As pointed out by retired Col. Alan West, Nidal Hasan is only the latest home-grown jihadi to attack American troops.

We have seen this before in 2003 when a SGT Hasan of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) threw hand grenades and opened fire into his Commanding Officer’s tent in Kuwait. We have seen the foiled attempt of Albanian Muslims who sought to attack Ft Dix, NJ. Recently we saw a young convert to Islam named Carlos Bledsoe travel to Yemen, receive terrorist training, and return to gun down two US Soldiers at a Little Rock, Arkansas Army recruiting station. We thwarted another Islamic terrorist plot in North Carolina which had US Marine Corps Base, Quantico as a target. What have we done with all these prevalent trends? Nothing.

And, of course, we could add a great many other terrorist incidents involving Muslims in this country. It wasn’t that long ago that I cataloged several stories that had appeared in the space of 24 hours about newly-convicted jihadis in various parts of the country. A recent investigation spanned the continent from Colorado to New York City, with charges brought against multiple participants. Indeed, we can expect multiple stories each month about would-be terrorists within our country seeking to aid the Islamist cause. Yet somehow, every time, there is a collective expression of shock every time such a story appears, with pious intonations of the P.C. mantra that such individuals are not representative of Islam as a whole and that we must not ask if there is something malignant in Islam that accounts for these cases – even when the perpetrators themselves clearly state that their motivation is their Islamic faith.

Am I saying that all Muslims are terrorists? No, I am not. Am I saying there are no odd ducks in the Christian (or Jewish or Buddhist or . . .) community that act violently and claim a religious justification for their misdeeds? Again, I am not.

But the reality is that there appears to be a higher proportion of such individuals among Muslims, and their propensity towards religiously motivated violence seems to be drawn from the same passages of the Qu’ran and oriented towards the same goal of establishing Islamic supremacy. Doesn’t prudence require that we acknowledge that reality and that our government look more closely at Muslim institutions – whether charities, political organizations, or houses of worship – in attempting to prevent such acts of terror from occurring on our own soil? And does it not require that we investigate more closely those in the Muslim community who have expressed some sympathy with the cause of jihad and those who engage in such religiously motivated violence?

It is now common knowledge that Major Nidal Malik Hasan, like so many of radical Muslims, publicly professed belief in acts of violence against those who Islam defines as infidels. We know that Hasan, like so many radical Muslims, expressed the view that the war on terrorism is in fact a war on Islam. We know that the FBI was aware that Hasan was trying to connect with al-Qaeda. Indeed, there were plenty of signs that Major Hasan was going to “go Muslim” (or, more accurately, “go jihadi”) against his fellow Americans. And yet even now, after the fact, it seems that too many folks in positions of authority would prefer to gloss over that fact and instead express concern for members of the Muslim community rather than the victims of this latest attack and the potential victims of future attacks by radicalised Muslims.

Again, this is not an attack on Muslims as a group. Most are loyal, and the contributions of Muslims in the military and law enforcement are often exemplary. But respect for good Muslims and a desire to embrace the full diversity of our society cannot outweigh the need to provide for security of all. We cannot look away from the problem out of fear of failing to appear “sensitive” enough to a minority religion in our midst. Any other response is nuts.