Nidal Hasan’s mysteriously religious beard

A few months ago, I looked at coverage of a judge's order that the beard of alleged Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan must be shaved. We have a bit of an update to that story from the Associated Press:




To be honest, the entire story left me a bit confused in the particulars. The general idea, though, is that the appeals court was worried that it had become a battle of wills between Gross and Hasan. One issue involved a medical waste bag and an adult diaper in the bathroom ... but I was a bit confused about what was going on.

In any case, I'm reminded once again of how poorly the religion angle to this story has been covered. I'm just going to quote what I wrote months ago:


That's one angle I'd like to see covered. Another comes from what one commenter to the previous post wrote:


Has Hasan gone through the accommodation process? If not, why not? What do Hasan's lawyers say about why he changed his mind about what his religion says about facial hair? Since the entire progress of the trial rests on answers to these questions, isn't it kind of weird that we're not seeing more about what's going on? Why the sparse coverage of the key religion angles here?

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