Jennifer's Blog

We hear an awful lot that Islam is a reli­gion of peace. And I know some who fit that descrip­tion. Yet coun­tries that have near 100 per­cent Islamic pop­u­la­tion – Afghanistan, Soma­lia, Saudi Ara­bia and Yemen – seem any­thing but peace­ful. So why are we privy to fre­quent news reports of Islamic ter­ror­ist attacks, sui­cide bomb­ings, insur­gent upris­ings and Fat­was order­ing vio­lence to those that speak against Islam?

Most are famil­iar with the fatwa that Iran­ian Aya­tol­lah Khome­ini pro­claimed on Salman Rushdie, the author of The Satanic Verses, and those involved in the pub­li­ca­tion of his novel. But how many know that an uniden­ti­fied Mus­lim stabbed Rushdie’s Japan­ese trans­la­tor, Hitoshi Igarashi, to death at the uni­ver­sity where he worked? Or that an uniden­ti­fied Mus­lim beat and stabbed Rushdie’s Ital­ian trans­la­tor, Ettore Capri­olo, out­side his home? Or that a sus­pected Mus­lim shot and severely injured Rushdie’s Nor­we­gian pub­lisher William Nygaard out­side his home in Oslo. Or that an Islamic mob set fire to the hotel accom­mo­dat­ing Rushdie’s Turk­ish trans­la­tor, Aziz Nesin, killing 37 guests while Nesin and oth­ers escaped. All because of this death threat:

I inform all zeal­ous Mus­lims of the world that the author of the book enti­tled The Satanic Verses — which has been com­piled, printed and pub­lished in oppo­si­tion to Islam, the Prophet, and the Qur’an — and all those involved in its pub­li­ca­tion who were aware of its con­tent, are sen­tenced to death. I call on all zeal­ous Mus­lims to exe­cute them quickly, wher­ever they may be found, so that no one else will dare to insult the Mus­lim sanc­ti­ties. God Will­ing, who­ever is killed on this path is a martyr.

Then there’s Theo van Gogh. He was the film direc­tor that pro­duced an 11-minute movie called Sub­mis­sion based on the abu­sive life of Somalian-born Mus­lim and now Dutch par­lia­ment politi­cian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. But his career ended abruptly.

A 26-year old Dutch-Moroccan born Mus­lim, Mohammed Bouy­eri, shot Van Gogh eight times with a semi-automatic pis­tol, killing Van Gogh in broad day­light. Bouy­eri then cut Van Gogh’s throat, nearly decap­i­tat­ing him and stabbed him in the chest. The killer left two knives in his torso, one attach­ing a five-page warn­ing to his body. The note (Text) threat­ened West­ern gov­ern­ments, Jews and Hirsi Ali – who went into hid­ing. The note also con­tained ref­er­ences to the ide­olo­gies of the Egypt­ian orga­ni­za­tion Tak­fir wal-Hijra.

Just this year, Dutch politi­cians have faced an unprece­dented num­ber of death threats. Police corps in The Hague region received 428 seri­ous death threats against politi­cians the pre­vi­ous year. And 285 directly tar­get­ted anti-jihadist Party for Free­dom leader Geert Wilders, a far-right Dutch politi­cian’, who pro­duced the con­tro­ver­sial film, Fitna, and sparked Mus­lim out­rage and an antic­i­pated fatwa ordered by ter­ror­ist net­work Al-Qaeda.

Sud­denly, Islam is look­ing more like a huge stack of dead bod­ies than a reli­gion of peace

Mus­lims have also issued fat­was on other pub­lic fig­ures crit­i­ciz­ing Islam includ­ing Jerry Fal­well, Taslima Nas­reen, Isioma Daniel, and even ordered fat­was against Jews, Amer­i­cans and their allies.

I mean when you have 9/11 mass mur­der­ers like Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri — both on the FBI’s most wanted ter­ror­ists list— as call­ing cards for your reli­gion, “peace­ful” prob­a­bly isn’t the best description.

Only days ago we heard about five Mus­lim Amer­i­can men that Pak­istani author­i­ties detained on sus­pi­cion that they were pur­su­ing jihadist train­ing in Pak­istan. Police have reported that three of the men are of Pak­istani descent, one is of Egypt­ian descent and the other is of Yemeni heritage.

Pak­istan is about 97 per­cent Islamic and Egypt is about 90 per­cent Islamic so hear­ing about sec­ond gen­er­a­tion home­grown jihadists from these coun­tries isn’t sur­pris­ing. What is dis­turb­ing is that these five young men were described by their mosque youth leader as “whole­some, devout young men.” Again, not the most acc­cu­rate choice of words.

If Islam is a peace­ful reli­gion, then why are second-generation Amer­i­cans becom­ing jihadists?

This brings us back to Major Nidal Hasan. He was born of Pak­istani descent, and those who knew him on base said about the same thing. His for­mer patients labeled him as “scary” and his col­leagues referred to him as “an Islamic extrem­ist.” So it’s ironic to hear his fam­ily describe him as “a calm oppo­nent to the war.”

Hello? Hasan was a Major in the US mil­i­tary who report­edly toted a busi­ness card that read S.O.A. (Solider of Allah). This just goes to show that Islamic ter­ror is a real threat and if left to its own devices will con­tinue to ignite in places we least expect.

Then there’s 9/11. An Amer­i­can wake-up call to Islamic orga­nized ter­ror that took the lives of 2,976 vic­tims plus the 19 jihadist hijack­ers that com­mit­ted these acts of vio­lence. And since the fall of the World Trade Cen­ters, the num­ber of Islamic ter­ror­ists attacks have grown expo­nen­tially. Con­ser­v­a­tive fig­ures sug­gest Islamic ter­ror­ists post 9/11 have car­ried out more than:

14,514

deadly ter­ror attacks (this num­ber grows daily). Many believe this num­ber is far too low due to underreporting.

Hmmm. I’m not find­ing much peace here. Author Dan Brown wrote the novel The Da Vinci Code and while the Catholic Church denounced it, Catholics world­wide did not place a hit on Brown or threaten to mur­der those con­nected with the novel’s trans­la­tion, pub­lish­ing and filmaking.

We need to read between the lies here. The same Islamic soci­ety that hides behind the word “peace­ful” puts fat­was on peo­ple for free speech and expres­sion and also per­mits honor killings for sham­ing one’s family.

Banaz Mah­mod is one such case. Banaz’s father dis­ap­proved of the man she fell in love with so he, her uncle and oth­ers raped, tor­tured and mur­dered her. A sim­i­lar case is 11– year old Nazmeen. A rel­a­tive molested her and set on fire for wear­ing lip­stick. Another case occured state­side just last year in Lewisville, Texas where the father of two sis­ters, 18-year old, Amina Said and 17-year old, Sarah,  fatally shot them in a taxi.

Despite these hor­ren­dous accounts and the ris­ing death toll from peace­ful (ha!) Islam, there is one more fact to con­sider. The birthrate of Islam­ics far exceeds the birthrate of Hin­dus, Bud­dhists, Chris­tians, Jews and ALL OTHER RELIGIONS PUT TOGETHER. At this rate, Islam­ics will exceed 50 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion by the end of this cen­tury. Audi­ble gasp.

Unfor­tu­nately, the num­bers fore­shadow the future. If the world doesn’t end by the 2012 (Iran – I’m also talk­ing to you), then we can count on the grow­ing num­ber of rad­i­cal Islam­ics to do the job.

The sil­ver screen is infa­mous for fea­tur­ing bum­bling intel­li­gence agents who hoard sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion from local agen­cies. This is not too far from the truth when it comes to the blood­bath at Ft. Hood. Con­sider the FBI mon­i­tored email exchanges released Sat­ur­day in the Wash­ing­ton Post. True to Oscar Wilde’s quote, “Real­ity imi­tates art far more than art imi­tates real­ity,” the inves­ti­ga­tion was amiss.

Here’s why. An FBI-led task force in San Diego inter­cepted emails between late 2008 and June 2009 between Hasan, the alleged Ft. Hood shooter, and a rad­i­cal Islamic cleric, Anwar al-Aulaqi. These emails dis­cussed covert finan­cial trans­fers and other steps that could trans­late Hasan’s thoughts into actions, accord­ing to sources briefed by the Post.

Keep in mind, news sources pub­lished in the wake of the tragedy that the semi-automatic Hasan pur­chased with cop-killer bul­lets was in August of 2009. It also brings up the ques­tion of why a mil­i­tary offi­cer would need a per­sonal semi-automatic. While there are plenty argu­ments against gun con­trol and wait­ing peri­ods, it might cre­ate a safety net if the armed forces knew when the sol­diers they’re train­ing for com­bat pur­chase semi-automatics on their own dime (or this case just over $1,000 for the FM 5.7 mil­lime­ter semi-automatic pis­tol Hasan toted not to men­tion the addtional cost of the per­sonal revolver in his other hand).

Fail­ure to Con­nect the Dots

Fail­ure to for­ward infor­ma­tion regard­ing a home­grown jihadist might seem pass­able in a Hol­ly­wood thriller but it is incred­i­bly irre­spon­si­ble in real­ity. While the media has not released any reports of civil cases against gov­ern­men­tal agen­cies to my knowl­edge, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if they multiply.

The Post also reported that while Hasan’s emails to the Iman began as reli­gious queries, the tone became more spe­cific before he relo­cated to Texas. Besides killing 13 in cold blood and injur­ing 30 more, who knows what addi­tional dam­age he may have caused the enlisted men and women he coun­seled. There have been reports of a high sui­cide rate at Ft. Hood. Just how many attempted or suc­cess­ful sui­cides were under Hasan’s care?

It would seem likely that if the intel­li­gence agen­cies had a pol­icy of open com­mu­ni­ca­tion and knew that high rank­ing offi­cials would hold them account­able then its plau­si­ble Ft. Hood could have expe­ri­enced another outcome.

A num­ber of peo­ple inter­viewed that knew Hasan said they observed warn­ing signs. How­ever, none of these com­plaints went to a sin­gle gate­keeper that could act on this infor­ma­tion. Sadly, if a sin­gle gatekeeper’s office tracked and assessed his actions there could have been an inter­ven­tion by authorities.

More than likely, no one is con­nect­ing the dots and iden­ti­fy­ing poten­tial human time bombs when they see them. Mil­i­tary per­son­nel from the high­est ranks down needs to know the poten­tial warn­ing signs that can lead to vio­lent acts like shoot­ing sprees,  sui­cides, etc. There are a num­ber of well-researched assess­ments that estab­lish sui­ci­dal and vio­lent behav­ior indi­ca­tors for adults as well as ado­les­cents. High schools on down have had to rely on such assess­ments after the Columbine case made know­ing the warn­ing signs manda­tory. It appears our mil­i­tary forces and national secu­rity agen­cies have some work to do to break away from their exist­ing silos, report warn­ing signs to a cen­tral assess­ment depart­ment, make trans­parency between agen­cies a real­ity and ulti­mately prac­tice mea­sures early-on that can save lives and pre­vent tragedies like Ft. Hood from ever occur­ring again.

Some neigh­bor­hoods grow flow­ers. Oth­ers grow gar­dens. And still oth­ers tend to a vir­u­lent crop: home­grown jihadists. Take John Allen Muham­mad for instance. Muham­mad is the noto­ri­ous DC sniper who mowed down at least 10 peo­ple in his path. He ter­ror­ized the greater part of DC, even turn­ing his .223-caliber Bush­mas­ter rifle (the civil­ian ver­sion of the mil­i­tary M-16) on school­yard chil­dren. But what do we really know about Muhammad?

The story may give you déjà vu. Muham­mad served in the Louisiana Army National Guard in 1978 and seven years later vol­un­teered for active ser­vice in the US army work­ing as a mechanic, truck dri­ver and spe­cial­ist met­al­worker. Just two years into his army ser­vice, Muham­mad joined the Nation of Islam in 1987.  Moham­mad soon qual­i­fied with the Army’s stan­dard infantry weapon, the M16, earn­ing the Expert Rifleman’s Badge. Guess what? The Army reserves this rat­ing as the high­est of three lev­els of marks­man­ship for a basic soldier.

At the time of Muhammad’s shoot­ing spree, he was iso­lated from his fam­ily, con­sid­ered a ‘loner’ and had adopted increas­ingly more mil­i­tant reli­gious beliefs.

Sound famil­iar? Hasan any­one? As we fight the war on ter­ror, we have an oblig­a­tion to con­trol the threat from within. We can no longer stay silent while we actively train Islamic Amer­i­cans to use our own train­ing against us. The most notable exam­ple of this is the Saudi ter­ror­ists who took up pilot train­ing in the US before turn­ing them­selves and our planes into human bombs.

Like the 911 ter­ror­ists, there is plenty of evi­dence link­ing Muham­mad and Hasan to jihad. Draw­ings by Muham­mad admit­ted that the killings were jihadist. Like­wise, Hasan emailed Anwar al-Awlaki, a Mus­lim cleric who had ties to the 9/11 ter­ror­ists. So how can we pre­vent home­grown jihadists in our midst? A buddy sys­tem that allows anony­mous report­ing to the high­est lev­els? Detain­ment of any­one remotely sus­pected of Jihadist under­pin­nings? A fail-proof sys­tem that results in an auto­matic court mar­tial for mil­i­tary per­son­nel who fail to detain sus­pected jihadists? It’s high time we all weigh in.

Some sce­nar­ios in life just don’t make sense. Con­sider how you would feel if your sur­geon botched your rou­tine pro­ce­dure due to his undis­closed case of Parkinson’s? Or that after drilling on your cav­ity for nearly two hours your den­tist apol­o­gizes while say­ing she will soon undergo dou­ble cataract surgery? Or what if the US Army psy­chi­a­trist treat­ing your PTSD (post-traumatic stress dis­or­der) from a recent Mid­dle East tour is an out­spo­ken Islamic sym­pa­thizer of Pales­tin­ian descent?

All three sit­u­a­tions are neg­li­gent as they not only put peo­ple at risk but they present a major con­flict of inter­est. But the third is a lit­tle dif­fer­ent. While the doc­tors in all three sce­nar­ios earn a salary, the US Armed Forces became an all-volunteer force in the 1980’s. This means that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan could have resigned at any­time. But he didn’t. Instead, he left as many unan­swered ques­tions as he did fallen and wounded sol­diers. His sense­less reign left 12 dead sol­diers, 1 dead civil­ian and 30 wounded when Civil­ian Police Offi­cer, Kim­berly Mun­ley shot Has­san four times leav­ing him unconscious.

And while infor­ma­tion streams in that sol­diers may have showed lit­tle respect to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, all I can say is “duh”. Hasan was a walk­ing oxy­moron. Sol­diers knew he didn’t quite fit in with his vocal sup­port of Islam so he never earned their respect. This is no dif­fer­ent than a man­ager in a com­pany not respect­ing his or her supe­rior because they have dif­fer­ent views on how busi­ness should be han­dled. The very fact that he con­tin­ued to remain in an influ­en­tial men­tal health post serv­ing fel­low US sol­diers is not just wrong it’s sick.

It doesn’t take a psy­chi­a­trist to deci­pher that Hasan’s life was a dichotomy. Pro­fes­sion­ally, he was a mil­i­tary offi­cer who took an oath to pro­tect Amer­ica and its peo­ple from for­eign and domes­tic ene­mies. Yet, per­son­ally, he was an Islamic sym­pa­thizer who told oth­ers that he believed the war on ter­ror was a war on Islam. Not a way to earn pop­u­lar­ity votes at a US mil­i­tary base. But even with his inter­nal tur­moil, he had a choice to leave. His vic­tims didn’t. They were unarmed and an easy tar­get for some­one enter­ing the room with a FN 5.7 mil­lime­ter semi-automatic pis­tol and a revolver. He was not only well pre­pared but he knew his arms. SWAT teams and drug car­tels favor this exact semi-automatic because the bul­lets — called cop killers — can pen­e­trate all soft body armor. The fact that he chose this type of semi-automatic indi­cates intent to kill.

There is lit­tle doubt that if Hasan regains con­scious­ness he will wish he was in par­adise with 72 vir­gins (one of the rewards for mar­tyrs men­tioned in the Quran). Eye­wit­nesses reported that he yelled, “Allahu Akbar” (God is Great!) before show­er­ing lead into unsus­pect­ing sol­diers that were armed with noth­ing more than pens.
Hasan will also have a hard time prov­ing that his killing spree wasn’t pre­med­i­tated. Records exist that show he bought the guns months in advance and brought them on base with­out reg­is­ter­ing them. Many peo­ple inter­viewed said he spoke of being fear­ful of his upcom­ing deploy­ment to Iraq or Afghanistan (which would mark his first for­eign tour). The FBI was mon­i­tor­ing his inter­net activ­i­ties as he had made some jihadist posts ref­er­enc­ing sui­cide bombers. His fel­low sol­diers noticed that he started wear­ing tra­di­tional Arab garb weeks before the shoot­ing. Neigh­bors reported that he sold his fur­ni­ture the morn­ing of the shoot­ing to any­one who would buy it. He used a neighbor’s PC often and called the morn­ing of the shoot­ing to thank him for being such a good friend. Hasan also handed Qurans to neigh­bors before the tragic event took place prob­a­bly as a thinly veiled attempt to help them under­stand his motives rather than a con­ver­sion tactic.

But to those who knew him his motives were no sur­prise. A fel­low physi­cian who took an envi­ron­men­tal sci­ence class with him said that while stu­dents pre­sented papers on mold or water con­di­tions, Hasan pre­sented a paper on Why the War on Ter­rror is a War on Islam. While this should have raised a red flag it’s too early in the inves­ti­ga­tion to tell what, if any­thing, came of it.

One thing Hasan didn’t count on was that his blood­bath at the largest US mil­i­tary base would result in reper­cus­sions on Mus­lims world­wide. News­casts since the tragedy have reported that Mus­lims around the world fear back­lash. They have good rea­son. Cit­i­zens world­wide are wak­ing to the real­iza­tion that Islam is any­thing but peace­ful. Maybe it once was but in recent years, the focus has become extrem­ist and recruited believ­ers into jihadists.

Need proof? There are moth­ers in some Mus­lim coun­tries that have out­lived all their sons due to jihad, and are happy about it. Why? Jihadists believe that by killing non-believers (which by the way is every­one else) hon­ors Allah and earns them and their fam­i­lies a place in heaven. Oh, and the moth­ers get a nice part­ing ges­ture: a kick­back along with comped buri­als. Mosque lead­ers inter­viewed by news net­works insist Islam is a peace­ful reli­gion. But don’t buy it. Cer­tain groups of Mus­lims like the Rev­o­lu­tion Mus­lim in New York and Mus­lims in the Hamas-run Gaza have praised Hasan for mow­ing down the aggres­sor.
Notable lead­ers of Islam like the Aytol­lah Khomeni have indi­cated that those who say Islam is peace­ful are igno­rant. This is because the Quran has hun­dreds of verses that incite Mus­lims to fight. It cer­tainly worked for Major Nidal Malik Hasan who fit the per­fect “sleeper” pro­file: no wife, no chil­dren, a loner who felt dis­en­fran­chised, dis­re­spected and became more radical.

IN MEMORIAM

Lt. Col. Juanita L. War­man
Maj. Libardo Eduardo Car­aveo
Capt. Rus­sell Sea­ger
Spc. Fred­er­ick Greene
John Gaffaney
Army Staff Sgt. Justin Decrow
Michael Grant Cahill
Spc. Jason Dean Hunt
Sgt. Amy Krueger
Pfc. Aaron Thomas Nemelka
Pfc. Michael Pear­son
Franch­eska Velez
Pfc. Kham Xiong