HASAN THE GOOD MUSLIM…..FSM
Exclusive: Hasan: A Good Muslim
Bill Siegel
Nationally syndicated talk radio host Monica Crowley once asked the team of psychiatrists at the Guantanamo Bay detainee facility to describe the difference between psychological disorder and committed Jihadism. They had no answer.
Much of the mainstream media has, at least subtly if not directly, attempted to distinguish Dr. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as mentally ill as opposed to being a Jihadi, a radical Muslim committing a terrorist act in living out his Muslim calling. The presuppositions here are essentially that (1) it is prejudice alone that leads one to blame Hasan’s behavior on his Muslim background and (2) most Muslims are, like the rest of us, “good†people. What makes one commit such heinous acts is independent of being a Muslim. Rather, if placed under enough stress, we are all capable of “losing it†or “snapping.†Hence, psychological imbalance is what distinguishes Hasan from the rest of us and from “good Muslims.â€
For every psychological theory there is at least another that can discredit it. And psychology is still far from an empirical science despite the intentions of its most ardent practitioners. Nonetheless, some general principles seem to long hold center stage. Most neurotic disorders can be described as resulting from conflicting deeply held beliefs. A series of conflicts creates a tension that has greater control over the subject’s life than the subject desires. Psychosis, of course, involves, among other things, more extreme forms of conflicts in which the beliefs themselves often do not match those fundamental to the surrounding society. The more severe the conflict, the greater the disorder and difficulty in bringing about change.
All of this, of course, relates to the underlying values of the culture in which the subject lives. In the West, we believe in certain fundamental values such that killing – except in the case of self defense – is strictly forbidden. It is presumed, then, that anyone who engages in such behavior must have some severe conflict that “drives†him to such act. In our criminal system, in certain usually rare circumstances, the insanity defense may be applicable. But even if a defendant is deemed to have fully understood the consequences of his acts, he is still considered psychologically impaired simply by virtue of his committing the act.
And that is the simple issue. The West has become so accustomed to imputing some psychological disorder whenever a severely inappropriate act is committed that it has difficulty letting go of the habit in the face of other explanations.
Yet Islam is an entirely different animal, so to speak. There are an estimated billion plus Muslims worldwide. Political correctness requires every non-Muslim to state each time he speaks of Islam that “most Muslims are peaceful people.†No one, however, has ever shown the evidence for such a statement or clarified exactly what “peaceful†means in these circumstances. There is much startling data showing how widespread supposed “radical Islam†is, including a 2006 poll in Britain showing 40 percent of the Muslims considered themselves such, up from 15 percent in 2001. And this is in Britain, a non-Muslim controlled country. Yet even 15 percent of 1.2 billion radical Muslims is a large number of adherents (more than half the population of the U.S.) who want the West destroyed.
It must be remembered that Islam expresses itself differently when it is in the majority and has control of a territory than when it is a minority. This parallels the Prophet Mohammad’s life in which the acclaimed “peaceful†and “compassionate†language in the Koran relates to the time in which Mohammad had no power and sought to convince others to convert to his new ideology. When Mohammad ultimately acquired power and led armies in Jihad, Allah’s revelations turned into the violent commands to strike terror in the hearts of infidels and to kill non-believers and so on. The Koran itself (as well as substantial Islamic Law as currently taught) dictates the resolution – the later violent provisions abrogate the earlier ones whenever deemed in conflict. From another angle, when given greater power to perform and greater freedom to choose among different ways to express his beliefs through his acts, Mohammad demonstrated exactly who he was in his later violent days.
The issue is not whether Islam is “peaceful.†Nor is it whether most Muslims are “peaceful and law-abiding.†Most Muslims neither seriously understand nor engage their religion. They are Muslims by culture or tradition and, more importantly, are rarely in a position to be able or have to choose exactly how to act or demonstrate what they believe.
Islam, however, in its core materials is clear. More accurately, Allah is clear in his commands – to commit Jihad, kill unbelievers, strike terror in the hearts of infidels and so on. Islamic “Hell†is truly foreboding and dying in Jihad is the only way to have a guaranteed escape from it and entry into paradise. Also, Allah’s ultimate goal is to have Islam submitted to by everyone triggering the time of final judgment.
As clear as Allah’s commands are, by definition, they will create psychological conflict and tension for any seriously engaged Muslim living in the West (or, as the history of Political Islam demonstrates, under Western authorities) – conflicts that generate behaviors we might otherwise associate with mental illness. Allah’s commands are in direct conflict with Western concepts of tolerance, equality, freedom to choose one’s own beliefs and many others.
And the concept of Hell in Islam is enough to create severe emotional distress for an adherent who takes it seriously. In Islam, one’s afterlife, whether he or she is to go to Hell or to Paradise, is determined close to birth and yet never disclosed to the Muslim. While on the one hand Muslims are taught that they can not change that destiny, they are also commanded to do all they can to earn Allah’s favor so that Hell hopefully can be avoided and Paradise entered. Allah does offer an escape for those who simply can not come to terms with the possibility that they have already been assigned an eternity in Hell: to die in Jihad. This alone guarantees Paradise. Is it any wonder that Hasan told an al Qaeda recruiter “I can’t wait to join you†in Paradise. It is not mental illness that causes one to escape these horrors. It is Islam itself.
A Muslim can decide to not live by Allah’s commands. He can decide to explain away or ignore significant aspects in the Koran. In the West, there are brilliant young Muslims such as Irshad Manji and Zudhi Jasser who are trying to forge a reformed Islam that can live more easily within the modern Western civilized world. They intentionally dismiss many beliefs that are fundamental to traditional Islam and Islamic Law in Islamic controlled territories. But much of their work is still left cut out for them.
What they both insist upon as the starting point is to admit the problems up front. That includes a full recognition of all of the conflicts between Islam’s true commands and Western civilized life and to be willing to do the unthinkable: re-interpret the Koran and other elements of Islam rather than force the West to conform to Islam. Most Muslims in Muslim minority territories have not been forced to choose yet. They are able to live a liberal form of Islam without being challenged. As Islam gains greater footholds within these territories (and particularly the U.S.), however, greater pressure will be placed upon Muslims to choose. That’s when we will get a more accurate count of how many so-called “radicals†there are.
Until such point, the simple fact is that seriously engaged Muslims will have severe conflicts with Western civilization; the type of conflicts that can also be deemed the cause of mental illness –especially when they generate actions that Westerners always conclude must come from mental illness. This was precisely the experience of the preeminent Islamic “radical†Sayyid Qutb who found living in the West intolerable.
Treating Hasan as mentally ill as opposed to a clear sighted Jihadi conforming to Allah’s wishes is more a sign of our own mental maladies. Our inability to recognize that others can choose not to share our fundamental values without something being wrong with them is our own grandiosity and fear at work. In other terms, our inability to recognize evil in the world emanates from our own weakness and, ultimately, invites more evil.
After all, while many in the mainstream media have tried to impute mental illness in order to distinguish Hasan from other “good Muslims,†attempting to protect the dignity of the supposed other “good Muslims,†Hasan is, in fact, truly the “good Muslim.†That is the paradox we must learn to sort out for ourselves for our own survival.
Bill Siegel is a contributing editor to FamilySecurityMatters.org.
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