THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume XI, Issue # 193, November 9, 2009
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
SUDDEN JIHAD OR "INORDINATE STRESS" AT FORT HOOD?
By Dr. Daniel Pipes
WHY A MUSLIM IN THE WEST WOULD VIOLENTLY ATTACK NON-MUSLIMS: TWO CONFLICTING THEORIES OF
EXPLANATION -- VICTIMIZATION & OPPRESSION OF A MUSLIM MINORITY BY THE SOCIETY'S NON-MUSLIM MAJORITY
VERSUS MUSLIM ADHERENCE TO & PRACTICE OF THE JIHADIST DOCTRINES OF POLITICAL ISLAM -- MAJOR NIDAL
MALIK HASAN'S ATTACK AT FORT HOOD AS ONE OF MANY MUSLIM EFFORTS TO VANQUISH INFIDELS & IMPOSE
ISLAMIC LAW -- ANOTHER OF NUMEROUS SUBVERSIVE & TREASONABLE ACTIONS INTENDED TO UNDERMINE & DESTROY
THE LAWS, GOVERNMENTS., & CULTURES OF WESTERN SOCIETIES
FULL STORY:
When a Muslim in the West, for no apparent reason, violently attacks non-Muslims, a predictable argument ensues about
motives.
The establishment – law enforcement, politicians, the media, and the academy – stands on one side of this debate, insisting
that some kind of oppression caused Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, to kill 13 and wound 38 at Fort Hood, Texas, on November
5, 2009. It disagrees on the specifics, however, presenting Hasan as the victim alternatively of "racism," "harassment he had
received as a Muslim," a sense of not belonging," "pre-traumatic stress disorder," "mental problems," "emotional problems,"
"an inordinate amount of stress," or being deployed to Afghanistan as his "worst nightmare." Accordingly, a typical
newspaper headline reads "Mindset of Rogue Major a Mystery.".
Instances of Muslim-on-unbeliever violence inspire the victim school to dig up new and imaginative excuses. Colorful
examples (drawing on my article and weblog entry about denying Islamist terrorism) include:
1990: "A prescription drug for … depression" (to explain the assassination of
Rabbi Meir Kahane);
1991: "A robbery gone wrong" (the murder of Makin Morcos in Sydney);
1994: "Road rage" (the killing of a random Jew on the Brooklyn Bridge);
1997: "Many, many enemies in his mind" (the shooting murder atop the
Empire State Building);
2000: A traffic incident (the attack on a bus of Jewish schoolchildren near
Paris);
2002: "A work dispute" (the double murder at LAX);
2002: A "stormy [family] relationship" (the Beltway snipers);
2003: An "attitude problem" (Sargent Hasan Karim Akbar's attack on fellow
soldiers, killing two);
2003: Mental illness (the mutilation murder of Sebastian Sellam);
2004: "Loneliness and depression" (an explosion in Brescia, Italy, outside a
McDonald's restaurant);
2005: "A disagreement between the suspect and another staff member" (a
rampage at a retirement center in Virginia);
2006: "An animus toward women" (a murderous rampage at the Jewish
Federation of Greater Seattle);
2006: "His recent, arranged marriage may have made him stressed" (killing
with an SUV in northern California)
Additionally, when an Osama bin Laden-admiring Arab-American crashed a plane into a Tampa high-rise, blame fell on the
acne drug Accutane.
As a charter member of the jihad school of interpretation, I reject the victimhood and oppression explanations as weak,
obfuscatory, and apologetic.
The jihadi school, still in the minority, perceives Hasan's attack as one of many Muslim efforts to vanquish infidels and
impose Islamic law. We recall a prior episode of sudden jihad syndrome in the U.S. military, as well as the numerous cases
of non-lethal Pentagon jihadi plots and the history of Muslim violence on American soil.
Far from being mystified by Hasan, we see overwhelming evidence of his jihadi intentions. He handed out Korans to
neighbors just before going on his rampage and yelled "Allahu Akbar," the jihadi's cry, as he fired off over 100 rounds
from two pistols. His superiors reportedly put him on probation for inappropriately proselytizing about Islam.
We note what former associates say about him: one, Val Finnell, quotes Hasan saying, "I'm a Muslim first and an
American second" and recalls Hasan justifying suicide terrorism; another, Colonel Terry Lee, recalls that Hasan "claimed
Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans," the third, a psychiatrist who worked very closely with Hasan,
described him as "almost belligerent about being Muslim."
Finally, the jihad school of thought attributes importance to the Islamic authorities' urging American Muslim soldiers to
refuse to fight their co-religionists, thereby providing a basis for sudden jihad. In 2001, for example, responding to the U.S.
attack on the Taliban, the mufti of Egypt, Ali Gum'a, issued a fatwa stating that "The Muslim soldier in the American Army
must refrain [from participating] in this war." Hasan himself, echoing that message, advised a young Muslim disciple,
Duane Reasoner, Jr., not to join the U.S. Army because "Muslims shouldn't kill Muslims."
If the jihad explanation is overwhelmingly more persuasive than the victim one, it's also far more awkward to articulate.
Everyone finds blaming road rage, Accutane, or an arranged marriage easier than discussing Islamic doctrines. And so, a
prediction: what Ralph Peters calls the Army's "unforgivable political correctness" will officially ascribe Hasan's assault to
his victimization and will leave jihad unmentioned.
And thus will the Army blind itself and not prepare for its next jihadi attack.
© Daniel Pipes 2009
Originally Published in Front Page Magazine, November 9. 2009
Republished with the Permission of Daniel Pipes
Reprinted from the Daniel Pipes Mailing List, November 9, 2009
Article URL: http://www.danielpipes.org/7737/sudden-jihad-inordinate-stress-ft-hood
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
The Islamist Fifth Column -- America's Internal Enemies:
Disloyalty, Subversion, Sedition, & Treason
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
Middle East -- Arabs, Arab States,
& Their Middle Eastern Neighbors
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
International Politics & World Disorder:
War, Peace, & Geopolitics in the Real World:
Foreign Affairs & U.S. National Security
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
Counterterrorism & U.S. National Security
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Daniel Pipes, a Ph.D. in Islamic History (Harvard University, 1978), is Founder and Director of the Middle East Forum,
Founder of Campus Watch, Taube Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University, a
signatory of the Project for the New American Century, a former board member of the U.S. Institute of Peace, a former
adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a Golden Circle supporter of the U.S. Committee for a Free
Lebanon, a former member of the U.S. Department of Defense Special Task Force on Terrorism and Technology, and a
former lecturer at the U.S. Naval War College, Harvard University, the University of Chicago, and the University of
Pennsylvania. Dr. Pipes was the Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute from 1986 to 1993.
Author or co-author of eighteen books, Dr. Pipes is a regular columnist for Front Page Magazine, the New York
Sun, and the Jerusalem Post. His analyses of world trends and of forces and developments in the Middle East
have appeared in numerous North American newspapers, including the Washington Post, the New York Times,
and the Wall Street Journal. He frequently appears on American network television, as well as at universities and
think tanks, to discuss the Middle East, Islam, and the Islamist threat to the U.S.A. and the West. He also has appeared on
BBC and Al Jazeera, and has lectured in approximately twenty-five countries.
Dr. Pipes is a Polish-American Jew whose parents fled Poland in 1939, immigrated to the U.S.A., and assimilated well into
American society and culture. His father is Richard Pipes, an American historian specializing in Russian and Soviet history
and serving as Professor of History at Harvard University from 1950 until his retirement in 1996. During the Cold War, the
worldview of Richard Pipes was strongly anti-Soviet and anti-Communist.
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