Excerpt:
Phoenix physician Zuhdi Jasser was particularly stung by the Fort Hood massacre. Like him, Maj. Nidal Malik Hassan is a Muslim, a son of Middle Eastern immigrants, a doctor and a military man. But there's a key difference: Hasan appears to have succumbed to the radical Islamist ideology that Jasser spends his time as Muslim activist fighting. Jasser is shunned by mainstream U.S. Muslim organizations, in part because he insists that they're really cover organizations for the same kind of political Islam that poisoned Hasan's mind. Jasser spoke by phone last week to Rod Dreher.
As a Muslim and a Navy veteran, what lessons do you think the Fort Hood massacre teaches us?
Some have incorrectly tried to connect this to Columbine and other random shootings. How many events and terrorist incidents like this do we need before we realize that there's a common ideological threat? Over and over, we see that the common thread is political Islam.
It's an ideology that brings Muslims down a slippery slope. That slippery slope can claim a gentleman that, horrifically, reminds me of my path. My family came from Syria. I was taught about the values of America and decided I wanted to join the military. I went to medical school on a military scholarship. This gentleman, similarly, was on a military scholarship. He wanted to serve his country as a physician.
Ultimately, though, what infected his mind was a violent form of political Islam. The question is: why was he susceptible to this, but I wasn't?