Nidal Hassan and Barack Obama

What would drive an officer in the US Army, in charge of supervising the psychological condition of his fellow officers and soldiers returning from war, to commit what officer Nidal Malik Hassan committed at the Fort Hood base in Texas?

It would be easy, as some racist parties in the United States have, to level accusations directly at the religious background of the officer of Palestinian origin. Such parties do not usually need justifications for their racist tendencies, as they also accuse President Barack Hussein Obama of not being American, and of “using Christianity as a disguise” in order to do away with the bases upon which rests the political institution in the United States from within!

Nevertheless, far from such a racist stance, one must also say that what this officer committed against his fellow soldiers, whether it was the result of a nervous impulse or whether its background and motives were suicidal, as preliminary reports by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have begun to indicate, will lead to negative reactions which Muslims enlisted in the US Army, who number nearly twenty thousand officers and soldiers, will pay the price for, whether in terms of promotions or of the way they are dealt with by their colleagues. It is only natural for the reaction of any American soldiers to what happened to be that of not believing that a colleague, one responsible for their health care, could fire a gun at them. This is exactly what one of these soldiers said yesterday: I cannot believe that one of us could commit such an act!

It is not unlikely for us to hear today, in the streets of our Arab and Muslim cities, those who would praise the “heroism” of Nidal Hassan, as we have heard in the past those who have praised the “heroism” of Mohamed Atta and his comrades, who carried out the “invasion” of New York and Washington, the “heroism” of those who committed the crimes of July 2005 in the subways of the British capital, or of the two “doctors” who attempted to bomb a nightclub in London and to break into Glasgow Airport in Scotland. All because these people were able to storm the cities and strongholds of “aggression”, to strike a blow against the security protection that surrounds them, and to do away, or attempt to do away, with the largest possible number of those who live in them.

Nevertheless, facing such voices, which are unfortunately not scarce, are more reasonable voices, from the American side as from the side of the Muslim community in the United States, that see things in a different way. On the American side, there are those who pointed out that this officer’s crime was not a unique occurrence in the US Army, despite being the worst and most atrocious. Last May, a soldier in one US Army base in Baghdad killed five of his comrades; and last year, a pilot from the US Air Force killed his two children after returning home from Iraq, following a dispute with his ex-wife. In this sense, it becomes necessary to look into the psychological reasons behind the crime committed by Nidal Hassan, whom it had been decided to send to Afghanistan against his wishes, and not just into his religious background.

On the side of the Muslim community, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) issued a statement in which it condemned without reservation the crime committed by this officer, saying that “no political or religious ideology could ever justify or excuse such wanton and indiscriminate violence”.

Far from both this and that, doubtless Nidal Hassan’s crime provides additional fuel for the supporters of scare campaigns against Muslims in Western countries and for those who oppose allowing them to assume responsibilities in various fields, including the fields of security. One might say that these people do not need justifications for their racist stances. Yet… do such acts, repeatedly committed year after year, not conceal a latent tendency in some of us to take advantage of the opportunities provided by Western systems and laws to attack them from within, under the pretext that the policies of these countries do not agree with our convictions and principles? And what can be said about the ethical motives behind such behavior, and about our ability to deal with others and blend with other cultures? Is it not paradoxical that, at a time when the United States is celebrating the first anniversary of the election of the first president of Muslim origin, officer Nidal Hassan finds no qualms in killing 13 of his fellow American soldiers in cold blood?