Inside the killer’s mind: Nidal Hasan’s internet postings
via scribd.com
The day after the Fort Hood massacre, we’re now left to sort through the debris of the shooting. An Army doctor kills double digits of people and seriously maims many more; digusting.
But it’s looking more and more likely that gunman Nidal Hasan is that classic American archetype: The religiously-crazed lone gunman. Only, you know, Muslim instead of Christian. Witnesses state that gunman Nidal Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar” as he mowed down his victims with a semi-automatic; NPR reports that Hasan was put on probatation during his postgraduate work for Islamic proselytizing while in the clock. It looks more and more likely that Hasan was also a regular reader of Saudi, Egyptian and Arab diasporic religious tracts.
So… we did some digging and found the inevitable: Hasan had written creepy religious rants online.
Last year, a tract called Martyrdom in Islam Versus Suicide Bombing! that originated on militant Islamic site salafimanhaj.com was uploaded to Scribd.com by user “rizkhan999.” Then Hasan left a creepy comment on it:
There was a grenade thrown amongs a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that “IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE” and Allah (SWT) knows best.
Hasan posted this on May 20, 2009. Less than 6 months later, he made his intention the main issue when he killed (at press time) 13 people. While currently in a coma, the killer is expected to recover.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Neal Ungerleider, Ignacio. Ignacio said: http://trueslant.com/nealungerleider/2009/11/06/inside-the-killers-mind-nidal-hasans-internet-postings/ [...]
What horrible reporting. You call the salafimanhaj.com website militant but if you bother to read the article it is actually a REFUTATION of suicide bombings which someone ELSE previously posted to that website and which Nidal Hasan then disagreed with through his blog comment. Salafimanhaj.com has actually posted a correction of this misrepresentation on their website: “As for the article Martyrdom in Islam Versus Suicide Bombing then it is an academic analysis which clearly repudiates extremist terrorist actions and this was the context of the article which is clear to anybody who reads it.
“The article itself was a response to an Online extremist paper which was justifying the killing of innocents and looks at the arguments expressed in that paper and refutes them. An update to that article by its author can be referred to here:
http://quran.nu/essays/ “
It’s nice to finally know what it was that Maj Hasan said. I kept reading about it, but never saw the actual post. Looks pretty well reasoned and moderate.
Out of curiosity, how sure are we that this comment posting was really by Maj Hasan?
Hasan was remembered by coworkers and friends to have spoken about similar themes around the job as he did in the posting. The fact that the post was floating around the internet for months before the shooting and that the style of writing is similar to that of his letters… Well, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck..
In response to another comment. See in context »Dear Sir
I wrote the tract on Martyrdom Operations vs Suicide Bombing which Nidal Hasan commented upon.
Please refer to the full version of the paper, which includes a discussion of Nidal Hasan’s comments and actions at Fort Hood, here:
http://quran.nu/essays/
Regards