Army says 13 people dead and 30 wounded in attack at Fort Hood, Texas

[darrels joy]

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 time 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.

Last week, on the eve of Hasan's killing spree, two Iranian-American security guards walked up to a U.S. Army officer in uniform in the parking lot outside the Sears auto repair shop in Herndon, Virginia, not far from where Hasan grew up in Arlington. “I want to join the Army,” one of the security guards said, “but I don’t want to kill my Muslim brothers, you know? So they won’t send me to Afghanistan or Iraq…Will they?” The military officer smiled. Of course, “they” would likely send the men to Iraq or Afghanistan if they joined the military. America is at war in those two countries.

To me, the conversation was revealing. From Seattle, Washington to my hometown of Morgantown, West Virginia and the mosque in Silver Spring, I have heard an ideology that Muslims belong to an “ummah,” in which Muslims can’t turn against other Muslims. As a Muslim-American writer-activist, challenging rules that banish women to the back corners of mosques, I have been told that I must stay quiet so as not to cause “fitna,” or division, inside the community.

Five years ago, in an email to community members, a member of the board of trustees of the Muslim Community Center argued one of my objectives was to “create fitna (chaos) in the community.”

It’s critical that we ditch the concept of the “ummah” with a capital “U” and recognize that we are an “ummah” with a small “u,” meaning our religious identity doesn’t have to supersede other loyalties and identities.

This attempt to push an “Ummah” is the politics of ideologues of puritanical Islam who want to mollify dissent. Sadly, too many moderates have bought into it. We aren’t monolithic, and we shouldn’t try to be. Look at Al Qaeda, the Taliban and Pakistani militant groups: They don’t have a problem with killing Muslims, slaying Muslims in attacks from Amman, Jordan, to Islamabad, Pakistan.

For ideologues, in a battle over loyalty between the army and the ummah, the “Ummah” wins. At my mosque in Morgantown, I have heard this Qur’anic verse used to quiet dissent (3:103): “Hold fast to the rope of Allah, the faith of Islam, and be not divided in groups.” Another verse in the same chapter (3: 110) says: “You [Muslims] are the best nation brought out for Mankind, commanding what is righteous and forbidding what is wrong.” In yet another verse, the Qur’an (21:92) refers to “ummah wahida” or “one community,” which ideologues push as a unified Islamic world, even a caliphate.

In an essay, “Unity of Muslims,” on a website by a Muslim organization, Dar-ul-ehsan, or “the House of Blessing,” with a branch advertised in Bristol, Connecticut the group’s leader, Shiekh Abu Anees Muhammad Barkat Ali, says, “Oh my dear Muslim brother! Unite together above all sectarian and racial strifes for the promotion of Unity and Brotherhood amongst the Islamic Ummah, the Muslim Community.” The capitalization comes from the group. In a September letter to Muslims, Mullah Umar, the leader of the Taliban in exile, extend greetings to “all Islamic Ummah.”

As a result of this kind of ideology, Muslims such as the writers of a website, RevolutionIslam.com, called Hasan “an officer and a gentleman” and praised his alleged killing spree at Ft. Hood, sending him “Get Well” greetings.

Throughout the Muslim community, there is a battle over legitimacy, authority and identity. Back in Silver Spring, on the day of the debate between the engineer and the doctor over the meaning of jihad, Akhter said that Hasan told him that if he didn’t believe in jihad as warfare, “Then you are not a Muslim.”

That politics of making another Muslim illegitimate is a strategy typically used today by literal, rigid interpreters of Islam to discredit other Muslims, in the spirit of a group of 7th century Muslims, the Kharijites, who used a politics called “takfeer” to declare other Muslims apostates.

Akhter responded: “Only Allah can say who is good.”

Hasan answered back: “It is written in the holy Qur’an. If a believer has any question about the Qur’an, then he is not a true believer.”

To argue for jihad as holy war is to accept strict adherence to verses such as this one (2: 216), translated in the Noble Qur’an as: “Jihad (holy fighting in Allah’s cause) is ordained for you (Muslims) though you dislike it.” That translation is published by the government of Saudi Arabia.

Another time, the engineer and the doctor debated the question of whether a thief’s hand should be cut off, a punishment laid out in a literal read of the Qur’an (5: 38). Akhter made the historically accurate point that Umar, the second caliph after the death of the prophet Muhammad, suspended this punishment during a time of famine. Hasan listened and then responded, “That’s not for everybody. Only Umar can interpret that. We have to follow the Qur’an in total.” Hasan’s strict adherence to literal readings of the Qur’an betrays his leanings to extremist Islam.

Ironically, last year, long before the tragedy at Fort Hood, an officer at the Army's Command and General Staff College at Ft. Leavenworth wrote a research paper in which he tried to understand the dilemma facing Muslims in the West. In the paper, “American Muslims: Living the Dream,” U.S. Army Maj. Matthew P Neumeyer wrote that while Muslim immigrants in the U.S. “share the same characteristics as any other immigrant group coming to America looking for a chance at prosperity,” he noted, “At this time, however, Muslim immigrants are at the center of a large struggle among Western governments, moderate Muslim communities, and Islamic extremist groups.”

In the midst of the many conversations he had with Hasan, Akhter stood outside the Muslim Community Center, distributing photocopies of a Washington Post article about an Afghan mother who tried to stop her radicalized son from carrying out a suicide bombing; the bomb exploded in the family’s home, killing the mother, her son and her three other children.

In a later email to mosque members, he urged them, “Let us wake up,” and take note of who are “potential terrorists, who are fanatics, who are fundamentalists” in the community.

No one in the mosque responded with concerns about Hasan’s extremist views. Rather, when he had distributed the newspaper article, Akther said, a member of the mosque yelled at him, charging him with causing “fitna” in the ummah.

Two years later, this past Friday after the Fort Hood massacre, TV crews and journalists thronged the yard of the mosque with questions about the religious identity of one man: Maj. Hasan.

Asra Q. Nomani is the author of

Standing Alone: An American..." target="_blank">Standing Alone: An American...
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. She is co-director of the http://scs.georgetown.edu/pearlproject/, 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, http://www.themosqueinmorgantown.com/MIM/The_Mosque_in_Morgantown.html. She can be found on Facebook, and reached at asra@asranomani.com

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-a...ilitancy/full/

[darrels joy]

Fort Hood shooting: Texas army killer linked to September 11 terrorists

Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a "spiritual adviser" to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.


Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother's funeral was held there in May that year.

The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.


Hasan's eyes "lit up" when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki's teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday's horrific shooting spree.

As investigators look at Hasan's motives and mindset, his attendance at the mosque could be an important piece of the jigsaw. Al-Awlaki moved to Dar al-Hijrah as imam in January, 2001, from the west coast, and three months later the September 11 hijackers Nawaf al-Hamzi and Hani Hanjour began attending his services. A third hijacker attended his services in California.

Hasan was praying at Dar al-Hijrah at about the same time, and the FBI will now want to investigate whether he met the two terrorists.

Charles Allen, a former under-secretary for intelligence at the Department of Homeland Security, has described al-Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen, as an "al-Qaeda supporter, and former spiritual leader to three of the September 11 hijackers... who targets US Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen".

Last night Hasan remained in a coma under guard at a military hospital in San Antonio, Texas, and was said to be in a "stable" condition. Born in America to a Palestinian family, Hasan, 39, was an army psychiatrist who had chosen to sign up for the US military against his parents' wishes.
But he turned into an angry critic of the wars America was waging in Iraq and Afghanistan and had tried in vain to negotiate his discharge.

He counselled soldiers returning from the front line and told relatives that he was horrified at the prospect of a deployment to Afghanistan later this year – his first time in a combat zone.

Whether due to his personal convictions, his stress over his deployment or other reasons, Hasan is alleged to have snapped and gone on a murderous rampage with a powerful semi-automatic handgun after shouting "Allahu Akhbar" ("God is great"), according to survivors. He had earlier given away copies of the Koran to neighbours.

Investigators at this stage have no indication that he planned the attacks with anyone else. But they are trawling through his phone records, paperwork and computers he used before the attack during an apparently sleepless night.

Five of the 13 victims were fellow mental health professionals from three units of the army's Combat Stress Control Detachment, it was disclosed yesterday.

It is understood that Hasan had been due to be deployed with members of those units in coming months. Whether he deliberately singled out other combat stress counsellors is another key question.

What does seem clear is that the army missed an increasing number of red flags that Hasan was a troubled and brooding individual within its ranks.

"I was shocked but not surprised by news of Thursday's attack," said Dr Val Finnell, a fellow student on a public health course in 2007-08 who heard Hasan equate the war on terrorism to a war on Islam. Another student had warned military officials that Hasan was a "ticking time bomb" after he reportedly gave a presentation defending suicide bombers.

Kamran Pasha, the author of Mother of the Believers, a new novel relating the story of Islam from the perspective of Aisha, Prophet Mohammed's wife, was told of the al-Awlaki connection from a Muslim friend who is also an officer at Fort Hood. Using the name Richard, the recent convert to Islam described how he frequently prayed with Hasan at the town mosque after Hasan was deployed to Fort Hood in July. They last worshipped together at predawn prayers on the day of the massacre when Hasan "appeared relaxed and not in any way troubled or nervous".

But Richard had previously argued with Hasan when he said that he felt the "war on terror" was really a war against Islam, expressed anti-Jewish sentiments and defended suicide bombings.

"I asked Richard whether he believed that Hasan was motivated by religious radicalism in his murderous actions," Mr Pasha said.

"Richard, with great sadness, said that he believed this was true. He also believed that psychological factors from Hasan's job as an army psychiatrist added to his pathos. The news that he would be deployed overseas, to a war that he rejected, may have pushed him over the edge.

"But Richard does not excuse Hasan. As a Muslim, he finds Hasan's religious perspectives to be fundamentally misguided. And as a soldier, he finds Hasan's actions cowardly and evil."

Fellow Muslims in the US armed forces have also been quick to denounce Hasan's actions and insist that they were the product of a lone individual rather than of Islamic teachings. Osman Danquah, the co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, said Hasan never expressed anger toward the army or indicated any plans for violence.

But he said that, at their second meeting, Hasan seemed almost incoherent.

"I told him, 'There's something wrong with you'. I didn't get the feeling he was talking for himself, but something just didn't seem right."

He was sufficiently troubled that he recommended the centre reject Hasan's request to become a lay Muslim leader at Fort Hood.

Hasan had, in fact, already come to the attention of the authorities before Thursday's massacre. He was suspected of being the author of internet postings that compared suicide bombers with soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to save others and had also reportedly been warned about proselytising to patients.

At Fort Hood, he told a colleague, Col Terry Lee, that he believed Muslims should rise up against American "aggressors". He made no attempt to hide his desire to end his military service early or his mortification at the prospect of deployment to Afghanistan. "He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there," said his cousin, Nader Hasan.

Yet away from his strident attacks on US foreign policy, he came across as subdued and reclusive – not hostile or threatening. Soldiers he counselled at the Walter Reed hospital in Washington praised him, while at Fort Hood, Kimberly Kesling, the deputy commander of clinical services, remarked: "Up to this point, I would consider him an asset."

Relatives said that the death of Hasan's parents, in 1998 and 2001, turned him more devout. "After he lost his parents he tried to replace their love by reading a lot of books, including the Koran," his uncle Rafiq Hamad said.
"He didn't have a girlfriend, he didn't dance, he didn't go to bars."

His failed search for a wife seemed to haunt Hasan. At the Muslim Community Centre in the Washington suburb of Silver Spring, he signed up for an Islamic matchmaking service, specifying that he wanted a bride who wore the hijab and prayed five times a day.

Adnan Haider, a retired professor of statistics, recalled how at their first meeting last year, a casual introduction after Friday prayers, Hasan immediately asked the academic if he knew "a nice Muslim girl" he could marry.

"It was a strange thing to ask someone you have met two seconds before. It was clear to me he was under pressure, you could just see it in his face," said Prof Haider, 74, who used to work at Georgetown University in Washington. "You could see he was lonely and didn't have friends.

"He is working with psychiatric people and I ask why the people around him didn't spot that something was wrong? When I heard what had happened I actually wasn't that surprised."

Indeed, many of the characteristics attributed to Hasan by acquaintances – withdrawn, unassuming, brooding, socially awkward and never known to have had a girlfriend – have also applied to other mass murderers.

Hasan was born and brought up in Virginia to parents who ran restaurants after emigrating to America from the West Bank. He graduated from Virginia Tech university – coincidentally, the scene of the worst mass shooting in US history in 2007 – with a degree in biochemistry and then joined the army, which trained him as a psychiatrist.

Relatives said that he was subjected to increasingly ugly taunts about his religion and ethnicity from other soldiers after the September 11 attacks. But his uncle insisted yesterday that Hasan would not have been driven to mass murder by revenge or religion.

Speaking in the West Bank town of al-Bireh, Mr Hamad said his nephew "loved America" and could only have been caused to snap by an as yet unexplained factor. "He always said there was no country in the world like America," he told The Sunday Telegraph. "Something big happened to him in Texas. If he did it – and until now I am in denial – it had to have been something huge because revenge was not in his nature."

•Additional reporting by Adrian Blomfield in al-Bireh

[Arrow]

03Fox2/1 wrote:

“It does seem as if there were many signs of impending action by this man that were overlooked. Possibly because of his rank and MOS or possibly because of his religion, either way, why would he get promoted recently to Major if all of his commanders fitness reports and opinions of his performance were rating him below average or less then stellar ?

I seem to remember another incident a few years ago of an American soldier, a Muslim, killing fellow soldiers as they were arriving in the Iraq War. He was the one that threw grenades into tents and fired his rifle on automatic.

Have we not learned to be more careful and have we not learned that one man's right to worship as he pleases should take a back seat to caution when it comes to religious extremism and the use of deadly force against our own troops by fellow Americans ? Religious freedom is one thing but you don't compromise military expediency in the name of perceived personal freedoms. We all know that some personal freedoms conflict with the purpose and mission of our military. When you take the oath to protect and defend the Constitution and to obey all legal orders from superiors, that is a binding contract. That's why there is the conscientious objector status during time of war with a national draft. But this war and our current military is all volunteer and Major Hasan has known for a long time, at least eight years, that the United States and our military are at war with Muslim extremism and Muslim terrorist. Hasan, an officer, is also a doctor, a psychiatrist who has treated soldiers at Walter Reed Hospital. He has seen the damaged and wounded, the PTSD and the lives forever changed by war, and still he murdered his fellow soldiers in the name of his religion. I believe that should he survive his wounds, he should be tried for murder and treason, during a time of war, and if convicted he should be executed by military firing squad, just as they did in WW II. ” Semper Fi



Scott,

Steel on Target! You dotted every I and crossed every T regard this murdering coward. You rounded up and ran every excuse anyone can possibly create for him into the proverbial boxed canyon. I’d love to see your points used against him in a court of law. He’d be left as loose as a goose in a rainstorm with not even a Texas tumbleweed to hide behind.

Thank you,

Arrow

[DMZ-LT]

Sit him on a coffin and shoot him or let me skin him now.

[03Fox2/1]

Arrow,
We all know that his defense will be temporarily insanity based on religious persecution. Probably get the American Civil Liberties Union involved and of course, all Muslims from around the world will be watching and our government will bend over backwards to be politically correct. Justice will prevail, he will be found guilty but I'm sure he will get long prison time instead of capital punishment as he deserves. This outcome will only encourage others to do the same and what's so sad is that these people that commit these crimes in the name of their religion want to die, they expect to die and dying is certainly what they deserve, but we, of course will not give him what he deserves. I may be wrong, I hope so.

Semper Fi, Scott

[Arrow]

My money says you won't be wrong, Scott.

Take care out there,

Arrow

[revwardoc]

I found out yesterday that the nephew of one of my fellow End Zone Militia members is stationed at Ft. Hood and was in his barracks when it happened, so he didn't get directly involved. He served 2 tours in Iraq and 1 in Afghanistan and is at Hood getting treatment for PTSD. His therapist was Maj. Hasan! He says all the asshat wanted to talk about was the conflicts in the Middle East and was very anti-Semetic and anti-US actions. He, my friend's nephew, had asked for another therapist 2 days before the jagoff snapped.

[David]

AP


FORT HOOD, Texas – A U.S. Army spokesman says the man suspected in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood is in critical but stable condition at Texas hospital.

Col. John Rossi told Fox News early Monday that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's condition has not changed since he was taken off a ventilator Saturday.

Hasan is at Brooke Medical Center in San Antonio, about 150 miles southwest of Fort Hood.

Authorities say the 39-year-old Hasan opened fire at a processing center Thursday at Fort Hood, the country's largest military installation. Thirteen people were killed and 29 were wounded.

The shooting spree ended when a civilian police officer shot Hasan.

Rossi says the center remains a crime scene, but that the base is "working on healing."

[darrels joy]

Officials: U.S. Aware of Hasan Efforts to Contact al Qaeda

Army Major in Fort Hood Massacre Used 'Electronic Means' to Connect with Terrorists

By RICHARD ESPOSITO, MATTHEW COLE and BRIAN ROSS

Nov. 9, 2009 —

U.S. intelligence agencies were aware months ago that Army Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to make contact with people associated with al Qaeda, two American officials briefed on classified material in the case told ABC News.

It is not known whether the intelligence agencies informed the Army that one of its officers was seeking to connect with suspected al Qaeda figures, the officials said.

One senior lawmaker said the CIA had, so far, refused to brief the intelligence committees on what, if any, knowledge they had about Hasan's efforts.

CIA director Leon Panetta and the Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, have been asked by Congress "to preserve" all documents and intelligence files that relate to Hasan, according to the lawmaker.

On Sunday, Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) called for an investigation into whether the Army missed signs as to whether Hasan was an Islamic extremist.

"If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have a zero tolerance," Lieberman told Fox News Sunday.

Investigators want to know if Hasan maintained contact with a radical mosque leader from Virginia, Anwar al Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen and runs a web site that promotes jihad around the world against the U.S.

In a blog posting early Monday titled "Nidal Hassan Did the Right Thing," Awlaki calls Hassan a "hero" and a "man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people."

According to his site, Awlaki served as an imam in Denver, San Diego and Falls Church, Virginia.

The Associated Press reported Sunday that Major Hasan attended the Falls Church mosque when Awlaki was there.




The Telegraph of London reported that Awlaki had made contact with two of the 9/11 hijackers when he was in San Diego.

He denied any knowledge of the hijacking plot and was never charged with any crime. After an intensive investigation by the FBI, Awlaki moved to Yemen.

People who knew or worked with Hasan say he seemed to have gradually become more radical in his disapproval of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Army Chief of Staff



A fellow Army doctor who studied with Hasan, Val Finell, told ABC News, "We would frequently say he was a Muslim first and an American second. And that came out in just about everything he did at the University.

Finell said he and other Army doctors complained to superiors about Hasan's statements.

"And we questioned how somebody could take an oath of office & be an officer in the military and swear allegiance to the constitution and to defend America against all enemies, foreign and domestic and have that type of conflict," Finell told ABC News.

The Army Chief of Staff, General George Casey, raised concerns over the weekend that innocent Muslim soldiers could suffer as a result of the shooting at Fort Hood.

"I think the speculation (on Hasan's Islamic roots) could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers," he said on ABC's "This Week."


http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fort-h...9030873&page=1

[David]

AP


WASHINGTON – The personal Web site for a radical American imam living in Yemen who had contact with two 9/11 hijackers is praising alleged Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as a hero.

The posting Monday on the Web site for Anwar al Awlaki, who was a spiritual leader at two mosques where three 9/11 hijackers worshipped, said American Muslims who condemned the attacks on the Texas military base last week are hypocrites who have committed treason against their religion.

Two U.S. intelligence officials told The Associated Press the Web site was Al Awlaki's. They spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence collection.

Anwar said the only way a Muslim can justify serving in the U.S. military is if he intends to "follow in the footsteps of men like Nidal."