Opposed America's military ventures in Afhganistan and Iraq, objecting to U.S. forces killing Muslims on foreign soil
On November 5, 2009 Hasan went on a shooting rampage inside the U.S. Army post at Fort Hood, Texas -- killing 13 people and wounding at least 31 others. He shouted "Allahu Akbar!" ("God is Great!") while he was shooting.
Born in Virginia in 1970, Nidal Malik Hasan attended Barstow Community College (in California) and Virginia Western Community College in the city of Roanoke. He then transferred to Virginia Tech University, where, according to military records, he served in the ROTC as an undergraduate and earned a bachelor's degree in biochemistry in 1997. (School officials, however, report that Hasan graduated in 1995 and that there are no records of his having served in ROTC.)
After leaving Virginia Tech, Hasan went on to obtain a doctorate in psychiatry from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in 2001. Early in his postgraduate work, he was put on probation and was disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues.
Hasan, who served eight years as an enlisted soldier in the U.S. Army, worked as a staff psychiatrist at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, DC from 2003 to 2009. During that period, he was known to be a very devout member of the Muslim Community Center (MCC) in Silver Spring, Maryland, where he made daily visits. On a form he filled out at the MCC, the Virginia-born Hasan identified his nationality not as "American" but as "Palestinian." A mosque official was puzzled by that, saying: "I don't know why he listed Palestinian. He was not born in Palestine."
In April 2008 Hasan earned the rank of Major in the U.S. Army. In early 2009 he was transferred to Fort Hood, a U.S. Army post located outside of Killeen, Texas.
Hasan (a Muslim convert) opposed America's military ventures in Afhganistan and Iraq, objecting to U.S. forces killing Muslims on foreign soil. Sometime in 2009, Hasan learned that he himself would be deployed either to Afghanistan or Iraq at the end of the year, and he told colleagues repeatedly that he did not want to go. According to one former colleague, Retired Army Col. Terry Lee, Hasan was hopeful that President Barack Obama would pull U.S. troops out of the Middle East entirely. Lee further reported that Hasan had frequently argued with other military personnel who supported the wars.
On May 20, 2009, a man giving his name as "NidalHasan" posted this defense of suicide bombing on the Internet (all spelling and grammar appears as it did in the original):
"There was a grenade thrown amongs a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that "IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE" and Allah (SWT) knows best."
On November 5, 2009 Hasan, armed with two handguns, went on a shooting rampage inside Fort Hood - killing 13 people and wounding at least 31 others. According to eyewitnesses, he shouted "Allahu Akbar!" ("God is Great!") while he was shooting.
In the aftermath of the incident (which ended when Hasan himself was shot and wounded by a police officer), Col. Terry Lee, a former colleague of Hasan, recalled that the gunman had previously made statements to the effect of: "Muslims have the right to rise up against the U.S. military," and "Muslims have a right to stand up against the aggressors." Lee also remembered an occasion when Hasan had spoken favorably about people who "strap bombs on themselves and go into Times Square."
Hasan was "a devout Muslim" who embraced the mandates of Islamic Law, or Shariah, which instructs the faithful to wage jihad, or holy war, against unbelievers.
While stationed in Washington, Hasan had attended a Fairfax County, Virginia mosque (Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center) whose pro-jihad Imam ministered to two of the 9/11 hijackers.
Hasan repeatedly tried to convince his psychiatric patients to convert to Islam, causing many of them to complain about his proselytizing.
In late 2008, while working towards a graduate degree at the military's health sciences university, Hasan gave a Power Point presentation titled "Why the War on Terror is a War on Islam."
According to the London Telegraph, Hasan "told classmates [in graduate school] that Islamic law trumped the U.S. Constitution."
Immediately before the deadly shootings of November 2009, Hasan gave away his possessions, telling one recipient: "I am going away." This act of charity was consistent with Shariah's instructions to aspiring shaheeds (martyrs).
The night before the shootings, Hasan told a friend that he might leave the military because, "In the Koran, you're not supposed to have alliances with Jews or Christian or others, and if you are killed in the military fighting against Muslims, you will go to hell."
Hasan once gave a medical lecture that called for Muslims to behead infidels and to pour burning oil down the throats of the latter.
Hasan's business cards featured the jihadist abbreviation "SOA," for "Soldier of Allah."
Hasan had contacted several jihadist websites and had been exchanging e-mails with a radical Islamic cleric in Yemen.
Portions of this profile are adapted from the article, "Jihad at Fort Hood," written by By Robert Spencer and published by Front Page Magazine on November 6, 2009.
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