In an infuriatingly parochial column for Forbes.com, NYU Stern professor Tunku Varadajaran coins the term “going Muslim” as the successor to the phrase “going postal,” in light of the recent shooting at the Fort Hood military base.

While “going postal” simply implies violence that results from “snapping psychologically,” Varadajaran describes “going Muslim” as a “calculated discarding of the camouflage of integration.” He recklessly speculates that Muslim-Americans, like “a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood,” could decide “to vindicate his religion” by committing mass murder. Varadajaran goes on to argue that the military should be a politically-correct-free zone with rampant racial profiling, because we “cannot stand civic piety in the face of the murderous kind.”

I know Major Nidal Malik Hasan is a Muslim. I know he reportedly shouted, “Allahu Akbar,” before opening fire on innocent Americans. I know there are stories circulating that he corresponded with some radical Muslim cleric in Yemen. But someone teaching at the NYU School of Business really should know that correlation does not establish causation.

As Ezra Klein points out, Hasan’s actions were actually a classic example of “going postal.” Students and faculty at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where Hasan previously worked as a psychiatrist, described him as “disconnected, aloof, paranoid, belligerent, and schizoid,” more than a year before the shooting took place. In 2007, Hasan gave a presentation to mental health staff at Walter Reed about “what the Koran inculcates in the minds of Muslims and the potential implications this may have for the U.S. military.” Hasan argued that Muslim-Americans should be exempted as conscientious objectors in wars against Muslim nations. Though his mental fitness had been under doubt for some time, Hasan rationally–not radically–conveyed how he felt his Muslim faith affected his ability to serve the army. (Note: US law regarding conscientious objectors requires that the person reject “war in all forms,” and not just selective ones.)

If Hasan acted alone, as seems to be the case, then Fort Hood shouldn’t be considered an act of terrorism just because the killer involved happened to be a Muslim. The conflict Hasan perceived between his Islamic faith and America’s military ambitions in the Middle East undeniably unsettled him, but there is no evidence to suggest “vindicating his religious” is what motivated him to kill. That’s like blaming the Jesus Christ for the people who kill abortion providers. The psychotic behavior? Now that may be what the US Army might want to do a more thorough screening of. As Ned explains in his post earlier today about the spate of anti-Muslim rhetoric coming from far-right pundits, the best way to galvanize a group into acts of terror is to preemptively subjugate them. If this is a struggle to protect the American way of life, but fear forces Americans to barter off their values about freedom and equality as Varadarjan suggests, then isn’t the battle already lost?

Photo by Flickr user Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the Creative Commons License