Well, analysis by anagram makes about as much sense and is about as logical as some of the “reasons” for his mass murder put out seriously by the apologists in the mainstream media (MSM): e.g.: that Hasan attended Virginia Tech College for a while. Remember VTC? That’s where the Korean loony went crazy and randomly killed a bunch of people a while back. Random mass murder is catching, don’t you see, so there’s an “explanation”, a “motive”. Hasan caught the crazies while there.
Other "motives" are catching as well, just like Swine Flue. Somehow, we are told, Hasan “caught” Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He’d never been deployed to a war zone, but he caught PTSD from returning soldiers.
Another "motive": Hasan the Counsellor was himself not counseled by other counsellors: it’s the fault of the Army, then. Or the US public. Or someone; certainly not Hasan, and absolutely not his religion.
Which can end up with this formulation:
“Muslim leaders and military service members have taken pains to denounce the shooting and distance themselves from Major Hasan. They mgke the point that his violence is no more representative of them than it is of other groups to which he belongs, including army psychiatrists.” ("Hard questions over faith for Muslim U.S. soldiers", International Herald Tribune, 10th Nov)
Right, I get it: Hasan is a psychiatrist who kills people, but doesn’t represent psychiatrists; and he’s a Muslim who kills people but doesn’t represent Muslims. But wait a minute! I’m sure the US Army Psychiatry Association does not have a handbook which requires adherence to Freudian analytics, with death to those that don’t so adhere. And their Manual does not require death in the name of Freud, for all non-believers, all the while shouting “Freud-u Akbar”.
The Muslim leaders will “denounce the shooting”, of course, but they do not do anything that would help stop more random suicide terrorism in future: like starting programs at Islamic schools and mosques specifically refuting and denouncing calls to sectarian and anti-Semitic killing in the source texts of Islam.
Meantime, these same “Muslim leaders” are adept at playing the victim card: even up and unto having the head of US Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano sing from their songbook rather than show concern for the safety of the homeland:
Describing the killings as "a terrible tragedy", Ms Napolitano said a civil rights and civil liberties directorate in her department aimed to "prevent everybody being painted with a broad brush”.
This is a truly shocking statement, even worse when allied with her earlier instant assertion that the killings had "nothing do with Islam" (thereby, incidentally, falling foul of her boss Obama’s instruction not to “jump to conclusions”. Oh well, it’s ok if the conclusion is to exonerate Islam).
As Robert Spencer notes:
“She [Napolitano] could have said something like this: "Describing the killings as 'a terrible massacre', Ms Napolitano said she aimed to "prevent such jihad attacks from ever happening again on American soil’".
I have shown elsewhere that despite the carnage done in the name of Islam, with over 14,300 Islamic terrorist acts since September 2001 (five a day!), Muslims are not overrepresented in the hate crime stats of the FBI. The greatest proportion of hate crimes are against Jews, who are three times more likely than Muslims to be victims of hate crimes.
One of the news stories about alleged reprisals against Muslims consists entirely of reports of Muslim organisations demanding protection against reprisals that had not happened. The headline runs “anti-Muslim backlash immediate”, but the only bit that was even vaguely a "backlash" was a post titled “Jihad at Fort Hood?”. With a question mark. The answer to which, btw, is now “yes”. But it was not irresponsible for the piece to be run, given what was already known at the time. What was worse, far worse, egregious, was the failure of the MSM, not to fail to highlight the religious motive, but not even to mention it.
Postscript:
The motive (as opposed to the "motive") is becoming clearer all the time, even as it was clear from the beginning. It’s what we thought all along. Hasan mass-murdered in the name of Islam. His links the radical sectarian anti-semitic, Al-Qaeda-sympathising cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki sealed all the other circumstantial evidence. (and remember one can indict on circumstancial evidence). As soon as the religious motive became clear, the MSM reporting stopped. After all, if he’s not loony, if he didn't catch the crazies from Virginia tech, or catch PTSD, or if he wasn't a person sinned against by racist taunting, or freaked out by a deployment to Afghanistan, then what's to report?
Almost all reports in the MSM downplayed or ignored the religious element of Hasan’s murder spree. Of particular note in the New York Times, this is my Reporters’ Hall of Shame, highlighting particularly tendentious or egregious "reporting":
Almost all reports in the MSM downplayed or ignored the religious element of Hasan’s murder spree. Of particular note in the New York Times, this is my Reporters’ Hall of Shame, highlighting particularly tendentious or egregious "reporting":
- Benedict Carey
- Damien Cave
- Lizette Alvarez
- Andrea Elliott
- Erica Goode
Many observers, Muslim and non-Muslim, have said that it’s not permitted for Muslims to kill other Muslims. Put aside the fact that Sunnis will happily kill Shia and vice versa and that both will kill Sufi’s or Ismaeli, the Koran and Hadith do prohibit the killing of Muslims by Muslims.
But, first, during WWII, the allies fought the Germans, all Christian countries, and never have I heard that there was concern by Christians at killing Christians. The point was that there were some clear “bad guys”, the Nazis, and the fact that their troops and ours believed in Jesus, did not stop the allies from trying to stop "bad guys”. Similarly, Muslims ought to be able to fight, and kill, other Muslims, if they are creating chaos in the land, as did the Nazis.
Second point: given that the doctrines of Islam do prohibit the killing of Muslims, such that even Muslim soldiers of the US army will be “conflicted” if asked to serve in a Muslim country, or consider themselves Muslim first and Americans second, doesn’t that demand that the US Military should reconsider recruiting any Muslims as soldiers? Especially since they will likely have to serve in a Muslim country?
