Desta vez foi um pouco inocente: o local não era público e o motivo, aparentemente, é mais fácil de discernir.
Seja como for, não podemos cometer o erro de cair em análises fáceis e por isso gostei do que li aqui:
"Jeffrey Dahmer: Sociopath. And White.
John Allen Muhammed: Sociopath. And Black.
Richard Ramirez: Sociopath. And Mexican.
Seung-hui Cho: Sociopath. And Korean.
Do we see the commonality here?
Upon first hearing about the tragedy at Fort Hood yesterday, my first thought was that intra-army conflict is terrible for morale in the face of two wars being waged abroad. When members of a volunteer army start shooting bases up, that is not a good. Sporadic reports of the aftermath flowed in until the mother lode came through: the suspected gunman’s name.
Nidal Malik Hasan (which was first reported at Malik Nadal Hasan)
My eyes rolled in such a way that I’m surprised they remained in my head. My only thought: Good fucking grief.
As a person of color/member of a “minority” group, I saw the horrible ways this would be run with without knowing any facts at all. Nadal, some would assume, had lost his mind and gone all Islam on an army base. After learning that he was an American-born Palestinian who had been in the Service since 1995 and was a psychiatrist, the assumption was abridged (assuming, of course, that these elements were brought into consideration at all):
Nadal was a Muslim army psychiatrist who went all Islam on an army base.
My brain hurt just thinking about it. One of those elements is germane, while the other is but window dressing. Unfortunately, more than people like freedom, they like window dressing.
There’s nothing in the Koran that says “You should go ape shit and kill people if you disagree with the wars your army is fighting.” It doesn’t say that anymore than the Bible says “If you don’t agree with the practices of an abortion doctor, you should totally blow his brains out.”
When people who are not well do heinous, not well things, their frame of mind is infinitely more crucial than their ethnic makeup.
White, Black, Asian, Arab, Polka Dot… crazy is crazy. And in the case of heinous group action, they’re still a collection of troubled individuals who act in accordance with what they think.
But that’s the trouble. We tend to lack specificity in these matters if there’s window dressing we like to be afraid of, window dressing that is, more often than not, incongruous with the dominant culture. Shorter Pitts-Wiley: Stuff that’s not White.
Allow me to be specific here. In America, the dominant culture is of
European, namely Anglo-Saxon, bent. While the cultural is becoming more diverse in fits and starts, the rulers of the roost are still European. The cultural cues many of us take, regardless of ethnicity, are determined by this dominant culture.
The determination of dominance and power is filtered many ways, but can be corralled under the umbrella of Otherness; a distinction reserved for those of us who are not straight Christian White men.
In the realm of Otherness–where submission to the dominant culture is the name of the game–individuals become monolithic and general; lacking the ability to be seen as an individual, one’s actions speak for the group, especially those sensational and unattractive actions that seem to confirm intrinsic difference. The thinking, for many, is “Yes; that is tragic…but that’s kind of what Others do.”
A Hasan shot up an army base? Tragic…but come on. He’s a Hasan for crying out loud!
In the case of the sensational and unattractive actions within the dominant
culture, the offending individual is cast out not to the realm of Otherness, but simply, outside that which is considered ‘decent’. Oddly enough, these individuals become more unique, more individual as people try to understand “what went wrong.”*
*A notable exception here is, of course, homosexuals, whose preferences are so anathema to the dominant culture–at least publicly anyway–that they exist in almost an Others Others in which people puzzle over why they do what they do, not unlike space aliens.
Few within the dominant culture have pondered the heinous acts of Jeffrey Dahmer and questioned aloud, “What is this saying about White people?” Sure; many in profiling him and other White serial killers will make mention of his White nice, but the mention is detached, factual. The fact that’s he’s White is seen as little more than a characteristic, a piece of a puzzle.*
*Plenty of people of color have certainly said “Of course Dahmer was White! White folks are serial killers!” This is foolishness that I once took part in until that fateful day my freshman year of college when I found out the DC snipers were Black. I remember sitting on my dorm room couch feeling hurt on two levels: My socialized collective conscience forcing me to feel shame that wasn’t actually mine and the hurt I felt at not being able to say ‘White people are serial killers’ anymore. Alas, this is how we grow.
Before this seems like an attempt to blame the dominant culture for all the ills of the world–though of course it deserves its fair share of humble pie–recall that many Others follow the tone set. It’s a domino effect of sorts in which every group needs, in some way, to be just a bit better than another. Shorter Pitts-Wiley: It’s not just White people who are saying wild shit regarding Islam and the Fort Hood shooting.
So where do we go from here?
Let’s fall back from the inarticulate terrorist rhetoric. If this was indeed an act of terrorism–which has not been determined up to this point–let’s stay on topic. Let’s try to recall that terrorists, or freedom fighters, or patriots or people who get shit poppin’, are only speaking for themselves and people who agree with them. And the people who agree with them cannot be classified as “Anyone and everyone who looks like they do.” They’re not speaking for everyone who looks like them or has a name like them. And they’re not agents of God either.
A Muslim army officer committed a disgusting act of violence.
Nidal Malik Hasan. Maybe crazy, definitely snapped. And Palestinian.*
*Originally, I had ’sociopath’ as a nice bookend, but as I looked into the definition, I realized such a determination couldn’t be made at this point. Is he a sociopath? That remains to be seen, but chopping down forty-three people who you don’t know like that–and killing thirteen of that number– requires both planning and being on some other shit."
Depois do texto original temos estes dois comentários:
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Um… the Quran does say that, about a hundred times, e.g.:
Qur’an (9:123) – “O you who believe! fight those of the unbelievers who are near to you and let them find in you hardness.”
And according to witnesses he was yelling the infamous “Allahu Akbar” before he opened fire. Yes, he’s crazy, but his crazy had help. It’s also relevant that he was Middle Eastern. According to colleagues and contacts, he didn’t want to enter that theatre as part of an army fighting against those he felt to be his own people. He had been desperate to get out of the service for some time because of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which is hardly crazy. They backed him into a corner, and it looks like he chose the glory of jihad as his way out (and he is already being glorified by like-minded Muslims). Maybe the army needs to look at whether they should compel people to fight (however indirectly) people of their own ethnicity if they don’t want to. It may be asking too much, especially in a fraudulent war.
These things are always complex, and we shouldn’t dismiss any factors just to make ourselves more comfortable. They all need to be looked at. Just saying “he’s crazy” is too simplistic. There may be things we can do to prevent these things if we look at them carefully and honestly."
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Sylvia, it is clearly stated in many places that ‘killing for God’ is a LAST resort and not an option that can be reverted to at will, like the so-called Muslims seem to do. There is no ‘Muslim’ who will blow up a bomb in a crowd and kill a hundred innocents. There is no place for that in Islam, anywhere.
The verses in the Quraan do have context – but not all publications include that information. Which chapter is that verse from? More specifically, when and where was it revealed? That will tell you a lot about the context.
In case you are unaware of the history, Muslims coexisted peacefully with Jews in both Madina and Jerusalem hundreds of years ago.
“There’s nothing in the Koran that says “You should go ape shit and kill people if you disagree with the wars your army is fighting.””
He’s completely right. The Quraan does not state that. It does however require Muslims to fight invaders. Nidal was not a victim of any invasion – just deranged and maybe confused. We’ll never know the full story behind that.
It’s a pity ‘Allahu Akbar’ is ‘infamous’ because it simply means God is the Greatest and is meant to be a supplication.
But yes, I agree with Salman, your point that he seemed to have been forced to choose between Arabs and Americans is very correct. Margi’s observation that he was probably shaken by his experiences with war veterans also seems to be spot on.
No sane, true Muslim will glorify his senseless act of murder. Murder is one of the few unforgivable sins in Islam. Those who glorify him are either evil or misled."
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