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pulse nightclub
Was the Orlando Massacre Another Chicken Coming Home to Roost?
We may never know the crucial determining factor or combination of factors responsible for Omar Mateen's ghastly slaughter of 49 people and the wounding of 53 others at Orlando's Pulse nightclub. Mainstream media pundits quickly cited LGBT bigotry, lax gun laws, failed FBI background checks, an infatuation with violence, deeply closeted homosexuality, and "self-radicalization."
Jun 29, 2016
We may never know the crucial determining factor or combination of factors responsible for Omar Mateen's ghastly slaughter of 49 people and the wounding of 53 others at Orlando's Pulse nightclub. Mainstream media pundits quickly cited LGBT bigotry, lax gun laws, failed FBI background checks, an infatuation with violence, deeply closeted homosexuality, and "self-radicalization."
But as more evidence accumulates, it's plausible that Mateen's unspeakable act was yet another grotesque version of the chickens coming home to roost. While the time and location of future attacks remain uncertain, there's no doubt that more jihadist-type chickens are en route to the henhouse. This raises the question that has remained outside polite conversation since September 11, 2001: What might lead someone like Mateen to carry out these hideous assaults on innocent U.S. citizens? Critical inquiry is not about making excuses for terrorism. Refusing to look at the causes of terrorism is inexcusable.
Years ago, Mateen spoke about becoming a martyr and watched Islamic State terrorism and propaganda videos. Classmates recall that when the second jumbo jet slammed into the Trade Center's south tower, the 14-year-old Mateen "started jumping up and down, cheering on the terrorists."
During one of his 911 calls from Pulse, he referred to the Tsarnaev brothers, the Boston Marathon bombers, as his "homeboys." In another, he claimed to be "acting in the name of God" and pledged his allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Bagdadi. And just before being killed by police, Mateen posted a Facebook message stating, "You kill innocent women and children by doing [U.S.] airstrikes. . . now taste the Islamic state vengeance."
Patience Carter, one of the hostages, heard Mateen say his attack was "to get America to stop bombing his country," a reference to his parents being from Afghanistan. In another conversation with a 911 operator, he demanded that the U.S. stop attacking Iraq and Syria and said, "That's why I'm out here right now."
Terrorism is only one consequence (the refugee crisis is another) that continues to reverberate in the wake of U.S. imperialist interventions, occupation, and unabated drone strike killings in Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, and the Horn of Africa, and Washington's one-sided support for Israel's apartheid-like suppression of Palestinians.
As peace activist and author David Swanson notes, there is an immediate step the U.S. could take: "Stop bombing people around the world." Of course, this is the last thing that ISIS wants because the more bombs that fall, the "easier it is to motivate more killers." U.S. violence inevitably begets more violence and more sanctuaries for terrorists in the Middle East and South Asia.
To date, the U.S. has left citizens of these countries with four futile choices: (1) Remain in failed states destroyed by U.S. bombs. (2) Live under U.S.-sponsored brutal dictatorships with no prospects for change. (3) Become refugees. (4) Support or join ISIS-type organizations.
Because U.S. allies like Turkey, Pakistan, the Gulf monarchies, and, especially, Saudi Arabia are directly and indirectly in league with the terrorists, the decision has been made that this deplorable situation is preferable for U.S. "national security." The dominant interests in this country need to keep fear alive to justify any means of safeguarding their empire.
The Islamic State would not exist but for prior U.S. policy, including fateful decisions by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. ISIS is a death cult, and negotiating with them is impossible. Muslims must see an alternative to the dismal options listed above, an alternative that addresses their justifiable grievances. Recall Islamist Mohamed Morsi was democratically elected as president of Egypt in 2011, only to be overthrown and imprisoned by the U.S.-backed military. Only by supporting efforts to join Islam and democracy, currently exemplified by Tunisia and Indonesia, will this be possible. At this late date, it may not succeed, but there's no other sane alternative.
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ISIS Must Love Trump
While Muslims prayed for Orlando, the GOP nominee urged his followers to reach for their guns.
Jun 22, 2016
As the sun set over New York on June 12, hundreds of Muslims gathered together in Hudson River Park to break their Ramadan fast.
Iftar, the evening Ramadan meal, is often a joyous celebration of faith and family. But the mood that Sunday was solemn: That morning, news had broken of the ghastly massacre of LGBTQ revelers at Pulse nightclub in Orlando.
A lone Muslim had allegedly perpetrated the attack. Here by the Hudson, over 200 knelt in prayer.
"We're praying for those who were lost," one woman explained in a video circulated by the Huffington Post, her voice breaking. "As Muslims, we're united in our outrage over this senseless act of violence."
Meanwhile, an Orlando imam condemned terrorism as un-Islamic and affirmed his belief that "Islam teaches peace." The Florida chapter of a national Muslim group called on members to donate blood for the victims. And statements of sympathy tumbled forth from American Muslims in what CBS News called "an avalanche."
"Today, we stand in solidarity with the LGBTQ community," said the group Muslim Advocates. "Your grief is our grief. Your outrage is our outrage."
Unfortunately, none of those touching gestures deterred Donald Trump from warning darkly that "radical Islam is coming to our shores."
In a falsehood-riddled speech following the Orlando massacre, the presumptive GOP nominee blamed the shooting on immigration and "political correctness."
As Muslims all over America sent their sympathies to Orlando, Trump mocked his Democratic rival's insistence that "Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people." He accused Muslims of causing "death and destruction" by covering up terrorism in their midst (though it was later revealed that a Muslim member of Mateen's community had reported him as suspicious).
Then, in perhaps the most ominous part of the address, Trump claimed that Democrats will "take away Americans' guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us."
Muslim immigrants are the problem, he seems to be saying. And guns are the solution.
If you ask me, I'd feel much safer with the crowd at Hudson River Park than anywhere near a rally of armed Trump supporters. But here's the creepier part: For all his blathering that "we have to get smart" about "radical Islam," Trump is stupidly playing right into ISIS's hands.
Like Trump himself, the group benefits immensely from anything that drives a wedge between Muslims and the societies they live in.
ISIS said as much itself -- in plain English -- in a publication detailing its plan to "destroy the gray zone" between infidels and believers. Since most Muslims seem to like living in the liberal societies of Europe and North America, ISIS propagandists have written that the only way to drive up recruitment is to make Muslims feel unwelcome there.
No wonder ISIS recruiters are now featuring Donald Trump in advertisements.
It's not because they're afraid of him -- it's because few people are working harder to make Muslims feel unwelcome than he is. Civil rights groups report that Trump's rise has paralleled a shocking increase in hate crimes against Muslims in this country.
That's an outrage. And it's thoroughly self-defeating.
In fact, the United States has arguably the most prosperous, well-integrated Muslim population in the Western world. Even as ISIS has scored a few recruiting successes among the much more marginalized Muslim communities of Europe -- though even there, the group falls way outside the mainstream -- it's flat-lined here.
Scenes like the iftar gathering in New York, in other words, are the rule, not the exception. They're a touching rejoinder to the toxic politics of division and a far more accurate reflection of our Muslim neighbors than anything peddled by Trump.
And, not least, they're a much better asset in the fight against terrorism than any bullet or bomb -- or any demagogue who urges his followers to reach for their guns at the first sign of trouble.
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Let Orlando Drive Us to Action, not Fear
Jun 21, 2016
As the debate and the raw emotion of June 12 subsides and the discussion moves into a second week, I find myself still reeling. I am not among those grieving the personal loss. My family and friends in Orlando are safe and the depth of my gratitude reflects this haunting and pronounced awareness that it might not have been so. That life must not be taken for granted. The grim reality that the news that shook mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters from their sleep last Sunday could have been mine. I feel this from far away from Orlando, and it is not lost on me that I write this waiting to retrieve a dear friend from the Brussels airport, where yet another tragedy, just months ago, shook so many.
As I consider the grief of those in Orlando, what shakes me the most is the moment those doubtlessly beautiful and brilliant lives were taken. My mind keeps drifting to the last moments for those murdered -- ordering drinks or texting their mothers from bathroom stalls -- and the thought that keeps haunting me is that it was just after "last call." The night was almost over.
The paradox is unrelenting, and it's the moment of their death that compounds my empathy and grief. I know what it feels like to be free on the dance floor at 3:00 a.m., working it out, happy, with friends, lovers and potential lovers. So many of us know that feeling -- that joy, that relative bliss and the vulnerability that comes with it. It is human. I imagine and remember the reprieve from work, from the 9-5, 11-3, or 6 until closing shift, a break from the other complications of life. I also know, as many LGBTQ people know, the sweet feeling of release from having performed our best drag all day to conform to the expectations of the dominant culture. The freedom found in some dark and crowded place where we can shake defiantly, kiss passionately and grind on the dance floor with abandon. The taunts, ridicule, and all manner of violence held at bay by the beats that feel as much within us as round us.
These spaces and moments are not perfect, but in this beautiful and sweet moment we are fully in our bodies, free in our love and desire. The more we've suffered and endured, the more the space is needed. I've always thought the song "God is a DJ" got it right, and the thought of that sacred moment interrupted by evil exacting such an unimaginable pain leaves me breathless. To the 49 souls whose lives have been lost, to the 53 injured and those who escaped, I will never again be able to dance without thinking of you.
When I've danced before, like many of us, I feel the weight of the gay clubs raided, bombed, the people beaten by police, forced to the ground while assaulted with billy clubs and police dogs. I have danced with the awareness that for the freedom we've gained and could express in Orlando, others in many other parts of our world cannot move their bodies so freely, cannot press their bodies against the bodies of those we desire without risking grave consequence. Perhaps that's what makes it all the more painful, the feeling of progress halted in one horrible instant. We had come to not expect such concentrated horror in places like Orlando.
For this reason and many, the shock of the country is understandable, and it is not at all mitigated by the fact that atrocities have happened before or persist elsewhere in similar or greater magnitude. No parent anywhere should have to feel what these parents must now feel. Yet, many have, do and will. As the war planes ready, and the soldiers prepare to be deployed, to think that the actions of this murderer will be cited as justification for the deaths of thousands is simply too much to bear. Perhaps one of the symptoms of the creeping inhumanity of our culture is our inability to mourn.
That grief drives us to action is not wrong, but for it to drive us to fear is dangerous. It is so dangerous because we are so very ill informed; we in the U.S. public are ignorant and some of this ignorance is willed. Thus, it goes that the horrible acts of a demented man serve to confirm the shortsighted convictions of ignorant people. Hypocrisy reigns, as they wrap themselves in rainbow flags to mourn lives they deemed unworthy of rights like hospital visitation.
Then comes the picking apart of the dead, perpetrator and victims. The New York Times publishes headlines like "Gays and Latinos, 2 Cultures Once at Odds," that speak of stitching together. The article eloquently chronicles the pain and homophobia of generations past. Yet this is the way the majority always tells the story, as if to be gay is to surrender your claim to Latino, as if being gay could make anyone any less Boricua, as if any of us with more complex identities could separate these insoluble aspects of our being. There is no Latino community without its LGBTQ members anymore than black or African American could exist without James Baldwin or Bayard Rustin, Alice Walker or Angela Davis. I don't wish to dishonor the victims by pointing out the violence of this reduction. Rather, I find it illustrative of a persistent problem that contributes to the creation of more victims.
Reporters, commentators and the like speak of "separate communities" reducing millions of people -- and in the case of Islam, 1.6 billion people -- to such a simplified caricature that, were the consequences not so frighteningly real in our time, it would be immediately taken as absurd. They say things like "Muslims are responsible," or "Muslims don't like gays," accepting a logic so faulty it's hard to understand how it could be said seriously. They render the Muslim gay, lesbian and trans people who have been among my friends in the United States and Europe invisible. These friends who I have, whom I've loved, also dance, arms extended, shoulders twisting. They also know the freedom of Pulse. It is true that they have struggled within their communities, as many of us have. Yet their struggle is made more difficult, not less, by bigotry and discrimination, bombs and military occupations directed at them. The W.E.B. Du Bois's phrases "What does it feel like to be a problem?" and "double consciousness" serve both LGBTQ people globally and Muslim-identified people living in Europe and the United States well. Du Bois wrote those words in 1903. Why haven't we learned?
It's all too much to deal with really. As I sit and write, my friend, Zoharah Simmons, who happens to be Muslim and feminist -- and a 50-year veteran of the Black Freedom Struggle -- arrives at Brussels Luchthaven. Following up on a conversation about nonviolence from our first event with young Belgians, our second event will be about the role of love and education in organizing for a more peaceful and just world. The airport is repaired, one does not notice the traces of the carnage that was here just three months ago. There is a part of me that wishes that I could just go from here to find a club and dance and forget it all. I'm sure I'll be able to again some day, but right now, my DJ is bowled over and weeping.
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