CONFRONTING NIDAL MALIK HASAN'S “MARTYRDOM"

From this AP story about Nidal Malik Hasan, the devout Muslim, execution-style murderer of US soldiers and civilian personnel at Fort Hood, and surviving “martyr,” we learn the following:

At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades.

It is likely that the full Nidal Malik Hasan comments alluded to in the AP story are these:

There was a grenade thrown among a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to [sic] late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He intentionally [sic] took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier [sic]. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its [sic] more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralleled [sic] this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers.

Dan Greenfield has a fine post about Hasan's local Silver Springs, Maryland, imam, Faizul Khan, who is at minimum a cultural jihadist.³ Regardless, Hasan's own apparent views on jihad martyrdom⁴ are entirely consistent with mainstream, orthodox Islamic dogma on this sacralized killing of the enemies of Islam, which should not be conflated with “suicide” resulting from melancholia or depression.

Franz Rosenthal, the late (d. 2002) Yale University scholar of Islam, who, fifty years ago, translated Ibn Khaldun's classic Introduction to History, ⁵ also wrote a seminal essay titled “On Suicide in Islam” in 1946.6

Rosenthal’s research confirmed how Islam extolled “suicidal” martyrdom attacks:

While the Qur’anic attitude toward suicide remains uncertain, the great authorities of the hadith leave no doubt as to the official attitude of Islam. In their opinion suicide is an unlawful act.. On the other hand, death as the result of “suicidal” missions and of the desire of martyrdom occurs not infrequently, since death is considered highly commendable according to Muslim religious concepts. [Emphasis added.] However, such cases are no[t] suicides in the proper sense of the term.⁷

These orthodox Islamic views have been reiterated by Yusuf Al Qaradawi—“spiritual” leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, head of the European Fatwa Council, and immensely popular Al Jazeera television personality, as well as Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, grand imam of Al Azhar University, the most prestigious center of Muslim learning in Sunni Islam.

the highest form of Jihad operations.the young people executing them have sold Allah the most precious thing of all.every martyrdom operation against any Israeli, including children, women, and teenagers, is a legitimate act according to [Islamic] religious law, and an Islamic commandment, until the people of Palestine regain their land.⁹

On July 25, 2005, historian David Littman attempted to deliver a prepared text in the joint names of three international NGOs (non-governmental organizations), but he was prevented from doing so by the intervention of Islamic members of the United Nations Sub­Commission on Human Rights. Following repeated interruptions, he was unable to complete his speech. Littman was simply trying to support the argument that those who issue fatwas to kill innocent people in the name of Islam are not real Muslims and should be treated as apostates.¹⁰ But as he noted, just before the July 7, 2005, London bombings, a major conference of 170 Muslim scholars from forty countries meeting in Amman, Jordan, gave an opinion in a Final Communique, dated July 6, 2005:

It is not possible to declare as apostates any group of Muslims who believes in Allah the Mighty and Sublime and His Messenger (may Peace and Blessings be upon him) and the pillars of faith, and respects the pillars of Islam and does not deny any necessary article of religion.¹¹

This unfortunate communique—clearly provides immutable protection to authentic Islamic advocates of homicide bombing—like the “esteemed” clerics Yusuf Qaradawi and Al Azhar grand imam Tantawi.

And the contemporary advocacy of such “martyrdom” operations by Islam's most esteemed mainstream clerics is what ultimately gives legitimacy to the mass murderous actions of pious Muslims such as Nidal Malik Hasan. This is the unspoken, but irrefragable truth our craven “elites” in the military, government, and media must be forced to acknowledge and confront.

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