THE WAY THE MUSLIMS HANDLE IT - AT 12:17 P.M. ET:  Melik Kaylan is originally from Britain, and writes for The Wall Street Journal and Forbes.  It was my pleasure to chat with him recently.

Here, reflecting on Fort Hood in his Forbes column, he gives us a sharp insight on the way the armies of Muslim nations handle religious extremism in their own ranks.  This is original reporting at its best: 

Some commentators place Major Nidal Hassan's outrage at Fort Hood in the continuum of nonreligious psychotic mass killings like those at Columbine and Virginia Tech. Others liken it to Islamist terror outrages such as suicide and car bombings. Those on the left seem to favor the former view, while those on the right prefer the latter.

Debate like that is not a favored form in the Muslim nations:

In most Muslim countries, the military would not dither over the issue. In Turkey, for example, the armed forces impose a strictly secular ethos on their personnel. Over the years, scores of stealthy Islamists have been identified and unceremoniously booted out for trying to proselytize fellow soldiers and generally undermine the army's values.

And...

In places like Algeria, Egypt and Libya, Muslim officers watch over their Muslim conscripts with relentless scrutiny lest any unscripted forms of freelance worship sneak into the picture. Their prisons are full of Muslim Brotherhood conspirators undergoing torture--if they haven't already disappeared into secret graves.

What's a Muslim extremist in these countries to do?

Many Muslims desperately flee these countries for the West in order to pursue their more extreme brand of Islam. We give them the freedom to do so--in effect the freedom to hate us.

And in the precincts of our universities, such hatred is tolerated, even respected, under the rubric of "multiculturalism."   The role of our universities in undermining this society is a volume in itself.

Kaylan asks a provocative question that I've not seen asked anywhere else:

Does the Army have any propaganda courses at officer level? Was anyone tasked with the job of telling Major Hasan what life might be like for him in a Muslim military? He would not have stayed around, or alive, long enough to explore his hurt feelings as a Muslim.

This is the first time I've ever felt that we could learn something from the Muslim armies.

In the Army, as in civilian life, we take infinite care to be inclusive, to allay the disaffections of minorities. We do not ask them why their families are here of all places.This is especially true of the U.S. military, an institution as color-blind, meritocratic and humane as no other genuinely fighting force in the world.

Finally:

The U.S. as a whole and the West in general do not ask Muslims or any other minorities to cast doubt on the virtues of their own culture. For many that would be tantamount to "hate speech." But as the conflicts of the world have migrated into the U.S. and its armed forces, the conflicts of ideas have become a part of our daily lives. Our strength--our appeal for the disaffected--lies in our tradition of open debate. For those minorities less accustomed to such openness, criticism can seem like a species of bigotry or a kind of culture war. To them we must say, repeatedly, that they are lucky to hear the sounds of such debate. Where they come from, too often, it would be settled in exactly the manner in which Major Hasan chose, only he would not have lived long enough to carry it out.

COMMENT:  That is fine writing.  We will be looking to Mr. Kaylan for more.  Please read the entire column, and others by the author.

November 14, 2009