Fort Hood Shooter Wanted Conscientious Objector Status For Muslims

This follows closely a recent report that indicated that Hasan contacted an Islamist known to be sympathetic to Al Qaeda. The new reports and the original story have U.S. Muslims bracing for reprisals.

In a report last night on CNN's Nancy Grace, one of the survivors of the Fort Hood attack re-iterated information we had heard previously. It was once again reported that Major Nidal Malik Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar" prior to his attack.

The newly uncovered incident occurred in June of 2007. Hasan was then a senior-year psychiatric resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He was supposed to give a presentation on a medical topic of his choosing, as one of the final exercises of his residency.

The presentation, given to his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members, was instead a rambling lecture on Islam, suicide bombers and possible threats the military might face in the future from U.S. service personnel who were also Muslims.

The Washington Post obtained a copy of the presentation. In it, Hasan emphasized that "It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims."

The title of Hasan's PowerPoint presentation, consisting of 50 PPT slides, was "The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military." One of the slides stated the objective of the presentation was to identify "what the Koran inculcates in the minds of Muslims and the potential implications this may have for the U.S. military."

The concluding slide said: "Recommendation: Department of Defense should allow Muslims [sic] Soldiers the option of being released as 'Conscientious objectors' to increase troop morale and decrease adverse events."

In effect, we have seen, more than two years later, the adverse event that Hasan was writing about. Hasan spent six years at Walter Reed Army Hospital as an intern, resident and fellow beginning in 2003. He was transferred to Fort Hood as a psychiatrist in July of this year; he was to be deployed soon for Afghanistan. Numerous reports indicate that Hasan was extremely upset about his deployment.