On Friday morning, Minhaj Hasan, editor-in-chief of The Muslim Link in College Park, Md., checked local headlines on the shooting at Ft. Hood, Texas, that had taken the lives of 13. They rang all too familiar.
A Washington Times’ headline read: “Army: Suspect Said ‘Allahu Akbar!’ Before Shooting.” Meanwhile, a Washington Post ran a story ran with the headline: “Suspect, Devout Muslim from Va., Wanted Army Discharge, Aunt Said.” The story started out talking about how the suspect prayed every day at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring — something that isn’t all that unusual given that “observant Muslims pray five times a day,” said Minhaj Hasan (no relation to Nidal).
Minhaj Hasan couldn’t help asking the same question that always comes to mind when, as he puts it, “the religion gets indicted when a Muslim commits a crime.”:
If Nidal Hasan had been Christian, or even if he had yelled something with the word “God” or “Jesus” as he gunned fellow soldiers down, would his religion — or his church attendance — dominate headlines?
I don’t recall the religious identities or practices of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, Columbine perpetrators Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, or Holocaust Memorial Museum shooter James W. von Brunn, ever being discussed by the news media. Instead, each of these individuals was connected to specific circumstances or extreme statements — from being bullied in school to posting anti-Semitic rantings on the Internet.
And so I wonder why Nidal Hasan’s role as an Army psychiatrist — the accounts that he was disturbed by the severe physical and emotional problems of returning Iraq and Afghanistan vets he encountered in his job — seem to have taken second place to his religion.
It was Psychology Today that focused on “vicarious traumatization,” a form of PTSD often suffered by medical professionals, as well as the impact of Nidal Hasan facing ridicule for his Muslim American identity (versus his religious beliefs themselves), as possible factors. Emphasis on the word “possible.”
During a press conference today, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, said base officials are not profiling for religion in this case. Specifically, The New York Times reported, Cone said, ‘What we’re looking for is people with personal problems, not at all related to their religion — not at all.” In an interview yesterday on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army’s chief of staff, said that “What happened at Ft. Hood is a tragedy, and I believe it would be a greater tragedy if diversity became a casualty here,” the Times reported.
The truth is, we don’t know, and we may never know, exactly what drove this senseless act. But in the absence of factual explanations, we all — journalists especially — are driven to speculate. When the perpetrator has, as CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and so many others put it, “an unusual name,” we are quick to seek reasons to label him or her “not like us.”
When Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 students and faculty members at Virginia Tech in 2007, initial accounts used the Asian last-name-first configuration — Cho Seung-Hui — and described him as a “South Korean national.” News media quoted classmates telling credible-sounding stories of how Cho had trouble speaking English and had a thick Korean accent.
The 23-year-old Cho was a U.S. citizen, and had been in the United States since he was 8 years old. Anyone who has seen his chilling video manifesto knows he spoke unaccented, fluent English. He rarely spoke, and his recorded speech was odd, because of a condition called selective mutism.
But as with the case of Nidal Hasan, it was tempting — necessary, even — for bystanders and journalists alike to characterize him as Not Like Us.
Nidal Hasan’s Muslim identity may fit into the broader context of violence in the name of Islam, said Keith Woods, dean of faculty at The Poynter Institute and an expert on diversity and coverage of race relations. “But one does not equal the other. How then, can journalists justify putting the word ‘Muslim’ ahead of all else in describing him?”
“Race and ethnicity never truly describe,” Woods said. “Connecting faith, race or ethnicity to motive without proof is reckless journalism.”
