Monday, November 09, 2009

'Going Muslim?'

Tunku Varadarajan has a neat phrase for the US Army Major, Nidal Hasan, who slaughtered his fellow soldiers-'Going Muslim.'

This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American--a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood--discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think you are going a bit overboard by blaming this incident on an religion

socal said...

Hardly so. If you read the article before jumping to any conclusion, you will notice, it is very nuanced and does make a clear distinction between Muslims who lead normal lives and the cases like that of Major Nidal. I only wish to draw attention to what I believe is a sophisticated case made to identify the phenomenon by the esteemed Stern B-school Professor.

Gandaragolaka said...

Going Muslim is not a term coined by varadarajan.

It is being used by a minority of politically incorrect and truthful US bloggers.

The term itself is a take on an earlier term "going postal" which is well described in Wikipedia.

surrey said...

Don't go to the religion...