Now that some time has passed since the shootings at Fort Hood has taken place; it's time to look back. For many emotions have been running on high since the terrorist attacks on 9/11. It's important that we review those emotions instead of blindly applying them to every untoward event that happens.
Major Nidal Malik Hasan joined the Army right after high school in 1988. He spent the next 15 years attending college and earning his medical degree in 2003. He was a devout practicing Muslim from a Palestinian family.
It appears from various reports that he was not happy with some of the aspects of the military. He wanted Muslims, if they asked, to be allowed to leave the military instead of fight against their fellow Muslims. He also had made several inquiries on getting out of the military, even asking if he could pay back the cost of his medical education. Of course he met a stone wall with those requests. Once the military gets a hold of you they hold you to your contract.
From several of the news reports I've read since that day Hasan had been harassed several times, by enlisted men, because of his religious beliefs. Nothing was done about that harassment. Having spent 10 years in the US Navy I find that extremely odd. Any disrespect, even a sloppy salute, shown to an officer by an enlisted is met with swift, and often severe, punishment. There was an incident, off base, where a soldier from Ft. Hood removed a bumper sticker and ‟keyed” Hasan's car.
Hasan dealt on a daily basis with soldiers that had just come back from either the Iraq Occupation or the various battles in Afghanistan. He had to listen to these soldiers talk about killing Muslims and all the racial slurs that come along with that. This daily anguish along with the harassment took it's toll.
From what I have read I do not believe the shootings were in any way a form of terrorism. It was a suicide, or specifically a Victim-Precipitated Homicide. He fully expected to die that day. Often a suicide is done so that the persons that caused the perceived harm are effected, emotionally or physically, by the suicide.
Terrorism is a political tool used by the very desperate to terrorize large populations. Hasan has not shown such a motive. Hasan did have contact with a ‟radical” Imam, but those emails were termed ‟innocuous” by an unnamed ‟counter-terrorism specialist.”
Hasan is a deeply disturbed man, not a terrorist. He was upset by his harassment and by what he saw going on around him and he snapped.
Dave lives in the mountains near Yosemite with his llamas and two cats. He has been active in local Secular Humanist groups for over 20 years.
QC Letters is an open forum for readers to express their views. To submit your letter, opinion or essay, email letters@qudosi.com. All submissions are protected by the First Amendment's Right to Free Speech. The Qudosi Chronicles is not responsible for the views held by readers and in the interest of free speech. The QC is open to posting submissions even if the arguments are disagreed with by the editors.
QC ROUNDTABLE |Is 21st Century Islam a Cultural Virus?
Based on an article written by Shireen Qudosi for Islamist Watch, Revoluion Islam questions whether Islam in the 21st century has become a type of cultural virus.
Is this a correct assessment or are we reaching too far?
At the 2004 Democrat National Convention a little know senatorial candidate from Illinois gave an electrifying speech. It was the kind of speech that brings Americans together. He talked about America as a "beacon of freedom." He referred to a grandfather who volunteered for service in the wake of Pearl Harbor. He even noted that those suffering economic difficulties "...don’t expect government to solve their problems." And even more compelling, "people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon," and "there is not a liberal America and a conservative America - there is the United States of America." What’s not to like?
Dressed up in the elegant formal wear of a post-partisan unifying figure, he filled a half empty American cup with hope. That hope was the fuel that ignited his rocket-like trajectory into the most powerful office on earth. His smile, his carefully chosen words, his complexion and his family fashioned an imposing and irresistibly romantic vision. No more racial politics. No more wasteful spending. Transparency in government. The world will again love us.
Well, time has stripped away the facade to reveal the man beneath the glamorous veneer. The President seems to be a pleasant, well mannered and relatively intelligent man of the left. The key is ‘the left’. His leftist instincts, relationships and past may have been obvious to those who paid attention but most did not pay close attention, did not care or were charmed into distraction. A carefully crafted image buttressed by the mainstream media, entertainment community and academia obscured the truth.
In one year that image has fallen victim to the reality of leftist governance via a gross miscalculation concerning his mandate. A combination of massive spending (debt and waste), old style trading billions for votes, opaque unintelligible legislation and ineffective kowtowing to despots and sheiks evidenced his tin ear to the center-right electorate. He governed from the left and now suffers as a consequence. We witnessed the result in the very bluest of blue states with the Massachusetts senatorial election of Scott Brown, a victory that would have been considered bad fiction just a few months ago.
Now we have an opportunity to demonstrate the substance of our message. Conservatives must not repeat the Obama mistakes. Most Americans are not ideologues. Indeed, they are generally center-right, but they are not far right in any pure sense. We must reconcile ourselves with the notion that defeat will follow demands of purity. A rejection of Obama policies is not synonymous with an embrace of the right.
Going into November Republicans must, in a unified manner, campaign for a reasonable and conservative health care reform package. Conservatives need to court independents, awakening Democrats, and find common ground with Republicans. Not one, but 4-5 short, understandable health reform measures must be put forward, to include: tort reform, interstate insurance, pre-existing condition protection and subsidies for the truly needy. Add renewal of the tax cuts due to expire, aggressive pursuit of Islamists, a drop in corporate income tax rates, an end to bailouts and a full court press to exploit our natural gas and oil resources, build nuclear plants as well as develop renewables.
Update a "contract with America" based on these proposals and stay on topic. 'Birther,' Marxist and Hitler rhetoric will only do harm. Reagan showed us how to travel on the victorious high ground.
We win with a center-right coalition and a plan other than "no." One more critical lesson. Senator Scott Brown is pleasant, personable and gracious. He showed classy respect for Senator Kennedy and his family in his acceptance speech. I detect very little anger in the man. That follows the Reagan model. If we are principled and delineate a clear and simple vision while displaying humility, devoid of anger, we will win on the issues.
RJC member Michael Hayutin describes himself as a father, San Diego Chapter leader of Act! for America, compelled to write as an expression of gratitude for the good fortune of being a citizen of this wonderful country.
QC Letters is an open forum for readers to express their views. To submit your letter, opinion or essay, email letters@qudosi.com. All submissions are protected by the First Amendment's Right to Free Speech. The Qudosi Chronicles is not responsible for the views held by readers and in the interest of free speech. The QC is open to posting submissions even if the arguments are disagreed with by the editors.
London-based Alexander Beiner has studied shamanism in South America and Africa and has contributed to several major publications on the topic, including Guardian UK, where this article was initially published. He is the author of Beyond the Basin and the host of Visionary Artists Podcast. He has a B.A. in English Literature from TrinityCollege, Dublin and can be reached at info@beyondthebasin.com
In the heavy, moist air of the Amazon rainforest, I sit waiting as an old shaman pours an ancient sacrament into a cup. The brew he has prepared is ayahuasca, a blend of two plants that provides a visionary experience of such sublime, boundary-dissolving beauty that it changes the way you see the world for ever. The shaman is participating in humanity's oldest form of spiritual practice. Not only does the use of visionary plants predate organised religion by tens of thousands of years, but many anthropologists believe that the presence of hallucinogens in the diet of our hunter-gatherer ancestors had a significant influence on the way our brains evolved. Millions of people, me included, use these substances for spiritual growth, metaphysical exploration and healing.
However, shamanism cannot be described as a religion or a faith. No faith is needed in a visionary experience; in these states, the individual receives direct personal experience of the divine, becoming unified with their own subconscious and with the rest of the universe. In a timeless moment you realise that God is not an angry patriarch somewhere in the ether – God is within. We are the arbiters of good and evil, entirely responsible for creating our own reality. This ecstatic realisation cannot be enshrined in dogma, requires no priests and does not ask one to have faith in the ancient ideas of other people. It is no surprise that hallucinogenic plants and chemicals are also known as "entheogens", a word derived from Greek that means "that which generates the god within".
Entheogens are illegal in most countries, but the same societies that condemn entheogens actively promote the use of alcohol, a drug that – according to a study by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health – may be responsible for 1 in 25 deaths worldwide. Plant medicines are incredibly safe by comparison and inspire peaceful and productive behaviour, which suggests that drug laws are based more on cultural conditioning and preconceptions than on reason.
The legality of alcohol and cigarettes indicates that the danger of a drug is not the primary factor in deciding its legality. What matters is that the drug does not interfere with the dominant cultural ideology of a society. Entheogens destroy an individual's cultural conditioning, freeing them from a fixed perceptual framework and encouraging them to think independently. Western cultures cannot incorporate experiences like this into their cultural framework because to do so would be to risk a serious transformation of culture itself. One only has to look at the effect that mass use of LSD had in undermining the moral assumptions of the US in the late 1960s to see why governments are terrified of these substances.
The tragedy of prohibition is that entheogens have the potential to be the most successful psychiatric medicines known to man. Fortunately, the medical community and some governments are beginning to recognise this, and there has been a resurgence in psychedelic research in the last five years. Organisations like the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in the US have studied the use of MDMA, psilocybin and other psychedelics for a range of illnesses and conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder and drug addiction.
As someone who uses psychedelics as a spiritual technology, I am not surprised by the very promising results of these studies. My first psychedelic experience completely changed my life and convinced me that the use of hallucinogenic plants is a human birthright. To find spiritual peace in this way and be told by your society that you were wrong for seeking it is saddening and frustrating. No one has the right to tell another person how they can experience the divine. Freedom of religion is an inalienable right, and until this right is extended to the oldest form of spiritual practice, our ability to explore who we truly are will be severely limited.
Supporting Theories:
David Lewis-Williams' research into the origins of paleolithic cave art, which he theorised were inspired by shamanic states, plant-induced or otherwise. Also argued by Graham Hancock in 'Supernatural'
Terence McKenna also theorises this in his book 'Food of the Gods', arguing that because psilocybin increases visual acuity in small doses, it was ideal for a hunter-gatherer society. In higher doses it causes arousal and in peak doses causes mystical experience. Evidence of early mushroom use can also be found in Minoan Goddess culture, as explored by Riane Eisler. Modern research into the viability of this can be found here: http://www.psychointegrator.com/?p=3
What happened was the before around 40,000 years ago, there is no evidence of cultural and artistic expression in the way we know it now. Then there was an as yet unexplained explosion of cultural and artistic awareness all around the world, as evidenced by cave art, jewelery etc.
As for the next point, most studies are conducted by MAPS and some are done in Israel and Switzerland as well.
QC Letters is an open forum for readers to express their views. To submit your letter, opinion or essay, email letters@qudosi.com. All submissions are protected by the First Amendment's Right to Free Speech. The Qudosi Chronicles is not responsible for the views held by readers and in the interest of free speech, the QC is open to posting submissions even if the arguments are disagreed with by the editors.
"...living together as Americans, different cultures uniting for one cause, to prosper in the only nation in the world with true freedoms for the individual, where dreams come true through hard work and fair play, where the only limitation is our imaginations and the dedication of our commitment.
Each one of us comes from "somewhere", ultimately. My grandparents came from Russia, but insisted upon assimilation. ENGLISH. Each of us has a culture, a language, a different background that will never be erased or compromised. Yet, for all of us to work together for the good of our country, there must be a cohesive element that we all buy into for the sake of the whole.
Here they are: our constitution, our Bill of Rights, and our English language. These are what makes us Americans, and the loosening of these bonds will eradicate the very glue that that our American forefathers fought and died for."
"Our founding fathers captured this tension in our national motto, E Pluribus Unum -- from the many, one. It's the great paradox of America: what we have in common is diversity. When the founders laid out America's first principles two hundred years ago, they took inspiration from the Iroquois Indian Confederacy. The Indian tribes modelled this principle of unity in diversity by retaining their individuality while at the same time belonging to a common network in the name of progress and mutual protection.
As we look to the 21st century, we are faced with the very same challenge: how do we recognize our fundamental unity without brushing aside the important differences that make us separate and distinct?"
Your thoughts: Is this authentic understanding of diversity or should multiculturalism come at the expense of an American identity? Does the fact that we host other cultures and religions with such emphasis define what it means to be American or are we in some way compromising ourselves?
Discussion
JERUSALEM DIVIDED
In the heavy, moist air of the Amazon rainforest, I sit waiting as an old shaman pours an ancient sacrament into a cup. The brew he has prepared is ayahuasca, a blend of two plants that provides a visionary experience of such sublime, boundary-dissolving beauty that it changes the way you see the world for ever. The shaman is participating in humanity's oldest form of spiritual practice. Not only does the use of visionary plants predate organised 