.
[My answer to Hurria in a discussion of my diary: Fort Hood Shooting A Palestinian Issue?. To be clear, see timeline in my statement putting up this diary: Fri Nov 6th, 2009 at 02:42:20 AM PST.]
From your own bias you continue to make accusations of prejudice. The teachings mentioned above are from the website of Shaikh Anwar al-Awlaki. From your personal beliefs you cannot accept there are Muslims who become extremists based on their focus on fundamentalist teaching of Islam. Madrassas in Pakistan and Indonesia are schools of thought educating children and teenagers on Islam and violence against infidels. From your knowledge of the regions on the Arab peninsula, you could confirm the presence of extremism and terror (al-Qaeda) in Yemen and parts of Saudi Arabia. Anwar al-Awlaki is seen as an extremist/terrorist by both nations. Someone like Nidal Hasan could very well have indulged himself into fundamentalist thought of Islam along these lines. Just like the murder of Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam five years ago, the anger and violence was brutal and extreme. The murderer Mohammed Bouyeri was a well liked social worker amongst youth in the burroughs. Of course any willful murder has a form of insanity, the same can be said of a war of choice or any violent conflict. I am searching for an answer … WHY? However, harassment and so-called ‘disgrunteld employee’ will not suffice to explain the brutality and violence. BTW I do not put blame on religion for this personal act of violence. Similar extreme violence is present in Christianity, Hindu, by agnosts and Judaism.
Below the fold Nidal’s business card and link to Palestinian struggle …
This photograph taken on Friday, Nov. 6, 2009 in Killeen, Texas, shows a business card that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan gave to his neighbor a day before going on a shooting spree at the Fort Hood Army Base.
(AP Photo/Jack Plunkett)
GAZA documentary Soldiers of Allah (SWT)
Soldier of Allah?
How about an American Muslim soldier who found that the American Military is less and less like what he thought he had signed up for 20 years ago? As the folks at Talk to Action and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation have documented, the military’s leadership has become dominated by those with a Christian Crusade mentality.
Perhaps the efforts of the military brass have convinced a few Muslims with its Top Ten Ways to Convince the Muslims We’re On a Crusade:
The crusade against Islam is not just some random Christian rhetoric, but is shaped by an explicitly Christian Zionist narrative. Who knows how your average Muslim service member experiences this military rhetoric about America’s Christian Crusade or how your average Palestinian American service member experiences the close identification of America’s war efforts with those of Israel’s?
But it looks like this particular Palestinian Muslim American soldier cracked. A lonely middle-aged man whose parents had both died, one brother had moved overseas and the military had moved him away from the other. A man who had become more involved in a local religious community after a death in his immediate family and who had sought to expand his family by seeking a spouse through religious networking. A man who had been hearing intimate horror stories from the war on the one hand and had been experiencing increasing harrassment as a Muslim. A Palestinian American whose brother lives a few miles from Jerusalem rubbing shoulders with Christian Zionist soldiers blithely talking about bombing Iran so that the war of Armageddon could be kick-started.
The military should be worried more about the rate of suicides under pre-launch stress (even suicide by cop) than by painting soldiers who object to serving as potential terrorists.
.
This perspective one does not read in the mass media. Nidal Hasan made choices in his life, his parents were opposed to his enlisting in the US Army in 2000? He got a full education as psychiatrist, he could have gotten out any time, resign or refuse to be deployed overseas and take the consequencies. He could have gone awol in Baghdad or Kabul and be a man. He chose to fight in a most cowardly way by shooting unarmed, innocent fellow soldiers in the back. There are no words for his deed and no motive can be rational. All murder is insane.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."I dont see how you can really describe his actions as cowardly, If you’re going to open fire whilst surrounded by 20,000 people who are going to shoot back, albeit not immediately maybe, Cowardly just isnt the word. If that is cowardly, then how isnt the activities of the Air force or Navy in firing missiles, or dropping laser guided bombs from a position from where they cannot be fired back at anything other than cowardly by your argument?
Well Just because you dont agree with his actions, dosn’t make him irrational, to him his actions may be utterly logical.
There is almost no way out, even for soldiers who come to believe that they are absolute pacifists. Even when the tour of duty ends, soldiers are redeployed over and over again. The levels of suicide before and during deployment are incredibly high. Some soldiers see death or severe injury as the only escape once deployed (although some have gone AWOL stateside). Attempts to get out of the military by working through the system have very little success.
being the official term for ‘no way out’ and going AWOL in theater can get you shot for desertion, if they catch you.
I suppose refusing deployment leads to a court martial at home, with what kind of punishment?
.
Fort Hood, TX – Victor Agosto, a Fort Hood, Texas soldier, is publicly refusing orders to deploy to Afghanistan. “There is no way I will deploy to Afghanistan. The occupation is immoral and unjust. It does not make the American people any safer. It has the opposite effect,” Agosto told his command.
Agosto is not the only GI refusing to fight in Afghanistan. Travis Bishop, also stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas, is currently refusing to deploy with his unit. And countless others have gone AWOL or escaped to Canada rather than fight in Afghanistan.
Agosto has received overwhelming support from Under the Hood Café, an anti-war GI coffeehouse just outside of Fort Hood. He has also been met with a groundswell of support from national peace and anti-war communities, and even from troops in his own unit.
“Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) strongly opposes the criminal and immoral US occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, and we fully stand behind servicepeople who refuse to serve in those two conflicts,” said Camilo Mejía, IVAW Board Chair. “In refusing deployment to Afghanistan, Victor Agosto is following his conscience and deserves the support of all service men and women and the American people.”
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."The way out is to end these insane and unecessary military adventures that do more to undermine our international reputation, safety of our people, economic security and encourage attacks upon us and our people
“From your own bias you continue to make accusations of prejudice.“
It has nothing to do with any bias of mine. I know anti-Muslim bigotry when I see it, just as I know homophobia when I see it, and just as I know anti-Semitism when I see it, and just as I know misogyny and racism when I see them.
“The teachings mentioned above are from the website of Shaikh Anwar al-Awlaki.“
Yeah, I saw that. So what? We know there are Muslims who hold these kinds of views just as there are Christians who think Jesus wanted them to use violence against people they disagree with. Every group has a few members like that. So what?
“From your personal beliefs you cannot accept there are Muslims who become extremists based on their focus on fundamentalist teaching of Islam.“
That is utter rubbish for which you can find no basis whatsoever in anything I have ever said. It is also worth pointing out that you have no idea at all what my personal beliefs are in regard to religion