The United States is regrettably home to too many shoting: Columbine, Virginia Tech, Waco, and the same week that the Ft. Hood shoting took place an unemployed man in Florida killed an office worker at the firm that previously fired him. Abortion killings are also common in the United States. Christian fundamentalist have in the past acted out of religious fervor and killed abortion doctors along with bombing Planned Parenthood offices. Working in the abortion profession is such a dangerous choice that in America abortion doctors when interviewed are rarely identified and the addresses of abortion clinics are not given.

For years, the number 1 domestic terrorist organization in the United States was the Jewish Defense League, a militant and paranoid organization under the slogan of “Never Again.” During the 1980s, the JDL carried out several terrorist attacks against Soviet Union establishments in the United States in an effort to force the Kremlin to allow Jewish immigration into Israel, and Arab-Americans have been the target of the JDL. A Palestinian-American Alex Odeh was killed in the late 1970s by JDL terrorists and Lebanese-American Darrell Issa was targetted by JDL rabbis in 2000. Issa’s attemped office bombing was foiled by the F.B.I.

In light of these events, no prominent American commentator has referred to such acts of violence and blatant terrorism as “Christian” or “Jewish terrorism.” And imagine the outcry if one were to do so!

But the actions of a gunman who happens to be a Muslim is now being described by several pundits as “Islamic terrorism.” Why? They claim that Hasan is different because he used Islam to justify his actions. But so do Christian abortion shotters and JDL terrorists.

But only when it comes to Islam is the word terrorism combined with the faith so as to imply as if there is some peculiar form of violence, a peculiar form of terrorism different from all other acts of terrorism. This is nothing more than sheer bigotry and a continuation of Western hostility toward Islam that always makes Muslims the feared “Other”.

Muslim-Americans have nothing to explain here, they have nothing to apologize and do not need to take responsibility for the deranged extremism and violence of Hasan:

“I don’t understand why the Muslim-American community has to take responsibility for him,” said Ingrid Mattson, the president of the Islamic Society of North America. “The Army has had at least as much time and opportunity to form and shape this person as the Muslim community.”

Point well made. Why should the Muslim community be smeared as if it gave birth to Hasan. His relationship with the army was very influential and it is the army that should have noted his extremism and now-revealed connections to terrorism, and booted this guy along time ago. It is not the Muslim-American community that needs to explain its refusal to spot extremists in its midst, but the U.S. army which does Muslims no favor by allowing those extreme few to continue serving under the maxim of political correctness.