Fort Hood Muslim Major and his Personal Jihad
The Conscious Act of a Devout Muslim
At 1:30 in the afternoon of November 5, 2009, a lone United States Army Major took up arms against his fellow soldiers at the post’s
Training at Fort Hood
Major Malik Nadal Hasan killed 13 and wounded as many as 30. Many of the victims were collecting their final deployment papers.
Witnesses say Army Major Malik Nadal Hasan opened fire using 2 handguns.
Hasan was in stable condition condition at a local hospital Thursday night, Cone said after previously reporting that he was killed at the scene.
A female first responder who shot at Hasan who was also previously thought to be dead, was also alive.
Reports say Major Hasan was scheduled to be sent overseas to Iraq or Afghanistan and was reported to have been upset about his pending deployment.
Authorities Begin Investigation
Nov. 6: Federal agents search the apartment of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan in Killeen, Texas.
Authorities raided the apartment of American born Major Nidal Malik Hasan early Friday in a search for clues, as another victim died from injuries suffered during the worst mass killing on a U.S. military base.
Federal law-enforcement agents ordered an evacuation of the apartment complex where Hasan lived in Killeen, Texas, and conducted a search of his home.
Officials said earlier that federal search warrants were being drawn up to authorize the seizure of his computer.
Before Thursday’s shooting, Hasan reportedly gave away all of his furniture along with copies of the Koran to neighbors, KXXV-TV reported.
Authorities have not ruled out that Hasan was acting on behalf of some unidentified radical group.
The motive for the shooting wasn’t clear, but Hasan was apparently set to deploy soon, and had expressed some anger about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Federal law enforcement officials told the Associated Press that Hasan had come to their attention at least six months ago because of Internet postings that discussed homicide bombings and other threats. The officials said they are still trying to confirm that he was the author.
One of the Web postings that authorities reviewed is a blog that equates homicide bombers with a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades.
“To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause,” said the Internet posting. “Scholars have paralled (sic) this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers.”
They say an official investigation was not opened.
Attended Same Mosque as 9/11 Highjackers
By the following Monday, it is learned Major Hasan apparently attended the same Virginia mosque as two Sept. 11 hijackers in 2001, at a time when a radical imam preached there. He also held his mother’s funeral at the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., on May 31, 2001, according to her obituary in the Roanoke Times newspaper.
Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center
In 2001, Anwar Aulaqi was an imam, or spiritual leader, at the Washington-area mosque. Aulaqi told the FBI in 2001 that, before he moved to Virginia in early 2001, he met with 9/11 hijacker Nawaf al-Hazmi several times in San Diego. Al-Hazmi was at the time living with Khalid al-Mihdhar, another hijacker. Al-Hazmi and another hijacker, Hani Hanjour, attended the Dar al Hijrah mosque in Virginia in early April 2001.
In his FBI interview, Aulaqi denied ever meeting with al-Hazmi and Hanjour while in Virginia.
Aulaqi, a native-born U.S. citizen, left the United States in 2002, eventually traveling to Yemen. He was investigated by the FBI in 1999 and 2000 after it was learned that he may have been contacted by a possible procurement agent for Osama bin Laden. During this investigation, the FBI learned that Aulaqi knew people involved in raising money for Hamas, a Palestinian group on the U.S. State Department’s terrorist list.
Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, outreach director at Dar al Hijrah, said he did not know whether Hasan ever attended the mosque but confirmed that the Hasan family participated in services there. Abdul-Malik said the Hasans were not leaders at the mosque and their attendance was utterly normal.
The Falls Church mosque is one of the largest on the East Coast, and thousands of worshippers attend prayers and services there every week. Abdul-Malik said it’s a mistake for people to conflate regular attendance at a mosque with extremism.
Senator Lieberman calls for Investigation
Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), chairman of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security, told FOX News Sunday there were “strong warning signs” that Hasan was an “Islamist extremist.”
“If that is true, the murder of these 13 people was a terrorist act and, in fact, it was the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11,” Lieberman added.
The senator said he plans to hold a congressional investigation on whether the Army missed signs that Hasan had become an extremist, citing reports that the gunman had shouted Allahu Akbar, or God is Great, before firing on fellow soldiers, who were crowded in a “readiness center” where they get medical and dental check-ups before deployment.
Home Grown Terrorists or Islamic Allegiance over U.S. Patriotism ?
The events of this day will no doubt be a game changer with wide implications.
To begin, with the fact that Major Hasan gave away personal belongings prior setting out to kill U.S. military personnel removes any likelihood this is a case where he simply snapped due to stress caused from combat fatigue. It is safe to say his actions were premeditated. His research into the teachings of Islam on the matter further indicate his actions were planned.
From this point forward, many military personal who share the same heritage and/or belief systems as those held by Major Hasan and others will be under greater scrutiny than ever before. American Christians who convert to Islam will be examined with a wary eye to accurately assess their psyche. Security clearances will need to be re-evaluated. Assignments will change, Recruiting practices will be refined.
Make no mistake; this is not a mere case of home-grown terrorism as some officials so readily call it. To label it as such reflects a failure to grasp the fundamentals of what motives these people.
It is clearly a case where religious Islamic zeal (Jihad) has eclipsed normal Western civil sensibilities which then allowed for this level of violence to be unleashed.
An Act of Treason
The actions of Major Hasan are those of treason. He demonstrated his disloyalty to the country he was supposed to have served. He betrayed and killed fellow officers and enlisted men who were serving to protect her. His actions provided aid and comfort to our enemies. By all accounts, Major Hasan is a traitor.
I will expect that the Major will be court martialed in a military court and will, at the very least, receive a life sentence.
If justice is to be served, he will be shot by firing squad, but the PC-minds in government and our military will see to it that does not happen.
The Root Cause : Cognitive Dissonance
The nature of this act of violence should serve to open the eyes of many Americans who are still asleep and unaware of what we have living among us in America today.
While politicians dance around the issue, including President Obama, the actions of Major Hasan is simply that of Islamic terrorism.
When this American born Muslim lashed out against his fellow officers and enlisted personnel, he threw off his veil of American patriotism and values and donned the cloth of Islam and the teachings of Muhammad. The motivation needed to embark upon these killings should indicate that one set of religious values overrode the values associated with being an American patriot. It was inevitable.
Major Hasan, was a trained psychiatrist. He had more emotional, cognitive and reasoning skills than most but in spite of these abilities, they were not enough to override the teachings of Islam. For him the mere though of being sent to a Muslim country to fight against Muslim born extremists – his brothers – was more than he could deal with.
Major Hasan
This is a case of cognitive dissonance, a condition which creates uncomfortable feelings caused by holding two contradictory sets of ideals simultaneously. Major Hasan was dealing with a conflicting set of values, attitudes and beliefs.
The Muslim in him was at conflict with whatever sense of being a good American he harbored. The uncomfortable level of dissonance was enough to create the motivation to act. Without a doubt he experienced anxiety, guilt, shame, anger, embarrassment, stress, and other negative emotional states created by a conflict of adopted belief systems.
It is a mistake to classify Major Hasan’s actions as those of a mentally ill person who slipped through examination. Major Hasan was perfectly sane. He, like so many other Muslims, was simply under the influence of Islam’s teachings. When America understands these mechanisms and understand the power these teachings have over other belief systems, then maybe America will come to fully understand the danger facing her.
It is like a shark. You cannot change it’s nature. You cannot be friends with it. It will kill you, unless of course you are also a shark.
The Muslim Brotherhood
The Muslim Brotherhood is an affiliation of at least 70 Islamist organizations around the world, all tracing their heritage to the original cell, founded in Egypt in 1928. Its credo:
“Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. Quran is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.” — Sayyid Qutb
Hanged by the Egyptian government in 1966 as a revolutionary, Sayyid Qutb remains its ideological godfather. His best-known work, Milestones, calls for Muslims to wage violent holy war until Islamic law governs the entire world.
The Final Irony
We are so afraid of trampling upon someone’s civil liberties that we won’t focus on the main mass which represents the source of our threat. Instead, we randomly pick people from a crowd or a line and expend the energy, money and resources to look into background, examine documents and search luggage to assess threat potential.
Meanwhile, the real terrorist slips through.
This security posture is born from our fear of losing our civil liberties; of taking liberties away from others. The irony here is that because of the policies we hold onto today, we may well end up losing a city. When that happens, the policies we could be employing today to prevent that eventuality will look very attractive and acceptable compared to the ruthless policies and resulting loss of liberties we will then impose upon ourselves.
Newt Gingrich said it better than I can by saying,
“I think those of you who care about civil liberties had better be thinking through how we win this war before the casualties get so great that the American people voluntarily give up a lot of those liberties.”
With the fact that federal authorities were aware of Hasan’s internet conversations and did not open a full investigation, it would appear that even our government has not yet come to full terms with this insidious enemy of freedom.
[...] Read about it here. [...]
Can you please add that the idea that this man suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is, in itself, a rather vicious smear being perpetrated by the media?
The man never deployed. He spent six years in Silver Spring, Maryland and never heard a shot fired in anger. Tens of thousands of US troops have PTSD and they would never kill their comrades out of the need to make a political statement against the war.
Thank you.
I think you just did and better than I could have.
I further believe that those who do believe PTSD played ANY role must join the ranks of those who just don’t get it. They need to first come to terms with Islam, the Qur’an, Muhammad and the teaching of the Imams in the Mosques across America today.
Now we have learned Major Hasan prayed in the same Virgina Mosque that was attended by 2 of the 9/11 highjackers.
To get an American analog, some think of David Koresh as one of America’s examples of a “crazy” following a religion. It is yet another mistake. The “Davidians” as the group was called, never espoused “Death to America” or “Behead non-Christian” and is light years away from the teachings of Islam.
I challenge anyone reading this to name a modern-day religion which espouses and preaches from its churches, synagogues, shrines, holy places of worship, etc. such teachings and has a body of followers who carry out its teachings of intolerance and hate against those who do not believe as they do.
[...] It’s a new theory out there which advances the preposterous notion that President Bush is responsible for the Fort Hood massacre. [...]
[...] It’s a new theory out there which advances the preposterous notion that President Bush is responsible for the Fort Hood massacre. [...]
George W. Bush Was Responsible For The Ft. Hood Shootings « The Political Inquirer said this on November 13, 2009 at 12:33 pm |