Reflecting on Ft. Hood

Watching the aftermath of the terrible Ft Hood killings has been personally agonizing for me. I tend to get personally wrapped up in foreign affairs issues and sometimes feel a crushing amount of responsibility. My wife assures me that this is just a form of pride, and stems from over-exaggerating my own importance. She's probably right. But when you are passionate about trying to build a better world, when you have committed your professional life to understanding the world's most intractable conflicts, and when you live your daily life at the intersection of cultures that misunderstand and fear and hate each other, it's hard not to feel personally involved. Ft. Hood shook me up, both because of the horrific tragedy inflicted on our soldiers and because of the bitter debate that has resurfaced about Islam.

On the one hand, many Americans believe in peaceful coexistence with Muslims, believe that militant Islamism is a minority perspective in the religion, and believe that extremists like Nidal Hasan should not reflect on Islam itself. Indeed, some say, his killing spree had less to do with the fact he was Muslim than the fact he was deeply disturbed. When Muslim-American organizations condemn violence, these Americans are willing to take them at their word. On the other hand, other Americans argue that extremism and militancy are fundamental to Islam itself. They point to a succession of Islam-motivated violence and extremism both within the military and without, and argue that an obsession with political correctness is blinding us to the obvious truth: Islam is the problem. They view Muslim-American organizations like CAIR as fronts for terrorism and view any Muslim condemnation of terror with suspicion. Ft. Hood gave the latter camp fresh ammunition, and they've come out in force. Ralph Peters' article Fort Hood's 9/11 is representative.

Where is the truth? It's obviously in the middle somewhere; black and white answers are almost never true when it comes to messy human issues. I'm honestly trying to work through this for myself, which is partly why I feel so much angst.

I learned pretty quickly when I began my Middle East studies that if you try to be a peacemaker, you make a lot of enemies on both sides. In persistent conflicts, people become so embittered and radicalized that they'll tear you to pieces for even trying to give the other side a voice. I gradually learned a second lesson: that you'll often get stabbed in the back by the people you're trying to represent. They say and do things that make you wonder why you ever bothered trying to defend their side. I regularly experience this with both sides in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. These phenomena show how tough, gritty, and messy the real work of peacebuilding actually is--it is not for the idealistic or faint of heart.

I'm feeling both these things in the wake of Ft. Hood. I'm furious at Nidal Hasan for murdering and injuring so many of my Army brethren, but I'm equally furious with him for destroying the credibility of those Muslims who want peace. For someone who allegedly wanted to defend his faith, he did irreparable harm to peaceful American Muslims. I have good friends who are Muslim, both in and out of the military, and I truly feel for them right now. I'm also, in a small way, feeling the backlash from those who see Islam as violent beyond salvaging. I've tried voicing what I thought were sensible and moderate positions in recent discussions with other US military officers, and was either shot down or ignored. It's not an easy time to stand in the gap between Islam and the West.

I don't claim to have many answers, but let me just summarize the things I believe:

There is undoubtedly a deeply-rooted Islamic element to much modern terror. We have to challenge excess political correctness, and ask the hard questions, especially in the wake of Ft Hood: why did nobody catch onto Hasan's extremism? But although many terrorists are Muslim, most Muslims are not terrorists. They abhor violence against innocents and believe these terrorists do not represent true Islam. With that said, we need to understand that many Muslims hold political views that would make many Western non-Muslims uncomfortable: for example, they are largely opposed to the trajectory of US foreign policy over the last eight years, opposed to Israel, and staunch supporters of Palestinians. We also need to understand that Islam does not draw a distinction between religion and state. For these reasons, I don't imagine the relationship between the West and Islam is ever going to be easy or free of conflict. There are modernist strands of Islam, but these are a minority. An Islamic Reformation could come, but it hasn't happened yet.

However, when we determine how to cope with the growing presence of Islam in the West, we need to be very careful how we proceed. Some of the most sensible advice I've read on this comes from Marc Lynch. We cannot (nor should we want to) go to war with 1.3 billion people. We do not want to get drawn into a war of civilizations, which will force moderate Muslims toward a more hardline stance and play exactly into al-Qaeda's grand strategy. We have to reserve our hard power for the genuine threats, and must find ways to coexist with everybody else--as uncomfortable as that might be.

As a side note, Americans aren't the only ones having these debates. I went out to coffee last night with a fascinating group of Jordanians who are well-connected politically. Among them were a Muslim who works on development issues in the Royal Hashemite Court, an atheist who studies languages and foreign affairs, and a Jordanian Catholic. We got into a vibrant discussion about the relationship between Islam, culture, and politics, and whether or not Islam can be sufficiently reformed to bring Jordan more in line with the Western world. The debate wasn't so different from similar debates in the US. The atheist said no, Islam is intrinsically flawed and cannot be reformed. The Muslim and the Catholic believed the opposite; fresh, modern interpretations of Islam are possible.