This story is now a day old, and I wasn't going to bother covering it yesterday, thinking it another case of 'oh well, America has too many guns, another guy with a Muslim name, nothing new here...'.But it seems to be story of the week, and someone should say a few words about it on this group...
From memory... he was an army psychiatrist, 39, about to be deployed to Iraq on Nov 28th, not happy about that. I don't know if he was a practicing Muslim, but you can bet your bottom dollar US media will hype that aspect of it... this article I found in lefty British newspaper The Guardian echoed my feelings about the whole story:
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/06/fort-hood-shootings1
Fort Hood shootings: Again we will be judged for acts we didn't commit
Moustafa Bayoumi
guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009 20.36 GMT
guardian.co.uk, Friday 6 November 2009 20.36 GMT
So much is still unknown about the shooting at Fort Hood Army base and the motives of the alleged shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, but still I have that same queasy feeling in my stomach that I've had before: this will not be good for Muslims.
First things first. Major Nidal Malik Hasan is in custody. We should judge him fairly and, if he is found guilty, punish him accordingly.
The same is true for Sergeant John M Russell. In May 2009 Russell shot and killed five of his comrades at a combat stress clinic in a US Army base in Iraq. Before that, Sergeant Joseph Bozicevich killed two American soldiers at his base just outside Baghdad in September 2008. What do these incidents point to?
We still have yet to understand how profound the depths are to the stresses of war, especially in cases of repeated exposure to war. And you don't have to be on the battlefield to be scarred. We are only now beginning to learn that the Predator drone pilots, sitting in offices in southern California and dropping bombs some 7,000 miles away from their targets, suffer the same if not higher stress disorders as soldiers on the battlefield.
Perhaps these shooting incidents also tell us something about the pressures not only of receiving but also of providing mental health services to people who have suffered traumatic events. Army suicides are at an all time high (nearly 150 servicemen and women in the US took their lives last year). Rates of domestic violence in the military are sky high and far too often turn deadly. What effect must that have on the mental health providers as well?
And what do we know about the stress of being on the receiving end of prejudice, as Hasan was reported to have been? This is nothing unique to Muslims. Racial prejudice can lead to all kinds of stress outcomes. Social science research in the US has studied this phenomenon, but not frequently enough when it comes to Muslims, a space slowly being filled by the relatively new publication, the Journal of Muslim Mental Health.
These are the kinds of questions we should be asking, not out of a desire to excuse, but to explain actions that seem beyond words. But I worry that the mood in the US is dimming and turning in a more sinister direction. The questions we will be hearing are: why are Muslims in the military? And, do Muslims even belong in the United States? The allegiances of America's Muslims, all of them and not just those in the military, will be called into question. Once again, we will be judged for an act we didn't commit or condone and have loudly denounced.
Am I being irrational? I don't think so. Every year since 2001 the Washington Post-ABC News poll has asked Americans if they hold negative perceptions of Islam. When the latest poll was released in April 2009, the number was 48%, the highest yet recorded.
The coming days will be meaningful. Will this crime and tragedy spur action so that we can finally see that war has enormous costs and is not merely an occasion to celebrate heroism? Or will the American public take one man's crime and churn it into the terrorism of religion?
Muslims, the newest minorities in the American imagination, will be bowing heads in mourning for the loss of life at Fort Hood but, with the dark clouds around them, they will be doing so with one eye open.
Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of How Does It Feel to be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America.
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This was covered in plenty of detail on a parallel group last night, dealing with more US domestic issues, called 'Political Soul'. See there for more. Apparently he was educated at the same University where that young Korean lad went gun-crazy last year, Virgina Tech.
One can't point at this and say 'America has too many guns', honestly. He was a Major in the military - he could get a gun if he wanted one. Otherwise though, it's an isolated case of a man who lost it. Don't believe the hype - this was no Jihadi terrorist or anything of the kind.
Sadly, it's too late already. Damage done. Many will see this as another reason to heap blame on Islam and Arabs. Hasan is in custody... no doubt the media will milk every inch of column-space and every second of airtime this tale is worth.
My advice? Move on... nothing new here.
First things first. Major Nidal Malik Hasan is in custody. We should judge him fairly and, if he is found guilty, punish him accordingly.
The same is true for Sergeant John M Russell. In May 2009 Russell shot and killed five of his comrades at a combat stress clinic in a US Army base in Iraq. Before that, Sergeant Joseph Bozicevich killed two American soldiers at his base just outside Baghdad in September 2008. What do these incidents point to?
We still have yet to understand how profound the depths are to the stresses of war, especially in cases of repeated exposure to war. And you don't have to be on the battlefield to be scarred. We are only now beginning to learn that the Predator drone pilots, sitting in offices in southern California and dropping bombs some 7,000 miles away from their targets, suffer the same if not higher stress disorders as soldiers on the battlefield.
Perhaps these shooting incidents also tell us something about the pressures not only of receiving but also of providing mental health services to people who have suffered traumatic events. Army suicides are at an all time high (nearly 150 servicemen and women in the US took their lives last year). Rates of domestic violence in the military are sky high and far too often turn deadly. What effect must that have on the mental health providers as well?
And what do we know about the stress of being on the receiving end of prejudice, as Hasan was reported to have been? This is nothing unique to Muslims. Racial prejudice can lead to all kinds of stress outcomes. Social science research in the US has studied this phenomenon, but not frequently enough when it comes to Muslims, a space slowly being filled by the relatively new publication, the Journal of Muslim Mental Health.
These are the kinds of questions we should be asking, not out of a desire to excuse, but to explain actions that seem beyond words. But I worry that the mood in the US is dimming and turning in a more sinister direction. The questions we will be hearing are: why are Muslims in the military? And, do Muslims even belong in the United States? The allegiances of America's Muslims, all of them and not just those in the military, will be called into question. Once again, we will be judged for an act we didn't commit or condone and have loudly denounced.
Am I being irrational? I don't think so. Every year since 2001 the Washington Post-ABC News poll has asked Americans if they hold negative perceptions of Islam. When the latest poll was released in April 2009, the number was 48%, the highest yet recorded.
The coming days will be meaningful. Will this crime and tragedy spur action so that we can finally see that war has enormous costs and is not merely an occasion to celebrate heroism? Or will the American public take one man's crime and churn it into the terrorism of religion?
Muslims, the newest minorities in the American imagination, will be bowing heads in mourning for the loss of life at Fort Hood but, with the dark clouds around them, they will be doing so with one eye open.
Moustafa Bayoumi is the author of How Does It Feel to be a Problem: Being Young and Arab in America.
*****************
This was covered in plenty of detail on a parallel group last night, dealing with more US domestic issues, called 'Political Soul'. See there for more. Apparently he was educated at the same University where that young Korean lad went gun-crazy last year, Virgina Tech.
One can't point at this and say 'America has too many guns', honestly. He was a Major in the military - he could get a gun if he wanted one. Otherwise though, it's an isolated case of a man who lost it. Don't believe the hype - this was no Jihadi terrorist or anything of the kind.
Sadly, it's too late already. Damage done. Many will see this as another reason to heap blame on Islam and Arabs. Hasan is in custody... no doubt the media will milk every inch of column-space and every second of airtime this tale is worth.
My advice? Move on... nothing new here.
Hasan in his own words:
AntwortenLöschenNidalHasan scribbled: There was a grenade thrown amongs a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. 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. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that "IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE" and Allah (SWT) knows best.
http://www.scribd.com/NidalHasan
What chance the above was fabricated today?
AntwortenLöschenThe false flag theory? I was going to ask what you thought about it.
AntwortenLöschenNo, not false flag. Just a random shooting in a place where guns are too easily accessible. If you could get a shooter like that in Cornwall, London or Jersey, in the supermarket... it would happen here too
AntwortenLöschenI`ll look out the figures for registered firearms in Jersey, you might be surprised by them.
AntwortenLöschenSo if not false flag, what do you mean by `fabricated`?
AntwortenLöschenThe scribd document
AntwortenLöschenAs for shootings here... there are other factors. America is a very specific culture.
AntwortenLöschen"One can't point at this and say 'America has too many guns', honestly. He was a Major in the military - he could get a gun if he wanted one. Otherwise though, it's an isolated case of a man who lost it. Don't believe the hype - this was no Jihadi terrorist or anything of the kind."
AntwortenLöschenThat thought crossed my mind also. No matter what national gun control laws you have you are going to find them on military bases. That sort of is the whole idea...
I don't think the public is going to hold this against Muslims - except for the usual suspects of course. There have been just too many cases of it. The one thing he has going against him is he never actually has been in combat - if he was just returning it probably wouldn't be as much of a story.
Hopefully the military will now do SOMETHING about returning soldiers mental health, even if this was a bit off topic. It is chewing up a lot more lives than 13 at this point.
I doubt it was fabricated. The guy was a psychiatrist, and was hearing stories like that all the time. How that translated into his actions is something else again. It is really too soon to tell, and we may never know.
AntwortenLöschenmaybe that is why he did it
AntwortenLöschenFox already called for all muslims in the military to be set a part and treated and screaned differently than the other faiths or non faiths