The story was overshadowed by Wednesday’s shooting at Fort Hood, but last Monday Fox News revealed that the FBI and the U.S. military had issued an alert for a Muslim former Army recruit who was planning a “Fort Hood-inspired jihad against U.S. soldiers.” This was more than just an eerie foreshadowing of the Wednesday shooting, although the story almost immediately got murky: on Tuesday the FBI responded to the Fox story with more or less a full denial, declaring that there was no manhunt and that the Muslim recruit named in the alert was not a threat. Nonetheless, enough details emerged to reveal some key facts:
5. Conversion to Islam can make a military man into a traitor.
The would-be Fort Hood-style jihadist was John Thomas Booker, a convert to Islam who now goes by the name Muhammad Abdullah Hassan. According to the alert that the FBI and U.S. military distributed, Hassan was,
“recruited by the U.S. Army in Kansas City, Mo., in February 2014 and was scheduled to report for basic training on April 7. But he was discharged last week, apparently after law enforcement authorities learned of his alleged plan.”
The alert didn’t make clear whether Booker was already Hassan when he was recruited into the Army, or whether he converted while in the Army, but unless he entered the Army with the intention of subverting it and killing American soldiers, he probably entered the military with at least some patriotic sentiment, all of which he lost as he learned about his new faith.
In this Hassan resembles last month’s military jihadist, Ased Abdur-Raheem, formerly Nicholas Teausant, a member of the Army National Guard who called for respect for the military uniform just three days before he was arrested, and almost a year after he wrote on Instagram,
“don’t get me wrong I despise america and want its down fall but yeah haha. Lol I been a part of the army for two years now and I would love to join Allah’s army but I don’t even know how to start.”
This change may be because Islam calls for loyalty to the umma, the global Islamic community, above all other loyalties, and teaches (in the words of the twentieth-century Pakistani Islamic scholar and politician, Maulana Maududi) that non-Muslims have “absolutely no right to seize the reins of power in any part of God’s earth nor to direct the collective affairs of human beings according to their own misconceived doctrines.” If they do, “the believers would be under an obligation to do their utmost to dislodge them from political power and to make them live in subservience to the Islamic way of life.”
Such words can turn an American soldier into an America-hating jihadist.
4. Conversion to Islam can be hazardous to your health.
Muhammad Abdullah Hassan wrote this on his Facebook page on March 15:
Oh those of the ummah of the Prophet Muhammad(S). I will soon be leaving you forever so goodbye! I am going to wage jihad and hopes that i die. I want to be with my lord so bad that I cry but I will miss you guys I am not going to lie. I wish I could give you guys more but I am just a guy who is so very poor. I am telling you I am so broke that my pockets are sore:) I cannot wait to go the Prophet Muhammad’s(S) door and prank Isa bin Maryam and party so hard that it will rock Jannah to its core. Only Allah knows what the future has in store so that should make you fear Allah much much more.
Hassan hoped to die. This accords with the Qur’an’s statement that Allah’s favored people should long for death: “Say (O Muhammad): O ye who are Jews! If ye claim that ye are favoured of Allah apart from (all) mankind, then long for death if ye are truthful” (62:6). Accordingly, Islamic supremacists frequently affirm how much they love death. A Muslim child preacher taunted Jews: “Oh Zionists, we love death for the sake of Allah, just as much as you love life for the sake of Satan.” Jihad mass murderer Mohamed Merah said that he “loved death more than they loved life.” Nigerian jihad murder mastermind Abubakar Shekau said: “I’m even longing for death, you vagabond.”
Afghan jihadist Maulana Inyadullah crowed: “The Americans love Pepsi-Cola, we love death.”
3. Fort Hood jihad murderer Nidal Hasan has fans and followers.
The alert said that Hassan was plotting a “Fort Hood-inspired jihad against U.S. soldiers.” Was the inspiration that Hassan apparently drew from the Fort Hood jihad massacre one reason why he took his particular Muslim surname — because of its closeness to that of Fort Hood jihad mass murderer Nidal Malik Hasan? In any case, in July 2011, another Muslim soldier, Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo, was arrested for plotting to explode a bomb at a restaurant near Fort Hood frequented by military personnel. As he was led out of a federal courtroom a day after his arrest, Abdo shouted out the name of his hero and role model: “Nidal Hasan Fort Hood 2009!”
How many more Muslims soldiers (and non-soldiers) idolize Nidal Hasan? There is no way to tell, because:
2. The U.S. military makes no serious attempt to determine if Muslim recruits might be jihadists.
Army officials stated that Muhammad Abdullah Hassan never said anything anti-American while he was being recruited, and that was apparently enough for them. There is no indication that the military makes any serious attempt to determine the views, allegiances and loyalties of Muslim soldiers.
Indeed, to do so would be “Islamophobic.” Perish the thought! Instead, the military is anxious to find and showcase Muslim personnel – so anxious that, as I reveal in my book Arab Winter Comes to America: The Truth About the War We’re In, Nidal Malik Hasan rose swiftly through Army ranks even as he justified jihad-martyrdom suicide bombing and spouted hatred for America. In an evaluation dated March 13, 2009, a bit less than eight months before his jihad attack, Hasan’s superiors stated that his “unique insights into the dimensions of Islam” and his “moral reasoning” could be of “great potential interest and strategic importance to the U.S. Army.”
A July 1, 2009 report noted that Hasan had “a keen interest in Islamic culture and faith and has shown capacity to contribute to our psychological understanding of Islamic nationalism and how it may relate to events of national security and Army interest in the Middle East and Asia.” He did indeed contribute to our psychological understanding of Islamic nationalism, on November 5, 2009, as he shouted “Allahu akbar” and began shooting.
Nor did his shooting change anything. Army Chief of Staff George Casey even said that barring Muslims from the military or subjecting them to additional scrutiny would be worse than the massacre itself:
“Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”
Casey will get what he wants: diversity in the military, along with its inevitable byproduct, more Fort Hood-style jihad massacres.
1. The U.S. government apparently considers jihad terrorism a mental illness.
Muhammad Abdullah Hassan is now in a mental health facility. Apparently the U.S. government thinks that any Muslim who wants to wage jihad as directed by the Qur’an and Sunnah must be insane. If it follows through on that assumption consistently, it is going to have to build a lot of new asylums.
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