Why I Murdered 13 American Soldiers at Fort Hood: Nidal Hassan Explains It

[Gordon Ray Kissinger]

Why I Murdered 13 American Soldiers at Fort Hood: Nidal Hassan Explains It All to You By Barry Rubin


All to You
By Barry Rubin
November 14, 2009


How do we know that the attack at Fort Hood was an act of Islamist
terrorism? Simple, Major Nidal Hassan told us so. You've seen reports of a
long list of things he did and said along these lines. But what's most
amazing of all is this:

Hassan is the first terrorist in history to give an cademic lecture
explaining why he was about to attack. Yet that still isn't enough for too
many people-including the president of the United States--to understand that
the murderous assault at Fort Hood was a Jihad attack.

It was reported that the audience was shocked and frightened by his lecture.
He was supposed to speak on some medical topic yet instead talked on the
topic: "The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S.
Military." All you have to do is look at the 50 Power Point slides and they
tell you everything you need to know.

It is quite a good talk. He's logical and presents his evidence. This is
clearly not the work of a mad man or a fool, though there's still a note of
ambiguity in it. He's still working out what to do in his own mind and is
trying to figure out if he has a way out other than in effect deserting the
U.S. army and becoming a Jihad warrior. Ultimately, he concluded that he
could not be a proper Muslim without killing American soldiers. Obviously,
other Muslims could reach different conclusions but Hassan strongly grounds
himself in Islamic texts.

In a sense, Hassan's lecture was a cry for help: Can anyone show me another
way out? Can anyone refute my interpretation of Islam? One Muslim in the
audience reportedly tried to do so. But unless these issues are openly
discussed and debated--rather than swept under the rug--more people will
die.

In fact, I'd recommend that teachers use this lecture in teaching classes on
both Islam and Islamist politics. .

Follow along with me and you'll understand everything.

Hassan deals with three topics: What Islam teaches Muslims, how Muslims view
the wars in Afghanistan and Iran, how this might affect Muslims in the U.S.
military. [Slide 2] Hassan defines Jihad, showing how silly are the claims
that it only means a personal struggle to behave better. It also signifies
holy war, of course. [Slide 5].

Now here's Hassan's central theme. Muslims cannot fight in an infidel army
against other Muslims. And Hassan himself says that it's getting hard for
Muslims in the U.S. military to justify doing so. [Slide 11] Obviously,
Hassan was deciding that he couldn't do so.

He then quotes the Koran extensively to prove the point. Allah will punish
anyone who kills a Muslim [Slide 12]. Hassan then gives four examples of
Muslim soldiers who broke under the strain. One who killed fellow American
soldiers (which Hassan would himself do), one accused of espionage (but was
acquitted), one who deserted, and one who refused deployment to Iraq. [Slide
13]

Quoting the Koran, Hassan next provides a number of quotations to show that
the believer must obey Allah. If they do, they will enjoy great delights
(though he left out the 72 virgins, there's one quote hinting at pederasty),
and if they don't they will suffer torments of Hell.

Finally, he gets into the heavy stuff. Hassan introduces the concept of
"defensive Jihad" which is a core element in radical Islamist thinking and
has especially been promoted by Usama bin Ladin and al-Qaida. [Slides
37-39]. If others attack and oppress Muslims, then it is the duty of all
Muslims to fight them. September 11 was justified by its perpetrators by
saying that the United States had attacked Muslims and therefore it was
mandatory to kill Americans in return.

And here is the crux of the matter: Verse 60:08, "Allah forbids you.from
dealing kindly and justly" with those who fight Muslims." [Slide 40]

If Nidal Hassan believed this and would follow it, he must-to be a proper
Muslim in his eyes-pick up a gun and join the Jihad, Muslim side. He was not
shooting Americans because he caught battle fatigue from American soldiers
he treated. Think about it. To have done so, Hassan would have had to
sympathize with them, thinking about what it would be like for him if he'd
been fighting.Muslims in Iraq or Afghanistan. But that was precisely his
problem. He sympathized with the other side.

Being ordered to ship out to one of these countries, Hassan now had to
decide: which side are you on? Would he choose the side of Allah and the
Muslims, to be rewarded in Heaven? Or would he join with the infidels, to be
punished with Hell and to betray his religion? He made his decision.

It is interesting that no Muslim debate has developed over a very simple
issue: What if two groups of Muslims are fighting, cannot one side with one
group, even if it has non-Muslim allies? After all, Americans are not going
to Iraq or Afghanistan simply to "kill Muslims" but to defend Muslims from
being killed. The Saudis, Kuwaitis, and Egyptians had no problem with using
Western troops to save them from Saddam Hussein's Iraq in 1991, for example.
The Iraqi and Afghan governments, made up of pious Muslims, do the same
thing.

Arab nationalists who are Muslims can take this position more easily. But
for Islamists the problem is not some abstraction but knowledge that they
are fighting a battle to seize control of all Muslim-majority states and
indeed perhaps of the entire world.

The true problem, then, is not that some Muslims help infidels kill Muslims,
but that some Muslims help infidels kill Islamists. But Hassan never
considered this point, which could be quite persuasive to other Muslims in
Western militaries.

So, in his thinking, how might Hassan have escaped from that stark choice?
Hassan answers that question. Quoting the Koran, he indicated that if the
Americans ended the wars, then that would be okay and no killing would be
necessary. [Slide 42]

Another alternative is if the Americans accepted Islam or agreed to become
subservient to Muslim rulers (dhimmis) and paid a special tax [Slide 43-44].

The third alternative would be if the Muslim Messiah came, destroyed
Christianity as a false religion and set off the post-history utopia. [Slide
45]. He didn't mention another part of this description, which was the
murder of all Jews.

A digression is appropriate here. Hassan, although a Palestinian, has never
been quoted as attacking Israel or the Jews. This is one more reminder that
this struggle isn't all just about Israel. But it also tells something
important about Hassan which also applies to many Muslim radicals in Europe.
Hassan is an American. As such he has no other nationality, neither
Palestinian nor Arab. He doesn't support Hamas or Fatah. But he has a
religion that directs his thinking. That's why he is an Islamist and why he
supports a generalized Islamist revolutionary movement, al-Qaida.

As one moderate Muslim from Canada pointed out, the clothes he wore the day
before committing his Jihad attack was not (as some sources put it in a
silly manner) some martyr or even Arab garb but the clothing of Pakistan and
Afghanistan. He is an al-Qaida Jihadi, having changed sides in the War on
Terror.

Hassan was no fool or blind fanatic. Indeed, he presents a sophisticated
view. For example, he quotes contradictory Quranic verses, one suggesting
that all religions can enter Heaven; another that all non-Muslims will go to
Hell [Slide 47].

His conclusion takes on tremendous significance in light of what would
happen at Fort Hood. He writes:

"If Muslim groups can convince Muslims that they are fighting for God
against injustices of the `infidels'; i.e., the enemies of Islam, then
Muslims can become a potent adversary ie: suicide bombing, etc."

And of course, these groups did so convince Hassan. [Slide 48]

Why? Hassan tells us:

"God expects full loyalty. Promises heaven and threatens with Hell. Muslims
may seem moderate (compromising) but God is not." [Slide 49]

And at the very end, he proposes what might have been his own escape route:

"Recommendation: Department of Defense should allow Muslim soldiers the
option of being released as `Conscientious objectors' to increase troop
morale and decrease adverse events." [Slide 50]

If that had existed for Hassan, I think, he would not have killed people.
This proposal is worth debating, though it has negative implications too, of
course. But then he had other options. He could have resigned his
commission, deserted, or refused deployment as a conscientious objector and
gone to prison. In fact, Hassan himself cited individuals who had done the
last two.

Consequently, Hassan's lecture also tells us why Muslims can choose not to
be Jihadists, though this requires ignoring or rationalizing clear,
religiously binding commandments in their religion or by being basically
secular people of Muslim background. This is the kind of solution found in
Christianity and Judaism, of course.

Hassan was too pious and consistent to take this way out. The answer to his
personal behavior must be found in a mix of psychological factors and
political-religious beliefs. The fact is, however, that he clearly did see
himself as a Jihad warrior in the end. The existence of psycological factors
in no way negates the importance of religious considerations.

All terrorists have some psychological forces working to make them follow
such a path. Yet if not for ideological--and in the case of Islamists,
religious--beliefs they never would have become terrorists. In contrast,
criminals have psychological factors plus material goals, while mentally ill
people who commit crimes are compelled by purely psychogical factors. Hassan
does not fit either of those two categories.

Equally, his action cannot be attributed to a "misreading" or "heretical"
interpretation of Islam. To read this lecture is to understand how carefully
and self-critically he approached the issues. Anything so obviously false or
deviant from mainstream Islam would simply not appeal to so many Muslims.
Hassan was looking for a way out in the texts and listed the "loopholes" he
did find: either the United States must not fight anyone who was a Muslim or
it must let him out of the military.

What Hassan neglected was an explanation that lay outside what his strict
reading of the Muslim texts would allow him to say: the United States must
fight, in general, because the Islamists have been the aggressors. And the
United States is actually fighting as allies with one group of (more
moderate) Muslims against another (of radical Islamists). Yet the texts
always deal with the Muslim community as a united whole (the umma), an
interpretation that just doesn't correspond with reality. Indeed and
ironically, this view enables Islamists to themselves kill thousands of
Muslims all over the world!

The fact that Hassan's lecture has not been the centerpiece of the whole
post-massacre debate is a true example of how impoverished are the
"experts," journalists, and politicians at dealing with these issues. Of
course, without exploring the Islamic factor, they're wasting everyone's
time. They're also going to be wasting quite a few lives.

http://www.gloria-center.org/Gloria/2009/11/why-i-murdered.html



Thanks to Yitzchok D., for sharing the the above content.

[PHILIP SCHNEIDER]

Although Mr. Rubin's analysis is refutable, I stand with him and agree that Hassan's lecture is a "pre-confession".