I apologize if this has already been mentioned. I just wanted to highlight what I feel to be the most offensive article I have read all day while on jury duty (more like waiting around all day to be called for jury duty so far). It’s entitled: "Going Muslim: America After Fort Hood". You pretty much get the jist of where the article is going by the first few paragraphs.
Ed. Note: this was an opinion piece, but still Forbes should have higher standards for publication in my opinion.
"Going postal" is a piquant American phrase that describes the phenomenon of violent rage in which a worker--archetypically a postal worker--"snaps" and guns down his colleagues.
As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub--disconcertingly--"Going Muslim." This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American--a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood--discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.
The difference between "going postal," in the conventional sense, and "going Muslim," in the sense that I suggest, is that there would not necessarily be a psychological "snapping" point in the case of the imminently violent Muslim; instead, there could be a calculated discarding of camouflage--the camouflage of integration--in an act of revelatory catharsis. In spite of suggestions by some who know him that he had a history of "harassment" as a Muslim in the army, Maj. Hasan did not "snap" in the "postal" manner. He gave away his possessions on the morning of his day of murder. He even gave away--to a neighbor--a packet of frozen broccoli that he did not wish to see go to waste, even as he mapped in his mind the laying waste of lives at Fort Hood. His was a meticulous, even punctilious "departure."
Funny I don’t remember Forbes coining "Going Christian" after the murder of Dr. Tiller.
It’s difficult to decide what’s the most insidious assertion this article raises. Is it the suggestion that Muslims are more likely to disguise their angst than the typical disgruntled postal worker without a single shred of evidence? Or perhaps it’s the implicit suggestion that Muslims can never be trusted because of their aforementioned ability to camouflage. In either case, this article is a perfect example of the anti-Muslim xenophobia sweeping the nation and the media in the wake of Fort Hood. It’s certainly an alarming trend from this commentor’s vantage point.
The article gets worse as it drags on.
Muslims are the most difficult "incomers" in the ongoing integration challenge, which America has always handled with pride--and a kind of swagger. We're the salad bowl/melting pot. Drive through Queens to see how we do this.
And on...
America differentiates itself on integration from Western European countries, which are far more cringing and guilt-driven in their approach. But can the American swagger persist if many Americans come genuinely to view Muslims as Fifth Columnists? The integration compact depends on a broad trust that the immigrant's desire to be American can happily co-exist with his other forms of racial/cultural/religious identity. Once that trust doesn't exist, America faces a problem in need of urgent resolution.
Have we reached that point of breakdown in trust? Not yet, I think, and not by some distance; but a few more murderous incidents of the Maj. Hasan variety--a few more shouts of "Allahu Akbar" as Americans are shot dead--will push many Americans on to a dangerous cusp.
Apparently, rather than an isolated act of violence by a Muslim who became enamored with the ideology of terror (for whatever reason, we still aren't exactly sure why), this is an act which threatens to undue the whole fabric of our multicultural society.
Well actually I might agree with that last point. But it won't be because of the actions of Mr. Hasan, it will be because of the backlash which appears to be in full swing right now.
I look forward to reading the comments as long as my jury duty schedule will permit.