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  • johnpi 10:37 pm on February 8, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: Fort Hood attack, , , ,   

    An experienced military trainer who taught US Army soldiers about his Muslim faith has been suspended from working on military bases pending a continuing criminal inquiry, according to a report in the Dallas Morning News.

    The [Louay] Safi affair reveals the deep divisions within the U.S. government over how to combat terrorism and over what constitutes moderate Islam.

    Some believe insight into Islamist thinking can be gained only by engaging a wide range of people in North America’s close-knit Muslim community, where leaders may well have ties to extremists – ties that do not necessarily signal alliances or support. Others argue that engagement should be limited or shunned to avoid legitimizing radicals or embarrassing the government.

    Safi is a senior official of the Islamic Society of North America, the country’s largest Muslim organization. ISNA has been consulted for years by Washington and is described as a partner in the fight against terrorism. In addition to serving as ISNA’s communications director, Safi runs its program certifying Muslim chaplains for work in the U.S. military and prison system. He publicly denounces terrorism and advocates peace.
    ….

    “You have a schizophrenic government and a schizophrenic institution,” Zelikow said, referring to ISNA. “The schizophrenia cuts right into how the government views the whole Fort Hood affair. We don’t know whether to treat him [Hasan] as part of an international conspiracy or as a lone wolf who happened to have gotten solace from a radical imam.”

     

  • johnpi 8:34 am on January 22, 2010 Permalink
    Tags: Fort Hood attack, ,   

    The US army’s report on the Fort Hood shooting is being used as fodder for the right-wing’s attack on ‘political correctness’ because it does not mention Nidal Hasan or Islam by name.

    “The report demonstrates that we are unwilling to identify and confront the real enemy of political Islam,” says a former military colleague of Hasan, speaking privately because he was ordered not to talk about the case. “Political correctness has brainwashed us to the point that we no longer understand our heritage and cannot admit who, or what, the enemy stands for.”

    The authors have defended the report, saying that the focus of their investigation was ‘actions and consequences not motivations.’

    Mark Lynch wrote about the broader right-wing response earlier:

    A lot of people — some well-meaning, some clowns or worse — evidently want the American response to the Ft. Hood shootings to revive the post-9/11 “war of ideas” and “clash of civilizations” anti-Islamic discourse. It’s a jihad, they shout, demanding careful scrutiny of the loyalty of American Muslims. That’s what they seem to mean by the demand to throw away “political correctness” and confront the ideological menace. The overall effect of their recommendations, however, would be to revive the flagging al-Qaeda brand and to greatly strengthen the appeal of its narrative. And that’s exactly what we should not want.

     

  • johnpi 9:42 pm on December 12, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: , , Fort Hood attack,   

    Fort Hood ups challenge to recruit Muslim, Arab troops.

    Army recruiter Sgt. Chris McGarity is on the front lines of the military’s effort to add troops who speak Arabic and understand Middle Eastern culture — a battle that grew more challenging after the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas.
    McGarity says he recently signed up an Arab-American high school student who lacked only her parents’ approval to enlist. Then came the Nov. 5 rampage at Fort Hood. The Army has charged Maj. Nidal Hasan, 39, a Muslim and Arab American, with killing 13 people and wounding 32.

    The high school student’s mother “made her withdraw her application,” McGarity says.

    Such experiences illustrate heightened fears of discrimination and harassment aimed at Arab-American and Muslim troops since the Fort Hood shooting, says Mikey Weinstein, a former Air Force lawyer who founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which advocates for separation between church and state in the military.

    Muslims in the military experience “horrible” discrimination, he says.

    Before the shooting at Fort Hood, the foundation had 80 Muslim clients who had reported instances of discrimination and harassment, Weinstein says. Complaints jumped 20% to 103 in the weeks after the shooting. “We had people almost immediately … being told ‘you people’ should not be in the military,” he says.

     

  • buzz 4:48 pm on November 21, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: Fort Hood attack, , , , ,   

    Well written and thoughtful OpEd piece in the NY Times.

    …It’s true that Major Hasan was unbalanced and alienated — and, by my lights, crazy. But what kind of people did conservatives think were susceptible to the terrorism meme? Like all viruses, terrorism infects people with low resistance. And surely Major Hasan isn’t the only American Muslim who, for reasons of personal history, has become unbalanced and thus vulnerable. Any religious or ethnic group includes people like that, and the post-9/11 environment hasn’t made it easier for American Muslims to keep their balance. That’s why the hawkish war-on-terrorism strategy — a global anti-jihad that creates nonstop imagery of Americans killing Muslims — is so dubious…

    Full article.

     

    • shams 8:02 pm on November 21, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      More apologia for the Reaver Factory.
      Hasan was a good soldier until 911, and then he began trying to get out of the military.
      They. would. not. let. him. leave.
      He wasn’t vulnerable to the terrorism virus…he wasn’t unstable and erratic……the system tortured him into insanity.
      This will never end until we accept responsibilty for the hundreds of thousands of dead muslim civilians in Iraq.
      That will never happen……being WEC means never having to say you are sorry.

      • WEC-O-MATIC 1:04 am on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        WEC WEC WEC W (etc)

        (edited – Admin)

        • shams 9:06 am on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          ‘zactly. ;)
          tyvm for the emphasis.

        • shams 9:12 am on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          …there can be no peace in MENA, until the WECs accept responsibility for the unjust partition of arab lands to expiate Big White Christian Bwana’s holocaustguilt, and responsibilty for hundreds of thousands of musim dead in GW’s Gog/Magog war on al-Islam.
          It won’t stop.

  • plimfix 4:27 am on November 20, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: , Fort Hood attack,   

    Omar Sacirbey poses the question, “Did the alleged Fort Hood shooter lose control, at least in part, because he was sexually frustrated?” My question is, what has mass murder got to do with self control? No, no, no, I can’t hold it in any longer, I’ve got to – shoot 13 people dead..? Omar collates a range of opinion. –”All these men are so sexually deprived so much so that the sperm has gone to their brain, and they implode,” wrote Ani Zonneveld, a female Muslim activist– echoing Bin-Bazian teachings on masturbation. –”I’m skeptical,” said Kecia Ali, a religion professor at Boston University. People have tried to link Islamic extremism and sexual frustration for years, she said, but a causal relationship “was a bit of a stretch.”– It’s an absurd notion, Kecia. A more interesting interrogative would be this: why is the original question taken seriously? Brainstorming – confusing issue with relationship between extremist violence and hypermasculinity, the trend for psychological explanation, the relationship between racism and sexuality exemplified by phalloplethysmography…

     

    • Buzz 1:55 pm on November 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Sexual frustration is one among many triggers that I don’t think should be completely discounted. In San Francisco, once in a while, they have this weird “parade” downtown in the financial district that makes a helluvalot of noise. No, it is not Gay Pride.

      Palestinians and their supporters march up one side of town and Israelis and their supporters march up the other side. They meet along one street in the middle of the city. Palestinians are partitioned to one side and Israelis are partitioned off to the other side. Police on horseback and foot patrol the middle and the whole gathering takes up a city block. It is loud and very emotional. Every kind of over the top emotion is on display. It is quite upsetting even for the objective outsider. People yell and cry and curse the opposing side. This goes on for about 20-30 mins. Then everyone disperses.

      I wondered what the point of this bizarre annual event was. And it struct me. This is a bloodletting. People are blowing off alot of the anger and violent feelings they have in the most innocuous manner possible.

      Sexual frustration, especially among young men, can build aggressive and irritable feelings. Someone already unhinged could be pressured by lack of healthy social outlets including sex. Violence and sexual are primitive aspects of the human brain and system and they are unfortunately intimately related in brain structure.

      • plimfix 2:29 pm on November 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Too true. People were often hacked to death my monks in the middle ages.

        • pi.info 2:39 pm on November 20, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          In all places and at all times.

          Japanese scholars maintained that Japanese Zen was the perfection of Buddhism, one that overcame the pacifism and weakness of Asia. This created the strange practice of sending Zen missions to Buddhist countries. It also promoted the idea of Japanese superiority over and “responsibility” for its Asian neighbors. The government sought to legitimate its exploitive occupation of East and Southeast Asia in part by appealing to Zen’s role in creating a “pan-Asian” Buddhism capable of resisting Western colonialism.

      • Hicham Maged 5:35 am on November 21, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        In addition to what Buzz mentioned, there is another important aspect about Fort Hood shooter that I wonder how/why reports do not foucus on which is his carrer as an army psychiatrist. He is not a normal citizen!

    • Rabiya 4:03 pm on November 21, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Do you remember that computer programmer who shot a bunch of women to death before ridding us of himself in Pittsburgh, PA a few months ago? All the media outlets said it was because he hadn’t gotten any (as he whined about on his blog). Women didn’t respond to this obviously creepy guy’s very needy neediness and didn’t sleep with him and so he had no choice but to hate them and kill them. I hope that’s not going to happen here (Oh, if ONLY he could have gotten married, those people would be alive today).

      • shams 4:28 pm on November 21, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        yeah….im pretty damn sick of this false equivalence, Fourth.
        When Hasan enlisted in1988, the Bush Doctrine hadn’t killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi muslim civvies.
        One has to wonder if he was forced to listen to returning GIs tales of atrocity perpetrated against muslims as part of treating them for their PTSD.
        Like being tortured, I imagine.

    • Adonna Joseph 8:35 am on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Yes, let us provide another Islam excuse for killing. How sad, how sad. It is never my fault when i do something wrong.

    • Adonna Joseph 8:45 am on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Hey Plimfix, people are often hacked to death in the name of Islam everyday! You dont need to blame someone else 500 years ago. Lets talk about sexual slavery today as promoted by Islamic men between Africa and The Middle East. Where are you balls!

      • shams 9:31 am on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        we have chattel slavery of women and children in this country.
        the conservative movement seeks to restrict womens rights over their own bodies every day in this country.
        And google Yearning For Zion. … the southwest corner of my state is infested with filthy polygs practicing “spirit marriages” to get around anti-polygamy laws.
        South Carolina refused to pass the woman’s suffrage amendment until 1970.
        WECs that live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.

    • Adonna Joseph 12:32 pm on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      To compare the politics of rights of women in the USA and the real slavery and traficing of over One Hundred Thousand children and women being sold in Africa and the Middel East is just illistrates your desire to ignore the truth. Well I am not surprised you existence depends on ignoring the truth. Oh yes tell me that some WEC is making them sell women and children. I am sure its not Islam.

      • shams 3:40 pm on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Like I said, idiot.
        Glass houses.
        We were a slave nation, membah?
        When will you ignorant godbotherers get a clue that IT ISN”T YOUR FRACKIN’ BIDNESS??????
        The US sowed these dragons teeth.
        The bitter harvest will be with America for a long, long, longlonglong time.

    • Adonna Joseph 4:38 pm on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Now your a slave buying nation. I guess you like that better. The only thing yur a slave of is Islam. Free your self man. Lets see it only takes 36 states to ratify the 19th Amendment and make it the law of the land in 1920. When the other states ratified is meaningless. And how about the girls of Islam are you still stoning them to death? Gee thats right out of the dark ages. I am a free women (black) and American.

      • Dan 5:16 pm on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Adonna, how about you black chicks free yourselves from the enslavement of materialism? You know, cashing those welfare checks so you can make 10 year payments on that Escalade with 24″ dubz of yours? Free yourself from the victimization mentality that Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton have forced you morons into? Even Bill Cosby has called out victimizing twats like yourself for the morons you lot are.

        Generalizations are a bitch, aren’t they? If you can’t handle the heat, then step out of the kitchen.

        Note: I’m not really a racist and I only resorted to making these posts to give Adonna a taste of her own medicine. I’m not racist if I have numerous color TV’s, each with different colors you know?

    • Adonna Joseph 5:29 pm on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      We black girls have been that way in history. We have learned. Now we know abuse when we see it. And it looks like Muslim men. Sorry Dan. No vail here. But its been fun talking.

      • shams 6:45 pm on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        lol, so you are an ignorant black godbotherer.
        That doesnt give you any validity….it just makes you extremely rare….and possibly a member of teh Angry Estrogen Posse.
        Was some man bad to you Adonna?
        you sound like that other wee black chick, Aayan Hirsi Ali.
        lol

        • Dan 6:48 pm on November 22, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          A lot of African-Americans don’t consider Somalis black anyways so sucks for Hirsi Ali

    • plimfix 5:01 pm on November 23, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      There I was, 16 responses to one of my blogs, thinking – woo, hoo, some intelligent debate about an issue I’m interested in. Whoops, apparently not.

      • shams 8:22 pm on November 23, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Well…it was an irrelevent post.
        Dr. Major Hasan wasn’t sexually frustrated……he was tortured into insanity by a fail system that would neither treat him or let him leave.
        It had nothing to do with sexual frustration or al-Islam.
        The mission changed to causing vast quantities of muslim deaths and Dr. Major Hasan could neither support that or……leave.

        • Shams al-Nahar 7:38 pm on November 24, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

          There is going to be a trial.
          We will learn first hand of Dr. Major Hasan’s attempts to leave the military, and of their refusal to allow to.

          The truth will set you free. ;)

  • buzz 4:36 am on November 18, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: , , Fort Hood attack, ,   

     

    CAIR: Va. Gov-Elect Asked to Repudiate Anti-Islam Donor’s Remarks

    One of McDonnell’s top contributors says Muslims should be treated like communists, fascists

    WASHINGTON, Nov. 17 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A prominent national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization today called on Virginia’s Governor-elect Robert F. McDonnell to publicly repudiate anti-Islam remarks by Pat Robertson, the televangelist and gubernatorial campaign contributor who recently said Islam is “not a religion” and that American Muslims should be treated like members of a communist or fascist party.

    (More …)

     

  • willow 3:18 pm on November 16, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: Fort Hood attack, ,   

    Asra Nomani was recently interviewed on NPR’s Talk of the Nation about Fort Hood. Her suggestion to prevent further violence? Monitor guys who wear their pants above the ankle. This police-state tactic has been en vogue in places like Egypt, Tunisia and Syria for many years. I’m sure the Mubaraks, the Ben Alis and the Assads could give her some great tips.

     

    • muffy 7:55 am on November 17, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Thanks for the link. As much as I hate to say it, I just lost a lot of respect for Asra Nomani.

  • johnpi 9:09 pm on November 14, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: Fort Hood attack   

    I’m going to be traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday in the US and not blogging at all (not taking my computer), inshallah.

    For Muslim converts who observe Thanksgiving with non-Muslim relatives, I’m wondering if anybody is anticipating that the recent Fort Hood attack will be, conversationally speaking, the 800 lb. gorilla in the room. Will you be put “on the spot” and expected to declaim about Maj. Hasan? Will you feel pressure to ‘represent’ for the Muslim team with big bold exclamations? Do you have relatives that still get their back up about your conversion or who are uneasy about it and who will feel licensed by Fort Hood to dump it on you again?

    Might be a good year to volunteer at the food pantry instead.

     

    • Infidel 11:55 am on November 16, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      Here’s a reply that Americans, who have allowed muslims to exist in our country for 230 years, might appreciate:

      ” muslims abhor violence. We, as muslims living in a Judao-Christian based country are thankful for two centuries of hospitality. We western muslims apologize for the Munich massacre in 1972, The Athens airport bombing, the Rome airport bombings, the Achille Lauro slaughter, the Kohbar towers massacre, Pan Am flight 103, the US marine barracks bombing, The USS Cole, Madrid, Bali, the senseless slaughter of kids waiting for Pizzas, or riding on buses in Israel, the video-taped beheading of Daniel Pearl………..(all before the invasion of Iraq, by the way)….for these crimes we as muslims living in your country apologize. ”

      That might be a good start.

      • aziz 11:59 am on November 16, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        hmm. suck it.

      • Buzz 12:42 pm on November 16, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        This is what you get Aziz for linking from Dean’s world.

        It is not your country nimrod. It was your country while Bush robbed and plundered and raped the constitution. That time is over. Crawl back under your slimy rock.

    • Buzz 12:19 pm on November 16, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

      No. In my circle, the extended family or friends who are douchebags like infidel here get the pat answer: “Politics.”

      To begin with the role of America around the world in the past 120 years, attempting to explain how there are two sides to every story, that fratracide has occured in the military atleast a half dozen times, listed here, the most recent where 5 soldiers were killed by another soldier in May of this year, but never did religion come to question. All of this takes too long to discuss and people have generally made their minds up anyway. “After Thanksgiving, we can get into all that,” I say.

      Right wing phoney nativism reminds me a little of the Gangs of New York only these fox new zombies have no idea whose proxy war they are fighting like unpaid mercs: corporate greed and the upper 1%. Bottom line: you are all idiots!

      • Infidel 5:48 pm on November 17, 2009 Permalink | Log in to Reply

        Pretty much the response I expected from a primitive kook. All you’ve got is ‘Bush’.
        News flash: Bush was in college when moozlims were blowing up people in Europe.
        Bush was playing governor of Texas when moozlims were busy slaughtering innocent kids.
        Bush is no longer president….you may have missed that subtle detail.

        And there is no ‘other side’ . Before moozlims went collectively insane, our founding fathers actually welcomed moozlims to practice in the New World. Only when

        And by the way, it is MY country. My father fought for it. I fought for it, and we’ll fight you next.
        Hajji isn’t welcome here anymore. We don’t trust you, you are under suspicion, and we will start pushing you out. We will not hire you. We will not sell or rent to you. We will not do business with you. You will be scorned, and sent back to the countries you’ve already ruined. Go drink your oil, eat your sand. You will never overcome America’s adaptability and problem solving ability, and moozlims are the current problem.

        As another poster said here, the West is excellent at killing. The west has turned it into a cold, hard science.

  • aziz 5:52 pm on November 14, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: Fort Hood attack,   

    this muslim diarist at @dailykos says what we all wanted to say. but without restraint. (via @eteraz)

     

  • buzz 2:53 pm on November 13, 2009 Permalink
    Tags: Fort Hood attack, fratricide, ,   

    Muslims need not be apologetic
    By Linda S. Heard

    Muslims make up roughly one quarter of the world’s population. Just because one out of almost 1.5 billion ran amok, leaving 13 dead and 23 wounded, does not mean the entire Muslim nation is responsible. When Sergeant John M. Russell opened fire on his comrades at Camp Liberty in Baghdad, last May, killing five, the media did not even mention his religion. Instead, papers reported that the young man, who “had been broken by the army” was suicidal and in debt.

    When National Guard soldier Joshua Cartwright shot and killed two Florida deputies in April he was characterized as “severely disturbed”. No one investigated his spiritual beliefs. The media, likewise, took a soft approach, last year, when Dustin Thorson, an Air Force sergeant, shot his wife and son at Tinker Airbase and, in 1995, when Sergeant William Kreutzer killed one and injured 18 at Fort Bragg. But when an American-born major with the name Nidal Malek Hassan commits a similar crime he is judged in the court of public opinion based on his ethnicity and religion.

    Bill O’Reilly of Fair and Balanced on Fox News has already decided that Hassan is either a “Muslim terrorist” or “crazy”. Fox’s Brian Kilmeade has made up his mind too. He asked a guest: “Do you think it is time for the military to have special debriefings of Muslim Army Officers …?” or “anyone enlisted”?

    Teheran Times

     

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