It’s all just such a perfect storm. At the heart of the tragedy in Orlando is a confluence of homophobia, islamophobia, calls for stronger gun control, claims of mental illness and shared blame for foreign policy weaknesses against ISIS. It’s certainly enough to keep the news outlets more than busy for a full news cycle. Of course, the cycle is always the same.
Yet, in the flurry of political blame-giving that goes around after another tragic shooting, we seem to have missed something this time around. Within the Muslim American community, there’s a common refrain in response to xenophobic hate-mongering—that we don’t bear any responsibility for the acts of the extreme among us. Of course, we all know by this point that the shooter was acting under the aegis of ISIS support. It goes without saying that his despicable acts do not represent the views of mainstream Muslims throughout this country. That said, I cannot help but reflect on the idea that we as Muslim Americans deserve our own share of blame for what happened in Orlando.
Though we are by no means a homogenous group—the four or so million of us come from widely varied racial, economic and spiritual backgrounds—we are unique among minority groups in America in that we are unified by some semblance of a common creed. To this effect, we share a common commitment to justice and peace. We also share a text, the Qur’an, that, when read with the most literal lens, condemns and outlaws acts of homosexuality. For that reason, Muslim Americans comprise a socially conservative group that, for the most part, maintains traditional views about marriage.
It’s for this reason that I have, time and time again, witnessed countless acts of homophobia within my own Muslim American community. Whether it be the criticism I received for my support of the King v. Burwell decision, the alienation I’ve seen thrust upon openly-gay Muslim Americans or the justification behind the murder of 50 innocent lives in Orlando, varied forms of homophobia abound.
Mateen’s father recently told NBC News that his son had some time ago come across two men kissing in Miami recently and was infuriated that his 3-year-old son had seen it, too. “They were kissing each other and touching each other and he said, ‘Look at that. In front of my son, they are doing that.’” Newer evidence coming out even suggests that Mateen was himself intimately involved with the LGBTQ community in Orlando and this act of violence may have been motivated by a twisted sense of guilt. Whatever his personal motivations, what is clear is that his acts were committed in a permissive environment where it is okay for an American Muslim to harbor ill will towards homosexuals.
I firmly believe that this disgust is indicative of a wider trend in our community. A recent poll of British Muslims found that 52% percent of them would support a wholesale ban on homosexuality. Though the situation is different there, I wouldn’t be the slightest surprised to find a similar trend stateside. Make no mistake, though many in my generation of millennial Muslims have supported our fellow human beings, this support is dwarfed by a silent majority unwilling to speak up.
To our credit, scholars in our community have devised a clever mechanism to address this issue. By making it a matter of political solidarity, some have attempted to garner Muslim American support for promoting LGBTQ rights by claiming a common enemy. After all, aren’t the people banning transsexual use of bathrooms in North Carolina also the same people who wish to ban Muslims from entering this country? By uniting against forces that wish to limit the rights and freedoms afforded to minorities, aren’t we doing a service to democracy? It’s a valiant effort, but simply not enough.
We cannot think of ourselves as removed, and we cannot act indifferent to others’ suffering and oppression. I hear over and over the quote of Dr. King, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And this is true, the system that oppresses one group contributes to, and is related to, the system that oppresses another. They feed into each other. But Dr. King didn’t mean that we should be concerned about something just because it related to us.
As Muslims, whether injustice affects us as individuals directly or not, even if they weren’t linked, we have an obligation to speak out. God says in the Qur’an, “O you who believe! Be staunch in justice, witnesses for Allah, even though it be against yourselves…” God does not specify who this justice is for because it is for everyone, all encompassing. The prophet was meant to be a prophet to all humankind. This means he was concerned with everyone, those who were orphans and widowers like him, but also others whose experiences he could never understand. His sense of justice and love extended to everyone. As Che Guevera remarked, “Above all, always be capable of feeling deeply any injustice committed against anyone, anywhere in the world.”
It’s not just that the Qur’an says in Chapter Hujurat, “And do not insult one another and do not call each other by [offensive] names”, it’s that the marginalized amongst us are being attacked and justice means we stand up. There are many LGBTQ Muslims. Some of them are in our communities, and there are so many do not feel welcome. If we don’t actively stand up, we are not making them welcome.
In the end, we as a community are not directly responsible for Omar Mateen’s despicable acts. There will be, just as there ought to be, lengthy discussions about the policy ramifications of his actions. We are culpable, however, for allowing silent homophobia to fester in the dark corners of our community. If there’s anything good to come out of this horror, it is that we might look introspectively to purge ourselves of the hatred and bigotry that exists among us. Until we do that, however, we have ourselves to blame.
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