And Maybe Dr. Hasan Is Not Crazy

An excellent point. And thanks for the link to Caldwell's column.

I recommend David Brooks' take on the same issue under the title "Rush to Therapy" in last week's New York Times.

Your inability to tolerate ambiguity makes you weak, silly as hell Marty.

Yes, because what we definitely don't need are people in our armed forces who speak any language other than English. Completely useless skill in all of our current theaters of engagement; surely we can just hire local entrepreneurs whose loyalty is unquestionable to translate for us?

However Marty's cataloging of the statement by the Ayatollah provides an interesting test of a particular world view. If Muslims quit the British armed forces en masse over the next few weeks (presumably in response to this calling), then perhaps there is something to be concerned about.

If on the other hand, Muslims throughout the world are about as monolithic as Christians are (that is to say, not at all) and this call is ignored by all but a possibly a very small number of service personal, what does that tell us?

While you cannot prove a negative, the normal course of action upon obtaining negative experimental results is to question the original hypothesis, or at least the world view that leads to the hypothesis being formulated.

I once linked to this vid with the Arab-American psychiatrist, Wafa Sultan, in an interview Al-Hayat TV on May 29, 2008:

"When I examined the Koran, the hadith, and the Islamic books under a microscope, I came to the absolute conviction that it is impossible – impossible! – for any human being to read the biography of Muhammad and believe in it, and yet emerge a psychologically and mentally healthy person

[...]

The language of Islam is a negative, dead language, replete with violence, anger, hatred, and racism. Man is the product of language, the outcome of the negative and positive language to which he is exposed in this lifetime. If his life is dominated by negative language, he will emerge as a negative, reckless, and non-productive person, who rejects everything. On the other hand, if positive language dominates his life, he will emerge as a positive, happy, and productive person. This is why the negative language of Islam has failed. It has failed to produce people with a spontaneous and positive outlook. It has produced negative people. If we take a look at Islamic societies, we see what that negative man did.

[...]

...A week or two ago, I read a short story in an Islamic book, according to which Muhammad was walking with some of his followers when they heard a commotion. They asked him: “What is this, Messenger of Allah?” He said: “These are the Jews being tormented in the grave.” Regardless of the conflicts Muhammad had with the Jews back then, this statement indicates that the graves of their ancestors were in Saudi Arabia, correct?"

http://switch3.castup.net/cunet/gm.asp?ai=214&ar=1783wmv&ak=null

So I ask this: If hatred and denigration of Jews is part and parcel of the religion, and a focus for rallying the crowds to the mosque; if hostility towards the non-Muslim is a religious edict, frequently and intensively urged upon the believers, how are you going to deal with it? If religion is off bounds for scrutiny and criticism, but the religion is steeped in the demonization of others, where do you draw the line? At what point this:

"a June 2002 interview on Saudi TV with a 3-year-old girl named Basmallah, made available by the Middle East Media and Research Institute:

Anchor: Basmallah, are you familiar with the Jews?
Basmallah: Yes.
Anchor: Do you like them?
Basmallah: No.
Anchor: Why don't you like them?
Basmallah: Because . . .
Anchor: Because they are what?
Basmallah: They're apes and pigs.
Anchor: Because they are apes and pigs. Who said they are so?
Basmallah: Our God.
Anchor: Where did he say this?
Basmallah: In the Koran."

stops being barely tolerable religious teaching and becomes hate speech?

Me from 11/07/09:

....Getting to Peretz, I reject his way too wide assertion phrased as a self-answering question “But which suicide bomber, even one inspired by what the president continues to call the "Holy Koran," as if that nomenclature would moderate the hatred of America in the world of Islam, is not crazy? Stark raving crazy, in fact?”...

Here's the exact quote in place of paraphrase:

...The present generation of Americans is made uncomfortable by the idea that their country might have enemies whose enmity is the result of something other than fanaticism or mental illness. Maj Hasan's colleagues, the Economist writes, say he thought the war on terror was a war on Islam. According to what we think Islam is, he is wrong. But according to a fundamentalist idea of what Islam is, he is right. There is rationality in such enmity, even if that rationality is built on different assumptions...

This is tautological and says therefore less than what Peretz would have it say. Peretz is, for all that I like him and find him okay on some subjects, is too prone to excluding middles, too prone to mutual exclusivities. From posing the necessary exclusivity between terrorists and sanity, he now embraces the exclusivity between Islam as a benign religion and Islamism, whereby the former becomes assimilable to the latter.

Caldwell's tautology is that if should it be that holding to Islam can *logically* commit Muslims extremely to hate America so much that acts of terrorism make sense to them, Americans would be fundamentally discomfited. (Ya' think?) Caldwell poses the solubility of the distinction between Islam and Islamism without demonstrating it and tells us that solubility would greatly alarm and perplex Americans. Peretz then asserts that solubility in eliding moderate belief from his nexus between (as he quotes Cadwell) "... enemies whose enmity is the result of something other than fanaticism or mental illness."

So in a typically Peretzian way we have moved from you must be insane to be an Islamic terrorist to inside the heart of every Muslim beats the palpable heart of an embryonic terrorist and our public policies must accommodate that.

Come on Peretz you can do better than all this!

Thanks, noga, for Dr. Sultan's observations (and conclusion!). And to Marty, for linking to Caldwell's article. Some, though not all by an means, of the fog has cleared and it appears to me the national conversation about the Hasan murders and it's implications is headed in a healthy (and sane) direction for now. Along with the head-scratching about what went wrong, a necessary cleansing of America's thinking and ratiocination on problems related to arriving at a rational, sane, and humane attitude toward Islamism, Islamists, and terrorists and terrorism in general.

Horrifying and tragic as this event surely has been and is, without a doubt, it is nonetheless shedding light on what it is we in the West, America in particular, need to be better equipped to deal with the range of contradictions and paradoxes that attach to the war against terrorism of the Islamist form. I believe we are being afforded a kind of x-ray view of what takes place in the mind of the Islamist terrorist in formation, and in our minds as we attempt to read and evaluate the evidence. It is extraordinarily complex business and the procedure must not be rushed to get maximum benefits. But, at the same time, in a way analogous to observing a patient in the ER who is in extreme crisis, with an eye to taking the most expedient action to stabilize the situation as quickly as possible, as it were, on the fly. Because every moment wasted or needlessly spent debating only adds to the odds that the patient will succumb. The patient in this case is the Islamist terrorist at whatever stage of initiation and/or development of the illness or trauma. The physicians and nurses, attendants and supporting staff, relatives family and friends of the patient who are sympathetic with the effort to save the patient and get him/her on the road to recovery, recognizing that there is always the possibility, and high probability that the patient will die in the course of emergency treatment. Still, whether the one result or the other, much data and useful information of a hopeful and positive nature will emerge from the exercise.

Cut to the chase, the world is in crisis as a consequence of the spread (unabated) of Islamist contagion producing new terrorists and new characteristics by the hour and day, and a critical stage has been reached, where massive, global intervention becomes imperative. The contagion must be thwarted and the continued, uncontrolled, spread of disease must be stopped, in the most expedient and urgent manner.

WandreyCer
"Your inability to tolerate ambiguity makes you weak, silly as hell Marty."

Ambiguity is fine in books, but in the actual world too much ambiguity can get you killed if it blurs the distinction between friend and deadly enemy.

An example of ambiguity:

"And while we are still on Dr. Hasan and his views about Muslims in the military, there was significant news in the Times of London today. Ayatollah Abdolhossein Moezi, the London representative of the Supreme Leader of Iran, also doubling as the director of the Islamic Centre of England, called on all Muslims in British military forces to quit. Otherwise, he said, they will be used by "the forces of Zionist imperialism." "

And of course he blamed the Jews:

From the above link:

"He said the September 11 attacks and the London bombings were wrong but accused the forces of “Zionist imperialism” of using the atrocities to smear Islam and its followers."

Ayatollah Abdolhossein Moezi is another Muslim who believes western Muslims should not kill other Muslims.

In the same interview he believes it's ok for Iranian Muslims to kill Muslims because they are not the correct Muslims.

Presumably after all the attacks from Iran upon Israel, he believes it's ok for Muslims to kill Jews. But no one asked him that question.

But the Ayatollah caught himself and clarified his position. he doesn't want Christians to kill Muslims either. This guy is a regular fountain of Diversity.

...Ambiguity is fine in books, but in the actual world *too much ambiguity* can get you killed if it blurs the distinction between friend and deadly enemy...(asterisks mine)

Undoubtedly so.

But I suggest the Peretizan oppositions shown in this post and previous ones display insufficient nuance and subtlety, the opposite of too much ambiguity.

I agree with you, Basman.

One question: when does an ideological persuasion such as Islamism become so virulent and implacable that it weakens minds not only of the individual but others with whom the individual is in contact, rendering a weak-ish mind mindless, a stronger mind weaker, etc. Another way to put it, in a disordered, neurotic, family system with marked addictive behavior among its members, can neurosis deepen and addiction run rampant, degrading the health of each member leading to a toxic situation where unboundaried unacceptable behavior spills into the open, putting relatives and non-family members at risk of injury and/or death, unless and until an intervention is made, enlisting the aid and support of as many individuals and professionals as need be mustered.

This is the situation in Islam today, I believe. Whether they or we like it or not, believe it or not, the evidence clearly indicates the need for considered but right action proportional to the severity of the crisis. The only humane thing to do at that point. Nobody really desires it, everybody wishes it were not so and some other remedy might be found, but as it is, something or other must be done at once, as soon as reasonably and rationally possible.

Which would you or I have preferred in the Hasan case: that reason and appropriate care had been decided on and rendered when it was still possible to save him and his victims from tragedy; or, somebody "shot the buzzard" before he was let out of his cage ("A buzzard is a buzzard, always was, is and will be."). If indeed, by the nature of Islamism, or the nature and meaning of the Koran, Muslims are all buzzards that need to be shot sooner or later, then we have one kind of situation on our hands. If not, or possibly not, the case, then what kind of situation do you have, and what is the indicated action?

Christians, by the way, in the past have had exactly the same neurotic idea and attitude, that has deepened and intensified to the point when pogroms have been launched, time and time again, in the name of G-d, to put "the Christ-killers" to torture and death. The idea and attitude persist to this day in latent or expressed form in many places, and seems to crop up here and there still, even in what we might otherwise be deemed civil and rational, high-functioning societies. It seems that nothing completely expunges it from the Christian (Lord knows even non-Christian) consciousness altogether. That does not suggest otherwise than the logical, rational and sane conclusion the notion and idea are utterly false, no ifs ands or buts, materially and essentially.

Tgossard: What to make of your questions?

As to the first one I don’t know when save to say that Islamism is by definition “so virulent and implacable that it weakens minds not only of the individual but others with whom the individual is in contact, rendering a weak-ish mind mindless, a stronger mind weaker, etc” rather than becoming that. And taking your analogy of a terribly dysfunctional family, what to your mind is the internal relations analogue and what specific policies do you have in mind?

As to your second one it seems to answer itself but I see it pointing to practical answers that I find elusive in your first question. It seems prosaic to say that if the military stepped back from its own procedures, rules and policies from apprehending evolving danger its midst in the form of what Hasan evidently exhibited out political correctness or in obeisance to diversity, then that obviously needs correction and the correction seems entirely realizable: not so, I don’t think, the “interventions” you seem to be pointing to in your own discussion of your first question.

I agree Jackson, I hope that goes without saying but I suppose it does not. I believe firmly in evil, in absolutes. But this is, in fact, an ambiguous situation. But I will state for the record that I know there is evil in it we must protect ourselves from and that is my only goal.

I'm just looking at the evidence, data that is available to me so far. The contortions and ad homenium one must go through to ignore huge chunks of in in this case is distasteful to me as thinker and as someone who'd like to prevent these events from happening again.

Nuking all Arabs, or kicking them all out of the army, or any sort of xenophobic response is just not going to be part of the equation. This is just logic. We need to think rationally, its self-indulgent not to.

I think Tgossard is on to something, I really like the track the is taking. We have to fearlessly and objectively appraise and I do think that's slowly happening. Any successful interventions depend on it. To learn from this, we have to know everything.

The story in the NYT today has evidence of all of it: PC Academia, mental illness, a toxic path Islamic fundamentalism can take, a country awash in guns, a military under duress, some guy who has had to listen to gory stories of death, hopelessness, illness and misery nonstop for years.

It's simply not excusing anything to be precise.

basman

"But I suggest the Peretizan oppositions shown in this post and previous ones display insufficient nuance and subtlety, the opposite of too much ambiguity."

Ours is an unsubtle age, and too much subtlety will only bore us.

Is there a subtle publication out there that is not on life support?

| Tgossard "Christians, by the way, in the past have had exactly the same neurotic idea and attitude, that has deepened and intensified to the point when pogroms have been launched, time and time again, in the name of G-d, to put "the Christ-killers" to torture and death."

Let's not confuse neurosis with the desire to plunder and the doctrines that justified these barbaric acts.

The Cossacks, btw, were not neurotic they were well trained killers.

WandreyCer
"I agree Jackson, I hope that goes without saying but I suppose it does not. I believe firmly in evil, in absolutes. But this is, in fact, an ambiguous situation...."

Leaving evil aside how was it ambiguous? 13 people were murdered, I know of nothing less ambiguous than death.

The man who shot down these innocents did so because he hated the US military because they were fighting his coreligionists in Iraq and elsewhere.

The fact that he was a Dr. of Psychiatry makes the murderer even more despicable since he was trained to heal and not to kill.

At a minimum he is a traitor: he betrayed his comrades in the Army and he betrayed his medical profession.

I see little ambiguity either in the act itself or in what caused him to act.

Two observations:

1. You cannot protect people from themselves. You can, however, protect others from them.
2. When affinity of religion or ethnicity trumps affinity of citizenship, then ethnic or religious fidelity has turned into secular treason.

The outcome was unambiguous, I don't disagree with your assessment of him as a dr and a man. I'm glad you said that. I stand in judgement of this person for his actions. He is among the damned.

We'll have to agree to disagree on cause, simply because I cannot say comfortably that I know what that is. I'm not excusing anything.

Neither the dumbing down of journalism, nor dumb journalism, in the interest or profitably informs the issue.

Nor does subtlety that's boring.

The issue here is writing that is (among other things) intellectually adequate to what it purports to do, be it journalism, specialist literature, blogging, answering a post on a thread or whatever. There is a reason why Krauthammer is considered a great political journalist of our time and one of the great American political journalists generally. He imho is a great fulfillment of much more than that adequacy. And there is a reason why we can be discriminating both amongst journalists and among the writings of particular ones.

Here is my recent, favourite, brilliant example of the exemplification of the highest criteria for judgment: http://www.tnr.com/article/world/the-goldstone-illusion .

Forgive me my bits of bad grammar

Finally, the top of my 5:44 post somehow got snipped off. It was respecftfully addressed to jacksondyer's of 1:34.

basman: "The issue here is writing that is (among other things) intellectually adequate to what it purports to do, be it journalism, specialist literature, blogging, answering a post on a thread or whatever."

Well yes, but such writing is very rare.

"There is a reason why Krauthammer is considered a great political journalist of our time and one of the great American political journalists generally."

I agree about Krauthammer.

b, I agree with your propositions 1 and 2 above. In re 2, however, I'd add a rider that secular treason can be justified when the faith or ethnicity concerned is the subject of unjust persecution by the secular authority (e.g. when a soldier in an ethnically diverse army is ordered to use force on members of his own ethnicity on grounds of that ethnicity alone).

jackson, thanks for correcting my inapt point. Of course you're right, it wasn't a neurosis that motivated the Cossacks, nor the perpetrators of other pogroms. I only meant to propose a neurotic condition, that of inferiority complex, that in large part results from claiming the existence of a sole, exclusive, singular, omnipotent, omniscient, invisible, transcendent deity: to whom is further claimed and attributed motives, purposes and other diverse, extraordinary qualities; who finally is exclusively dedicated to the enlightenment and empowerment, of a single people who shall stand out in pride and place before and above all other peoples, by their deeds of worship of and service to said deity, additionally to such other peoples as merit the deity's grace and goodwill.

The neurotic condition is deepened all the more by the respective Abrahamic faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, when they simultaneously claim their particular decked out and accessorized G-ds to be one and the same (though at the same time different depending on which group is doing the talking).

This is one big reason why I try to keep some distance and reserve, if not quite disinterest, from inter-religious conversation and dialogue, especially in regard to ecumenism. Also, why I am greatly sympathetic with atheists in their trenchant critiques of religion in general, Abrahamic faiths in particular, though I am a worshipping, believing, and (I hope) faithful Christian.

Good grief, I can hardly believe I got all this out without turning and running for my soul and life. What a business, but there it is.

basman (sorry to get back so late), per your first sentence, I don't know either, however I presume (probably wrongly) that there might have been some more benign developmental phase of Islamist thinking and preaching, etc., during which time an appeal or critique by something resembling a consensus of opinion among Islamic academics and imams might have dislodged the Islamists feet from the pavement. As I've said about myself already I'm inclined to be tolerant and open-minded to a fault, so if what I wrote only begs the question, you have answered it to my satisfaction. (I am really sorry I am so verbose on these topics but it's the only way I feel I'm capable of giving these matters my full attention and consideration. Otherwise, I nearly can't stand it that I feel so constrained. :(

The dysfunctional family model I'm thinking of would apply to greater Islam, if there really is such a thing, which by now I doubt.

To your second paragraph, bas, I say fair enough.

There are all sorts of quiet/loud religious crazies of all types in America. How was Hasan so easily able to get a semi-automatic gun if he was in the military (or not). To me it is another Columbine and many others. If not terrorrist supporters then certainly their great enablers, National Rifle Association and cowardly COngress. Still the big issue.