems that there is an oversupply of them between muslims. In times of war you treat traitors as traitors, and those in the military who overlooked his traitorous remarks are responsible and must be held accountable. I he had been a member of the Aryan Nation or a member of the KKK everybody would have stopped making excuses for him. Well there is no much difference between the Aryan Nation the KKK and these fanatics. By the way we are still waiting condemnation of his actions from the religious leaders of his persuasion. Go figure.
Bettie
A great post. This muslim looser has never worked a day in his life. He sucked the American Taxpayer tit since he got out of high school. We will have to continue paying him until he dies. I hope the a**hole suffers in horrible pain for the next 100 years.
Wonder if they have taken him off the payroll yet? Or maybe that is discrimination......
rowland
Only one 'o' in 'loser' guys....
escomments
Here, Here!
If he was a White Supremest, we would never hear the end of it. Matter of fact, that is all we are hearing now, how we need to make sure that there isn't any undue reaction to this incident towards Muslims at large, like that needed to be said! Seems that the next Timothy McVeigh was this guy. A Muslim Terrorist.
idealist707
They condemned his actions about4 hours after his identity was revealed.
But maybe facts don't interest you, even if they are shown on TV.
PapaWhiskey
While admiring the sentiments expressed in this article, it can hardly be denied that its author faces an uphill struggle. After all, on Sept. 18, 2008, the secretary general of the 57-nation Organization of the Islamic Conference, Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu declared, in a speech at Columbia University, that:
"The Muslim Ummah, means the 'community of the faithful'. It is a unique bond that has no similar example under any other political or religious system in the world. It is a belonging to ideals which bring Muslims together in an eternal brotherhood lock which transcends all other consideration of allegiance or loyalties or barriers of nationhood, ethnicity, geography or language."
See also Qur'an 48:29, which mandates that Muslims be "hard against the disbelievers and merciful among themselves."
RomeoHotel
If so, then it seems that a belief in the "Muslim Ummah" would be a direct violation of the oath of allegience that officers take to serve in the U.S. military.
dooreen
I meant theoretically, in practical terms you are right.
It is just like a manager hired by, for example a restaurant, and lets people walk out without paying cause they are poor, theoretically that is nice for poor people, but in practical terms, if he is the owner that is one thing, but if he is the agent of the owner, he is ignoring his duty to his employer, and he needs to be fired because he is not doing his job.
I just hope it is just one, and not a whole bunch. It is pretty scary for the people that work there, especially if they are not allowed to carry arms.
They are sort of like sitting ducks, in a war zone, sort of.
They are hired to fight a war. If they don't agree with the war, they will have a conflict in that job, which makes a person a soldier first, and a doctor or what have you second.
dooreen
In this case, his actions, made him a traitor. Technically.
I can see people with a Muslim background being an asset. If they are in that line of work, and they have their doubts on what side they are on, that is a liability, and I would not want to be a soldier, unarmed, in that room again, until a reasonable effort is made to rule out the possibility of a sleeping cell existing in that base.
I would think there is a possibility there is a sleeper cell in that area.
Why wouldn't there be?
I would not want to be unarmed in a situation like that.
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n--Y--maladaptedgobbycoot
That IS the ticket! Is this head-burial-in-the-sand spot free? :)
JohnConnughton
I do not have a religious faith myself, but I have the same problem with atheism as I do with belief in a God: if you're going to define a thing as impossible to understand-all knowing, all powerful, etc.-then I object to any human being saying he or she knows any more about it than I do. It does not matter a whit if studying it is all you've ever done. I have a decent brain myself. And I have pondered the what and why of God. But I would not presume to tell anyone else that as a result I know God any better than they do. Whatever I do know, that is between me and God.
Anyone who says a thing is unknowable (to you) except that somehow THEY know it, they are delusional, or else they are false prophets. That means all priests, ministers, and mullahs who claim anything more than that they too are seekers after truth. NO human is infallible in judgement, not a Pope, not any Imam. Not even me (smile).
Needless to say, this makes the 'Ummah' idea anathema to me. And I cannot foresee any happy ending to this warefare they make on all who are outside their little circle, unless the more rational among them take control of their extremes and, as Nomani writes here, start by knocking that 'u' out of upper-case. Good luck to you, M'am.
Thank you.
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