C O L U M N S

A few days ago, Major Nidal Malik Hasan went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood, a US army base in Texas, leaving 13 dead and 28 wounded. Immediately after the media broadcast Hasan’s name, American Muslims braced themselves for a backlash, similar to the witch-hunts they endured in the months after 9/11.

In the coming days, the Obama administration and the US military will investigate the major’s individual motivations for opening fire on his colleagues. But what needs to be addressed more urgently is the widespread feeling of insecurity that plagues American Muslims.

Acknowledging the Muslim community’s anxieties, US President Barack Obama called for calm responses to Fort Hood and urged Americans not to jump to conclusions; implicitly, he was asking his countrymen not to assume that Hasan’s violent outburst was religiously motivated. Previously, too, Obama has stepped up on behalf of American Muslims: in his historic Cairo speech addressing the Muslim world, he acknowledged that Muslims have enriched the US by serving in the military and government, contributing to the economy, defending civil rights and winning Nobel Prizes.

Despite Obama’s calls for restraint, a narrative that links Hasan’s faith to his violent actions quickly emerged. The day after the attack, an article in The New York Times described the mosque where Hasan began attending prayers two months ago. CCTV footage showing the major in a prayer cap hours before the shooting has been widely circulated. The disclosure by Lt-Gen Robert Cone, the commander at Fort Hood, that Hasan shouted ‘Allahu Akbar’ before opening fire has made headlines. And right-wing websites have been playing up the fact that Hasan distributed copies of the Quran before the attack.

The emphasis on Hasan’s Islamic behaviour leading up to the attack has overshadowed other possible explanations. These include his imminent deployment to Afghanistan; his complaints about being harassed for his religious and ethnic background; and his sustained exposure to soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

As Hasan’s faith overshadowed other factors, the American public aired its suspicions about the local Muslim community. US representative Michael McCaul from Texas described the attack as an ‘act of terror’. The right-wing news website WorldNetDaily alleged that Hasan was ‘the tip of a jihadist Fifth Column operating within the ranks of the US military’.

The frenzy reached such heights that the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council urged Muslims to reach out to law-enforcement agencies to ensure the safety of their homes, mosques, and businesses.

Reactions to Fort Hood serve as a reminder that the US mainstream still believes that Islam is incompatible with what America stands for. Eight years after 9/11, six in 10 Americans acknowledge that Muslims face more discrimination than other religious and ethnic groups, according to a September 2009 Pew poll. In fact, only gays and lesbians are said to face more discrimination than Muslims.

There are several reasons for this unrelenting distrust. Arrests of Muslims charged with plotting terror attacks have made Americans nervous about the ‘threat within.’ In September, Najibullah Zazi, originally from Afghanistan, was apprehended in Aurora, a small town in Colorado, with a bomb recipe on his laptop and a trip to Pakistan for training in terrorist camps on his record. After Zazi’s arrest, Aurora’s mayor Ed Tauer said, ‘the lesson is that even if you don’t see yourself as one of those high-visibility targets, you can wake up to find a terrorist down the block.’

The panic at having a ‘terrorist down the block’ is compounded by a fear of Muslims snatching unprecedented political power in the US. According to a Pew poll, up to 12 per cent of Americans still believe that their president is a Muslim. This misperception has been fuelled by the ongoing ‘birther’ movement, an initiative spearheaded by right-wing theorists who contest that Obama was not born in the US, and is therefore not eligible to hold the office of president.

Muslims in the US military are trusted even less than their civilian counterparts. The fact that the US is currently at war in two Muslim countries leads many in the armed forces to believe that the loyalties of American Muslims must be divided between their nation and faith. Consequently, allegations about Islamic extremists infiltrating the US military are increasingly common.

Interestingly, misgivings about Muslims in the US military are a legacy of the first Gulf War. At the time, Saudi clerics were invited to lecture troops about Islam, and up to 3,000 soldiers are said to have converted, resulting in the biggest surge of Muslims in the armed forces. Since then, military higher-ups have been anxious about foreign influence over US troops.

Sadly, such concerns undermine the service of over 20,000 Muslims currently in the US military. Hours after the Fort Hood shooting, conservative commentators on Fox News were calling for special debriefings and screenings of Muslim soldiers.

Unfortunately, no matter what the outcome of investigations, Hasan’s shooting spree will amplify concerns about American Muslims. Since this community is the first point of contact between the US and the Muslim world — after all, Muslim immigrants maintain ties to their home countries — the US government should prioritise strengthening relations between Muslims and the communities they inhabit across America.

As a start, the Obama administration can launch public awareness campaigns that address the widely held belief that Islam is alien to ‘Americanness.’ After all, a March 2009 Gallup poll showed that the American Muslim community is the most racially diverse religious group in the US. If that spirit of inclusiveness is not American, I’m not sure what is.