The only response to Orlando, or Boston, or Paris, or San Bernadino, or Boko Haram’s many atrocities, that will really matter 100 years from now, is to continue living our lives in freedom WITHOUT altering where we go and what we do. They cannot win if we do this. They will be defeated in a gradual fizzle.
We can only hope that the American people will not be led to more bad decisions, as they have been too many times since 9/11. I think we all know which Presidential candidate will lead us in a constitution-destroying direction. Things like this will happen between now and November. We must strike back hard at that candidate in a Warren-like way to preserve our collective future.
Please share widely!
I watched parts of the Mohammed Ali funeral, arguably the most famous Muslim American on Earth, and was struck by the ecumenical spirit and the litany of humanitarian causes the champ has been devoted to. A conscientious objector from an unjust war at the height of his fame and popularity, working with Billy Crystal to build performance centers in Isrsel that broke divisions and brought the Arab and Israeli communities together. The two best eulogist a were both Jewish, Crystal and the progressive rabbi Michael Learner. Ali supported the LGBT community his whole life as well. That’s real faith in action.
This extremist hated gays and was violent towards them and women like his ex-wife long before he started calling himself a practicing Muslim. I was struck by a tweet that pointed out its still illegal for gays to give blood to help with this terrible tragedy directed at their community, but perfectly legal for this person to acquire the arms to shed their blood in the first place. The horrible irony in that has stayed with me since I read it. I hope and pray we can find peace as we continue to work towards justice.
It never made sense anyway. If the concern is HIV they can test for that, right?
I think this perfectly describes one of the fundamental differences between the two competing ideologies.. What conservatives call politeness is really deference to authority. What liberals call politeness is sensitivity to the least powerful among us.
” When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fail. Think if it — always.”
MAHATMA GANDHI
Fred Rich LaRiccia
This latest tragedy has everything to do with a tortured individual filled with hate — and readily able to buy guns and ammunition. His religion was secondary.
The headlines about Congress being stunned are not even worth an eyeroll. These things will continue so long as Congress values criticism from the NRA more than the grief, anger, and cynicism that this American bloodbath produces.
I’ve had enough of the crocodile tears, false grief, and wimpering cowardice of our elected officials.
Take these weapons off our streets. Dial back our language of hate. Stop this madness.
I won’t push back too hard, since I wholeheartedly reject the inevitable bigotry and Islamaphobia that so many will exhibit and exploit after tragedies like this one. But it’s one of many factors, and not the factor, but it’s certainly a factor all the same.
From my limited experience talking to friends who knew the Tsarnaev brothers, they both had homophobic and misogynist tendencies long before they became radical. The older brother was especially quite short tempered and violent, prone to get into fights quickly, and he kept to himself.
But this made him easy prey for an extreme form of Islam when he went back to Chechnya and became radicalized by the horrible condition of that country also “at war” with a “western/Christian” foe and he then became quite vocally anti American and anti Israel. You needed two and two together. A hateful temperament, feelings of isolation and resentment, and need for heroic validation against ones enemies. And the twisted politicizing of their faith served as the glue.
It’s not unique to Islam, obviously the most recent anti-abortion killer or Timothy McVeigh qualify as people who became affiliated with extremist brands of Christianity that conformed to already present distortions in their personality. We’ve seen this with other causes too. Sometimes it’s race or nationalism more than religion, like with Dylan Root.
There was a provocative piece in the Atlantic showing that liberal norms and secular values are alien to large swaths of the global Muslim experience, even democratic places like Indonesia and Malaysia have sharia at the local level and a heightened preference for Islam in their laws and constitution. Other than Ataturk Turkey, which has also largely been replaced by an Islamist polity, there are few examples of secularism taking root in majority Muslim societies.
Again, that’s not unique to Islam. Look at Europe prior to the 19th century and you’d find the same thing. Even our own state was still semi/confessional until the 1830’s. But the liberalizing tenants of secularism haven’t taken hold and have even been rejected by large portions of the Muslim world. Again, Indonesia and Malayasia are democratic and globally integrated places that reject extremism. But they reject secularism as well, and it’ll continue to pose challenge in the decades ahead. We may have to reconcile a moderate form of Islamism with pluralism rather than enforce a Western secular standard that has yet to organically take root there.
Many blacks do not do as well whites in head-to-head academic competition. The jump from that factoid to “blacks are inferior” is as racist as it is tempting. The same is true for virtually any prejudice we can imagine. These prejudices are not born from nothingness — such prejudices are dangerous and vicious shortcuts that obscure far more challenging (and often threatening) truths about people and society.
The Muslim community — especially the American Muslim community — reacted immediately and loudly to this awful act.
I think we MUST mention Israel when enumerating players who reject (or minimize) secularism in the Middle East.
Finally, I suggest that if we are to discuss religion at all in connection with this event, then we should be discussing Literalism and Fundamentalism versus metaphorical and symbolic faith traditions rather than Islam versus others. To the extent that there is a religious aspect to this, it is the superstitious search for concrete and immediate day-to-day interventions of a “personal” deity who loves only a chosen few and commands us to “smite” the others that creates this pathology. It is a small step indeed from a “literal” and “inerrant” reading of the more toxic passages of Hebrew Scripture to the actions of crazed (and often schizophrenic) gunmen.
I enthusiastically agree that we need a new way to view these texts. I think that has very little to with how we react appropriately to tragedies like Orlando.
It seems to me that whether we talk about this perpetrator (I prefer to leave him anonymous), Timonthy McVeigh, John Salvi, or any of the other religiously motivated murderers in our midst, it is a peculiar brand of passionate fundamentalism that joins them.
Just as we do not see radical Episcopal followers killing people, we also don’t see radical Sufi followers doing the same.
Islam is NOT the problem here.
And actually think you largely articulated my point. I think the brothers, at least the older one, would’ve been prone to violence no matter what. Their personality was gasoline, this twisted form of Islam happened to be the match. I don’t doubt had their cultural background been different if would’ve been a different ideology that sparked the flame. So in that sense Islam is not to blame, and I didn’t mean to imply it was *THE* problem at all.
The reason we don’t see extremist Episcopalians/Anglicans today is because that faith was borne from the Reformation and has been refined and reconciled with secular modernity. We did see extremist Anglicans kill innocent people on our own soil 324 years ago, as I’ll be reminded constantly this October. And the point of the Atlantic piece is that it’s more difficult for Islam to be reconciled with modernity, reformed or refined as currently configured.
It was written by a Muslim American who rejects extremism, but the point is that fundamentalist forms of Islam have more currency in the Muslim world at present than non-fundamentalist forms. But one can still adhere to local sharia and remain a functioning global democracy, like Indonesia and Malaysia which are light years ahead of the Islamic State. So the relationship will be different and distinct from a Catholic-reformed-secular progression.
There are plenty of quasi-secular (at least) Islamic societies in the past. Cyrus the Great comes to mind. The issue is that for a secular society to take root, there needs to be a long enough period of stability and prosperity for it to gain legitimacy. If I lived in Northern Africa and the Middle East, I would equate secular rule with Mubarak, Saddam, or Bashir. Hardly motivation to sign up for it.
At least many places are rejecting hard line Islam at this point — Egypt has turned away from it, as has Morocco. Our best hope is that Tunisia will remain stable, and become an example to the region.
…lived a few centuries before Christ, and since Islam came around in the 7th century AD he could not have presided over an Islamic society to any degree.
As a general comment on this subthread I don’t think we need to insist that every polity have the complete separation that we do. Israel I think has sound historical justification for being a Jewish State, and many European countries that are our allies and nobody would call unfree, most obviously probably the UK, continue to have state churches.
The justification for Israel being a Jewish State is not supported by most of the world’s Muslim population. Zionism has certainly produced its share of extremists.
Meanwhile, it is certainly true that various European nations have state churches. It is also true that those churches are far less powerful than their US counterparts. In Germany, the church wedding ceremony has no legal standing whatsoever.
It seems to me that the issue here is fundamentalism versus the others, or “literalism” versus “abstractism”. Those deep and bitter divides have very little to do with national policy.
which turned out to be much more tolerant than feudal Europe.
Europe in this century is substantially more secular with the political and religious institutions, even in places with state churches, largely seperate and distinct from one another. While this is not the case even in “moderate” Muslim states like Egypt or Jordan.
We’ve learned the hard way we can’t impose a western model, so the Atlantic piece provokes me to wonder if there is a way to tolerate a limited amount of sharia and Islamic law in the polity without creating a hot bed for extremism. Indonesia and Malayasia are multi cultural and multi confessional democracies that all have a high degree of direct Islamic influence on the law. But they aren’t exporting ISIS fighters, what are they doing right that Saudi Arabia is doing wrong?
can gays be put to death for having sex? Iran, Iraq, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, …
no common thread? If people see that treatment of gays codified by authorities they see it as being rational.
The west should isolate and not engage with any country which has laws such as those. Let them stay in the stone age.
Let’s not abandon the many brave people in these countries taking great personal risks to try to carve out some freedom in their societies. They are there, and they are taking great risks as we speak, hoping against hope that we will take interest.
It is only contact with us, the bringers of Light and Civilization, that raises up those savages from their stone age lives.
Why, we just have to give them the silent treatment — and that’ll fix them! They’ll go back to hunting mastodons.
They, not we, have to work out what both their religions will be and what their governmental systems, both local and national, will be. We finally have a President who understands this. (The wisdom of President Obama’s foreign policy is wildly underestimated.)
Having lived for a year in a Persian country, I can tell you that there is long and deep tradition of local small “d” democratic councils in Persian societies- and they were not based on Sharia law.
And in many ways Iran seems to be moving in the right direction internally, though we’ve have false starts before in the 90’s so all optimism is cautious.
The Tsarnaevs, for example, did not lead the particularly austere or ascetic lives of the devout. This guy, neither.
It seems, rather, that ISIS provides a veneer of justification to tormented men who want to commit horrendous crimes. Some of that is that ISIS claims to be a caliphate and, by some readings, loyalty to the caliph forgives a lot.
allows the appearance of a secular live to be a mask which these madmen use to blend in until they feel the time is right to act. Remember the 9-11 bombers? They drank, went to strip clubs, probably had some BLT’s until it was time. It isn’t the openly devout we need to be afraid of.
If your religion requires you to hate someone, you need a new religion.
Can I please remind you that fear is what TERRORISTS seek to create?
Do you understand that when you write “It isn’t the openly devout we need to be afraid of”, you confirm the wisdom and effectiveness of these attacks?
The antidote to terrorism is non-fear. We must REFUSE to be terrorized into whole-scale Trumpist persecutions of minorities, religions, and cultures. We must redouble our constitutional protections of free speech, of privacy, of our right to peaceably assemble, and so on.
In my view, it is time to FORGET the 9/11 bombers and instead remember our horrific over-reaction to 9/11. Our headlong embrace of the Patriot Act. Our insane invasion of Iraq two years later. Our shameful war crimes. Our shameful imprisonment and harassment of innocents with “foreign-sounding” names.
You, this community, and I live in Massachusetts. Each of us is FAR MORE at risk from heavily-armed and drunken cops attacking us in an out-of-control rage than from ANY “terrorist”, Muslim or otherwise.
studied terrorism in college with the ancient Ernst Halperin- quaint now that in order to study the topic we mainly focused on the anarchism of the early 20th century. The point of terrorism is NOT primarily to terrorize. It is to convert others to see the world from the terrorist’s point of view. Virtually no one in the media understands this.
Recommended by jconway, fredrichlariccia, somervilletom.
I agree that the goal of terrorism is to convert others to see the world from the terrorist’s point of view. Fear is the tactic.
In my view, this reinforces my response — when we allow ourselves to react to terrorist acts with fear, we advance the agenda of the terrorist.
It seems to me that the vision Muslim terrorists would have us embrace is a world where America is the evil oppressor, striving to seek out and crush Muslim believers as it strives spread its cancer among the vulnerable. That vision sees American freedoms as symptoms of our immoral and godless corruption.
When Americans react with fear and paranoia towards Muslims, we advance that agenda. Each American who cheers the xenophobic insanity of Donald Trump helps recruit more Muslim terrorists by confirming the allegations ISIS and groups like it already make.
Events like Orlando are symptoms of an auto-immune disorder, where our already out-of-control fear, insecurity, racism, and bias produce more and more episodes of home-grown terrorism. When we respond to that wih more fear, insecurity, racism, and bias, we nurture our next round of home-grown terrorists.
In my view, religious beliefs were an excuse and rationalization for the Orlando shooter, rather than a motivation. It seems increasingly clear that — like too many young men in America — he was caught in an out-of-control spiral of self-loathing driven by homophobia produced by his own conflict about what seems to have been his own attraction to other men.
We have evidence now that he was a frequent visitor to the nightclub that he eventually terrorized, over a period of several years. It seems to me that a strategy of helping him accept and celebrate his own feelings towards other men might have been more effective at preventing this tragedy than somehow trying to identify and neutralize him.
I do not believe this was an act of religious fervor. I believe it was instead an act of suicidal self-loathing and desperation.
Two months ago, Imam Farrokh Sekaleshfar preached at a local central Florida mosque. Prior to his arrival during another event, Sekaleshfar advocated death for gays, saying it is the “sentence” they deserve for their lifestyle and that it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. This sick religion has far too many “radicals” that believe in sharia law. Shouldn’t his words be considered “hate speech” even though it’s an official position in his religion.
2000 years ago some guys riding their camels came upon a black meteorite rock, propped it up and the clan thought it was a gift from god so they worshiped it. To this day over a BILLION people interrupt their day, bow down 5 times a day and zombie-like worship TOWARD the rock. (Don’t do the christian also did it, the current danger is from islam)
Just because there are a lot of them doesn’t mean Mohamed (pbuh ha ha) shouldn’t be included in with David Koresh and Jim Jones. What makes him legitimate and they’re not. Less interaction with islam will be better for the country and educate, educate educate the ones that are here, so they will denounce their religion.
is more racist than ignorant or more ignorant than racist.
Either way, I’m sure there’s an intellectual fish tank somewhere that needs the algae sucked off its pebbles.
Do Immams preach “death to gays”?
Is homosexual behavior punishable with stoning to death in Saudi Arabia?
What is in the Kaaba?
(and it can’t be racist since all races adhere to islam)
…yes, so do some pastors, and the Bible also has verses purporting to condemn homosexuality.
I’m honestly not sure she should have given them the publicity, but Rachel Maddow played tapes on her show last night of two so-called pastors who rejoiced that so many “sodomites” and “pedophiles” were killed and only lamented that more of them were not. She followed this up with a clip of Pat Robertson making one of his get what they deserved comments on 700 Club. For the record, that God they worship is the same God of Abraham that many of the rest of us also worship.
and in what country are they in power to the extent that it is written into the law that it is still ok to kill for sexual behaviour?
If I had written that the kukluxklan believes it is ok to kill blacks because they’re inferior, and David Duke should be shunned (which is true) you all would be 6 6ing.
Political correctness shouldn’t be used to absolve religions/cults from spreading their venom and their ideas should be exposed. The idea that somehow accumulating enough “followers” legitimizes such hateful behavior
is wrong.
If you’re argument is that we should not be so closely accommodating of countries whose policies include egregious human rights violations I’m right there with you, but I am interpreting your argument as we should stereotype all Muslims by their most extreme members, which is outrageous, just as it would be with respect to Christians.
The west should isolate and not engage with any country which has laws such as those. Let them stay in the stone age.
Do Immams preach “death to gays”?
and in what country are they in power to the extent that it is written into the law that it is still ok to kill for sexual behaviour?
Yes, some Imams preach death to gays.
Yes, there are countries where they hold sway, but…
NO, it does not justify any blanket statements about the beliefs and practices of Muslims here or abroad!
How about the religious leader of the country
Simultaneously, Ayatollah Ali Khameni denounced “homosexuality, male and female”. He condemned Britain and the USA for promoting gay relationships, claiming the two countries had legalised marriages between people of the same sex. Homosexuality was, he said, a symptom of the decay and corruption of Western culture.
His colleague, Ayatollah Musavi-Ardebili, demanded the strict enforcement of Islamic punishments for lesbian and gay behavior. Describing the procedures for the execution of homosexuals, he told students at Tehran University:
“They should seize him (or her), they should keep him standing, they should split him in two with a sword, they should either cut off his neck or they should split him from the head…. after he is dead, they bring logs, make a fire and place the corpse on the logs, set fire to it and burn it. Or it should be taken to the top of a mountain and thrown down. Then the parts of the corpse should be gathered together and burnt. Or they should dig a hole, make a fire in the hole and throw him alive into the fire. We do not have such punishments for other offences”, boasted the Ayatollah. “There cannot be the slightest degree of mercy or compassion. … Praise be to God.”
You still have yet to say anything to justify your bigotry, especially against Muslims in this country. Even in Iran, I would not assume that every Muslim agrees with their Ayatollahs. In fact, there has been plenty of evidence in recent years to the contrary.
I don’t care who preaches what.
I’d rather die a gruesome death at the hands of radical anything than to live one moment in fear and in hate. That’s the current danger.
Your concern for my welfare overstates both fear and hate and I reject it. So you can stop pushing it like it’s a drug. Thanks.
Atlantic piece here
Check out the article being distributed on Facebook in The Federalist. It is important that there are intelligent responses to it from people like you, Charley, and other BMGers. It is called “The Assault Weapons Ban Is a Stupid Idea Pushed by Stupid People”. Aside from the obvious offensiveness of the title, I believe that this the beginning of a massive response by the gun lobby that must not be allowed to go unanswered this time.
In particular, it hashes out the old canard that people who are in favor of restricting these massive ammunition clips are just ignorant about guns and our equating them with machine guns. We cannot allow ourselves to be bullied around on this issue this time. I would suggest contrasting the absurdity of having these ammunition clips floating around our society contrasted with the selfishness of paranoid gun owners who refused to make the slightest adjustment in their gun hobbies in order to save the lives of innocent people gathered in civilization who are sitting like sitting ducks todaywith these ammunition clips floating around.
A hand gun killed a substantial number of people in Charleston and the rifle that was used at Sandy Hook was a common family hunting rifle. In both cases, these are the kinds of guns and family to family transfers even the Brady Campaign has historically tolerated. In this case the casualty count could’ve been lower with an assault weapons ban in place, but other weapons would’ve still been available. The assailant passed a background check and had no prior history of criminal activity or mental health issues. Granted, he did have a prior history of domestic violence that should’ve been reported and been a factor preventing a gun purchase.
But every gun can be used to kill people, begging the question why should we stop at assault rifles? The many law abiding citizens who own firearms and have never used them to harm another human being would ask the same question and this is the real reason the politics around this will continue to be ineffective. There is just not a majority of Americans willing to go as far as you would need to on gun control to actually effectively dent the numbers.
Obviously push incrementally in every direction anyway, just as we did when Americans were hostile to same sex marriage or other social changes. And there will likely be an emerging majority that does favor stricter controls. In the meantime, let’s also examine ways to identify potential mass shooters before they strike and what kind of actual interventions can be used to keep them from being violent.
Without minimizing Orlandl, let’s also remember that 60 people were shot over the Memorial Day weekend in Chicago, many of them children, and their lives matter too.
…can mow down dozens at a time as happened in Orlando. They are not required for any legitimate civilian use such as sport or self defense.
The Bushmaster is a variant of an AR-15. The AR-15 is the ‘street legal’ (sic) variant of the M-15. Neither the M-15, AR-15 nor the Bushmaster are ‘common family hunting rifles.’ The last thing you want to have with you when hunting is an assault rifle like the Bushmaster… Unless you’re hunting deaf animals who can’t smell in an enclosed pen… The relatively short barrel of the Bushmaster/AR-15 diminishes range, the geometry of the pistol grip and shoulder stock discourage accurate and stable sighting for long ranges, the caliber of bullet is unlikely to kill in a single shot without expert marksmanship and you never want to go hunting with something that can shoot 45 rounds a minute unless you’re either really just trying to scare animals away or like to eat venison flavored lead. Most of these things can be changed to make them better adaptable to hunting, but the cost to do so is greater than the cost of going out and buying an actual hunting rifle.
The Bushmaster is NOT a ‘common family hunting rifle’.
Someday soon I’m sure voice to text will finally understand context and stop making us look ungrammatical. Oh well.
“No. I know what dumb looks like. It’s letting people on terrorist no-fly lists buy guns with large ammunition clips because paranoia about our own government. That’s dumb.”
Oy vay: “because of”