Jihad Joe_ Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam - J. M. Berger [80]
The e-mails continued through June 2009. In July Hasan was assigned to Fort Hood, Texas. His initial assignment was to evaluate soldiers headed for the front lines; then he too would be deployed to a combat zone. In Texas he lived life as a man who cared little for it, renting a rundown unit in a bad part of town near the base. He had few friends.43
Like the 9/11 hijackers (also students of Awlaki), Hasan frequented a strip club in the final days before he carried out his mission, paying $50 for private lap dances from fully naked women.
The strip club was next door to the gun shop where Hasan armed himself for the attack. Two days before his killing spree, Hasan took an extended round of target practice at a local range. The night before the attack, he stayed up all night. That morning he gave his perishable groceries to his neighbors.44
The evidence of premeditation and planning is overwhelming. The evidence of Hasan’s involvement with jihadist ideology is overwhelming as well. He may also have been mentally ill; certainly he was lonely, frustrated, and socially inept.
But his expressions of jihadist ideology and his patterns of reinforcement closely track with other American jihadist cases in which mental fitness is not an issue. A Mafia enforcer might be a stone-cold psychotic, but he is still a member of the Mafia. Mentally ill individuals can and do join street gangs and crime cartels— or, for that matter, the armed forces and the police. Acknowledging mental illness does not erase affiliations.
There is no evidence Hasan was delusional. He sought out and embraced an established ideology outside the mainstream of American Islam but certainly well within the mainstream of jihadist thought. He voiced his belief in the same world-view that has justified acts of murder by many other people around the world. His actions cannot be lightly dismissed as an act of random insanity. They must be placed within the jihadist/terrorist context.
OUT OF THE CLOSET
The Fort Hood shootings thrust Awlaki into the spotlight at long last. Two days after the shooting, news reports began to connect Awlaki to Hasan. Two days after that, Awlaki took to his blog with his most aggressive public statement to date. Not only did he justify the attacks, he damned American Muslims who had condemned the attacks.
Nidal Hassan [sic] is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. This is a contradiction that many Muslims brush aside and just pretend that it doesn’t exist. Any decent Muslim cannot live, understanding properly his duties towards his Creator and his fellow Muslims, and yet serve as a US soldier. The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges.
Nidal opened fire on soldiers who were on their way to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan. How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done? In fact the only way a Muslim could Islamically justify serving as a soldier in the US army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal. [ … ] The American Muslims who condemned his actions have committed treason against the Muslim Ummah and have fallen into hypocrisy.45
Yet once again, at the very edge of the precipice, Awlaki pulled back, as he always had. Rather than call on all American Muslims to take up arms and follow Hasan’s example, he instead suggested they leave the United States.
The inconsistency of being a Muslim today and living in America and the West in general reveals the wisdom behind the opinions that call for migration from the West. It is becoming more and more difficult to hold on to Islam in an environment that is becoming more