A collective “oh crap” emitted from the  the Arab-American and Muslim communities yesterday after the lone shooter at the Fort Hood massacre was identified as Major Nidal Malik Hasan.  I’d like to say stuff like “don’t judge the whole community by this one man,” but I can’t help but feel angry at Hasan myself. And so do many Arabs and Muslims for that matter. What he did was inexcusable. His reluctance to go to war could have easily and peacefully been solved had he simply gone AWOL. That one simple act may have ruined his military career (a career he wanted out of anyway) but would have made him a hero of sorts to the anti-war community in this country, and may have made him a martyr in the Muslim community. His people would have respected him. But Hasan chose a different path. A path all to familiar in the Middle East. He didn’t want to NOT go to war, he wanted revenge. Was it justified? Absolutely not. Was it understandable? Maybe. A Muslim man with an identity crisis working as a psychiatrist with PTSD patients and with soldiers blowing up and killing people in the Middle East who has suddenly been shipped off to war might have a few mental health issues to deal with. And soldiers overseas have acted out similar massacres while in combat though not to the degree that Hasan took it. I have to ask, why wasn’t he screened before it got to this point? His comments and actions worried superiors yet he was allowed to not only continue his internships at hospitals (where he received counseling and was given poor marks and where fellow doctors raised concern about his mental status), but was allowed to counsel fellow soldiers and participate in a mission overseas (a mission he said he didn’t want to participate in). I hate what this monster did. But I fear what it’ll mean for the Muslim community, for myMuslim husband and my family and friends. Already an Irving mosque received a death threat. Muslim organizations have condemned the act, but it’s too little too late. The seeds of hate have already been sown. I don’t know what it will take  to fix this. Muslims and Arabs can talk about peace all they want, they can go about the same 9-5 jobs like everyone else, but all it takes is one psychopath with a gun or a car bomb or a plane and suddenly all Muslims are little Johnny Jihads waiting to blow up McDonald’s. What I hope can come out of this are frank discussions within mosques, within homes, within Arab-American and Muslim communities about the hijacking of faith, about how nothing gets solved with car bombs and about how maybe Muslims shouldn’t just say “That was one bad man” but rather, “Why are there bad men allowed to fester and spread hate in our community, our mosques, and what are we going to do about it?”