Muslim Groups Condemn Hasan, Rush to Judgment

With hate mail already pouring in, Muslim American groups rushed to condemn the Fort Hood shooter today as a criminal who doesn’t represent Islam. “You wouldn't take a Christian or a Jewish soldier who did something like this and look at other Christians and Jews and say, 'Can we trust them?'” the executive director of the Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council said of the reaction to Nidal Malik Hasan. “It’s ludicrous.”

An imam from a large Northern Virginia mosque announced that he’d be collecting donations for the shooting victims, and decried religious violence in general. “You do this, you go to hell,” he said. “You don’t go paradise.” Groups around the country have been reporting a backlash since the shooting; the Michigan branch of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee got an e-mail reading, “We know where you are, you have nowhere to hide.” (More hate mail stories.)