Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan or Major Nidal Hasan. One soldier is an American Muslim whose body lies in Arlington National Cemetery while the other is a Muslim jihadi pretending to be an Army doctor and used his position to attack unarmed soldiers and civilians inside Fort Hood, Texas.
Which one of these men is a true Muslim? I know what the Qur'an says. I know what centuries of Islamic history have taught us regarding the character of the jihadi. I know that there are "American" muslims who have complemented Major Hasan. I do not know of any Muslim who has used Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan as an exemplar of proper Islamic behavior. (Perhaps I am wrong and maybe there are Muslims who find Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan a heroic figure. If so, are they the exception and not the rule?) One thing is true, Major Nidal Hasan did not use Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan as a role model.
I feel that the arguments of Exposito and Powell citing the example of Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan are simply more of the mythology of the "moderate" Muslim. Somewhere, perhaps in the imagination of wishful thinkers everywhere, millions of these sympathetic people exist; waiting for their moment to leap from the bushes and cry out that all this murder and destruction is just the actions of a lone few who will be excommunicated from Mother Islam and punished by sharia law. Those in the west should not be holding their breath.
"There is nothing in the Qur'an that allows Muslims to do that!" is one of those empty phrases that rings as false as "the check is in the mail" and "we're from the government and we're here to help". There is nothing in the Qur'an that stops Muslims from doing that. And in fact, there is a lot in the Qur'an that encourages the murder, rape and enslavement of those who do not believe in this 7th century war ideology.
It is in our self-interest as a country to assume that Muslims will follow the example of both Mohammed and Major Hasan UNTIL Muslims can prove otherwise.
