The Orlando Shooter’s Sexuality And Islamic Purity Hypocrisy

Each time a Muslim fanatic clocks up a body count, which is to say all too often, Muslims and non-Muslims alike flock to expunge the perpetrator of their Islamic credentials. He liked the booze? Not a Muslim. He didn't visit the Mosque regularly? Not a Muslim. As information begins to surface indicating that Orlando nightclub shooter Omar Mateen may have been gay, the champions of Islamic purity come out of the woodwork. https://twitter.com/MrAdnanRashid/status/742653050230308864 Muslim Scholar Yasir Qadhi also appears to focus on alcohol and homosexuality as his springboard for apostatising Omar Mateen. You do wonder why he doesn’t just point to the mass slaughter of innocents as his strongest get out of Islam card. A tougher sell perhaps. Unforgivably throwing LGBT Muslims under the bus aside, what these reckless apologists don’t seem to understand is that by trying to distance their religion from extremism in this manner they directly feed into the Islamist narrative. Islamists would agree that you must accept every scriptural dogma and literal injunction wholesale - lest you be denigrated as not sufficiently Muslim. Asra Nomani, a truly progressive Muslim refers to those pushing this purity test as 'the honor brigade'. There are two pervasive narratives being spun in the service of Islam at the moment. The first is that there is no reason to be concerned with Islam, Muslims and their attitudes towards homosexuality (despite the data). The second is that the killer, Omar Mateen couldn’t possibly have been a Muslim because he was gay. I’ll leave the apologists to work out amongst themselves which of these two contradictory statements is true. Stephen Knight is host of The #GSPodcast. You can listen to The Godless Spellchecker Podcast here, and support it by becoming a patron here.