Questions of identity and loyalty

By Irfan Husain Wednesday, 18 Nov, 2009

IMAGINE if a Hindu or Christian officer in the Pakistan army had shot dead 13 soldiers and wounded 40 in a lethal rampage. Think of the backlash in a country where our minorities are so badly treated at the best of times.

Fortunately, beyond heated speculation about his motive, and the odd threat, there has been no violence following Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s unprovoked attack on his fellow soldiers at the US army base in Fort Hood in Texas.

One line of investigation is the extent to which he acted out of an impulse to kill American soldiers. Among the many articles about this outrage posted on the internet was a presentation he gave to fellow doctors at an army facility a few months before the attack. While he was supposed to speak about a medical topic, he suddenly veered off into a long and detailed exposition about the duties of Muslim soldiers fighting for the American government.
Many of the audience were horrified at the extreme views Major Hasan expressed.
Investigators have also found an exchange of emails between the psychiatrist and an extremist preacher in Yemen. In addition, there have been some money transfers to Pakistan that have excited interest. Now, questions are being asked about why all these facts and views had not alerted the authorities to Hasan’s Islamist ideology.

Clearly, here is a case of divided loyalties. While many of us feel the tug of competing philosophies, we generally compromise and muddle along without resorting to such violent actions to resolve the contradictions of modern life.

Although being a doctor, he was not required to fight other Muslims, Hasan still felt uneasy at the prospect of serving in Afghanistan or Iraq. The fact is that he had other options to pulling the trigger: he could have resigned his commission, or refused to serve as a conscientious objector, and accepted the consequences. The fact that he decided to turn his gun on his fellow soldiers speaks of an extremist mindset, rather than a troubled mind.

In the 21st century, as unprecedented numbers move from their homeland to distant lands to seek a better life, questions of identity and loyalty are assuming greater urgency.
In Major Hasan’s case, he was clearly torn between his religious belief and his professional loyalty to the US army. The conflict arose when he was told he would soon be sent to serve in a country where the US was at war against Muslims.

Normally, people are not asked to make such stark choices when they migrate. A shopkeeper or a farm worker just gets on with his life, trying to save money for his family. But if they are Muslims, their loyalty to their host country is increasingly suspect in a post-9/11 world.
However, this inner conflict over loyalty and identity is not limited to Muslims: many American Jews have dual nationality, and soldiers from among them have received leave of absence to serve in the Israeli armed forces at times of need.

In the Yom Kippur war of 1973, many Jewish American pilots flew missions with the Israeli air force. Thus far, their loyalty has not been tested as there is no possibility of a war between Israel and America. However, there have been cases of American Jews spying for Israel.
The arrest and successful prosecution of a number of young Britons of Pakistani origin for terrorist plots and attacks has also raised questions about loyalty. Many in the UK, even very liberal and tolerant people, are appalled that these young men have turned against the country in which they were born, raised and educated. This is an extreme case of confusion over identity, and an angry rejection of the values of the host community.

In India, there was the recent furore over the fatwa issued by an Islamic group at Deoband forbidding Muslims from singing the national song, Vande Mataram. Usually sung at schools, the official song has been shorn of any Hindu content, and is a hymn in praise of Mother India. By issuing this fatwa, the Indian ulema have put their community in the difficult position of choosing to further isolate themselves from the mainstream, or risk being ostracised.

Indian Muslims in the previous generation were often viewed as a fifth column whose true loyalties lay with Pakistan. Most younger Muslims have put this sentiment behind them, and see themselves as Indians. And apart from occasional outbursts of communal violence, they are well integrated into the fabric of Indian society.

Generally speaking, dual nationality does not really pit one identity against another. At heart, the first generation of migrants retain strong links with their home country. These feelings of patriotism are diluted over the next generation, until total cultural assimilation takes place.
However, the real crisis arises when an individual’s loyalty to his adopted country is pitted against his most deeply held religious beliefs. Thus, when Muslims in the West are convinced by radicals that their adopted countries are acting to dominate and defeat fellow Muslims in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan, they are torn between these conflicting pulls.

This is not to excuse people like Major Hasan, but to try and explain why they act as they occasionally do. No religion, including Islam, teaches its followers to take up arms against innocent civilians to kill innocent civilians. And certainly, suicide is a sin in every religion.
In any case, there are several aspects to our identity, and religion is only one of them. But for some, it assumes overwhelming proportions, dominating and subsuming all others.
This is when such individuals can turn against their fellow beings in a nihilistic outburst of violence.

To rationalise this act, they cite their religious belief, as if their faith is superior to all others and somehow justifies killing innocent people.

Major Hasan’s rampage has raised deeply troubling questions, and no doubt his trial will ensure that this debate over identity and loyalty will resonate for a long time. No doubt, too, that many Muslims around the world condone and even admire his murderous attack.

But they need to consider how this single act has placed a cloud of suspicion over other Muslims serving in the American armed forces. They should also ponder over the ultimate futility of terrorism as a means of gaining political ends.

(Dawn)

In Major Hasan’s case, he was clearly torn between his religious belief and his professional loyalty to the US army. The conflict arose when he was told he would soon be sent to serve in a country where the US was at war against Muslims. —Reuters/File Photo