Saturday, 07 Nov, 2009
SILVER SPRING (Maryland), Nov 6: Islam is ‘not responsible’ for the bloodbath at an army base in Texas where Muslim-American army Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly gunned down 13 people, the prayer leader at the mosque where the officer regularly worshipped said on Friday.
“We offer our condolences and prayers to the families that have a person who died,” said Imam Mohammed Abdullahi over loud-speakers that carried the weekly Muslim prayer to several hundred worshippers gathered at the mosque.
“Islam is not responsible,” he stressed.
Many of the worshippers who had come to the mosque in this suburb of Washington knew Hasan or had seen him at Friday prayer, which he attended regularly when he lived in the Washington area.
To them, the news that he had allegedly opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon and a handgun in a crowded troop processing centre on the sprawling Fort Hood base in Texas, mowing down 13 people and wounding 30 others, came as a shock.
“Islam doesn’t command anybody to do something like that,” said Shaikh Khamis, who has prayed at the Silver Spring Muslim Community Centre mosque for 11 years.
“It’s very sad, a big tragedy for everybody,” said another worshipper, Ibrahim Gayi.
“We pray for everybody, all Americans, not only Muslims,” he said.
Asif Qadri, head of the medical clinic at the Muslim Community Centre, described Hasan, an army major, as “very gentlemanly.
“He was sociable, likeable. We had regular, casual conversation — he didn’t manifest any particular view either way,” Qadri said.
“When I saw him on television, I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he added.
It was “unbelievable”, said Qadri, that the man who news reports said went on a deadly rampage on Thursday was the soft-spoken psychiatrist who prayed at the mosque nearly every week.—AFP
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/international/islam-not-responsible-for-shooting%2C-says-us-imam-719
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12:07 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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