There is a lot of heat on the milbogs now about the official reaction to the Ft. Hood atrocity - an official reaction which plays down, rather than playing up, the Islamist chain of causality that led to Maj. Hassan stepping up on a table and drawing his gun.
I disagree. I think it's the right thing to do, and Lynch explains why decently well:
Since the Ft Hood atrocity, I've seen a meme going around that it somehow exposed a contradiction between "political correctness" and "security." The avoidance of Nidal Hassan's religion out of fear of offending anyone, goes the argument, created the conditions which allowed him to go undetected and unsanctioned in the months and years leading up to his rampage. American security, therefore, demands dropping the "political correctness" of avoiding a confrontation with Islamist ideas and asking the "tough questions" about Islam as a religion and the loyalty of Muslim-Americans.
This framing of the issue is almost 100% wrong.
There is a connection between what these critics are calling "political correctness" and national security, but it runs in the opposite direction. The real linkage is that there is a strong security imperative to prevent the consolidation of a narrative in which America is engaged in a clash of civilizations with Islam, and instead to nurture a narrative in which al-Qaeda and its affiliates represent a marginal fringe to be jointly combated. Fortunately, American leaders -- from the Obama administration through General George Casey and top counter-terrorism officials -- understand this and have been acting appropriately.Note - importantly - that I flatly disagree with the notion that 'political correctness' had nothing to do with the reluctance of Maj. Hassan's peers to report his increasingly bizarre behavior up the chain of command.
It's worth walking through the connection once again, because how America responds to Ft. Hood really is important in the wider attempt to change the nature of its engagement with Muslim publics across the world. Get the response right, as the administration thus far has done, and they show that things really have changed. Get it wrong, as its critics demand, and the world could tumble back down into the 'clash of civilizations' trap which al-Qaeda so dearly wants and which the improved American approach of the last couple of years has increasingly denied it.
I do believe that we need to accept that certain kinds of behavior are unacceptable - most of all in the Armed Services - and that whether you're white and sporting a Christian Identity t-shirt, black and wearing Rolling 60's tattoos, or Muslim and spouting Salafi and Islamist ideology - in any of those cases you've stepped over a line and need to pulled out of uniform.
But I do agree that firewalling between Hassan's Islamist craziness and his Muslim beliefs is important.
I believed in 2003 and believe today that the goal is to keep the conflict from widening into a "Muslim' v. "Western" one. Within the Muslim world, the Islamist crazies are a small minority, and the primary goal should be to make them a smaller one. By painting all Muslims with the murderer's beliefs, we make that harder.
I ask you; should we ban all white fundamentalist Christians from the Military because of the actions of a few extremists? All African-Americans so that no members of street gangs serve? You see where I'm going with this...no, of course not.
We need to ruthlessly seek out and stamp out Islamist believers who wear our uniform. We don't need to - and would be worse off if we did, morally and practically - do the same to pious Muslims.
Now the question is how we can tell the difference.
-
A.L.,
I flatly disagree with the notion that 'political correctness' had nothing to do with the reluctance of Maj. Hassan's peers to report his increasingly bizarre behavior up the chain of command.
From the very sketchy reports that I've read, the problem -- if it turns out there was one -- was not that his peers were shy about reporting him up the command chain, but that no action was ever taken by the commanders. Although, what the rationale behind their decisions to take no action was, remains speculative.
It's hard enough to find the line that lets you know when you can pull someone out of uniform for his beliefs. It's even harder to know which loonies are going to snap and turn violent. It's also hard to lock someone up until they do snap. I mean to say, that it seems quite possible that had Hasan been tossed, he might have taken his weapon to the local high school football game.
We'll need to wait a while to find out what triggered all this, and we may never know for sure, but it may be more Columbine than 9/11. We don't know yet and it seems premature to launch into accusations and charges. Let's at least get past the memorial service and maybe wait till after Veteran's Day to sharpen the claws.
Agreed with both the premise and this conclusion.
But there's a bit of a problem: When both CNN and the Commander-in-Chief try to avoid the issue, does that help to delineate that difference, or does it lead to reasonable suspicions that they're trying to tiptoe either around the lack of such a bright line, or of any intent of enforcing one? The stifling of discussion in the interest of political correctness could be as deadly in the long run as the failure to catch Hasan before he murdered his comrades.
Yeah, we must be very careful to distinguish between al-Qaeda and other Muslims ... except that doesn't tell us anything about Hasan, who was not a member of al-Qaeda, was he?
And once again, Barack Obama's stump-like inertia must be praised as incredibly, stupendously brilliant. Otherwise the terrorists win - the terrorists being the insurance companies and little old ladies from Des Moines who disrupt town hall meetings.
I've heard this song before. It's called Taps, and they'll be playing it over all our graves. Someday we'll be playing it over the ruins of a radioactive city.
Spot on, A.L..
The other problem which is getting brushed over, again and again in discussions of anti-terrorist policing, is the problem of distinguishing between actual competent would-be terrorists, (deadly dangerous) and, bat-shit crazies who fancy themselves to be would-be terrorists (less likely to be competent terrorists, but almost equally dangerous, because they're DUMB).
The latter tend to be easier to catch, or entrap, because (as a number of domestic investigations since 9/11 have shown) if law enforcement puts someone out there, undercover, who lets it be known that he can put folks in touch with Alqaeda, and sign them up to be jihadists, the bat-shit crazies are going to be quicker on the uptake, and will come running forward, asking if they can get the cool boots and flashlights (I remember this specific detail from one investigation), and when they can go to terrorist camp, while the really dangerous folks are going to be a LOT more careful.
While it's clear the government has info which most of us yet have not seen, I'm guessing that if Hasan had not only attempted to contact A.Q., but had gotten back something in the nature of an "expression of interest", some more vigorous action would have been taken, and we might have heard about it earlier.
I ask you; should we ban all white fundamentalist Christians from the Military because of the actions of a few extremists? All African-Americans so that no members of street gangs serve?
Yes, I do see where you're going with that, and of course the answer is "of course not." However, I don't think you would find many people who would support banning all Christians, African Americans, or what-have-you for the actions of a few crazies. That is a red herring. I think most sensible people would support investigating those crazies, and making sure not only that the crazies are kicked out but that their particular form of craziness is known and known as unacceptable. Not to do so for fear of offending the sane Christians, African-Americans, or what-have-you and for fear of bad publicity (mainstream media screaming RACIST! RACIAL PROFILING!) would be a big problem. If that is, in fact, what happened here (and the details coming out seem to indicate that it is) then I have to disagree with AL. We do have a political correctness problem, and it is deadly.
This is a strategy of denial - not in the sense that you are trying to deny the enemy resources or position, but in the sense of denying that you are at war with an enemy, who however is in a chronic state of low-level war against you.
The real problem with this is that it assumes that we are the ones who define legitimacy within Islam: what the example of the ideal man, Muhammed, teaches; what the Koran says, and so on.
If we had the authority to define for Muslims what is Islamic and un-Islamic, then a policy that's all about suppressing our immune responses to chronic Islamic aggression (including demands for deference and special consideration, demographic pressure, dawa, "lawfare" and probes of all kinds, as well as jihad plots) might have some success in forcing Muslims to accept that by their laws they must abandon their war aims.
I'd bet against it. History doesn't support this kind of strategy working. We are on the wrong end of a "persistent raiding" strategy, and "denial" has a very bad record against that. But it wouldn't be wholly irrational.
In fact we do not determine the content of Islam. If Islam teaches that the essence of the Islamic world's relationship with the house of unbelief is that Muslims should do unto non-Muslims whether non-Muslims were doing unto Muslims or not, we can't change that. If Islam teaches that grievances (such as the loss of Spain or the fact of Israel) are perpetual, we can't change that either. We can't call off Islamic aggression.
So we have to defend ourselves against it. If we want to live in freedom, or maybe at all.
David, of course I'm denying that we're at war with all Muslims; that's exactly the point I thought I made.
It seems obvious to me that we can live with a large number of Muslims in our society, and adjacent to Muslim societies - we've been doing it for a long, long time.
What's different now is a movement within Islam - absolutely funded by the Wahabbi clerics and their supporters as well as states like Iran who see it as a useful tool in a Westphalian world.
Going to war with the world's Muslims is a pretty good indicator of failure in our current struggles; it's one of the bad outcomes I'd like to avoid.
I have no doubt what the outcome of that war will be; a lot of dead Muslims and some dead Westerners. That confidence allows me the space to find other, better solutions.
Let's take my example and extend it - are we at war with Fundamentalist Christians because a few of them have turned to murder and terror? Are we at war with African-Americans because a few of them have created or joined violent urban gangs? Are we at war with Hispanics because some of them are narcotics gangsters?
Each of those 'movements' presents a significant threat to our way of life, and we - appropriately - spend out energy trying to defeat the movement, not battling the whole culture it springs from.
Marc
Not to nitpick but Wahhabiism is a Sunni movement (they consider the Shiia every bit the infidels we are). Something often overlooked in the geopolitics of militant Islam is the cold war taking place between the Sunni and Shiia, which explains a great deal of why Iraq was and will be such a flashpoint. Much of the escalating international terrorism is an arms race between the Saudi block and the Iran block for influence in places like Gaza and Lebanon. The coin of the realm is dead infidels.
Our job here in America is (as it always has been) to seduce our immigrants away from those petty squabbles and bring them into our way of life. In many ways, we do that, but we do everyone involved a disservice by turning our eyes when radicalism sprouts up here. Allowing it to plant root is a terrible idea, and the politically correct mindset is like miracle grow.
Shame is a powerful thing. Being ashamed of the extremists in your society keeps down the extremists. If you allow the culture of denial to flourish instead, you eliminate the shame and ignore the underlying rot. Instead of papering over these movements we should be shining a bright spotlight. Where are the 20/20 reports on extremist mosques and imams, such as Hassan was associated with? I doubt you will find them.
Shame is a powerful thing. Being ashamed of the extremists in your society keeps down the extremists.
To a point. At some point, pressure actually insulates the group (making them more extreme) than if they were allowed to freely associate in public.
Where are the 20/20 reports on extremist mosques and imams, such as Hassan was associated with? I doubt you will find them.
The reports I read said the Imam he reached was in Yemen. Hence, unlikely to be covered by 20/20. Is there any evidence to implicate an American mosque in his radicalization?
He's in Yemen now. Until 2006 he was preaching in Colorado and DC... 5 years after being the imam of 3 of the 911 hijackers.
The Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Centre is where he preached, along with being the Muslim Chaplain at George Washington University. There are two golden stories for some news show to look into.
I'm telling you people- this radicalization has been allowed to mainstream because we've purposely ignored it.
Well you know I don't find plausible the view that the claws and teeth of the tiger are hostile but those are the only parts that draw blood, so above all we mustn't be lured into a defensive struggle against the whole beast. I knew we disagreed on that.
What I didn't appreciate was just how much you demand in the cause of keeping our populations in denial.
Armed Liberal:
It seems obvious to me that we can't live nearly as well as we otherwise would with large numbers of Muslims in our society, and maybe not at all; and that the experiment we are embarked on is unprecedented, not something that's been tried over the ages and always found to work. Instead, Islam has a growing kill list. I don't want us to be on it.
Armed Liberal:
No. For a start, Iran is a revolutionary ideological project founded by Imam Khomeini, and not a "normal" (Western-style) state or operating within a "Westphalian" or any other Western paradigm.
Second it's not a question only of the Islamic fashion of the moment. Islam is what it is. (link) and hat-tip to Robert Spencer (link), whose wisdom I consider indispensable.
We are the ones that have changed, and dreadfully foolishly. Awesome oil wealth transfers, our demographic suicide combined to Muslim super-fertility, our spiritual collapse after the great wars 1914-1945 combined with Muslim awareness that the unbelievers are un-alert and no longer to be feared as they were, and the dreadful mistakes of "multiculturalism" and self-hating "anti-racism" combined with mass Islamic immigration into core Western countries has created a crisis the like of which nobody has ever survived before.
Maybe we can do it. We are the West. History says we are something special. Joe thinks old Europe can survive "lowest low" fertility and all the diseases above, and I'd love him to be right.
But if we survive, it won't be by denial, or because Islam isn't really a hostile system after all, or because it reverts to being the Western-friendly, kuffer-tolerant thing it was. It was never like the denialists claim or imply that it was like.
Islam was only kept in check for a while, becalmed and discouraged into quiet by the seemingly invincible power of the West. That illusion has vanished. Our bluff has been called. Our reactions have been inadequate. Now it's too late to avoid serious conflict.
My general rule of thumb is:
What Marc Lynch says/claims/states/argues/analyzes/nuances (is "nuance" a verb?)/enumerates...
is usually entirely, consistently wrong.
Wrong and wrong-headed.
Of course, he's an expert who's respected by a great many who are on the same wavelength (and who thus, like him, have essentially no idea what's really going on in the area of his expertise).
I give Lynch props because everyone I know (personally) who's lived, worked or has close ties to muslim nations tells me that Lynch is:
1) Brilliant
2) Describes ME politics/relations thoroughly and accurately
3) gives them a better sense of how to work in the ME
Based on that, I generally give him more credit than anyone else I've read thus far. But if you would like to say where you think he's wrong (on this particular issue), we can at least start the debate...
David Blue:_I don't find plausible the view that the claws and teeth of the tiger are hostile but those are the only parts that draw blood_
Again you make the missassumption that Islam is, by definition, a single moving entity. I find that claim laughable about any human organization (expert the borg).
For example: my parents neighbor (an engineer who fled Iran after the revolution) Is muslim, and has more American flags outside his house than anyone I know. He has big barbeques on the 4th of July. He IS NOT waging some "secret war", he is becoming American, as his children already have become.
In some cases it's difficult to tell the friend from the enemy. And certainly, there are fringe groups out there lying in wait. As Lynch says, there goal is to confuse us, to make us find rash decisions that lead to further conflict.
Let's try a flipside game. What if I said that Christianity was permanently stained because of Scott Roeder, pedophile priests (etc) and that we have to treat all of it like a "single tiger" rounded up completely to prevent worst-case scenarios. How well do you think that would go over? (I'm guessing that strategy would lead to more violence, even among non-violent groups).
David Blue might go a bit far in his condemnation of Islam as Islam, but your analogy compares apples to oranges. As a gedankenexperiment let's revise it as follows:
What if the Bible stated in no uncertain terms, "Ye shall kill all those who are abortionists" and "Let all those priests of the Lord molesteth each child in His name." Let's further ask, what if the majority of Christians nonetheless fail to murder abortionists and support priestly molestation, but at least a large plurality support those actions even if it does not commit them itself. Would that justify not allowing Christians who admittedly adhere to those postions to work at abortion clinics and not allowing priests to work at day care centers? Or at the very least, subjecting them to closer than ordinary scrutiny? And would it not reflect poorly on the judgement of those who protected the "rights" of such Christians and Priests to work at abortion clinics and day care centers for fear of being called bigots?
Lynch's belief that we have denied propaganda to al-Qaeda with some "improved approach" over the last three years is nonsense.
Just as we get no credit for coming to the aid of Bosnian Muslims, not to mention the largess we have showered on Muslim nations over the years, we get no credit for NOT oppressing Muslims. Not with people who simply lie and say that we do, or with the captive audiences who believe their lies.
Or does Lynch believe that al-Qaeda is somehow compelled to tell the truth about US policies?
_What if the Bible stated in no uncertain terms, "Ye shall kill all those who are abortionists"
Now, the bible doesn't say this, but it does have a lot to say on stoning which fed into the witchcraft trials, Spanish inquisition, Thomas More burning those who translated the bible into English.... (etc, etc etc).
Now, I'm not going to argue that this makes Christianity an immoral religion (especially since some of these things are avoided in the new testament), but these historic texts have a lot of bad stuff in them. It's not what you read, it's how you act. And while Islamic terrorism is clearly aided by these archaic quotes, I will not condemned muslims who have ignored similar quotations (as I will not condemn Christians who ignore them likewise).
Alchemist:
I guess you refer to the part where Christ "avoided" stoning a woman to death. As in, "Let you who is without sin cast the first stone," etc.
Compare this to the shari'a law subscribed to by people like Hasan, which endorses stoning based on Hadiths like Malik 493:1524 - The Prophet was told: "My son was employed with this man; he committed adultery with his wife. I gave 100 sheep and a slave girl in compensation." The Prophet said: "Take back your sheep and your slave girl. Your son will receive 100 lashes and a year in exile. As the adulteress has confessed; she will be stoned.
When playing the game of Moral Equivalence, it's better not to be overly specific.
Again, Glen, let's go back to my muslim neighbor.
He does not believe in Sharia law. His two daughters have become a lawyer and a doctor. One of them married a Jewish man. And yet, nobody is dead or stoned. How does this happen in the "tiger" analogy? How can he be muslim and not seek to destroy 'the great satan'?
And that's my point. When we try and say "Well, the Koran says this, so therefore they all think that way." It's BS. People can be faithful to their religion and choose what they want to believe.
Just as every christian denomination has different feelings about what is and isn't important in the bible, so do different muslim denominations. You can either realize that's true, (and realize the ramifications of that) or you can see a vast borg-like muslim army hiding in wait.
Just as we get no credit for coming to the aid of Bosnian Muslim
Did you read the Totten bit? We get a lot of credit from the Bosnians themselves.
David Blue:_I don't find plausible the view that the claws and teeth of the tiger are hostile but those are the only parts that draw blood_
Alchemist:
Laugh away. But history and the facts of how organizations work are on my side.
Alchemist:
Splendid. Good for him. But the spread and dominance of Islam is a bad thing anyway. And John Rabe, the saint of Nanking, praised by Iris Chang in The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, was a wonderful man, but the cause he served was a bad one anyway. And so on. The social machine is what it is, but a particular individual may be better or worse than it.
Alchemist:
Into further conflict with what system? We're not going to have "further conflict" with random, academically devised samples of disaggregated individuals. And who would "we" be anyway?
Alchemist:
Groups? On the radically disaggregating line you've pushed, there shouldn't be any.
Also, there's no "flipside" to saying a group is permanently stained, because that's not what I'm saying. I'm not pulling the equivalent of saying "because of the crimes of the Nazis, blondes are permanently stained with an assumption of evil." I'm not appealing to malice and prejudice. I'm appealing to prudence and truth. Because of the demonstrated character of Islam, which it had in the past and still has, it's dangerous, and we need to react to that.
A "flipside" would be something like, what if you said that the Catholic Church was dangerous, because of the harsh deeds of the Roman Inquisition?
I'd point out that Pope John Paul II's great Jubilee Apology of 2000 showed a very different attitude than the Catholic Church displayed during the Roman Inquisition, and that some basic points of doctrine have changed (what with the Jews no longer being guilty for the death of Christ after Vatican II, 1957), and that in certain contexts people do indeed look askance as Catholics, who bear the prejudice pretty well on the whole. There's a reason comics have had long careers mocking the Pope, in a way they would not dare to mock Imam Khomeini.
If there had been no reforms, and if all the teachings on the "Christ-killers" were still in force, and if Catholics were regularly killing Jews and appealing to those teachings to justify those killings, and if a loud shout of "For Jesus and Mary!" was the most terrifying thing you could hear on a plane except "Allah-hu Akhbar!" then of course I would be anti-Catholic, on the same grounds I'm anti-Islamic: practical grounds.
Glen and David have pretty much beaten me to the punch of how I would reply to your reply to my reply. I would only add: As you yourself point out, the more violent aspects of the Old Testament are superceded by the New. There are also not many Christians or Jews who would recommend stoning adulterers now (though there may have been centuries ago). The Spanish inquisition also now exists only in a Monty Python sketch. A plurality or Muslims now support jihadi terrorism morally and financially if not physically. In an encounter with an unfamiliar snake, it's always the most prudent course to assume it's poisonous. It is more likely to be non-poisonous, but you only get one mistake.
I would also add that people like your neighbor have little to fear from closer scrutiny of Muslims due to the inescapable fact that Islam is the source of the threat we now face (sorry, I don't buy the "hijacked religion of peace" horse hockey). I would assume your neighbor has never made loud jihadi noises while being placed and left in a position to do great harm to many people. Yes, a few innocent Muslims may get caught in the crossfire, but I would imagine there are 13 families right now who would have happily settled for that trade-off.
Actually the Koran does not advocate killing women with rocks, but the various Hadiths (describing purported acts of Mohammed) repeatedly do so. Under shari'a, these Hadiths have the literal force of law, supplanting all other law. (Secular liberals should definitely educate themselves about Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, BTW, it would save huge amounts of trouble.)
Now Muslims like your neighbor who reject these Hadiths and reject shari'a are not the problem. Those who embrace it are the problem, and Major Hasan shows how serious the problem is.
The people who, above all, are confounding these two things are the political correctniks who constantly accuse other people of confounding them.
Likewise, I do not believe in collective guilt, because collective guilt is a morally repugnant doctrine. The left revels in it, so long as it's selectively applied to western civilization.
Let me stack up some responses -
David Blue (#11) - Tigers are single organisms; they thrive or die together. Islam is (as are many other human communities) a collection of lesser communities who in the case of Islam have harmed each other far more than any outsiders.
David Blue (#12) - That's just untrue. Muslims have lived in the US for hundreds of years. Where's the ongoing trail of murder and violence aimed at the infidels? Hasn't happened...and for your model to be true (Islam and the west are inherently incompatible) it would have had to.
And while the Wahab are Sunni, the reality is that the current strain of fundamentalism in Islam is shared by Shiite and Sunni I believe it comes from common intellectual and cultural roots. Just as anarchism become so popular in so many cultures at the turn of the 20th century, Islamism became a powerful movement in the late 60's and 70's across the Muslim world.
Barry Meislin (#13) I do think Mark suffers from a bit of the 'Arabist' mindset that seems to hit State Department officials and academics. I'd love to understand it better...but that doesn't mean he's wrong in everything he writes, any more than the fact that Isupported the invasion of Iraq (and still do) means I'm wrong in everything I write. They all have to stand on their own.
David Blue (#21) - David what facts are on your side? If there's a case to make for Islam as a unitary entity (sort of like the case that Capitalism is a unitary entity), let's debate it.
enough for now....
Marc
Major Hasan shows how serious the problem is.
Over the last 30 years, there have been about 95 public shooting sprees. Of those, maybe 5 belong to muslims (I only know of 2). The rest are referred to as "going postal" where no relgion, class or creed is blamed for the incident. In fact, this small number (comparatively) is about what you would expect statistically from 2% of the US population.
Do you have any evidence to suggest that muslims are more apt to violence than regular americans? I've looked for data and can't find any for or against.
Alchemist, I doubt that they are substantially more likely - the numbers you offer don't really reach significance either way - but the issue is that there is a pipeline intended to encourage Islamist Muslims to act - whereas there is no similar ideological support for random muckers.
Part of what I've argued for along time in the 'Bad Philosophy' series is that the pressures of modernity lead some people to become muckers; and that Islamist ideology is a perfect vehicle to rationalize and justify those impulses. In essence, that all Islamists are muckers...
Marc
"Over the last 30 years, there have been about 95 public shooting sprees. Of those, maybe 5 belong to muslims (I only know of 2)."
When did we confine the discussion to shootings?
You've also laid yourself a bit of a trap- people that 'go postal' have a fairly common mentality. They aren't making a political statement, they are going to kill some people in a personal way, eyeball to eyeball, and go out in a blaze of glory.
That hasnt been the modis operendi for Islamicists, by and large, on that you are quite right. Islamicists have been FAR more imaginative, probably because they DO have a political cause bigger than seeing somebody bleed out in front of them. They bomb planes, or fly them into buildings. They strap explosives to their bodies or put them in crowded subways. They aren't just out to kill people, they are out to terrorize them.
So to change your question around, how many multi-fatality incidents have been executed and how many have been done so by Islamists? How many plans have been foiled? I can think of perhaps a dozen in the Western World since 2001 (exclusive of Israel of course) and they are all Islamists aside from the anthrax (although i'm sure i'm missing something).
Marc Lynch has made a name for himself by promoting the idea that the United States should make an effort to reach out to the so-called 'nonviolent' Wahhabist/fascist Muslim Brotherhood as a way of defeating al Qaeda.
This 'expert' idea ignores the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood manages al Qaeda's ideology and finances (as well as the finances of most Wahhabi-allied terrorist groups). The Muslim Brotherhood is al Qaeda - so reaching out to them probably isn't such a good ideal
However, Lynch's idea can be called 'expert' because it has already been tried by the British government for years, and it has failed in a fairly spectacular manner. Some experts. The British government has empowered the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda, while alienating most non-extremist British citizens (Muslims included). The policy of pandering to Britian-based Muslim Brotherhood groups has resulted in an increase in Nationalist/skinhead type attacks against Muslims, and it's also increased the popularity of the fascist BNP party.
This is what one British MP, Louise Ellman, has to say about Hassan's Muslim Brotherhood/extremist buddy Anwar al-Awlaki and Britain (and Lynch's) idea of kissing up to extremists:
"It is time that the spotlight fell on the Muslim Association of Britain, particularly the key figures, such as Azzam Tamimi, Kemal el Helbawy, Anas Al-Tikriti and Mohammed Sawalha. All of them are connected to the terrorist organisation Hamas. The Muslim Association of Britain itself is a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood—an extremist fundamentalist organisation founded in Egypt in 1928, and the spiritual ideologue of all Islamic terror organisations. It is militantly anti-Semitic and always has been. In June 2003, the Muslim Association of Britain organized a series of meetings with an American imam, Anwar Al Awlaki, as guest speaker. That gentleman is reportedly wanted for questioning by the FBI in connection with the 9/11 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington."
However, Britain protects Al Awlaki, as they protect MB members.
If we follow Marc Lynch's advice, we'll wind up like Britain, helping all varieties of fascists lead cozy lives of power and influence. So, I can't really agree with him, no matter how carefully he frames his arguments.
Mark: This hasnt been the modis operendi for Islamicists, by and large, on that you are quite right.
Which is one of the reasons why I don't think this is an "al-queda" attack. Whether or not he had connections to a racial cleric, this guy clearly had problems, and there were a number of warning signs about those problems. Some of them were related to islam, some of them were not. If the mental health of all soldiers had been better monitored, these signs should have been clear.
Unfortunately, the military has been overloaded with mental health cases. This salon article has been continuing a 2-year series looking at the poor shape of facilities and treatment of officers. and those that speak out against it are routinely fired. AS the problem gets worse, it seems likely that a rise in PTSD-related events will show up as well. Very few are likely to get the publicity of Ft. HOod, but they are equal damaging to the men and women of the armed forces.
Even if we discharge every muslim officer from the armed forces, these events are going to happen again.
Sorry for the long delay in replying, Armed Liberal. I was boggled by your argument, based on the history of Islam in the United States of America, the like of which I have never seen.
I accept that you are serious, but I don't know what facts your argument's based on. For what you are saying to be valid, there should have been large, confident Muslim communities and regions in the country. Small numbers of highly Westernized Muslims, without ties to the larger Muslim world, and without a "sea" for the jihad "fish" to swim in, would not establish the point, certainly not in the way that Utah establishes whether the Mormon religion is compatible with the United States of America. Yet I don't know any history of the Muslim regions of the United States of America, their swelling populations, mighty cultural influence and so on. I'm not in a position to argue about how they acted compared to how I would have expected them to act.
Armed Liberal:
Only in the way that Communists harmed each other far more than any outsiders, and so on. That a system has a bloody style in its internal struggles for power is no comfort for those being wiped out by it.
You are still being attacked by the animal, and not just by the tips of the claws: by the Palestinian suicide bombing machine, complete with fanatical mothers who never personally redden their hands with blood, and reasonable-seeming people who fuel the machine by extracting aid from gullible Westerners, and not just by whichever Abu or Khalid blew up today.
Moral support counts too, and when Muslim children are named Osama more often, because not despite of the 11th of September, 2001, that supports Islam's chronic, low-level war-making against non-Muslims. When the families of witnesses against jihad bombers become pariahs to their Muslim neighbors, that also supports Muslim jihad efforts. And so on.
Of course all but a tiny fraction of Muslims will never participate in a jihad terror act. But it's equally true that hardly any Soviet Communists were veterans of KGB wet work, and that hardly any Australians are in the SAS, and so on. The threat is not the piffling numbers of people pulling triggers at any one time, it's the the system as a whole.
Armed Liberal:
In calling Islam a "tiger" I was calling attention to the fact that its throat-cutters, trigger-pullers and suicide bombers are its trigger throat-cutters, trigger-pullers and suicide bombers, supported by doctrine, sentiments and when possible by lobbies and charities maintained by many, many Muslims across the globe.
When Nidal Hasan killed, that was no more his act alone (without the support of the Islamic lobby that made him too hard to get rid of) than the killing of a jihadist by a Predator drone is the sole responsibility of some American soldier who pushed the "Fire" button. "Rosie the Riveter" is a part of the American tiger. Nidal Hasan's spiritual adviser was a part of the Islamic tiger.
The first question that those who deny that "Islam" exists as a system and a geopolitical entity, like Communism, is: "Why does the Organisation of the Islamic Conference exist?"
It's absolutely true that in past ages the umma was not one thing. It did not move and fight like a single organism. (Example: the career of Tamerlane.)
The communications did not exist for this to be possible, and the Islamic peoples had no more interest in common than Communist Russia and Communist China. (Which went to war against Communist Vietnam, which had gone to war against Communist Cambodia.)
But modern communications have changed things, allowing state-transcending systems to be more effective, and Islam is the prime example.
Doth parties and the armed forces and committed to the strategy of denial and disbelief, with popular support (link). That means more base killings are inevitable.
We can resume this conversation after the next jihad slaughter. (Or if one prefers, after the next random killing spree by someone who coincidentally cries out "Allah hu Akhbar!") Or the one after that. Or the one after that.