What if Hasan had been a Christian?
The Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg makes a good point:
Here’s a simple test: If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a devout Christian with pronounced anti-abortion views, and had he attacked, say, a Planned Parenthood office, would his religion have been considered relevant as we tried to understand the motivation and meaning of the attack? Of course. Elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism. Quite the opposite. It would be useful to apply the same standards of inquiry and criticism to all religions.
Monday, November 9th, 2009 at 10:55 AM | Stand For Israel
Heroine
Sgt. Kimberly Munley
Our prayers and gratitude go out to Sgt. Kimberly Munley, the civilian officer credited by Ft. Hood commanders for bringing down Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan with four shots. Sgt. Munley is in hospital recovering from wounds sustained during the incident.
May the Source of Comfort bless her and the other survivors of the attack with a speedy and full recovery, and may He bless those who lost their lives and send comfort to their bereaved families.
If Hasan does turn out to be a jihadist, it’s particularly delightful that he was brought down by an American woman.
After all, Jihadis don’t tend to be too fond of uppity women.
Update: The Washington Post reports that Hasan refused to have his photo taken with female co-workers, which was an issue even for group photos taken during the Christmas season. Shooting them, though, is perfectly fine. (And it was one of them who took him down!)
Comments (1) »Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 2:13 PM | Stand For Israel
The elephant in the room
Twelve servicemen and women were murdered yesterday at Ft. Hood by an army psychiatrist gone mad (physician clearly did not heal himself).
Funny thing: Early coverage of this atrocity twisted itself into pretzels to avoid mentioning that the shooter is Muslim and of Palestinian descent. Israeli blogger Treppenwitz marvels at how deeply that fact gets buried:
Jerusalem Post – First mention of his religion comes in the 10th paragraph.
New York Times – Amazingly never actually says he was a Muslim. In the 34th paragraph they have a condemnation of the shooting from the Muslim Public affairs Council… but that seems odd since in the 20th paragraph they go out of their way to mention that the shooter had indicated ‘No Religious Preference’ in his service record… a point completely contrary to easilyavailable interview material from his fellow Mosque members.
Haaretz waits until the 10th paragraph to mention his religion.
The Washington Post waits until the 16th paragraph to mention the shooter’s faith.
YNet doesn’t see fit to mention his religion at all, although well into the article they say that it is unclear if his name (a very Islamic sounding one) was given at birth or if he converted at some point to Islam.
The Chicago Tribune doesn’t mention the shooter’s religion in all 29 paragraphs of their coverage. Nada.
A common thread in all the articles is a quote from the Base Commander saying that they are not treating this as a terror attack.
Treppenwitz notes that if the shooter was an Orthodox Jew, his religion would have been in the lead paragraph of every article. We’ll add that if he was an Evangelical Christian, it would have been the headline.
Day-after coverage is now acknowledging that he was a devout Muslim and, oh, by the way, he’s been on FBI watch lists for internet posts praising suicide bombers and other aspects of…
Read More » Comments (0) »Friday, November 6th, 2009 at 12:30 PM | Stand For Israel
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