Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, I do not understand you and that frightens me.
Demographically, we have much in common. We are both American citizens with Palestinian ancestry, raised and educated here. Perhaps most importantly, we are both American Muslims.
You volunteered to serve in the U.S. Army despite the disapproval of relatives, and continued to serve even though you were critical of American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan. You counseled troubled soldiers upon their return. If I had met you a few years ago, and known only these facts, I would have said you were a model American, a person of conscience attempting to balance a sense of civic duty with personal morality.
But last Thursday you snapped and shot more than 40 fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, killing 13. It is an event that many have been struggling to understand. A great deal of media attention has focused on how isolated you were from your peers—ostracized by some in your family for serving in the military and discriminated against by some fellow soldiers for your Muslim faith.
These may have been factors that drove you to the edge. I’m not sure. Soldiers can snap. An article in Monday’s New York Times told the story of at least two other soldiers who had murdered people upon their return to Fort Hood.
But it would be disingenuous to suggest that your shooting spree isn’t a class apart from those other murders and suicides. I am not sure where your actions lie on the spectrum between pressure-induced insanity and premeditated terrorism, but ultimately I don’t think it matters. What matters is that you snapped and how you chose to do it.
Before you killed those men and women, you yelled “Allahu Akbar.” When you yelled “God is Great” before killing, you and I became cosmically linked. That is why I am writing this column. Our similar backgrounds are not enough for me to feel the need to react to what you did, but “Allahu Akbar” is.
Your language of justification is what I find troubling. “Allahu Akbar” is the first phrase that calls Muslims to prayer. The fact that you invoked our religion when you shot those people involves me. I do not want to identify with you in the least, but I feel compelled to do so. I feel like your sins are my own.
Since the attack on Thursday, I have had a number of conversations with other Muslims both in person and via e-mail. Some of them have lamented that this will cast more suspicion on us by the general American public, but others have wondered how you and they can derive such radically different views from the same holy text.
Major, your actions are problematic for me and them because the same text that we revere and look to for moral guidance you turned to and found justification for violence. With other incidents that occur in far-off foreign countries, I can attribute terrorism to a culturally influenced interpretation of the faith, but with you I cannot. We have the same culture and think in the same language. Your actions leave me at a loss.
Some American Muslims will undoubtedly be critical of me for writing this column. They will say that I am struggling to condemn something that I shouldn’t feel responsible for in the first place. Every religious group has adherents that are more prone to violence and radical behavior, they may say. Why would you invite criticism upon us? Why air our dirty laundry for public viewing and invite stereotyping and bigotry?
Because we already have these conversations among ourselves and we ought to let the general public know, even if we are ashamed. Talking about these problems publicly is not a matter of apologizing for our beliefs but of defining them.
Let’s speak openly so that people know that we too are concerned. We too are disturbed.
Yousef AbuGharbieh is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Wednesday.
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