Advocate for military’s Jews speaking up for Islam in wake of Fort Hood killings
Mikey Weinstein believes it is important to investigate reports of harassment faced by the alleged Fort Hood shooter as a Muslim in the military that could have contributed to his mental state.
WASHINGTON — Mikey Weinstein is probably best known for defending Jews from alleged bigotry and harassment in the U.S. military. In the past few days, however, he’s been raising questions about whether there’s an anti-Muslim bias in the service as well.
Weinstein, the founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, says Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s alleged killing of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood is inexcusable and reprehensible. But he also believes it is important to investigate reports of harassment that Hasan allegedly faced as a Muslim in the military — mistreatment that Weinstein says could have contributed to his mental state.
“There’s enough out there” to look into, Weinstein said. “I’m not excusing him, but did it affect him or was he just a maniac to begin with?”
Weinstein cited media reports quoting members of Hasan’s family saying that someone had put a diaper in his car and told him, “That’s your headdress,” and that a camel was drawn on his car with the words “Camel jockey, get out!”
Weinstein also provided a letter, with the name withheld, from a Muslim woman and wife of a member of the military in which she described how her best friend on the base, immediately after the shooting, told her that “Muslims shouldn’t even be allowed in the U.S. Army” and that she repeatedly heard things like “Go back to your country” and “F-ing Muslims” as she shopped at the base commissary.
Weinstein, who spent 10 years in the Air Force as a military attorney, or JAG, said he also doesn’t believe reports that Hasan’s colleagues hesitated to report his changes in behavior because of political correctness. In fact, he claimed, Hasan’s superiors would have been sympathetic to hearing such charges because of their strong Christian beliefs.
Weinstein would like to see military leaders make an “unadulterated clarion call” that Americans shouldn’t “paint all of Islam with a broad brush” and emphasize a “zero tolerance policy” of any religious harassment.
A 1977 graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, from where his two sons and daughter-in-law also have graduated, Weinstein argues that Jews, Muslims and most members of the military who are not an evangelical Christian face a hostile environment from what he says are “fundamentalist Christians” who dominate the armed forces and are constantly trying to proselytize others.
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Tags: Bias, Fort Hood, Harassment, Jews, military, Muslims
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Weinstein utterly fails in his attempt to pin the jihadi massacre of Christians on …yep, Christians. The reality is that he is backing the wrong horse. Hasan, according to a memo obtained by NPR, was actually written up for proselytizing patients. Here it is: http://www.npr.org/documents/2009/nov/hasanletter.pdf. You won’t hear it from Weinstein’s cover organization, MRFF, though, because it finds fault with Hasan, not Christians. Weinstein’s so blinded by hate for Christianity that he’s come to the conclusion that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Hence now he’s backing Islam. Weinstein. FAIL.