US MUSLIMS “STUNNED”….A RABBI DEMURS
“But Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, said Muslims need to be asking “hard questions” among themselves. “I think their way of dealing with it is putting distance between the perpetrator and the tradition,” he said. “Which is fine, but they need to ask themselves what is the relationship between the faith which the murderer shared with them, and the act he performed. Simply saying they are unrelated is too easy. So far, they are saying the basic ‘we deplore this but it has nothing to do with Islam’ stuff.”
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Muslims stunned by Fort Hood shooting
Julia Duin
Stunned Muslims were trying to understand Friday why a normally soft-spoken Army officer who served on his local mosque’s charity committee allegedly fatally shot 13 people at the sprawling Fort Hood military base in Texas.
Officials at the copper-domed Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring — where Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist, attended daily evening and Friday noon services — said he was a quiet, devout man whom few of the 250 members knew.
“I cannot believe it was him,” said Dr. Asif Qadri, a cardiologist who works at a medical clinic at the mosque. “He never expressed his views on politics or religion.”
Pressed further by TV and radio crews that jostled for space in the mosque’s community hall, he said Maj. Hasan helped administer the mosque’s “zakat,” or charity fund. But he was not a recluse, as the media were portraying him.
“He was very soft-spoken, gentle and helpful,” Dr. Qadri said. “He didn’t sound like a recluse. He was a very happy and pleasant person.”
TWT RELATED STORY:
• Army: Suspect said ‘Allahu Akbar!’ before shooting
That was before Maj. Hasan shouted “Allahu akbar,” a term uttered by Muslims meaning “God is great” in Arabic, before his alleged rampage.
“As a Muslim, every time something like that happens, I think ‘Here we go again,'” the doctor said. “Every time something like this happens, I think, ‘please, don’t let this be a Muslim.'”
Arshad Qureshi, chairman of the mosque’s board of trustees, downplayed Maj. Hasan’s role at the Islamic house of worship on New Hampshire Avenue.
“He come and pray and leave,” said Mr. Qureshi, adding that soon after he learned of the shooter’s connection with the mosque, about 8:30 p.m. Thursday, his phone began to ring incessantly until he took it off the hook. “I didn’t know him.”
At a Friday service, the mosque’s spiritual leader, Imam Mohamed Abdullahi, preached on controlling one’s anger and the value of life, quoting Surah 5:32 from the Koran: “If anyone slew a person … it would be as if he slew the whole people. And if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of the whole people.”
He told reporters afterward that Maj. Hasan was “not friendly.”
But, “His personality was not violent,” the imam added. “He was calm. He came here every day.”
Asked whether he feared a local backlash, the imam said he did not.
“This is a friendly community,” he said. “There are churches and synagogues here,” specifically the gold-domed Ukranian Orthodox Cathedrial of St. Andrew next door and a Hindu temple a few miles south. “We’re not afraid.”
But the killings are bad news for American Muslims in general, he added.
“It doesn’t look good,” he said. “Whenever you hear of something like this, you think, ‘Oh no, not again.'”
Thursday’s shooting was the second allegedly committed by a Muslim in five months at a military facility.
On June 1, Muslim convert Abdulhakim Muhammad gunned down Pvt. William Andrew Long at a suburban Arkansas recruiting center to protest perceived U.S. military actions against Muslims, according to authorities.
It touched off yet another national debate on the role of America’s Muslim community, estimated at anywhere from 2 million to 6 million people, many of them immigrants. Maj. Hasan was American-born but of Jordanian descent.
“We have to disconnect the war on terrorism from the Muslim faith,” said Michael J. Wildes, mayor of Englewood, N.J., and a New York immigration lawyer. “This is a nation built on the backs of immigrants; we must not project the horrific actions of one onto an entire group.
“I am concerned about the collateral damage to these communities and individuals who are looked upon as rogue,” said Mr. Wildes, a former federal prosecutor. “The racial profiling of the Middle Eastern community in the United States is off the radar.”
Several Islamic organizations hurriedly put together press releases, including the Muslim Public Affairs Council-DC, the Islamic Society of North America and the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, calling the shooting a “barbaric act of violence” and denouncing it “in the strongest terms possible.”
But Rabbi Brad Hirschfield, president of the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, said Muslims need to be asking “hard questions” among themselves.
“I think their way of dealing with it is putting distance between the perpetrator and the tradition,” he said. “Which is fine, but they need to ask themselves what is the relationship between the faith which the murderer shared with them, and the act he performed. Simply saying they are unrelated is too easy. So far, they are saying the basic ‘we deplore this but it has nothing to do with Islam’ stuff.”
“Well, every blogger and writer is saying ‘This is what Islam is.’ That is ridiculous. I do not believe in collective guilt but when you share a faith with someone, there is collective responsibility.”
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