Love of the Land: Fort Hood massacre provokes outcry in Guardian and BBC…over “fear-mongering hysteria” against Muslims

Fort Hood massacre provokes outcry in Guardian and BBC…over “fear-mongering hysteria” against Muslims

Robin Shepherd
Robin Shepherd Online
07 November 09

A Muslim, Palestinian-American soldier massacres 12 fellow soldiers and a civilian at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. Evidence is already available that the perpetrator, Major Nidal Hasan, a military psychiatrist, was incensed at the prospect of being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and that he had compared suicide bombing to the bravery of soldiers in combat who might fall on a grenade to protect the lives of their comrades.

It is also clear that he is a very devout Muslim who opposes the wars he feared being sent to fight in. According to the testimony of a former colleague, Col. Terry Lee: “He said maybe the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor…At first we thought he was talking about how Muslims should stand up and help the armed forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but apparently that wasn’t the case.”

So clearly, there are good grounds for suspecting that this might at least have something to do with the kind of Islamist agenda which has provoked massacres from Bali to Tel Aviv, from London to New York and from Madrid to Mumbai. Note that all I am suggesting here is that there are “good grounds for suspecting”. In other words, I am arguing that any open minded and intelligent analyst would want to take that possibility into consideration.

Well, not if you write for the Guardian which raced out two op-eds with the aim not of expressing sympathy for the victims but of starkly warning that red neck, Islamophobic loons were about to have a field day. But if its loons you’re after you rarely have to search further than the Guardian’s editorial page.

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Love of the Land: Fort Hood massacre provokes outcry in Guardian and BBC…over “fear-mongering hysteria” against Muslims