Pink Humanist editor BARRY DUKE hits out at those who insist that terrorists such as Omar Mateen, above, who killed 49 people at the gay club, are ‘aberrant’ Muslims, and who flatly refuse to acknowledge the fact that Islam itself is an aberration, a ghastly, inhumane ideology bent on destroying everything in its path.
I HONESTLY don’t know what angered me more: the slaughter in a gay club Orlando of 49 people by Omar Mateen, or the words of sympathy directed at those affected by the tragedy by Farrokh Sekaleshfa, described by the Daily Mail as “a British-born doctor and Muslim scholar.”
A day after the shooting, on Monday, June 13, Sekaleshfar offered his “sincere condolences to the friends and families of those massacred” and added: “The killing of innocent life is never justified by religion. The perpetrator of this shooting has directly violated this holy commandment and displayed a complete disregard for the sanctity of human life and divine values.”
Why does this fill me fury? Because Sekaleshfar is well-known for his hatred of homosexuals, and has publicly called for their execution. In videos posted online, he has been seen saying that the way to “deal with the phenomenon of homosexuality” was to “get rid of them”.
“Death is the sentence. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about this. Death is the sentence,” Sekaleshfar says in one sermon, delivered in 2013. “We have to have that compassion for people. With homosexuals, it’s the same. Out of compassion, let’s get rid of them now.”
Is there a connection between Sekaleshfar and the shooting at the Pulse nightclub? We don’t know. But what we do know is that he made similar comments during his visit to Orlando in March.
Playing the victim card, he went on to claim that he has been the subject of abuse since the shooting and that he has received death threats by people attempting to link his sermon with the shooter’s motives. “Such a connection is impossible, because had the shooter listened to my lecture, he would have clearly heard me condemn hate and violence multiple times and endorse compassion towards all humankind. I invite my friends to help in supporting the humanitarian needs of the families of the victims of the shooting during such a period and share with their grief.
“This is an Islamic value in all cases where people are being oppressed –whoever they are.”
After the shooting, another Islamic hate preacher was named as a figure who may well have inspired the killer: Marcus Dwayne Robertson, above. The 47-year-old firebrand is known to his thousands of followers as Abu Taubah.
Michelle Jesse, associate editor at Allen West.com, reported that Robertson is known for openly and vigorously preaching against homosexuality. She quoted from a Fox News report that said: “It is no coincidence that this happened in Orlando. Mateen was enrolled in [Robertson’s online] Fundamental Islamic Knowledge Seminary.”
The school was recently rebranded as the Timbuktu Seminary.
The report added: “Robertson’s school may not have been the only source of Mateen’s spiritual guidance. The gunman was at the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce with Imam Shafiq Rahman two days before the nightclub attack, according to The Washington Post. That mosque was frequented by American-born suicide bomber Monar abu Salha, who blew himself up in Syria in 2014, and the two knew each other, according to officials.”
Robertson recently spent four years in prison in Florida on illegal weapons and tax fraud charges before being released by a Florida judge a year ago.
But despite the clear connection between religion and this latest atrocity, there are people – world leaders among them – who insist that killers such as Mateen are “aberrant” Muslims, and flatly refuse acknowledge the fact that Islam itself is an aberration, a ghastly ideology bent on destroying everything it disapproves of.
Just before massacre, for example, on May 13, David Petraeus, a retired US Army general, wrote a piece in the The Washington Post expressing his concern “about inflammatory political discourse that has become far too common both at home and abroad against Muslims and Islam, including proposals from various quarters for blanket discrimination against people on the basis of their religion.
“Setting aside moral considerations, those who flirt with hate speech against Muslims should realise they are playing directly into the hands of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. The terrorists’ explicit hope has been to try to provoke a clash of civilizations – telling Muslims that the United States is at war with them and their religion. When Western politicians propose blanket discrimination against Islam, they bolster the terrorists’ propaganda.”
In short, please don’t tell the ugly truth about Islam because if you do they’ll throw more of their toys out the pram . . . and more homosexuals off high buildings.
Writing for The Spectator, in the aftermath of the Orlando atrocity, Douglas Murray slammed this mindset under the headline “We can’t ignore the religion of the Orlando gay club gunman” and predicted that “law enforcement will play down the ideological component. Meantime US and other political leaders will try to deny the ideological connection or say – at the most – that it is important not to single out any one ideology. Almost every single Imam in America and elsewhere will deny that there is any connection between the gunman’s beliefs and theirs.
“If any journalists do look into which mosques or groups the gunman was associated with the entirety of the American Muslim community leadership will insist that any identification of the gunman’s beliefs is in fact ‘Islamophobic’. And so the hatred that propelled the gunman will not just live on, but grow. Which the rest of us might end up assuming was the aim all along.
“It is just two months since we learned that 52 per cent of British Muslims believe that being gay should be made illegal in the UK. When that poll was released very nearly the entirety of the UK’s Muslim leadership and spokespeople attacked not the bigotry of their own community, but the poll. It is always the same story. And yet there is a perfectly straight line from that belief to what happened in Florida last night. With any other religious community we – and they – would admit that. But not with Islam.”
George Broadhead, Secretary of the UK charity, the Pink Triangle Trust, said that The Spectator article was “spot on” and added: “This vicious attack on gays is another ghastly example of Islamic homophobia. Islamic holy texts, the Koran and the Hadith, clearly condemn homosexual practices and its sharia law provides for the most barbaric penalties.
“These are put into practice in Islamic theocracies like Iran and Saudi Arabia where gays are publicly beheaded, hanged and stoned. Five other Muslim countries also have the death penalty on their books. These facts are totally ignored by those like the US President and the media for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities.”
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