poor muslims, indeed! there is nothing they can do without being accused of something bad

But like Obama says; “we can never really know what motivated Mr Hasan”.

What ever happened to “yes we can”?

I think you need to read the Independent’s Patrick Cockbun on Iraq.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=purKFMhCNDA&feature=PlayList&p=9D13075DCBFBF7B1&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=11

I read the Telegraph article.

I don’t doubt Islam’s capability to twist a vulnerable mind; few religious ideologies are filled with such hatred and violence. This guy probably felt that he was doing ‘god’s’ work and looked forward to virgins, waterfalls and non-intoxicating wine in paradise.

However, my own gut feeling is that he was deranged; in the same way that many deranged people think their god wants them to kill.

This is unlike the 9/11, 7/7 or Madrid bombings where the perpetrators calmly committed their evil with much planning and forethought. Where they were organized, coached and coordinated by Islamist organizations and supported by Islamic scholars.

If that had been the case here, then his handlers would have made better use of their ‘asset’ to inflict far more damage to their enemy than a simple shooting spree.

It is also very important for all ‘Islamo-sceptics’ to understand that the overwhelming majority of Islamic scholars believe that killing your countrymen is un-Islamic. Therefore, the 7/7 and Madrid bombing were almost certainly un-Islamic. However, the question of 9/11 is grey as the victims were not the killers’ countrymen. That boils down to the very subjective definition of ‘innocent’ as Islam forbids killing ‘innocent’ people. (However, like all subjective terms, it is very easy to claim that the targets aren’t innocent. Who is?)

We must nevertheless understand that many scholars believe that Islam condones and actually demands that Muslims join their ‘oppressed’ brethren and fight the ‘oppressors’ in OTHER lands. So for example, there is nothing un-Islamic about British or American Muslims, going to Iraq or Afghanistan and fighting their former countrymen. Indeed, many scholars consider this to be a duty.

It is important to understand these subtleties. I know from experience that Muslim scholars are very slippery. They will stress how un-Islamic killing sprees such as this are, yet they’ll play-down the Muslim duty to leave one’s homeland in order to fight it.

I concur.

I read somewhere that the average daily income in Afghanistan is $2 but the Taleban offer local fighters $15… when you’ve barely enough to eat as it is you might have to think twice about turning down such an offer… shame bin Laden’s a coward and won’t fight himself.

The big pu$$y.

If these right-wing columnists were from the Middle East, they’d probably have blown themselves up long ago. But I suppose the fact that the majority are from wealthy, priviliged backgrounds gives them an outlet for their rage by getting them journalism jobs they would never in a million years get on their own merit.

sorry but what cjcjc? Why not spell it out?

YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!!!!!

Saddam Hussein was a vile and nasty little man. I am not with those who defend him. But it was obviously a mindless policy to act as if overthrowing him would make the west safer (the myth of his WMDs and links to Al-Qaida) or make Iraq a junior version of America.

Further right-wing bollocks and inconsistency.

But the US army kept him on, why? For all the whinging about “offence takers” and “diversity”, we know the real reason. So overstretched is the US military, thanks to the pointless imperial wars supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, that they are obliged to recruit any old twat.

Wrong. They can get rid of some twats who sign up, but not others.

It’s known as Political Correctness, and should be quite familiar here in Leftistan.

But the US army kept him on, why? For all the whinging about “offence takers” and “diversity”, we know the real reason. So overstretched is the US military, thanks to the pointless imperial wars supported by Democrats and Republicans alike, that they are obliged to recruit any old twat. Not only Hasan, but also people who are only just about keeping themselves out of prison for various kinds of violent crime.

Is it really so surprising that they behave badly in terms of behaviour towards civilians and so on, as the recent torture scandals show?

Until the US army scales back operations and has a smaller, better qualified force it leaves itself open to attack from within. Short of a mass draft the only option is to withdraw from trying to police the world and turn the whole world into an extension of the west.

sorry but what cjcjc? Why not spell it out?

‘One Army doctor who knew him said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim soldier had stopped fellow officers from filing formal complaints.’

That IS interesting, if not much more than anecdotal wisdom after the fact. There is not a single thing wrong with respecting religious views, but that does not mean that the collective knee has to be bent before every taboo.

The professional offence takers (religious and otherwise) have much to answer for.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/08/us/08investigate.html?_r=1&hp

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6526030/Fort-Hood-gunman-had-told-US-military-colleagues-that-infidels-should-have-their-throats-cut.html

Surely anyone who hated Islam so much would, in order to be consistent, oppose foreign entanglements and concentrate on controlling the border, deporting anyone who showed Islamist sympathies, and arming America against extrenal threats. Perhaps they could do something like the Gulf War or the strikes on Iraq in the late 90s, but why a full-scale imperial war?

Why? Because American right-whingers are morons and twats whose ideas are even more hopelessly wrong than yours- at least you’re consistent and wrong, whereas they’re incoherent and wrong.

That is what I was saying in my post at 20.