‘Workplace Violence’ Update

On June 1, 2009, a convert to Islam named Carlos Leon Bledsoe (aka Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad) opened fired on a military recruiting office in Little Rock, Arkansas. Muhammad killed one soldier and wounded another. His guilt and motivation have never really been in dispute. “I wasn’t insane or post traumatic nor was I forced to do this Act,” Bledsoe wrote in a letter to the judge who presided over his case, according to the New York Times. The shooting, Bledsoe added, was “justified according to Islamic Laws and the Islamic Religion. Jihad—to fight those who wage war on Islam and Muslims.” Bledsoe, who spent more than a year studying Arabic in Yemen, also claimed that he was dispatched by Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Five months later, on November 5, 2009, Major Nidal Malik Hasan went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas. Hasan killed 13 of his fellow Americans, wounding dozens more. There was never any real doubt about Hasan’s motivation either. Hasan openly proclaimed his jihadist beliefs. He had business cards made that labeled him an “SoA”—or “Soldier of Allah.” And in a presentation to colleagues prior to the shooting, he justified violence against American soldiers. One of the slides in Hasan’s presentation offers the standard jihadist creed: “We love death more then [sic] you love life!” Hasan also had ties to AQAP. He was an email pen-pal with Anwar al-Awlaki, the AQAP cleric who sought to inspire jihadists in the West to commit acts of terrorism. (Awlaki was killed in a drone strike earlier this year.)

The ideology that binds Hasan, Bledsoe, and an unknown number of other extremists is easy to identify. In the decade that followed September 11, 2001, Americans grew familiar with terms such as “jihadist” and “Islamist terrorist.” Americans also realize that these terms do not brand all Muslims as terrorists, nor do they defame Islam.