Here's Relativism
Still difficult to digest, that the professional cadre of military psychiatrists in the United States would have recognized nothing seriously amiss in their interactions with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who gunned down 13 military personnel at Fort Hood, awaiting processing for deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan, wounding an additional thirty. This was his personal jihad, his commitment to his religion as he saw fit, informing a neighbour before embarking on his bloody attack: "I'm going to do good work for God."There was, by all accounts - and they have been ample in the days following the attack at Fort Hood - that Major Hasan informed his colleagues at the country's leading military hospital that non-Muslims were condemned to hell. He was forthright in telling any who would listen that he was a "Muslim first and American second", and although there's nothing amiss in that statement, warning bells should have been ringing loud and clear when they were subjected to his anti-American rantings.
He was, after all, an American, born and bred. Who offered himself to the military in a burst of patriotic enthusiasm. Worn thin, quite evidently, by the unravelling of his commitment to his country of birth through the events that followed, in Afghanistan and Iraq. Major Hasan clearly focused on his vision of America assaulting Islamic values and slaughtering Muslims. Essentially ignoring the reality of fanatical Islamist jihadists targeting Muslims whose brand of faith was not sufficiently emphatic, placing them in the same status as infidels and Jews, ripe for slaughter.
Even Muslims, and Muslim military personnel and medical personnel as well, having been acquainted with his incendiary views, appeared to have done nothing to alert already-lax authorities to the threat that his unhinged mind posed. Instead, he was left free by all levels of the military to continue serving as a psychiatrist treating the maimed souls that served on the war fronts. Now Muslim-Americans, and particularly those in the military- some 5,000 in number - worry about a rebound.
They have reason to worry. People who are morally outraged can also react outrageously in venting their disappointed frustration at those whose loyalties have proven sadly absent at a time when they're most required to be vigilant and socially useful. Out of a population of almost three million Muslims in America, representing fully 2% of the entire population, a mere five thousand Muslims have enlisted in various branches of the military. How peculiar. It is only lately that the U.S. has been engrossed in defending itself from Islamists.
Contrast that with WWII when 17,000 Canadian Jews served in the various branches of the Canadian military. Presumably, at that time in history there were fewer Jews in Canada than there are now. Out of a population of about 33-million Canadians currently, 315,120 are Jewish Canadians. The United States boasts ten times the population of Canada, about 330-million people. And a paltry 5,000 Muslims serve in the U.S. military.
There should be social sympathy for psychical conflict. But what kind of sympathy can be extended to a huge population living within the confines of a liberal democracy as respected and respectful citizens, unresponsive to the need of their country at a time of great social fear imposed by Islamofascist-brand terrorism? Don't American Muslims have a stake in battling the ferocious pathology of hatred? A hatred directed as well against them as at non-believers?
What marks a patriot? The willingness to live within the confines of a country whose politics and values and economy and social traditions are amenable to one's future aspirations, but yet with no obligation to attempt from within to eradicate the dread worm of fanaticism threatening the stability of the very political and social infrastructure all Westerners depend upon? Is there no perceived need to concern themselves with denouncing radical imams whose sermons inspire Muslim men to reject decency and embrace murderous jihad?
Muslims obviously live with their own brand of fear. They are law-abiding citizens of the country in which they live, free to practise their heritage traditions and religious adherence simply because it is their right to do so. It is also, however, incumbent upon them to advance the cause of freedom and Democratic action, and to denounce and help to rout out the demagogues and dangerously-brittle minds hearking back to the glories of feral violence.
Labels: Human Relations, Human Rights, Political Realities, United States
posted by Pieface @ Monday, November 09, 2009
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