Jazak Allah khayr for the link. May Allah subhanahu wata ala forgive the imam for whatever sins and errors he may have committed, and protect us all from agents of shaytan (or the government) who foment and spread discord for the sake of taking advantage of it.

Since you took offense with the prayer I offered, “Stinger,” maybe you should practice what you preach. Selectively quoting from my prayer does not make your advice more sincere, either. My comment indicates that I do not know exactly what took place that day or in the days that preceded it.

If anyone were to “foment and spread discord for the sake of taking advantage of it,” I would seek refuge with Allah from that person. I believe that government “anti-terrorism” agents too often fall exactly into that category. And yet even that might well be justified if these agents were infiltrating actual terror cells that already existed and that planned to hurt innocent people.

But 8 years show that the FBI and other agents “successes” have come from planting operatives among innocent people, fishing for malcontents, literally urging people to do evil, encouraging them to scheme, providing them means they might not otherwise ever have had — in other words every single element of what a lay person would call entrapment, but in a fashion to skirt the law and build a case. And those are the cases where the government can point to a plan — one their own operative devised — foiled by “timely” intervention.

Yet there are also so many other cases such as the abduction and torture of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui or the case of Shaykh Dr. Ali Timimi — a case so absurd that no rational person would look at the circumstances of his conviction and conclude anything other than that the justice system had been manipulated to achieve a political “victory.”

Yes, I ask refuge with Allah from the tyranny of such agents.

And as for my patriotism, or as for my opinion of the rest of the government, since you do not know me at all, your comments reek of a rush to judgment, don’t they? I have worked for the government, I have been more than willing to fight to defend America, and unlike you — I do not hide my name.

Last night my family happened to watch coverage of the tragedy at Fort Hood from three sources. On local TV, because we live in Texas, the coverage included impact on families of the military. It included a statement by CAIR. It seemed fair in as much as the reporters and anchors avoided speculation.

FOX news was like watching a lynch mob looking for its pitchforks and white hoods. The host/anchor interviewed a former coworker of the accused shooter, and kept trying to get the man to say that the shooter was an extremist Muslim. There was no end to speculation. And no attempt to avoid a “rush a judgment.”

MSNBC’s host Rachel Maddow is no favorite of mine, but her coverage of the tragedy went a long way to improving my opinion. She did rattle off a list of other tragic shootings, but her list included the non-military mass shooting that took place decades ago in the town next to the base, and killings within the military regardless of the religions of the killers. And switching to MSNBC after FOX was like stepping out of Salem during a witch hunt.

I know some readers may have mixed feelings when it comes to Muslims who serve in the military, but I felt fearful for them that yesterday’s tragedy will be a burden or a smear on them. Of course no one in the military looks at other “fraticides” — deliberate killings of one soldier by another — and says, “we’d better watch all the baptists now, because that guy who killed his sergeant was one.” But Muslims in uniform already bear a heavy load of extra scrutiny and take all kinds of abuse — now that will likely increase.

It’s especially sad that pressure on Muslims in the military may increase, because as one analyst on MSNBC pointed out — the accused is a psychiatrist who used to treat soldiers every day. And it may have simply been stress from what he heard every day that pushed him over the edge.

Tellingly, the Fox News coverage of that particular tragedy also does not probe a link to religion. Snapping under stress was more than enough explanation then. The first three links are Fox News.