We are not the only country faced with this legal dilemma. In the Netherlands a young Muslim man by the name of Mohammed Bouyeri killed Theo Van Gogh in the name of Allah and was tried in court. Like Hasan, he had planned to die either by killing himself or being killed by the responding police officers. Instead he survived.

Bouyeri, a Dutch-Muslim, was born and raised in the Netherlands to immigrant parents from Morocco.

When the presiding judge, Udo Bentinck, wondered why the defendant had turned his back on a society that offered him complete freedom to follow his faith, he snapped in a moment of anger and shouted: "In the name of Allah, the merciful bringer of mercy."  And then in Dutch: "I worship Allah every day and pray that he protects me from ever changing the way I think now."

On the last day of his trial he asked to speak. He told the court room that when he killed Van Gogh he acted out of faith. He explained to the court that he was obligated to cut off the heads of all those who insult Allah and his prophet by the same divine law that didn't allow him to "live in this country, or in any country where free speech is allowed."

He finished his speech saying, "You can send in all your psychologists and all your psychiatrists, and all your experts, but I'm telling you, you will never understand. You cannot understand. And I'm telling you, if I had the chance to be freed and the chance to repeat what I did on the second of November, wallahi [by Allah] I'm telling you, I would do exactly the same."

He was sentenced to a lifetime in prison. They did not deem him insane. In Amsterdam he is called a political Islamist.

It is being said Major Hasan, who committed the largest mass murder on a U.S. military base in history, will plead insanity. Evidence shows this was a premeditated attack and he has a history of telling his colleagues that he was a Muslim first, American second and that Islamic law usurped the U.S. Constitution.  He was promoted to major in the U.S. Army and was a practicing psychiatrist. Is he a terrorist or is he insane?

This Ft. Hood mass-murder was foreshadowed by three recent similar events.

In 2002 the Beltway Sniper John Allen Muhammad, a Gulf war veteran, killed 10 civilians in a killing spree he dubbed a "jihad."  While imprisoned, the minor Malvo who was his accomplice wrote a number of erratic diatribes about what he termed "jihad" against the United States. "I have been accused on my mission. Allah knows I'm gonna suffer now," he wrote.  Muhammad was executed last month.

Sergeant Hasan Akbar threw a grenade into a tent of his comrades in Kuwait in 2003. He was sentenced to death and the prosecution claimed he had been motivated by Islamist extremism.

Earlier this year Abdulhakim Muhammad fatally shot an army recruiter and critically injured the second in Little Rock, AK while the two men stood outside on a break. He faces trial for murder. He was a recent Muslim convert.

 [Update: 1/21/2010:  LITTLE ROCK, Ark.  —  The man accused of killing one soldier and wounding another outside an Arkansas military recruiting center has asked a judge to change his plea to guilty, claiming ties to Al Qaeda.]

Terrorism? Or insanity?

This past weekend popular Professor and author, Dr. Richard T. Antoun, was stabbed to death at Binghamtom University in New York.  His assailant is a Saudi national, a 46 year old grad student in anthropology, Abdulsalam Al-Zahrani. Professor Antoun was Jewish; Al-Zahrani was reportedly blogging and making violent and racist comments against Israel and the Jewish religion. Dr. Antoun was the author of "Understanding Fundamentalism: Christian, Islamic and Jewish movements" among other books. Much to his wifes agony, it is not being reported as a hate crime.

After Van Gogh's murder, recriminations racheted. The prime minister and the minister of justice were blamed for not tackling hate speech in the mosques. The friends of Theo blamed the mayor of Amsterdam for being a coward, the government for being careless and the Muslims for being in denial. Afshin Ellian, a scholar born in Tehran, but living in Amsterdam with Dutch citizenship wrote  the following in his newspaper column:

"Citizenship of a democratic state means living by the laws of the country. A liberal democracy cannot survive when part of the population believes that divine laws trump those made by man. The fruits of the European Enlightement must be defended, with force if necessary. It is time for Muslims to be enlightened too. European intellectuals, in their self-hating nihilism and utopian anti-Americanism, have lost the stomach to fight for Enlightenment values. The multicultural dream is over. The West, except for the U.S., is too afraid to use its power."

He points out, "The Dutch government must act to protect those who criticize Islam. No religion or minority should be immune to censure or ridicule." And that dialogue since Theo's murder in 2004 has not abated.

That dialogue is about to begin anew in the U.S. with the trial of Hasan and the New York trial of the 911 killers. General Casey's attempt to  squelch frank discussion began almost immediately after the Ft. Hood shooting. As several columnists pointed out, "Gen. Casey's concern was not for American victory in the war on terror, nor for the safety of the American people, nor for the safety of U.S. military personnel. Gen. Casey's greatest concern was for diversity."

The U.S. has been dragged into the same frank discussion they are having in the Netherlands, the Phillipines, Great Britain, Switzerland, Spain and France to name just a few countries who find themselves at odds with political Islamists who are free to practice their religion in these countries but refuse to acknowlege freedom of speech, womens rights, Jews, religious tolerance and gay rights. And one of the starting points will be this question, asked at Hasans trial: is it terrorism? Or is it insanity?