Reports on Fort Hood shouldn’t promote Islamophobia

Originally published November 12, 2009. This column was given two different headlines. In the Nov. 12 print edition, it was “Some factors forgotten in Fort Hood shooting”. Online, it ran as “Reports on Fort Hood shouldn’t promote Islamophobia”.

One week ago, a man killed thirteen and wounded another 29 in an unexpected shooting spree at Fort Hood in Texas. When news sources revealed his name, people suddenly forgot that he is a single, Virginia-born, 39-year-old Army psychiatrist who has served since 1995, and had been recently informed of his upcoming deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan.

But a name like Nidal Malik Hasan attracts a lot of attention from the press and the public these days.

News reports continue to emerge that focus almost solely on Hasan’s Muslim background—e-mail exchanges with radical imam Anwar al-Aulaqi regarding a research paper, a presentation concerned with American Muslims’ potential personal reactions to waging a war against other Muslims, and much more.

The AP and ABC made sure to mention soldiers’ speculative claims that they heard Hasan yell “Allahu akbar!” during the violence last week. On Monday, Reuters, rather than identify him as a Virginian or even of the nationality of his parents, simply said that Hasan is “a Muslim born in the United States of immigrant parents.”

It’s interesting that the only word used to describe him in a very brief report is his religious preference.

Popular news media seems devoted to stripping all of the other details from this horrible event, leaving the public with two assertions—that Hasan is a Muslim and a terrorist.

It seems likely that Hasan’s perspectives on the United States, its overseas conflicts, and his religion factored into his extreme actions.

But as the press and the government mull over how this situation could have been prevented, all they’re doing is debating over something that doesn’t really have a clear solution.

It is in no way acceptable to seek out Muslims in the military and investigate their behavior and correspondences without a concrete instance of questionable action on the part of an individual.

On top of that, it’s another nigh-impossible task to create regulations that give investigators further scope over personal data and the power to decide what is potentially dangerous.

Rather than wade into the quagmire of whether others’ inaction in approaching Hasan had to do with some misguided sense of “political correctness,” the greater issues at hand are basic oversights on the part of others at Fort Hood.

How did a psychiatrist get a potentially unregistered civilian handgun onto a base? How did a military mental health professional with potentially serious emotional and psychological issues get out of his own standard psychiatric examinations?

It’s not to say that Hasan’s religion shouldn’t be discussed if it’s proven to be the primary motive for his appalling behavior, and in his circumstance, it may well be. But most of the presentation of information concerning his beliefs is the same kind of sensationalist fear-mongering that’s put Muslims in such a compromised position in the U.S. in the first place.

While we continue to seek justice in the aftermath of such a terrible crime, it is deeply important that we remember one person who identifies in any particular way—Christian, Latino, gay, American, Muslim—is not an example of everyone else who identifies the same way.

Other people who are observant Muslims, who have names that others could construe as “Middle Eastern,” and the like should not be forced to cringe as they listen to the news, hoping that actions of one single human being will not reflect upon their own.

Chelsea is a senior in LAS.

Islamic banking may secure freedom for French Muslims

Originally published October 15, 2009.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy made his opinion on the burqa very clear over the summer, and after getting some legal snags worked out, he’s also strongly indicated his feelings about Islamic banking. France’s Finance Minister Christine Lagarde put it succinctly in a new government television ad, reported in an NPR article on Tuesday: “I would like to convince you that London is not your only choice for Islamic investment, but that Paris is also ready to welcome you and any of your clients who are looking for an alternative.”

Burqas are out but banking is in for Sarkozy’s France, launching some other French politicians into an uproar. Henri Emmanuelli, a deputy leader of the Socialist Party, calls Sarkozy’s activities threatening to France’s secularism. The Front National, the party of the French far-right, claims that Islamic banking will put communities at risk due to increased immigration of Muslims into France.

Banks that observe Islamic Shari’ah seem to have been unaffected by current global financial troubles, and according to NPR, Moody’s rating agency suggests that such banks hold $700 billion in assets. Given that France has the largest Muslim minority in Europe, it sounds like Sarkozy would like to see some of that dough revitalizing the country’s economy.

Similar to most environmental initiatives anywhere else in the world, people have to be pushed to make change that puts more money in someone else’s pockets. If tolerating France’s significant Muslim population could yield some profit, the French government is much more likely to comply. Banking, unlike burqa sales, could seriously benefit France.

While Sarkozy clearly only wants to gain convenient profit from his appeal to Muslims in France and abroad, that money could secure greater freedom of choice for practicing French Muslims. Establishing outlets for Islamic banking could encourage greater tolerance of Muslim observances in the future. If things get off to a good start (the Islamic Bank of Qatar has already applied for a license to open), maybe even the burqa ban will be quelled.

France’s fervor for secularism is aggressively one-sided, tipped in favor of, well, secularism. It presents the argument for the separation of church and state in a totally different manner, mandating in many circumstances that everyone forcibly maintain the secularist attitudes of said state. As others have argued in the instance of the burqa, a number of women opt not to wear them. The choice must belong to Muslim women individually—not their families, not men they don’t know, not religious leaders, and not to the French government.

What we have in the case of Islamic banking being legalized is choice in a particular instance being returned to Muslims. And while there’s no money in giving people a choice over what they wear, it becomes a little more difficult to outlaw one aspect of religious observance when another has already been given the government’s green light.

Despite angry rhetoric from other French politicians, I’d like to approve of Sarkozy’s politics of convenience just this once. If he uses it correctly, he’s given himself the opportunity to step back just slightly from his motions to cram an extremist, pompous brand of purported secularism down the throats of the citizens he represents.

Chelsea is a senior in LAS.