Fort Hood shooting witnesses: Gunman shouted 'Allahu Akbar' before killing 13 Posted Friday, Nov. 06, 2009
By DAVE MONTGOMERY, STEVE CAMPBELL and CHRIS VAUGHN [email protected]_ (mailto:[email protected]) FORT HOOD -- Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted “Allahu Akbar!” — an Arabic phrase for “God is great!” — before opening fire, the base commander said Friday. ============================================================= (http://www.nypost.com/) Updated: Sat., Nov. 7, 2009 Take a look at Hasan's old mosque By STEPHEN SCHWARTZ Last Updated: 12:54 PM, November 7, 2009 Posted: 12:38 AM, November 7, 2009 What interpretation of Islam influ enced Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan? As often before, the trail leads to the official sect of Saudi Arabia -- known as Wahhabism to most of us of who denounce it. Confronting the role of radical Islam here is not Islamophobic, but common sense -- and the first response moderate Muslims themselves will have. Hasan, though born in America, refused to have his picture taken with women -- an attitude distinct to fundamentalist radicalism among Muslims. The Prophet Mohammed cautioned his followers that when they go to live in non-Muslim lands they must accept the laws and customs of their new home. Millions of American Muslims get their picture taken with women, even ones not their wives, and don't worry about it. To refuse such an elementary and even trivial act of courtesy sets Muslims apart -- and that is the aim of radicals. We've also learned that, before his transfer to Ft. Hood last year, Hasan served as a psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC, and regularly attended Friday prayer at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, Md. The Silver Spring clerics have issued formal statements condemning the carnage at Ft. Hood. But Imam Faizul Khan, long the main prayer leader at the mosque and a friend of Hasan, said he never believed Hasan capable of such an act. Yet what docrines did Hasan absorb at the mosque? While he was a communicant, it hosted at least four talks by Enver Masud, the founder of The Wisdom Fund, the main Muslim "truther" group in America. And Khan is a leading board member of the Islamic Society of North America -- the main Wahhabi-lobby group in the United States, established by Saudi Arabia to impose extremism on American Muslims. ISNA has a long and disgraceful record of promoting radical Islam. On the roster of the ISNA board (listed on its Web site), the Silver Spring center's Imam Faizul Khan is the fourth member under its president. But the mosque has worse associations. On its own Web site (mccmd.org), it promotes a Sharia-based financial product -- the Amana Mutual Fund, put together by the Wahhabis at the International Institute for Islamic Thought (IIIT), in northern Virginia. Federal antiterrorism agents raided IIIT in the Operation GreenQuest raids of 2002. That operation remains an ongoing inquiry; IIIT and the Amana fund are still under investigation. Convicted Palestinian Islamic Jihad leader Sami Al-Arian is still in US federal custody because of his refusal to give evidence about the Virginia Wahhabi ring caught in GreenQuest. Most interesting of all: The button on the MCC's Web site titled "Islam" takes you to a pamphlet titled "Islam Is . . ." by a person calling himself "Pete Seda." Seda is an Iranian also known as Pirouz Sedaghaty and Abu Yunus. He was one of three officers of the US branch of a Saudi-based "charity," the Al-Haramain Foundation -- until being indicted by the Justice Department for terror financing and tax fraud. Seda and his companions still await trial. >From a ghastly act to a Saudi-backed fundamentalist imam to a Saudi-run designated terror-financing "charity" is not a long trail. It is a small coil of associations that exists in too many US mosques. American Muslims must drive these elements out of their community. The problem's not traumatic stress, much less Islam. It's the ideology, the money and the interests of the Saudi hardliners. Stephen Schwartz is the executive director of the Center for Islamic Pluralism (islamicpluralism.org). ======================================================= The Jawa Report November 07, 2009 BBC: Ft Hood mosque member defends shootings: "they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them." Thanks to DB in the comment section who directs us to this _post_ (http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2009/11/i-honestly-have-no-pity-for-them.html) , which features a BBC interview by Gavin Lee with a member of the Killeen, Texas mosque outside Ft Hood, the Islamic Community Center of Greater Killeen, where Malik Nidal Hasan was currently attending. In the interview (the whole interview can be heard _here_ (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nrvhp#p0051bjj) ), mosque member "Duane" not only refuses to condemn Hasan, but justifies their murder because "they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims". Here's the relevant portion of the interview: Duane : I'm not going to condemn him for what he did. I don't know why he did it. I will not, absolutely not, condemn him for what he had done though. If he had done it for selfish reasons I still will not condemn him. He's my brother in the end. I will never condemn him. Gavin Lee : There might be a lot of people shocked to hear you say that. Duane: Well, that's the way it is. I don't speak for the community here but me personally I will not condemn him. Gavin Lee : What are your thoughts towards those that were victims in this? Duane : They were, in the end, they were troops who were going to Afghanistan and Iraq to kill Muslims. I honestly have no pity for them. It's just like the majority of the people that will hear this, after five or six minutes they'll be shocked, after that they'll forget about them and go on their day. Over at _Biased BBC_ (http://biased-bbc.blogspot.com/2009/11/i-honestly-have-no-pity-for-them.html) they wonder whether this is the same Duane Reasoner _quoted today_ (http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/us/07muslim.html) by the New York Times: Duane Reasoner Jr., an 18-year-old substitute teacher whose parents worked at Fort Hood, said Major Hassan was told he would be sent to Afghanistan on Nov. 28, and he did not like it. “He said he should quit the Army,” Mr. Reasoner said. “In the Koran, you’ re not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell.” Reasoner was also _interviewed_ (http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?article=65920§ion=104) by Stars & Stripes: Just last week, Hasan expressed views that Muslims shouldn't serve in the military and fight other Muslims, according to Duane Reasoner Jr., a recent Muslim convert who had been having dinner regularly with Hasan. Hasan had taken 18-year-old Reasoner under his wing, mentoring him in his new faith. After evening prayers he would often buy a fish dinner for Reasoner and sometimes the iman at the Golden Corral, a chain buffet restaurant. Besides mentioning that he prayed for a wife, the conversation almost never strayed from religion, Reasoner said, describing Hasan as warm and caring. Looks like Hasan has left some disciples to continue his work at Ft Hood. By Barbarossa at November 7, 2009 =================================================== from the site : Islam in Action Saturday, November 7, 2009 _NY Muslims: US Military Blood Will Spill in America!~Video_ (http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/2009/11/ny-muslims-us-military-blood-will-spill.html) No surprise here, as the Muslims of _NY based RevolutionMuslim.com,_ (http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/2009/11/cnn-ny-muslims -say-islam-calls-for.html) brag about the _Islamic terrorist attack at Fort Hood._ (http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/2009/11/fort-hood-shooter-maybe-muslims-could.html) They do us one favor though, they explain how _Islam justifies_ (http://islaminaction08.blogspot.com/2009/10/islam-101-religion-of-war_05.html) the Fort Hood attack. Islam is at war with us, it time that we wake up! ==================================================== OC Register Friday, November 6, 2009 Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole in U.S. terror strategy Same ideological pathologies that drive al-Qaida overpowered Hasan's American identity. Mark Steyn Syndicated columnist Thirteen dead and 28 wounded would be a bad day for the U.S. military in Afghanistan and a great victory for the Taliban. When it happens in Texas, in the heart of the biggest military base in the nation, at a processing center for soldiers either returning from or deploying to combat overseas, it is not merely a "tragedy" (as too many people called it) but a glimpse of a potentially fatal flaw at the heart of what we have called, since 9/11, the "war on terror." Brave soldiers trained to hunt down and kill America's enemy abroad were killed in the safety and security of home by, in essence, the same enemy – a man who believes in and supports everything the enemy does. And he's a U.S. Army major. And his superior officers and other authorities knew about his beliefs but seemed to think it was just a bit of harmless multicultural diversity – as if believing that "the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor" (i.e., his fellow American soldiers) and writing Internet paeans to the "noble" "heroism" of suicide bombers and, indeed, objectively supporting the other side in an active war is to be regarded as just some kind of alternative lifestyle that adds to the general vibrancy of the base. When it emerged early Thursday afternoon that the shooter was Nidal Malik Hasan, there appeared shortly thereafter on Twitter a flurry of posts with the striking formulation: "Please judge Maj. Malik Nadal [sic]by his actions and not by his name." Concerned tweeters can relax: There was never really any danger of that – and not just in the sense that the New York Times' first report on Maj. Hasan never mentioned the words "Muslim" or "Islam," or that ABC's Martha Raddatz's only observation on his name was that "as for the suspect, Nadal Hasan, as one officer's wife told me, 'I wish his name was Smith.'" What a strange reaction. I suppose what she means is that, if his name were Smith, we could all retreat back into the same comforting illusions that allowed the bureaucracy to advance Nidal Malik Hasan to major and into the heart of Fort Hood while ignoring everything that mattered about the essence of this man. Since 9/11, we have, as the Twitterers, recommend, judged people by their actions – flying planes into skyscrapers, blowing themselves up in Bali nightclubs or London Tube trains, planting IEDs by the roadside in Baghdad or Tikrit. And on the whole we're effective at responding with action of our own. But we're scrupulously nonjudgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subway, and thus we have a hole at the heart of our strategy. We use rhetorical conveniences like "radical Islam" or, if that seems a wee bit Islamophobic, just plain old "radical extremism." But we never make any effort to delineate the line which separates "radical Islam" from nonradical Islam. Indeed, we go to great lengths to make it even fuzzier. And somewhere in that woozy blur the pathologies of a Nidal Malik Hasan incubate. An Army psychiatrist, Maj. Hasan is an American, born and raised, who graduated from Virginia Tech and then received his doctorate from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. But he opposed America's actions in the Middle East and Afghanistan and made approving remarks about jihadists on U.S. soil. "You need to lock it up, Major," said his superior officer, Col. Terry Lee. But he didn't really need to "lock it up" at all. He could pretty much say anything he liked, and if any "red flags" were raised they were quickly mothballed. Lots of people are "anti-war." Some of them are objectively on the other side – that's to say, they encourage and support attacks on American troops and civilians. But not many of those in that latter category are U.S. Army majors. Or so one would hope. Yet why be surprised? Azad Ali, a man who approvingly quotes such observations as "If I saw an American or British man wearing a soldier's uniform inside Iraq I would kill him because that is my obligation" is an adviser to Britain's Crown Prosecution Service (the equivalent of U.S. attorneys). In Toronto this week, the brave ex-Muslim Nonie Darwish mentioned that, on flying from the U.S. to Canada, she was questioned at length about the purpose of her visit by an apparently Muslim border official. When she revealed that she was giving a speech about Islamic law, he rebuked her: "We are not to question Shariah." That's the guy manning the airport security desk. In the New York Times, Maria Newman touched on Hasan's faith only obliquely: "He was single, according to the records, and he listed no religious preference." Thank goodness for that, eh? A neighbor in Texas says the major had "Allah" and "another word" pinned up in Arabic on his door. "Akbar" maybe? On Thursday morning he is said to have passed out copies of the Quran to his neighbors. He shouted in Arabic as he fired. But don't worry: As the FBI spokesman assured us in nothing flat, there's no terrorism angle. That's true, in a very narrow sense: Maj. Hasan is not a card-carrying member of the Texas branch of al-Qaida reporting to a control officer in Yemen or Waziristan. If he were, things would be a lot easier. But the same pathologies that drive al-Qaida beat within Maj. Hasan, too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his expensive Western education, his psychiatric training, his military discipline – his entire American identity. What happened to those men and women at Fort Hood had a horrible symbolism: Members of the best-trained, best-equipped fighting force on the planet gunned down by a guy who said a few goofy things no one took seriously. And that's the problem: America has the best troops and fiercest firepower, but no strategy for throttling the ideology that drives the enemy – in Afghanistan and in Texas. ©MARK STEYN =====================================================
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