Mark Durie gives an analysis of accused Fort Hood killer Major Nidal M. Hasan’s own powerpoint presentation on Islam. The presentation is itself worth a look, as is Mark Durie’s comment on its islamic teaching. The slides are true to mainline (Sunni) Islam and Durie comments on the slides as demonstrating the emphasis given by Major Hasan to the enormous dilemma for a Muslim to kill another Muslim:

What the US military has to accept is that some Muslims in the armed forces could be poor soldiers in wars against Muslims.  In a sense what Major Hasan was arguing was that Muslim soldiers can only be relied upon to kill non-Muslims.

Underlying this world view, fed by the streams of centuries of Islamic theology, is the distinction that a Muslim’s blood is sacrosanct, but an infidel’s blood is not. 

The US military is between a rock and a hard place.  It could  a) choose to discriminate and refuse to recruit  Muslims, b) not use Muslims against Muslim enemies, or  c) obtain a rock-solid fatwa declaring that the Muslim enemies of the US are not true Muslims at all, so they can lawfully be killed.

Mark Durie’s full article on Major Nidal M. Hasan.  Link to Major Hasan’s powerpoint presentation on ‘The Koranic World View as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military’.

Mark Durie’s  analysis is supported by Sheikh Awlaki the former imam at a Virginia mosque that Hasan attended who praised Hasan as a ‘hero’ and said:

”He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people,” Sheikh Awlaki wrote. ”The only way a Muslim could be Islamically justified serving as a soldier in the US Army is if his intention is to follow the footsteps of men like Nidal.”

See, Killer’s emails to cleric ignored.