Islam's Homophobia

The other day, I wrote a post on how Omar Mateen, the Orlando shooter, had a conflict between his sexuality and his religion. He sadly resolved this conflict on the side of his religion's homophobia.

At the New Republic, Omer Aziz has done a far more thoughtful essay on this conflict, which I highly recommend. Mr. Aziz's summary:

The fact that a gay bar was attacked by a Muslim man is not to be brushed aside or understated—it is the unconscionable but predictable consequence of a deep-seated homophobia. Which brings me back to the alleged homosexuality of the Orlando killer. His sexual orientation is not a laughing matter, nor is the Muslim-majority world’s attitudes towards gays “irrelevant,” as Yasir Qadhi said. Mateem’s sexual orientation and what Islamic culture says about homosexuality are central to this massacre. The killer’s unrelenting homophobia was a lethal synthesis of what he knew was true about himself and what he knew his fellow Muslims thought of gays. He appears to have been rejecting his own homosexual impulses, which are as natural as heterosexual impulses. His father was himself ruthlessly homophobic. Mateem was afraid of his god, of what his family would say, of how his culture would condemn him, and so his visceral shame became visceral hatred.

If anything is to come from this shooting, let it be this: The Islamic world needs to be held accountable for their homophobia. We cannot allow the forces of political correctness to let the Islamic culture to be given a pass on this, nor can we allow the forces on the Right to turn this into another excuse to attack Middle Eastern countries, nor can we allow the Media to turn this into another pointless discussion about gun control. Guns did not kill 49 people last weekend.

A homosexual man who was conflicted with his own religion killed 49 people.