Posted October 15, 2026
On November 5, 2009, an Army psychiatrist named Nidal Hasan entered the Soldier Readiness Processing Center at Fort Hood, Texas. He bowed his head in prayer, shouted “Allahu Akbar,” then opened fire with a semiautomatic pistol. He killed fourteen people, among them a pregnant woman and her unborn child, and wounded another thirty-two.
Hasan was apprehended after a firefight that left him paralyzed from the waist down. At his court-martial, he admitted to the murders, stating that he had been “on the wrong side [of] America’s war on Islam” and that he was “trying to establish the perfect religion of Almighty God, as supreme on the land despite the disbeliever’s hatred for it.”
On August 28, 2013, he was sentenced to death following court-martial panel deliberations that lasted less than two hours. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced that Hasan would be executed on December 3 by firing squad and that the event would be livestreamed. However, administration officials are said to be raising concerns about making the execution public, and a large group of retired high-ranking military officials is pressing the government to cancel its livestream plans.
My purpose today is not to debate the morality of the death penalty, a subject Dr. Ryan Denison discussed in depth recently in The Focus. Nor is it to examine the propriety of utilizing a firing squad to carry out such a sentence, as others are focusing on its effectiveness in contrast with lethal injections.
Rather, I want to think with you about the wisdom of livestreaming Hasan’s execution, for reasons that transcend the event and apply to our cultural engagement as followers of Jesus.
In his recent Free Press article, Manhattan Institute Senior Fellow Charles Fain Lehman stated that Hasan “deserves to die for his massacre of fourteen people” but warns that “turning his execution into online content would mock his victims and hand the death penalty’s critics their best argument.”
He writes: “Putting someone to death is a serious affair, and it should be conducted seriously. The tone matters tremendously: Are we passing a solemn judgment, or reveling in an act of violence?” He warns that livestreaming Hasan’s execution is likely to produce the latter, referencing the horrific video of Charlie Kirk’s murder and the ways it has “become the subject of jokes, memes, and TikTok remixes.”
In addition to the issue of propriety, I have a foundational concern rooted in Hasan’s motive behind the massacre he perpetrated. Here I agree with the Wall Street Journal editorial board’s assessment:
Mr. Hasan and his ilk understand they are likely to die. That is part of their fevered calculation. They imagine that by their violence they will contribute to the bloody caliphate they hope to build on earth.
A public death by firing squad would give Mr. Hasan that publicity in perpetuity. It would assist the cult of death promoted by the perversion of Islam seeking to recruit more suicide attackers. Far from deterring jihadists, it would serve as a YouTube recruiting video.
Martyrdom to “defend” Islam from its Western “enemies” is a high aspiration for jihadists. The more public their deaths, the greater the glory they believe they bring to Allah and to their cause.
If we wish to deter such violence against Americans, we need to understand its root causes. The less publicity Hasan receives for his crimes, the better for the rest of us.
As you and I seek to impact our culture for Christ, today’s conversation points to three principles that transcend the subject at hand.
One: We need to understand the worldview of those we are called to influence.
There’s a reason Paul quoted Greek philosophers when engaging Greek philosophers (cf. Acts 17:28) and Hebrew Scriptures when engaging Hebrew audiences (cf. Acts 13:16ff). Everyone has a set of beliefs regarding God. Ignoring them while sharing the gospel is like preaching in English to people who speak only Russian.
Two: Jihadists genuinely believe murdering Americans is a defense of Islam required by the Qur’an.
This is a spiritual and ideological battle before it is anything else. Praying daily for spiritual awakening in the Muslim world is therefore foundational to our ongoing conflict with Iran, its proxies, and other jihadists around the world.
Three: God is working to reverse the Fall and calls us to join him.
St. Cyril of Alexandria (c. 376–444) noted that prior to the Incarnation, “there was just one temple at Jerusalem, in which one people, the Israelites, offered their sacrifices.” Now that the gospel has gone out around the world, however, “there are countless worshippers who honor the universal God with spiritual offerings and fragrant sacrifices.”
Every Christian is a theophorus, a “God-bearer” in whom Jesus lives by his Spirit and through whom he continues his ministry in the world. Every time we meet needs with his love, pray with his passion, and share the gospel with his grace, we hasten the day when “wars cease to the end of the earth” (Psalm 46:9) and “the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15).
The key is to be the change we wish to see by modeling the submission we wish to advance. C. S. Lewis observed,
“In obeying, a rational creature consciously enacts its creaturely role, reverses the act by which we fell, treads Adam’s dance backwards, and returns.”
How “rational” will you be today?
“Every soul belongs to God and exists by his pleasure. God being who and what he is, and we being who and what we are, the only thinkable relation between us is one of full lordship on his part and complete submission on ours.” —A. W. Tozer
The post Why the US should not livestream Nidal Hasan’s execution appeared first on Denison Forum.
