Among the 13 who were murdered last week was a pregnant servicewoman–she was only 21, but she had already served for three years, one of those years in Iraq. Nine of the other victims had children as well–nearly 20 children left without a father or mother by the attack.

In the aftermath of Hasan’s rampage we have learned that he was leaning more and more toward a  radical Islamic perspective and that his religious beliefs were increasingly at odds with his role as soldier. He had become obsessed with the idea that Muslim soldiers–there are very very few–would be called upon to “wage war on Islam.” 

Would Hasan have been equally obsessed had the wars the U.S. is currently waging not been in three Islamic nations–Iraq, Aghanistan and Pakistan? One imagines not. Terrorism seems increasingly if not solely the purview of religious fanatics. It does not seem to matter who the killer on the rampage is. Domestic terrorist Scott Roeder allegedly murdered Dr. George Tiller in a Kansas church back in May because, said Roeder, he was doing God’s work in protecting the unborn from Tiller, who performed late-term abortions.

Hasan was a religious fanatic–a fundamentalist adherent to what has come to be called “radical” Islam, which demands, ultimately, an end to modern/Western life and a return to a fifth century standard of Islamic law as established when the religion first began. That was a goal of the 9/11 attackers. And Hasan’s writings make clear it was a goal of his as well.

Not everyone who is deeply or devoutly religious is a budding terrorist, of course, whether Christian or Muslim. But there is a language of fanaticism that is as obvious as it is irrefutable. That language inevitably has this religious extremism at its core.

Why did Hasan do what he did? He was, it seems, a suicide bomber with semi-automatic weapons instead of a bomb. The assault, however, was no less deadly. 

A week after the shootings we know so much more–and so much less–about what happened. What holds the most clarity, however, is how deeply the military failed the dead and wounded in this attack. Hasan was assigned to Ft. Hood because it was determined that there he could do the least damage–that the number of other mental health professionals would provide ample choices for the soldiers and also possibly help for Hasan who had been reprimanded and brought up on charges–later dismissed–for behavior that was at best out of line and at worst utterly  and dangerously irrational.

Hasan is still alive–until the military court that tries him sentences him to death. But if the military had paid attention to a man whose psychotic relationship to his religion had begun to infuse and confuse every aspect of his working life, 13 people might still be alive, nearly 20 children not missing a parent and two dozen others not recovering from severe wounds and emotional trauma.

I am religious, but I don’t understand religious fanatacism. Faith in God is supposed to make us better people–more loving, more giving, more honest, more selfless. Hasan was known for his charitable nature at his mosque where he gave thousands to those in need. But in the end he lied to those around him, including his fellow soldiers and his Imam, he murdered 13 unarmed people in cold blood and he believed that God made it all acceptable. Indeed that God would have ordered him to do these heinous acts.

Yet every faith has a prohibition against murder. Where religion and terrorism have begun to intersect is in the belief that the ”thou shalt not kill” commandments are fungible–that we can choose “righteous” murder, as Hasan and Roeder and others have claimed to have done.

There is no such thing. There is life and there is death and there is the line some cross that ends in murder. No religion sanctions that. No religion accepts killing. 

Obama told the crowd at Ft. Hood that Hasan would be judged in this world and the next. But according to religious extremism, there is no judge of these terrorist actions. They are as accepted as a ritual sacrifice, like the Mass or Passover or Ramadan.

As long as there are those promoting this kind of religious fanaticism, there will be adherents to it and violence will be the result. Isn’t that what 9/11 was all about? Isn’t that what we are allegedly fighting to subdue in Afghanistan and Pakistan?   

Those like myself trying to make sense of this abuse of religion will always be left shaking our collective heads because the irrationality of these actions is so extreme, there is no path to clarity in it.

God is supposed to be love. Heaven is supposed to be a place of blissful healing reward from life’s suffering. But as defined by these religious fanatics, God is a murdering monster and heaven a convention of the worst sort of criminals–those who prey on the innocent and unsuspecting, like those gunned down at Ft. Hood or on the schoolbus, at the pizza parlor, during the wedding–all victims of suicide bombers.

There are no more answers in the Ft. Hood shootings. Now there is only punishment, a form of justice. For Hasan, certainly. But also, it is to be hoped, for all those who let this fanatic slip through to kill and maim. So that they remember next time that the language of fanaticism is unmistakeable. And that religion does not make terrorism okay.—VAB