Until gunshots rang out at Fort Hood, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was typical of many Americanized Muslims: strong in his faith, loyal to his country and troubled when the two seem in conflict.

Exactly how troubled wasn't known until the shooting started at a facility where medical screening is done on soldiers who are about to be deployed or who have just returned.

The rampage killed 13 people.

If any reason was left behind for the rampage, it hasn't been disclosed. But the tension created by the intersection of religious belief and military obligation was evident, especially in hindsight.

Hasan had become openly hostile toward U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and expressed a desire to get out of the Army.

At his old mosque in Silver Spring, Md., Hasan didn't rant or rave about American foreign policy. He was quiet and pleasant, a gentleman and a gentle man who smiled a lot, those who knew him there recalled. Though privately embarrassed by the taunts and insults that came his way after 9-11, he didn't wear it on his sleeve.

"He did not come across as an angry person," said Asif Kadri, director of the Muslim Community Center Medical Clinic and a fellow physician. "He was very grateful to the Army, who trained and educated him. He was proud."

But Hasan also was the proud son of Palestinian immigrants — shopkeepers and restaurant owners — and he wasn't reluctant to share his political opinions in other venues, often in a tone so strident that many considered them inappropriate for an Army major.

Last year, he presented a medical school assignment with a particularly inflammatory title: "The U.S. war in Iraq: A war against Islam." Hasan also is suspected of submitting posts to a Web site that expressed sympathy for suicide bombers.

A 1997 graduate of Virginia Tech, site of the last major mass shooting in the U.S., Hasan grew up in Virginia. He isn't married and has no children.

He didn't have a girlfriend, apparently because he had not yet found one equally religious. He was devoted to his religion and to his job, friends said. Despite the increasing internal conflict that created, family members said they were stunned when news broke about the rampage.

His aunt, Noel Hasan, told the Washington Post he wasn't a fighter, even in his younger years. She acknowledged that as operations in Iraq and Afghanistan escalated, he was frustrated by the Army's unwillingness to release him from his military obligation, even though he'd offered to reimburse the service for his medical training.

His parents, now dead, never wanted him to join the military, but Hasan felt it was his patriotic duty, his aunt said.

As he worked with soldiers traumatized by their war experiences, Hasan became increasingly disturbed by what he heard, family members said. When he recently received deployment orders, he became distraught.

For a man who'd often said the military was his life, and thus the reason for lack of immediate family, an obvious question arises in the search for motive: Was this act planned as retribution against the Army for causing a personal dilemma or as some sort of protest against U.S. policies?

The only thing authorities know for sure is that in the days before the shooting, Hasan had emptied his Killeen apartment. He gave away clothing, the few bits of furniture he owned and even frozen food to neighbors, explaining he was about to be deployed.

Neighbors said he was a loner, but pleasant nonetheless.

"I would say ‘Hi, how are you doing?' And he'd say, ‘I'm blessed. I'm doing OK,'" said Alice Thompson, who manages the small 28-unit complex with her husband, John.

John Thompson said Hasan, who moved into an upstairs apartment in July, was insistent that no one enter to do repairs while he wasn't there. One time, someone did enter without his knowledge, and when he found out later, "he wasn't too happy," he said.

He said Hasan had little in his apartment except a bed, microwave oven, card table and some simple chairs.

In the days prior to the shooting, Hasan began talking to his neighbor, Patricia Villa, about giving her his possessions. He gave her his furniture and his shirts, for Villa's husband. He even paid her $60 to accept them.

The morning of the shooting, Villa offered Hasan tamales she had made. He declined, saying he didn't eat meat. When she told him these were sweet tamales made with pineapple and sugar, he happily accepted two.

"And that was the last time I saw him," Villa said.

Nothing seemed odd to her at the time.

Nor to the 7-Eleven clerk who rang up his usual morning purchase of coffee and hash browns Thursday, though he was dressed in traditional Arab garb. Hasan didn't appear agitated. He called another neighbor and left a voice mail message expressing appreciation to her boyfriend for being a "good friend."

Federal authorities said Friday they will launch a Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into Hasan to see whether he had connections to Islamic extremists, U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, told the Houston Chronicle.

McCaul, briefed by federal authorities in his role as the ranking Republican on the House Committee on Homeland Security panel that handles intelligence and terrorism risk assessment, said Hasan's steady radicalization during the course of his Army career at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Fort Hood at least raised the possibility of outside influence.

"I think the guy eventually just snapped," McCaul said. "He had a conflict between his religious and political views and the official position he had with the United States military."

McCaul, who served as a counterterrorism official with the Justice Department in Texas and as deputy state attorney general before winning election to Congress in 2004, noted the FBI had taken possession of Hasan's cell phone and a neighbor's computer that he often borrowed and will comb both for connections to the world of radical Islam.

They could "really be the key to giving us the full picture of whether this was just a lone-wolf operation or tied to something else," McCaul said. "I don't have the answer whether in this case (the shooter) is somebody who was radicalized again by al-Qaida or whether he was taking this cause on his own."

At Hasan's old mosque in Maryland, those who once worshiped with him don't have the answers, either. They do insist that he was a good Muslim. Now they fear they'll be pilloried along with him.

"It has nothing to do with Islam," said Akhdar Khan, who said the rampage was not consistent with the Hasan he knew or the faith both follow. "It is the particular action of a person. When a Christian does anything, does it reflect on Christianity?"

The search

Didn't seem angry