Gawker 
Enter your username and password.
New York, 6:39 PM
Sat Nov 28
12 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip Your Editors:
tips@gawker.com
Tipline: 646-214-8138
Editor-in-Chief:
Gabriel Snyder | Email
West Coast Editor:
Richard Rushfield | Email
Contributing Editors:
Valleywag:
Ryan Tate | Email
Media:
Hamilton Nolan | Email
Politics:
Alex Pareene | Email
Investigations:
John Cook | Email
Entertainment:
Brian Moylan | Email
Nights:
Adrian Chen | Email
Azaria Jagger | Email
Ravi Somaiya | Email
Weekends:
Foster Kamer | Email
Video Editor:
Richard Blakeley | Email
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
11/07/09
11/07/09
Anti-Obama folks hoarding guns and ammo and showing up at rallies with assault rifles? Now this?
Also, everything points to this guy being a known problem who was shuffled around by his supervisors. When he should have been kicked out of the military to begin with.
Good lord. What a mess. #nidalmalikhasan
11/07/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
To me, I'm bored senseless by the "why" of the nihilistic disregard for human life displayed by all these fuckers, the absolute narcissism of thinking your "reasons" trump anyone else's right to continue living. Fuck no.
Muhammad told you to kill your fellow soldiers? Fuck him. Jesus wanted you to invade a country and take out a few hundred thousand civilians? Fuck him. Lord Krishna order you to torch that mosque and take back your temple? Fuck him and fuck your temple. Fuck your mosque, your church, your synagogue, your scripture, your holy places and your heritage. Fuck your cause.
Because if this is the service your God asks of you, your God is an asshole.
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
That's not at all what she's doing. If killing isn't a service your god asks of you then your god isn't an asshole!
But, arguably, it's not your god but you whose the asshole in that equation, right? So god's off the hook! Unless even the good gods are as much a projection of their believers as the bad ones--something that does go toward understanding the complexities of religious affiliation, but not one that the religiously affiliated would appreciate. Too bad. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
And I concur. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
Hmmmm....how about man made god long ago out of ignorance and fear?? #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
It's bullshit like this that makes embarrassed to be an atheist, sometimes. But then, there are short-sighted nitwits in every group that reflect badly on the whole, amirite?
Anyway, the serious point to make is, it's monumentally stupid to boil down something like this to simple religion. It's never that simple. The foulest thing about this whole mess is that no one will learn from it. Islamic nationalism / militarism has little to nothing to do with Islam, and everything to do with elements of regional cultures violently resisting western encroachment. The idea of a global network of religious extremist only kind of came into reality after 9/11, when the Bush Administration became the proverbial bull in the china shop of the Middle East. The seeds of it were sewn long before that, in Cold War politicking and CIA meddling, in the side effects of American economic imperialism. This is all international politics.
"Al Qaeda" didn't spring from whole cloth. They were a locally-focused group who, after failing as a popular movement (fancy that, a bunch of devout muslims not deciding democratically to submit to ultraconservatives!) decided they'd use violence against their regional states, and ultimately came to the (probably accurate) conclusion that they would never come to power with Western nations involved in local events.
But the point is, it's kind of ridiculous and typical of lazy atheists to think that a person just picks up a holy book and becomes a violent warrior of faith. Yes, there is history behind it. Yes, there is sociology behind it. There's got to be an explanation why there are some muslims who never murder anyone and some who have the desire to murder everyone. It's grotesque and dishonest to paint them with the same brush.
What if we find out that this particular murderer was not part of a terrorist cell, but acted on his own spontaneously? It would make more sense to assume that there was something about his job, something about the war that pushed him irrevocably to the edge. But that's too difficult to think about, isn't it? Best to just sever that Gordian Knot. What's the worst that can happen? Yeah, fuck this nebulously defined group of astounding breadth. Punk rock!
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
For the record, my problem with religions has everything to do with their hijackers, the fundamentalists, who use these dogmas for their own selfish, narcissistic purposes. I think most people in all religions couldn't really give a shit, go through the motions and are embarrassed by their co-religionists' misuse of their various dogmas.
And I reiterate my opinion that anyone who undertakes the murder of unsuspecting, unarmed people really doesn't have an excuse grounded in any wothwhile philosophical or metaphysical paradigm because it is, by definition, an act of insanity. To me, Charles Whitman, Tim McVeigh and this prick have nothing to say to me because they're all just nuts.
But again, I'm not here to harsh on anyone who gets off on feeling intellectually superior to me. It's the least I can do, right? #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
11/09/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
The first thing that comes to mind is "racist." Hope you're not offended. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
If someone killed a bunch of people, and said God told him too, and his name was Bubbah Lee Johnson, we would label him schizophrenic and give him medical treatment. Still prison, of course, but people would say he has an obvious mental disorder. Change Bubbah Lee Johnson to Muhammed Al Sherik, and people will immediately say, "those Muslims, they are dangerous, etc etc." If anyone suggested, oh that man is just suffering from schizophrenia, no one would accept that as an explanation. #nidalmalikhasan
11/08/09
11/06/09
Crazy Religious Does Something Crazy, Religious. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
Until there's evidence of a motive, all the media speculation of a religious motive is irresponsible and bigoted. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
I responded to your comment because you made a connection between his religion and politics and this massacre. But 'apparently' isn't really proof that this man was anything more than a nutcase, Muslim or not. According to his cousin, he 'apparently' joined the military because he felt it was his duty as an American. So 'apparently' this guy was a patriot. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
It absolutely sucks that this happened, for obvious reasons but also because nutjobs on the right will use this to justify their anti-Islamic rhetoric. At the same time, we lose credibility if we argue that this asshole's political beliefs had nothing to do with his actions. #nidalmalikhasan
11/08/09
The bigotry come in when people jump to conclusions about "Muslims in general."
That said, and I am speaking as someone who has spent years in the Middle East and has read the Qur'an, there are clearly passages in the Qur'an and Hadith that help along anyone who wants wage holy war, and there are a lot of guys (they tend to be guys) out there willing to use these passages to justify killing innocent people. And yes, most Muslims in the world know this is wrong, but some are conflicted when they see US supporting the pounding of non-combatants in Gaza and Lebanon. It also doesn't help quell the holy war bullshit when we send robotic drones into Waziristan to blow up wedding parties and fuck up the lives of a lot of really poor, stupid, uneducated, fundamentalist people in the region.
Every time we fuck up and kill some child in a drone attack in our war on terror, that child's body is on the front page of every newspaper in the region and the following Friday sermon in many mosques in the region couches the death of that child in terms of holy war. That's a potent form of propaganda we create through "collateral damage" -- avoidable or not. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
Terrorism? The guy was attacking the military. How is that terrorism, which is almost exclusively defined as attack against civilian targets? #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
Religion causes way too much fuckery to be justifiable. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
I feel like Matt Lauer. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
It is part of the definition of God (and dark matter) that it is undetectable and imperceptible.
It is not impossible for something imperceptible to exist, even as part of the world described by physics.
Therefore (although I lean more on the atheist side), there is nothing inherently stupid or wrongheaded about a belief that God does exist (mind-independently).
Of course, is very difficult to defend that belief, as it is very difficult to defend a believe in many entities posited by theoretical physics. But we can argue about it civilly without calling people morons. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
Sometimes I find myself immediately faulting religion without considering the fact that some people are just crazy and will figure out a way to carry out their crazy regardless of what they believe or do not believe. #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
I'd argue that God was invented primarily to reconcile human beings to the mystery of their transitory nature. It was invented because us, humans, need to find a way to explain death to ourselves. The strong emphasis on coercive morality and such is a prominent tenet of Judeo-Christian-Muslim religions, but hardly as emphasized in Hinduism, Buddhism, and countless "pagan" or "native" systems of belief.
I do agree that organized religions often begets senseless violence. That doesn't negate the vital importance of spiritual/religious belief systems. ("Religion causes way too much fuckery to be justifiable.")
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
11/06/09
I offer that this sort of complete refusal to consider something at more than a shallow depth is more worthy of blame in a situation such as this- by all accounts this guy was, for lack of a better word, bullied by his colleagues after 9/11 because of his Muslim background, which he may or may not have even personally embraced as a practicing member of the faith, and his superiors either weren't able to help him or weren't willing to, and he felt trapped in the institution, and it would appear that he snapped. None of this absolves his actions, however I think the analogy that is more apt than any religiously based violence is to the Columbine shootings , and if we are looking at something to pin blame on we would be best to look at the propensity for people to be cruel to other people who don't fit into some perceived category of "acceptable". #nidalmalikhasan
11/06/09
(When I speak of God in most casual settings, I'm speaking of the Omnipotent, Omniscience, Omnibenelovent imperceptible thing that the Abrahamic religions posit. I don't think that thing exists on purely conceptual grounds.)
I think Spinoza's different, 'heretical' conception of God as part of the natural world is way more plausible. I'm digressing a hell of a lot! #nidalmalikhasan