That initial seeming generalization aside, I agree with the overall point you're making. ....... I think the religious motivations come into play in the sense that he was probably confused about his religious views for some time, and after becoming extremely discontent with his life to the point of crisis, he snapped and immediately gravitated toward the extreme side of things.
Every individual Muslim terrorist has a reason for when and why they decide to commit acts of murder. The time line does not really matter, and the root cause (their religion) is the same.
The most similar
event happened in Afghanistan in early April. This particular murderous Muslim terrorist was an Afghan Army Soldier. He had been through all of the screening processes, he had been trained by the US Military, and then one day he decided to murder four of our officers. Luckily, two of them lived.
It took less than 12 hours to decide that this particular traitor was in fact an insurgent. It's not like they had to do any big investigation into his background or interview his friends or find out if he was a formal member of Al Qaeda (like they carry an ID or something).
This discussion is turning into nothing but basic definition arguments. If someone does not really believe that we are in a global war against radical Muslim extremists, then you are not going to believe that this guy basically switched sides and is in fact a traitor. He is just someone who "snapped".
The problem in classifying this POS is the same problem we are having in Iraq and Afghanistan. How do you tell the good Muslim from the bad ones? The ones that are shooting at you are bad? That's pretty much it. With that singular method of terrorist identification, Major Hasan made it clear which brand of Muslim he is. He is a terrorist.
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