By Dr. Tawfik Hamid:
After the heinous attack at Fort Hood, many questions were raised about the underlying cause of the atrocity. Some pointed out that the Muslim background of the suspect, Mr. Hasan, was the motivating factor, while others presented the case suggesting that being ‘teased’ for being a Muslim and the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were trigger factors for the massacre.
If an external factor provoked a different response in one group of people compared to others, then it is more likely that there is an underlying cause in the former that explains such a difference. So, if the external emotional or political factors were the true cause of the atrocity at Fort Hood, we would expect that these factors will produce the same response in all humans irrespective of their faith.
Basic observations of the responses of Muslim populations to insults, critiques, and to political situations in the last few decades clearly demonstrate that there is an underlying factor in Muslim societies that predisposes many of them to react in a violent manner.
Let us just examine the difference in responses between many in the Muslim world and people of other faiths when both are exposed to trigger factors. People identified as Muslims committed terrible atrocities that included killing innocents, burning places, and many other barbaric acts as a reaction to the following “triggers”:
- Publication of Danish cartoons of Prophet Muhammad
- Critique of Islam by Pope Benedict XVI
- Comment about Prophet Muhammad by a journalist in a beauty queen event in Nigeria provoked extreme violence and a Fatwa to kill the journalist
- Publishing a book that was perceived as critical of Islam by Salman Rushdie
- Rumors of U.S. military personnel insulting the Quran
On the contrary, many non-Muslims were exposed to much more distress yet they did not react in the same manner:
- The Jews were put into ovens during the Nazi era and are currently called “pigs and monkeys” in several parts of the Muslim world, yet we have not seen the Jewish people beheading the Germans or exploding themselves to kill innocents all over the world.
- Some Christian minorities who live in some Muslim majority countries have had their churches burned, their priests killed, their religion insulted, and they suffer from different forms of discrimination, yet they do not attack innocents as a result.
- Many Buddhists in Afghanistan and Bahia in Iran suffered from severe discrimination from the Islamic systems, yet we have not seen any of them killing their fellow innocent human beings to revenge this discrimination.
The difference in response to the external triggers strongly supports the view that an underlying factor in radical Muslim societies is the main cause of such a violent reaction.
In other words, why does teasing or insulting or a political situation provoke such barbaric responses in devout Muslims at a global level but do not provoke similar violent reactions in the followers of other faiths who are exposed to much more injustice and prejudice?
Since humans are born equal, the difference in responses in these situations is likely to be caused by differences in their religious education or ideological factors. These educational or ideological factors must be addressed in an honest manner to avoid further calamities and to protect young Muslims from the damaging effects of these forms of teaching.
Some may argue that if religious education was the main cause behind these atrocities then why do most Muslims not react in a violent manner while other Muslims do? The answer to this question is that this difference in response within Muslim populations can be due to one or a combination of the following factors:
- Lack of exposure to the same form of religious education
- Lack of exposure to the same trigger factor
- Lack of sufficient religious motivation or courage to perform an action that may threaten their personal life
- Different ways for expressing violence such as a father killing his daughter because she was “too westernized,” indiscriminate killing of non-Muslims, beheading innocent people, preparing a terror act, and suicide bombings
In addition, if we accept the concept that teasing and insults can justify such a level of barbarism, then we should ask ourselves: Will we also justify the situation if non-Muslims started burning mosques in the U.S. and engaging in killing innocent Muslims as a response to the discrimination they have in some parts of the Muslim world?
Since it is practically impossible to stop all possible trigger factors, it is extremely important to treat the underlying cause of the problem (or the form of religious education Muslims receive) that leads some Muslims to react in such a violent manner.
Dr. Tawfik Hamid is a Muslim reformer, author and expert on the jihadist radicalization process. He also is an instructor at the CI Centre.
……His colleagues reportedly knew he sympathized with suicide bombings and attacks on U.S. troops abroad, and one colleague said Hasan was pleased by an attack on an Army recruiting office and suggested more of the same might be desirable. That’s treason, even if you’re a Muslim.
Which raises the most troubling revelation: For a very large number of people, the idea that he is a Muslim fanatic, motivated by other Muslim fanatics, was — at least initially — too terrible to contemplate. How else to explain the reflexive insistence after the attack that the real culprit was “post-traumatic stress disorder”? The fact that PTSD is usually diagnosed in people who’ve been through trauma (hence the word “post”), and that Hasan had never in fact seen combat, didn’t seem to matter much.
…….We have a real problem when much of the political and journalistic establishment is eager to jump to the conclusion that peaceful political opponents are in league with violent extremists, but is terrified to consider the possibility that violent extremists really are violent extremists if doing so means calling attention to the fact that they are Muslims.
…….I have no remedy for the challenge we face. But I do take some solace in George Orwell’s observation that “to see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” Read all
A court in Italy announced guilty verdicts and jail terms for nearly two dozen CIA agents and an Air Force Colonel tried in absentia in connection with the 2003 arrest and rendition of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, known as Abu Omar to his terrorist friends.
The “victim” at the center of the controversy, Abu Omar, is a member of al-Jemaah Islamiya organization (JI), an Egyptian terror group responsible for, among other things, the assassination of Anwar Sadat and the 1997 massacre of 59 dangerously non-Islamic tourists in Luxor, Egypt — including a five year old British boy who presented an imminent threat to their dreams of world domination.
The organization is allied with Al-Qaeda and is believed to still be actively plotting attacks against the Egyptian government and westerners, and also anyone who just happens to be within range when they start spraying bullets at their perceived enemies — like the four Japanese couples on honeymoons that they killed in the Luxor attack.
The incident that the trial results from occurred in February 2003, when CIA agents, working with Italian intelligence and secret service agents, arrested Abu Omar on the streets of Milan — where he had been hiding out in plain sight on a permanent vacation since he fled Egypt years earlier and sought asylum in Italy as part of an oppressed minority group: fanatical Imams who want to take over their homelands.
……It was clear soon after the case became public that the entire operation had been conducted with the assistance and permission of the Italian government. However, an anti-American prosecutor in Italy, Armando Spatari, egged on by an adoring crowd of onlookers in the press, decided to use the debacle to pursue his dream of indicting Americans connected to the so-called “so-called War on Terror.” Numerous CIA agents and military personnel, along with a token number of Italian officials were charged with kidnapping poor Abu Omar and sending him home.
Successive Italian central governments, both left wing and right wing, asked Spatari to halt the prosecution on the grounds that the Americans were acting with the knowledge, permission and direct assistance of Italian intelligence services.
……The high ranking Italians that gave permission for the operation — the only people the court had any real cause to punish — were set free, while numerous American CIA agents and others were sentenced to as much as eight years in prison. Several of the high ranking Americans had their sentences tossed by the judge, Oscar Magi, on diplomatic immunity or other technical grounds, but all the rank-and-file agents, as well as an Air Force officer, had their convictions left in place and were given five year prison terms. The judge also ordered the convicted agents to pay Abu Omar and his wife 1.5 million euros ($2.2 million) in damages. So now American CIA agents, working under orders, in a “friendly” country with the permission and material assistance of that nation’s government, have to worry about being arrested and imprisoned any time they leave the U.S. Read the rest
Sabrina De Sousa’s job in 2003 as a State Department officer in the political/military section of Milan, Italy was to “provide Washington with the ground truth.” What’s ground truth? “It could be the economic situation of the country, how the country views us (the United States) or it could be an incident that happened on any given day. Our job is to report that information back to Washington,” she says.
But it was an event that took place on one of those “any given days” that resulted in her conviction in absentia along with 22 U.S. State Department, Central Intelligence Agency and military officers on kidnapping charges by the Italian government on Nov. 4, 2009. That event led to the unraveling of her life, and De Sousa charges the U.S. government turned its back on her.
…….”It is virtually unprecedented that a foreign power, and particularly a close ally, would pursue criminal charges against acknowledged U.S. diplomats, and even rarer that the U.S. government would allow it to happen once underway,” says De Sousa’s U.S. attorney Mark Zaid. “To be sure, enemy powers have targeted our diplomats, but even in the worst case scenario the individual would simply be declared persona non grata and leave the country. That this rendition prosecution even finished reflects a fundamental failure of a recognized system,” he says.
……De Sousa says she will continue to fight to clear her name and live a normal life, but is aware she has to be careful when traveling see her family because a Europol warrant has been issued for her arrest and Interpol may eventually follow suit. Of the 26 U.S. officers charged, 23 were convicted by the Italian court. Three were given diplomatic immunity. Five of the seven Italians accused were convicted and two were acquitted. De Sousa and the others who were convicted face five to eight years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. Read all
Intelligence gaps revealed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks were supposed to be bridged by pouring billions of dollars into better information sharing among law-enforcement branches, an overhaul of competing agencies and the biggest government reorganization since the Defense Department was born in 1947.
Yet connecting dots and detecting potential threats before they erupt into violence is still a highly subjective exercise that boils down to judgment calls. That became clear this week amid new revelations about intelligence that was obtained, then shelved, months before an Army psychiatrist killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, on Thursday. Read the rest
