On June 12, Omar Mateen perpetrated a mass shooting at Pulse nightclub, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Armed with a semi-automatic rifle and a handgun, Mateen entered the club during its popular Latin night event and killed 49 people and wounded 53 others before being killed by police after a three-hour standoff.
During the attack, Mateen called 911 and pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The FBI investigated the case as both a terrorist act and a hate crime, noting that Mateen had expressed extremist views and made anti-gay statements. The attack remains the deadliest act of violence against gay people in US history. Mateen was motivated by Islam’s profound loathing of homosexuality.
Compounding the tragedy is the fact that Mateen was not unknown to authorities. Mohammed A. Malik, who attended the same mosque as Mateen, reported him to the FBI. Malik had met Mateen at an Iftar dinner. He watched Mateen break his Ramadan fast with a protein shake. They became fast friends. Malik knew what Mateen was thinking. He alerted law enforcement. The FBI did an investigation, but determined that Mateen was not a threat and closed the case.
In 2014, a man from their Mosque, Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha, became the first American-born suicide bomber, driving a truck full of explosives into a government office in Syria. Abu-Salha was a happy person, so nobody suspected that he would be a terrorist. Mateen had a dark outlook, but Malik still didn’t believe he was capable of violence. He was troubled enough to alert the FBI, but he provided the Bureau with no actionable intelligence.
Abu-Salha was a fan of the lectures of Anwar al-Awlaki, the same Yemen-based imam who influenced the Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan. In 2009, Hasan perpetrated what apologists describe as a case of “workplace violence.” Mateen also watched al-Awlaki’s video lectures and told Malik that they were “powerful.” This was why Malik turned him in to the FBI.
In an op-ed for The Washington Post, Malik wants people to know that his community abhors hate. The imam at the mosque where he, Mateen, and Abu-Salha studied Islam did not preach violence or hatred, he assures his readers. But what did Mateen and Abu-Salha learn in that mosque, in their community, in their culture, that provided the context in which the videos of Anwar al-Awlaki were circulated? What is in the environment that made watching them such a powerful experience that two members of that community would go on to commit horrific acts of terrorism? Ideas don’t drop out of the sky. Why don’t al-Awlaki’s videos move me? Why do they scare me instead?
German antisemitism created a context in which Nazism could thrive. Without a fertile ground of right-wing ideology, with its hateful attitudes towards gays, Jews, and women, it would not have been possible for Nazism to take hold of so many people. When people grow up in a culture rooted in warped conceptions of justice, morality, sexuality, gender relations, etc., they are more susceptible to extremist outgrowths of the underlying ideology. It is not only easier to groom them for terrorist operations, but they are at a greater risk of “self-radicalizing,” an unfortunate term for a very real phenomenon.
We saw this with Dylann Roof, who shot several people at a black church in South Carolina. The phenomenon is not exclusive to the Muslim world. Extremism and terrorism are not random or happenstance. They are the result of the availability of extremist directions associated with mainstream religious, conservative, and ultranationalist ideologies in a person’s environment.
We can draw at least two conclusions from Malik’s testimonial, the release of the transcripts from the night of the shooting (finally released unredacted), and the many other facts in this case. First, we can put to bed the question of whether the shooter was motivated by Islamic belief. Omar Mateen’s motive is clear. He was an Islamic soldier in the project to establish a caliphate. The Islamic State has declared war on the West, and Malik answered the call. To be sure, Bush and Obama (and Clinton as Secretary of State) helped create the power vacuum that allowed this poisonous ideology to spread (and maybe that is what they wanted), but getting hung up about the past isn’t going to protect women, homosexuals, atheists, and other despised groups today and tomorrow. The West is going to have to take serious steps to defend its security and its ideals, and these steps are going to have to reckon with the ideology of Islam.
Second, we can see the importance of advancing the critique of religion generally and of Islam particularly. Extremist notions do not occur without the support of deeper and more fundamental notions of right and wrong. Islam creates and perpetuates an immoral and unjust system of social relations. Islamic law codes and penalties are barbaric. There is nothing in any religion that necessarily provides the basis for an adequate morality. Religion exists—like white supremacy—to divide the population and provide justifications to short-circuit universal moral actions. Islam is the religious ideology that is at present causing the most trouble in the world.
It is not just that we can no longer allow a hateful ideology to hide behind religion. We have to understand that this is what religion is: a system that gives people the motive to divide, hate, and oppress. Religious people who act violently are not appealing to religion to cover for actions spawned by some other cause. Zealous adherence to religion causes their actions.
freedom and reason 