Mosque Leader: 'There's Something Wrong With You'

Hasan struggled with how to counsel soldiers in Iraq, Afghanistan
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Nov 7, 2009 3:16 PM CST
Mosque Leader: 'There's Something Wrong With You'
Flowers are left outside the entrance of Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas, Saturday.   (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

The Army psychiatrist accused of the Fort Hood shooting spree was so conflicted over what to tell fellow soldiers about fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan that a local Islamic leader was deeply troubled by it. The co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen said Major Nidal Malik Hasan's persistent questioning prompted him to recommend that the mosque reject Hasan's request to become a lay Muslim leader at the Army post.

Hasan never expressed anger toward the Army, said Osman Danquah, but during the second of two conversations over the summer, Hasan seemed almost incoherent. "What if a person gets in and feels that it's just not right?" Danquah recalled Hasan asking him. "I told him, `There's something wrong with you.'" Meanwhile, a former classmate in a public health program says Hasan equated the US war on terror to a war on Islam. "In retrospect, I'm not surprised he did it. I had real questions about what his priorities were, what his beliefs were." (More Fort Hood shooting stories.)

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