Zealotry in any form is dangerous

On November 5, 2009 at Fort Hood military base in Texas, thirteen people were killed and 30 injured in a massacre by Major Nidal Malik Hasan. News of the tragedy has dominated the US media, and the debates over the Major Hasan's motives are likely to consume all the political oxygen for the foreseeable future. The collateral societal damage is predictable: grieving and angry people will ascribe the tragedy to religion, challenging the patriotism of American Muslims serving our country because we have been engaged in a war on Islamist terrorism for most of this decade. Instead of jumping to "furious and intemperate conclusions" about why this occurred, I was struck by the vivid, almost inherent conflict in the fabric of the perpetrator.

What has been revealed to us is that this person is a man, an American, a soldier, a psychiatrist, and a Muslim. He was also scheduled to be dispatched to the war in Afghanistan. Certainly there are other important attributes of who he was at the moment he made the decision to use violence against fellow soldiers and fellow Americans. What perplexes me is how any single vector of one's being could so completely overpower the integrity of the entire person so that violence of this magnitude results. Call it radical fanaticism or extreme zealotry, my tenet is that any form of this mindset is unjustified and tragically dangerous.

Stepping back from the Fort Hood events, I ask myself a broader question: how might each of us explore ourselves, our own personal philosophies, beliefs and principles, to determine if we might be motivated to act with a singular purpose? I'm not suggesting confining the examination to violent outcomes, but any unthinking, unreasoned one without considering the consequences. Sadly, one doesn't have to look far to see how we treat one another when motivated by prejudice, hatred or greed. What if instead we treated each other with respect, integrity and generosity? Can we agree to replace fear with understanding?

Returning to the tragedy at hand, I offer the BBC link as an access way for more editorial from the global press:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8347361.stm