June 12th, 2016
The Hill reports:
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) claimed responsibility Sunday for a deadly nightclub shooting in Orlando, Fla., that left 50 dead and 53 injured. “The attack that targeted a nightclub for homosexuals in Orlando, Florida and that left more than 100 dead and wounded was carried out by an Islamic State fighter,” ISIS said in a statement. The organization offered no proof for the attacks.
ISIS’ claim of responsibility came several hours after news of the attack hit the news. It’s important to remember that authorities have not established a connection between the Orlando shooter Omar Mateen and ISIS. Friends, family, and an ex-wife all say he was not particularly religious. Co-workers at the security company he worked for called the FBI in 2013 after he made comments about terrorist connections, but the FBI investigation found no basis for concern. The FBI investigated in 2014 over potential ties with someone who became an Al-Quida suicide bomber in Syria. That investigation was inconclusive.
The FBI did put him on a watch list, but that alone was not enough to prevent Mateen to purchase an AR-15. Congress refused to close that loophole last December. ATF says that Mateen legally purchased his weapons in the last week. Shortly before attacking Pulse, Mateen called 911 and pledged his allegiance to ISIS. According to NBC News:
Investigators are trying to determine whether religious extremism motivated the attack and piece together what exactly set off Mateen, who lived less than two hours south of Orlando in Port St. Lucie and worked as a security guard.
Mateen didn’t appear to have any direct ties with ISIS, sources told NBCNews, although he was a follower of ISIS propaganda and referenced the Tsarnaev brothers, who carried out the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, at the scene of the shooting.
Based on what we know so far, the most immediate reason why Mateen chose this particular target and these particular people appears to be what Mateen saw in Miami:
Because of his name and heritage, there were immediate questions about Mateen’s possible ties to Islamic fundamentalism. But his father told NBC News that his son was affected by a recent incident involving two men showing each other affection.
“We were in Downtown Miami, Bayside, people were playing music. And he saw two men kissing each other in front of his wife and kid and he got very angry,” Mateen’s father, Mir Seddique, told NBC News on Sunday. “They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son they are doing that.’ And then we were in the men’s bathroom and men were kissing each other.”
“We are saying we are apologizing for the whole incident,” Seddique said. “We weren’t aware of any action he is taking. We are in shock like the whole country.”
Seddique added: “This had nothing to do with religion.”
Mateen’s ex-wife describes him as being very violent:
“He was not a stable person,” said the ex-wife, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because she feared for her safety in the wake of the mass shooting. “He beat me. He would just come home and start beating me up because the laundry wasn’t finished or something like that.”
…“He seemed like a normal human being,” she said, adding that when they were married he wasn’t very religious and often worked out at the gym. She said in the few months they were married he gave no signs of having fallen under the sway of radical Islam. She said he owned a small-caliber handgun.
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Lucrece
June 12th, 2016
Yeah, homophobia and misogyny, nothing to do with religion. Ha!
Ben in oakland
June 12th, 2016
I posted this today at Religion News Service, and sent it to all of my friends. IT seems to apply.
Regarding the murder of 50 gay people today in Orlando by a young Muslim man:
This is the result of the toxic religion that falls so easily from the lips of religionists. And please, spare me that this is just another facet of Islam, and has nothing to do with the toxic spew from so many so-called Christians, whether they are calling for our deaths, calling for our imprisonment, or calling us threats to everything good and holy, or claiming we are mocking God, or whatever other nonsense they are vomiting from their dark hearts.
And especially, when they claim to love me but hate my sin. You CANNOT love me and hate my sin. Because it is not a sin, despite what your holy book allegedly says. It is how I live and love and fulfill my life, the same as any heterosexual. And to hate this not-sin, and to wish it gone from my life and from the world to satisfy YOUR religious impulses, is all about you, and not about me. And it doesn’t say anything nice about you OR your religion.
Love the sinner and hate the sin? How about this? We drop every word, every qualification, after the very first word, and leave it at LOVE. Because, personally, I find this so called love that you profess completely indistinguishable from hate.
The father of this mass murderer said that his son was angry because he saw two men kissing in Miami. Your son was angry because he saw two men kissing? There is more Bullscheiss in that statement than in every cow residing in the state of Texas.
Your son was angry because he had been taught to hate and fear, whether by his religion, by you, or by political religionists or religious politicians who see gay people as less than human, as disposable, as fodder for their never-ending quests for power, money, and dominion. And will these political maggots do anything about the easy access to weapons of mass destruction in our so-called civilized society? Most assuredly, no. If the murders of several dozen children a few years ago couldn’t do it, the murder of 50 despised adults will not even merit a ho-hum. They might wring their hands once, or even twice, utter a few meaningless platitudes, and perhaps even deplore the tragedy, in a vague, general sort of a way. But do anything? Not a chance.
The fundelibangelist “leaders” will of course say something about it, for a while. But eventually, their guard will drop, and the truth of what they really feel will come through. Wages of sin, God will not be mocked, god’s wrath at sinful America, and all the rest of that moralizing, moral rot. And then, they’ll be back to “God says…the bible says…” And business as usual. Pass the collection plate, please. We have homos to fight.
This young vermin was angry for the obvious reason. I am increasingly convinced the the worst, the most vicious, and the most virulent of those opposed to our right to live our lives as free men and women and equal participants in society, whether religious or not, are homo-hating homos who cannot bear the thought that we are allowed to do just that, when they have confined themselves to the prisons of their small minds, shriveled hearts, minuscule souls, and over-mastering fears that someone will find out about them. Maybe even the God of love that they pretend to worship.
So violence, and the abuse and misuse of democracy and law are the result.
Look to yourselves, bible-believing, so-called Christians. You’re not much better than these Islamist monsters. It wasn’t so long ago that you were doing the same, under color of law, one gay person at a time, whether by prison, judicial murder, legalized discrimination, or presenting no alternative but suicide. Now, you can only attempt to murder our souls by doing everything you can to force us back into the closet, to enable discrimination under color of law, to tell the slandering, reviling lies you tell with the smug assurance that you, like your Islamist brethren, are simply doing god’s work. Some god you worship there. He looks suspiciously, but not surprisingly, just like you.
Be assured. This will galvanize us and our loved ones, friends, families, neighbors and colleagues even more. This Islamist may have murdered 50 of us, but has infuriated and energized millions more.
John Ozed
June 13th, 2016
The latest news is that the murderer was self loathing and had been on Grindr, Adam4Adam as well as being at Pulse a number of times and had to be escorted out due to being very drunk.
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