Editing Nidal Malik Hassan (section)

==Background==
Hasan was born in Arlington County, Virginia at Virginia Hospital Center to Palestinian parents who immigrated to the U.S. from al-Bireh in the West Bank. Raised as a Muslim together with his two younger brothers, he attended Wakefield High School in Arlington for his freshman year. After his family moved to Roanoke in 1985, he attended William Fleming High School in Roanoke, Virginia. He graduated from high school in 1988. Hasan and his brothers helped their parents run the family's restaurant in Roanoke. Their father died in 1998 and their mother in 2001. As adults, one brother continued to live in Virginia and the other moved to Jerusalem. It is believed that he became a much more radicalized Muslim after the death of his parents. 

Hasan joined the United States Army immediately after high school in 1988 and served eight years as an enlisted soldier while attending college. He graduated from Virginia Tech in 1997 with a bachelor's degree in biochemistry. After earning his medical degree in 2003, Hasan completed his internship and residency in psychiatry at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. He earned his Master's Degree in 2009, shortly before he transferred to Fort Hood. 

As a psychiatrist, Hasan often counseled soldiers who'd seen combat in Afghanistan and Iraq and struggled with PTSD. He reportedly became traumatized himself after hearing of the horrors they'd experienced while deployed and reportedly tried to get out of the military, but this claim is disputed. He also reportedly began showing [[Americophobia|Anti-American]] sentiments during this period, supposedly because of [[war crimes]] apparently being perpetrated by U.S. military forces against Muslims in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

In the time period leading up to the shooting, Hassan got in touch with [[Anwar al - Awlaki]], an imam at a mosque in Northern Virginia who was secretly a senior recruiter for [[Al-Qaeda]]. Al-Awlaki further radicalized Hasan and allegedly introduced him to the concept of jihad.