Confronting Nadil Malik Hasan's Jihadism

"Allahu akbar!"

Recent days have seen many people, both journalists and lay people, display their intolerable ignorance, and self-inflicted denial, over the motivations of Nadil Malik Hasan, who last week gunned down dozens of people at Fort Hood, Texas. Every single person I have spoken to personally on the subject has expressed the belief that Hasan was "mentally unbalanced" and that his "anxiety" over an imminent deployment to Afghanistan caused him to "snap" and engage in an act of mass murder. His Muslim identity was, consequently, irrelevant in this case.

But let's look at the facts (keeping aside a statement in support of suicide bombing allegedly posted on the Internet by Hasan months before the attack). Nadil Malik Hasan handed out Qur'ans to neighbors just before going on his rampage and yelled “Allahu Akbar,” the jihadist’s cry, as he opened fire. When he was supposed to be giving a medical lecture, Hasan instead proselytised for Islam, during which time he said that according to the Qur'an, if you are an unbeliever, "you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You're set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat."

One former associate of Hasan's, Col. Terry Lee, recalls that Hasan “claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans”. Finally, it has recently emerged that Hasan went to the same mosque as three of the 9/11 hijackers, and according to a fellow Muslim officer at Fort Hood, his eyes "lit up" whenever he discussed his admiration for the radical teachings of the imam at that mosque.

In short, this was an Islamic jihad attack.

Of course, there will be those who will never accept Nadil Malik Hasan's Islamic motivation for this shooting, no matter what evidence is presented to them, because the consequences of doing so frighten them senseless. If they accept the overwhelming evidence that Hasan was a jihadist, they may start to have to question their normal assumptions that Islamic terrorism is caused by poverty, or social frustration, or any number of other equally Marxist excuses. To question those assumptions leads to having to reconsider the place of Islam in Western society, and the extent of the threat posed by Islamic fanaticism even in America.

But liberals will never take these steps. To do so would make them "bigots" and "Islamophobes", reactionary and intolerant. Can't have that.

UPDATE: "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."