The Muslim Charles Whitman shouted the takbir "God is Great" as he went about his shooting spree at Fort Hood, but he wasn't a "terrorist" in the conventional sense. He had a long history of mental instability, like his precursor Whitman.
Jamie Tarabay on American Muslim's reactions.
Reflecting on the shootings, the emotion I felt was sadness, for the victims and for the recent history of world Muslims. Russia leveled Muslim Chechnya in the 90s. Bosnian Serbs ethnically cleansed the Muslim residents of Bosnia, resulting in the worst massacre in Europe since World War II. In Darfur, Arab Muslims committed genocide against black Muslims. Growing powerhouse China continues to dominate and oppresses the Muslim Uygurs in the western Xinjiang region. Israel invades Lebanon again, blockades and commits war crimes in Gaza and refuses to allow a Palestinian state to form in the West Bank. Mahmoud Abbas is about to resign and the Palestinian Authority is on the brink of collapse.
The "antiwar" left is coldly callous about all of this, except America's client Israel and Iraq and Afghanistan. (Ostensibly because we pay taxes and participate in elections here and not in those other countries, not to mention the fact the US is still the most powerful country economically and militarily.) And yet because of America and the West, Saddam Hussein and the hard core religious Taliban can no longer massacre fellow Muslims on a regular basis.
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* The "antiwar" right - antigovernment, nativist and isolationist - like those at antiwar.com are basically racist and weirdly obsessed with Jews and neocons.
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