AMERICA STANDS TO REASON

Upon hearing about the Fort Hood massacre last week I first sat staring at my computer screen, stunned but not surprised. I was here in my air-conditioned midtown Manhattan office, with a distant view of the Statue of Liberty and the still empty downtown skyline.

I wanted to transport myself to Texas so I could see what had happened for myself. I wanted to be there to help, not that my help would have changed anything. As an American, I was hit with an overwhelming, albeit brief, sense of uselessness that forced me to head downstairs and outside to the street. I needed to be around people, strangers, whoever. I needed to see people talking, asking for directions, buying food and hailing cabs.

It was that same feeling I had on September 11th, 2001. The feeling of despair coupled with a sense of being incredibly grateful. Again, I could do nothing but I was happy to be alive.

Then, the anger set in. As I received more information from various news sources I sought to fully understand the “why” of this terrible event. Nidal Malik Hasan, a man who was born here in America, raised here, educated here and gainfully employed here had killed 13 and shot another 32 people. He fired over 100 rounds of ammunition from a gun he had recently purchased. He had planned an attack at Fort Hood and when he finally worked up the nerve, carried it out as efficiently as he could. His goal; to kill as many Americans as possible.

I kept reading and listening in the following days. Across the board in the media and from our President himself, the overarching message was that we just didn't know and couldn't know what Hasan’s motives were. The government, the Army spokesmen and the mainstream media insisted that they could not figure out why Hasan did this.

They do, however, continue to insist with inflexible certainty that the massacre was not an act of terrorism.

I’m not sure which insultingly ridiculous explanation I like best. NBC's Chris Matthews explained that it was “unclear if religion was a factor” in the shooting.

Sunday’s New York Times Week in Review article about Hasan was titled “When Soldiers Snap.” The premise of the article was that Maj. Hasan had “snapped”, just completely lost his cookies, even though he had never been engaged in any sort of combat. According to the article he lost control and killed his fellow men and women prior to combat.

This idiocy was further explained by NPR’s Tom Gjelten who proposed that Hasan may have been suffering from “pre-traumatic stress disorder” due to the anticipation of traumatic stress. Gjelten seriously asked (and I’m not kidding): “Was he an example of these soldiers who are literally freaked out by what they are likely to face when they are deployed?”

Good one.

Geraldo Rivera remarked “I don’t know what motivates him … as far as I know … he’s a sociopath; he’s a criminal. He could have had a toothache and gone off because of that.”

Right. And my migraine headaches turned me into a child rapist. Come on, my head hurts really bad here…

No, I’m not an Islamophobe. I don’t hate Arabs. In fact, I find most of them to be good, hardworking, decent people, much the way I feel about the Chinese, Indian, Korean, Hispanic and Romanian people who make up the rest of my neighborhood in Queens. But I’ll tell you this and I will say it as plainly as it comes:
Nidal Malik Hasan committed a terrorist act because he believed he was upholding his duties as a faithful Muslim and for no other reason at all. He was motivated by his beliefs in fundamentalist Islam in conjunction with his related political beliefs.

He was not insane. He was not retaliating because someone once called him a “towelhead” somewhere down the line. He was in his right mind and carried out a terrorist attack with absolute lucidity.

Once again, we have to sit here and take it;

My fellow citizens blaming themselves for their own perceived “racial insensitivity”. Maybe Hasan did this because we were not sensitive enough to his culture and beliefs.

Sorry. No.

My fellow citizens blaming our country and our foreign policy. Hasan was so bent out of shape about our foreign policy that he just couldn’t take it anymore.

Wrong.

My fellow citizens attributing the massacre of innocent people to stress. Hasan was so stressed out about being deployed to Iraq that he just lost it.

This is all delusion. The excuses and so-called “reasons” for this attack are only a mass self-deception tinged with political correctness. Hasan’s motives could not have been made clearer after his ongoing discussions with fellow soldiers at Fort Hood about his political and religious beliefs. In modern radical Islam, these are intertwined.

Last Thursday, as he methodically passed from victim to victim, firing his weapon, Hasan called out “Allahu Akbar!!” Boom. “Allahu Akbar!”

We know from his former classmates at the Uniformed Services University that Hasan claimed the war on terror was “a war against Islam.”

We know that Maj. Hasan espoused anti-American views with regularity.

We know Hasan sent numerous emails to al-Qaida recruiter Anwar al Awlaki.

We know that Hasan gave a presentation during his master’s program that justified suicide bombing and that he repeatedly told classmates that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution.

I will say here that I strongly believe the vast majority of American Muslims are loyal Americans. But to deny that there are some Muslims who are not loyal Americans and then some others who will go to great lengths to kill and maim those who do not adhere to the tenets of fundamentalist Islam is disgustingly ignorant. Hasan did what he did because he was a radical Muslim who believed in Shari’a law and disagreed with the policies of the country that gave him a haven to practice his religion freely.

We will not defeat radicalism of any kind by pretending it doesn’t exist. Islamic Fundamentalism is here and it isn’t going away. I won’t even justify a pointless argument involving politically correct moral relativism. (Stating that there are radicals of all religions doesn't make it OK for a Muslim to kill in the name of religion. Drop it.) The historical underpinnings of Islam, stated with stunning clarity in the Koran, speak for themselves. Taken literally, as they were by Maj. Hasan, some of these teachings are quite dangerous.

I leave you with several selections taken directly from the Koran. You can dismiss their context all you want but they are there and Islam makes no apologies for them:

Excerpt K 9:005
Set 33, Count 91 ...slay the idolaters wherever you find them...take them captives and besiege them and lie in wait for them in every ambush...

Excerpt K 9:029
Set 38, Count 101 Fight those who do not believe in Allah...nor follow the religion of truth, out of those who have been given the Book, until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.

Excerpt K 9:073
Set 44, Count 108 ...strive hard [Jihad] against the unbelievers and the hypocrites and be unyielding to them...

Excerpt K 24:055
Set 58, Count 123 Allah has promised to those of you who believe and do good that He will most certainly make them rulers in the earth as a reward for going on Jihad.

Excerpt K 47:004
Set 69, Count 136 ...when you meet in battle those who disbelieve, then smite the necks until when you have overcome them, then make them prisoners, and afterwards either set them free as a favor or let them ransom themselves until the war terminates...as for those who are slain in the way of Allah...

If you are of the mind that these teachings have not influenced the behavior of individuals to carry out violence, you are living in a fairy tale world.