Muslim Killer?
I heard a veteran newspaper editor this week expressing relief in the wake of the Ft. Hood shootings that the gunman, though a “devout Muslim,” was not religiously motivated, and therefore the incident would not fuel hateful anti-Muslim stereotypes.
“He had a gripe with the Army,” this editor declared definitively, “His religion had nothing to with the killings.”
“As a reporter,” he added, “You don’t want to go down the stereotype road, because you may not like where that takes you.”
As a reporter, I would suggest, you also don’t want to close your mind to facts that might lead you to an uncomfortable, perhaps politically incorrect, conclusion. The job of journalists is to uncover the facts, not to foster harmony by dismissing possibilities that might upset the view we have of ourselves as beacons of religious tolerance.
The Washington Post has already rendered a verdict on it’s editorial page, “The terrible crime of which Maj. Hasan is accused was not the expression of any faith… but rather, it appears, the act of an evil or deranged individual.”
After Ft. Hood — Washington Post, Nov. 7, 2009
[The Post goes on to suggest the blame may rest with the military authorities who might have missed an opportunity to prevent Maj. Hasan from acting, and security at Ft. Hood for failing to prevent him from smuggling weapons on to the base.]
No responsible journalist wants to perpetuate stereotypes, but there are real questions about whether Maj. Nidal M. Hasan’s murderous rampage was motivated solely by his “gripe with the Army,” including stress over his impending deployment, or fueled by radical Islamic fervor in which he saw himself on the wrong side of a war against Muslims.
And seizing on the more politically palatable narrative doesn’t serve the cause of truth very well.
“It would be wrong for me to speculate, but, since you asked…”
One of the obvious shortcomings of today’s hair-trigger internet reporting is the elevation of conclusion-jumping to an Olympic level sport. The game is played successfully by practitioners who leap to a conclusion, but carefully caveat their assumptions, just in case they turn out to be wrong.
The phenomenon, in which commentators, analysts, and sometimes straight news reporters rush to provide faux context, before their enough known facts to reach an intelligent conclusions, was referred to as “the bombastic fog,” by NPR’s Scott Simon on Weekend Edition Saturday.
“They make whatever happens fit their vision of the universe,” said Simon in his radio commentary. ” At these times, people of all political stripes can remind me of early humans who blamed plagues, storms and volcanoes on whatever demons they feared.”
But there are many facts already at our disposal to suggest the Nidal Hasan’s act of terror, was not just an irrational act in response to the stress of military service and his impending deployment to the war zone.
According to the Washington Post, Hasan told colleagues “the war against terror was a war against Muslins, and that his religion came first.”
Investigators are looking into whether Hasan may behind internet postings that said suicide bomber were heroes with a noble cause.
Some soldiers at Ft. Hood reported Hasan shouted “Allahu Akbar”, (“God is Great”), just befre he fired his two pistols and cut down innocent victims, taking time to aim, and shooting each two or three times to increase their chances of dying.
These facts, and others, are still under investigation, but it would appear that Hasam was the one who sullied the name of Islam by slaughtering innocents in its name.
Muslim groups have been quick to denounce the attack, and reinforce Islam’s peaceful tenets, and certainly no one should tar Muslims with the stereotype of terrorists.
But ignoring the religious motivation and the perversion of Islam by enemies of the United States will not help us understand the fight we are in.
Maj. Nidal Hasan apparently was subjected to some anti-Muslim sentiment while he was in the military. And the irony is that may have also fed into the twisted motivations for his horrific act, which in turn may feed more anti-Muslim feeling.
Its like the old Dennis Miller joke about a Middle Eastern ethnic group, tired of being stereotyped as terrorists, who threatens to blow something if it doesn’t stop.
The most important question a journalist can ask, and attempt to answer is “Why?”
Let’s look at the facts, and go from there.
Here’s what my colleague Andrea Stone wrote over at Sphere
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Tags: Ft. Hood, Islam, Muslim, Stereotypes
