In the early hours of Sunday morning, June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen, 29, opened fire with an assault rifle and a handgun in Pulse, a popular Orlando gay club. This is the worst mass shooting in US history, leaving 49 dead, and another 53 wounded.
In a call to police, Mateen claimed allegiance to the Islamic state. Local and federal officials are labeling the incident as a terrorist attack. Any number of other venues could have provided a larger pool of victims to produce mere terror. The fact that he chose a gay club suggests that anti-gay hate was as much or more of Mateen's motivation than mere terrorism.
Viewing this tragedy as a mere terrorist attack obscures the fact that it was a large scale hate crime.
The shooter's father recounted that in a recent visit, his son had been particularly enraged at the sight of two men kissing.
According to the FBI, there is no indication at this point that the attack was instigated by known terrorist groups. Mateen was on an FBI watch list and had been investigated, even interviewed by the FBI in the past. He had claimed connections with Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, but these were unsubstantiated.
He was also on record as saying he 'hoped that law enforcement would raid his apartment and assault his wife and child so that he could martyr himself.'
Perhaps we should see the gunman as one of the victims. Fundamentalism (in this case Islamic) begat extremism. Extremism begat hatred. Hatred begat violence. Fundamentalist thought, in a variety of flavors, is a plague, possibly one of the most dangerous pandemics sweeping the globe today.
No comments:
Post a Comment