Nidal Hasan And Terrorism

AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

There has been much made of the Fort Hood massacre and possible links to Islamist terrorism. Many of the most prominent critics of radical Islam have written about the incident at length. Tarek Fatah wrote that one cannot ignore the attire worn by suspect Major Nidal Hasan on the morning of the killings. He was wearing the “shalwar-kameez,” the traditional attire worn by Pashtuns on both sides of the Pakistan-Afghan border, and symbolizes the jihad waged by al-Qaeda and the Taliban against the foreign invaders.

Irshad Manji wrote that the distinction of motive helps to shed a light on whether religion plays a factor in the crime. If a criminal merely happens to be a Muslim, his religion is immaterial. But if the crime is committed in the name of Islam, then that religion can certainly come under scrutiny as the underlying motivator.

But it is Salim Mansur who makes the greatest stretch that this shooting was a collective act “in the war Islamists declared some three decades ago against America”, and the west in general. He argues that the point in his life that Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an American-born citizen of Palestinian immigrants, became in his mind a loyal soldier of the global Islamist jihad, is highly relevant in determining what happened in Fort Hood.

What I’m having trouble with is in brushing this incident as broadly as Mr.Mansur does, using rhetorically alarming phrases such as “Nidal Hasan went out as an Islamist warrior to kill as many infidels before he found his martyrdom”, because it presupposes that an act perpetrated by a person acting alone is representative of the collective actions of jihadists. This distinction matters because, if Mr.Hasan acted alone and without orders from a terrorist network, then it becomes more difficult to simply lob him into the pile of terrorists who seek to destroy America.

It isn’t “political correctness” that tempers my caution; rather it is my hesitation to attribute the wanton actions of one individual to the madness of the Islamist terrorists. If not only because, as in actions performed by the military against our enemies, orders do matter, but because we run the risk of creating terrorism out of criminality. For an example of this, one can merely look at how mass murderer Marc Lepine has been rebranded under his Algerian birth name of Gamil Rodrigue Liass Gharbi, presumably to create an insidious implication that Muslims have a tendency to go postal.

There is some circumstantial evidence to suggest that Mr.Hasan was motivated by radical Islam in the execution of his crimes. He shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he shot up a room full of American soldiers. It is alleged he was in communication with a Yemen-based jihadist. He owned a paper shredder in his apartment, which although not quite uncommon, isn’t exactly common either. And then there’s the alleged Pakistan connection, although for now that is based on hearsay from Congressman Michael McCaul.

George Jonas in the National Post chides Barack Obama for urging caution:

“‘I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we get all the facts,’ Obama said.”

Look before you leap is good advice — though perhaps shouting Allahu Akbar does offer “a little hint of the actual motive,” as the Ottawa Citizen’s David Warren put it. But journalists such as Warren who feel that a massacre in the hand is worth two witch hunts in the bush are rare birds. A favourite topic of the mainstream press these days is whether Maj. Hasan is a madman or a terrorist. Many in the media seem to believe the two are mutually exclusive.

While it does offer a “little hint” of the motive, it doesn’t constitute the act of Islamist terrorism unless it was ordered from a centralized command. It’s the same difference between an Afghan peasant shooting at an ISAF soldier in his village, and a conscripted foreign jihadist being ordered to set an IED on the road before a convoy approaches. Whether he was a madman or a terrorist can be determined by whether he acted alone or not. A man screaming about Jesus Christ before he shoots a crowd of people is no more representative of Christian terrorism than a man screaming about Allah before shooting soldiers in Fort Hood being representative of Islamist terrorism.