The Ft. Hood massacre is a national tragedy. Unfortunately, the United States is all too familiar with shoting rampages. Just yesterday, an unemployed man shot and killed an employee at a company office from which he was originally fired.

Ft. Hood is another case of how a mentally unstable person living in an often culturally violent and belligerent society where access to handguns is very easy to come by, lost it and took out his revenge on innocent people. The Ft. Hood is in a long line of similar events - Columbine, Virginia Tech.

Unfortunately, some opportunists are trying to exploit the event for their own cynical agenda. Some voices are stating that this was an act of terrorism. What makes Ft. Hood an act of terrorism in comparion to Virginia Tech (where more lives were lost)? For such individuals, the only variable they use to distinguish between awful violence and terrorism is the identity of the killer. In the case of Ft. Hood, the name responsible is a Muslim. And for Islamophobias from whom Muslims are always the loathed “Other”, that makes. Ft. Hood Islamist terrorism.

But his is an absurd and bigoted assertion. This was an unstable man who happens to be Muslim. Islam was not the motivator. He may have been devote and even considered U.S. foreign policy to be anti-Islamic, but so do many Muslims and for the record non-Muslims as well. But they do not go killing people in anger. This man was mentally unstable and at the most he falsely used Islam to justify sinful attacks, but Islam is not a relevant factor here. And if one wants to blame external factors, how is Islam more salient than U.S. foreign policy?

Muslims are no different from anyone else, and are entitled to their share of crazies without having their faith or culture demonzied. It is beyond the pale that any white American would seek to smear Islam with Ft. Hood given the degree of violence white Americans have undertaken. The last soldier-on-soldier shooting was by a white troop who killed five of his fellow troops.

Ft. Hood is no more Islamic terrorism, than Columbine was Christian terrorism. Any statements to the contrary are nothing more than transparent and vulgar attempts to attack a vulnerable minority and stroke the self-defeating fires of the ‘clash of civilizations’ theory.

The innocent deaths deserve to be mourned with respect and not have their deaths exploited by shameless and hateful opportunity. America deserves better.