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No you can't judge and say he was an extremist but you can't discard the possibility either. The fact millions of practising muslims go to mecca shows he did practise Islam to a certain extent. Why go if he wasn't.
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Originally Posted by Natnasci
He went with family members on a trip organized by the NYU Centre. They believe he went with his mother.
He went twice, but it's a leap to assume that someone visiting Mecca on a trip organized by a university and NYC travel agency must be a radical or extremist.
Just because the muslims you know haven't been to mecca doesn't mean much, when millions of muslims do go to Mecca and they vary in the amount of devotion.
I wonder how many of proven Islamic Terrorists have been to mecca? Is this even a fair way to judge someone's extremism? Hmmmm. Not sure about that.
Society and religion most certainly played a part in his hating gays. Lots of " believers " in lots of religions dislike gays and gay kids grow up feeling that hatred. Some get over it and live great lives, some become self-haters.
It is a fact he frequented the club. It is a fact that his behaviour was anti-social enough that the clubbers didn't interact with him much. It is a fact that he frequented gay hook up sites. Now whether he hooked up or not, I haven't heard. However most anti-gay religious fanatics do not frequent gay clubs or hook up sites.
Gay muslims exist and gay muslims have contact and support groups. It's too bad he didn't seek them out...but maybe he really wasn't as religious as some are saying.
Last edited by UrbanLuis; 06-18-2016 at 06:26 PM..
Good post. All muslims are expected at one point in their lives to go to Mecca. Most of them don't go around shooting people or blowing themselves up in a terrorist attack. There's a whole lot more going on with these people who are attracted to radical islam than just that they are muslim or wannabe muslims.
Outside the muslim world - there is a strong minority of individuals with anti gay sentiment. We know this living as gays every day. There is no saying that some anti-gay Christian nut wouldn't do what Mateen did. Its happened before - one guy who killed a gay patron at a bar and injured several other said he was a "Christian Soldier working for my Lord" - It will be interesting to see how linked Mateen actually was to ISIS or radical islam - it might not be as strong as we think as more details are revealed about his motives.
Exactly, Christians are capable of religious extremism too. I don't know why you are even bringing that up. You say it is a minority of muslims outside of the muslim world that have anti gay view, how do you know this for sure?
Last edited by UrbanLuis; 06-18-2016 at 06:51 PM..
Exactly, Christians are capable of religious extremism too. I don't know why are you are even bringing that up. You say it is a minority of muslims outside of the muslim worle that have anti gay view, how do you know this for sure?
Well i'm bringing it up because it happens and has happened so we can't just point the finger at Muslims doing bad things to gays or to people in general. I said a minority of muslims in the world are attracted to radical islam and are attracted to becoming terrorists and blowing things and people up, I didn't say only a minority have anti gay sentiment. The majority are however peaceful.. This isn't to say Islamic dogma is creating healthy societies. Really, if you were to look at Christian dogma that isn't conducive to creating a healthy society either if you think about it. We could get rid of every single Muslim in Canada and homophobia would still be a big problem. A lot of people still don't treat us separately from our sexuality and will judge and discriminate just because of and the pink ceiling would still exist.
I posted an earlier study on how gays are treated in schools in Canada commissioned by EGALE. Its not painting a rosy picture at all.
No you can't judge and say he was an extremist but you can't discard the possibility either. The fact millions of practising muslims go to mecca shows he did practise Islam to a certain extent. Why go if he wasn't.
I'm not discarding anything. I am going by the information that is known. I'm not jumping to conclusions because a muslim visited Mecca, or assuming since he may have been devout ( evidence suggests he wasn't ) that devout equal radicalization.
If evidence comes up that he was a radical then I won't ignore that. Until then, I'm basing my opinion on the situation on known facts, not rumours or what ifs.
He went with family members on a trip organized by the NYU Centre. They believe he went with his mother.
He went twice, but it's a leap to assume that someone visiting Mecca on a trip organized by a university and NYC travel agency must be a radical or extremist.
Just because the muslims you know haven't been to mecca doesn't mean much, when millions of muslims do go to Mecca and they vary in the amount of devotion.
I wonder how many of proven Islamic Terrorists have been to mecca? Is this even a fair way to judge someone's extremism? Hmmmm. Not sure about that.
Society and religion most certainly played a part in his hating gays. Lots of " believers " in lots of religions dislike gays and gay kids grow up feeling that hatred. Some get over it and live great lives, some become self-haters.
It is a fact he frequented the club. It is a fact that his behaviour was anti-social enough that the clubbers didn't interact with him much. It is a fact that he frequented gay hook up sites. Now whether he hooked up or not, I haven't heard. However most anti-gay religious fanatics do not frequent gay clubs or hook up sites.
Gay muslims exist and gay muslims have contact and support groups. It's too bad he didn't seek them out...but maybe he really wasn't as religious as some are saying.
Look up the Dancing Boys of Afghanistan. This has been a part of their culture long before Islam came along. I don't think him going to gay bars or watching drag queens is all that different, though I haven't heard one person claim to have had a sexual relationship with him. Whether he was scouting the places, or targeting someone specific that he did have a relationship with, I don't think it was as awful of a thing in his culture as people seem to think.
Maybe I'm wrong about him, but I am right about the culture there.
Well i'm bringing it up because it happens and has happened so we can't just point the finger at Muslims doing bad things to gays or to people in general. I said a minority of muslims in the world are attracted to radical islam and are attracted to becoming terrorists and blowing things and people up, I didn't say only a minority have anti gay sentiment. The majority are however peaceful.. This isn't to say Islamic dogma is creating healthy societies. Really, if you were to look at Christian dogma that isn't conducive to creating a healthy society either if you think about it. We could get rid of every single Muslim in Canada and homophobia would still be a big problem. A lot of people still don't treat us separately from our sexuality and will judge and discriminate just because of and the pink ceiling would still exist.
I posted an earlier study on how gays are treated in schools in Canada commissioned by EGALE. Its not painting a rosy picture at all.
No one is pointing a finger just at Muslims. I guess you havent been reading my posts in this thread. In this case the shooter was Muslim. Had this been a Christian that did this, would you say " Muslims do it too, so we can't just point the finger at Christians." ?? In fact if you look at previous pages people that are here defending Muslims had no problem throwing Christians into the mix. For the record I am not a Christian, so i am not interested in defending that religion either.
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I said a minority of muslims in the world are attracted to radical islam and are attracted to becoming terrorists and blowing things and people up, I didn't say only a minority have anti gay sentiment. The majority are however peaceful.. This isn't to say Islamic dogma is creating healthy societies
I;m glad you said it not me. Please tell me how are Islamic dogma is not creating healthy societies?
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Really, if you were to look at Christian dogma that isn't conducive to creating a healthy society either if you think about it.
Interesting comment. Wasn't Canada a Christian society at one point, didn't Christianity help create the Canada we have now? Just curious why you would say that. I think Christianity has done a lot of damage in the world, but after you wrote Islam didn't create healthy societies did you need to throw that in there to balance things out?
Natnasci was absolutely right that you are making a false equivalency and comparing apples to oranges. In doing so, you are proving my point perfectly that there are individuals who simply cannot have a rational conversation about this topic where logic and facts prevail. Your false equivalency is one of many deployed by many gun "culturalists" to make arguments that sound reasonable on the surface, but fall apart under scrutiny.
So let's take a closer look at your earlier statement that gun culture has no significance at all in mass shootings like the one at Pulse, because the same kind of thing happened in Paris and Brussels. You seem to suggest that because these things have happened in nations where more rigid civilian gun ownership laws are in place, the ubiquity of guns in America is not the problem at all.
So far in 2016, the US has had 140 shootings where there were at least four victims (this includes both injuries and deaths). 212 people died in these 140 separate instances. I couldn't even take the time to count the injured, but ther were about 600. President Obama has had to make, what, fifteen public statements about only the most gruesome gun massacres during his eight-year tenure. By comparison, France has had only four fatalities as a result of mass shootings (using the same definition: where there were four or more victims in a single incident).... Between 2009-2015!!!! Your argument seems like the definition of a false equivalency. And how many gun murders does Belgium or France have in an average year, other than these extremely rare, well planned terrorist attacks which were well-financed, and relied on sophisticated networks of radicals, smugglers and individual terrorists who had, in many cases, received specialized combat training, and relied on illegally imported and smuggled guns in order to commit the crimes? The homicide rates for the three countries are revealing. According to Wikipedia, Belgium had a firearms-related homicide rate of 0.33% per 100,000 residents in 2010; France had a 0.21% rate in 2010. The US had a rate of 3.43% in 2014. That means that the USA has 16 times the rate of gun-related homicide than France!
Countries like Brazil and Honduras are a completely different story. If you want to compare the USA to them in order to make it look like a peaceful place, that is a sad statement. Even then, some US cities have homicide rates that approach the levels of some of the most violent undeveloped nations in the world.
Katygirl, you have just proven my point that with most pro-gun Americans, a rational debate is impossible. You based your entire argument on a false equivalency, which renders the entire thing meaningless. But you have illustrated my point perfectly: some people actually believe that because a gun massacre occurred in France and Belgium, which have stricter gun laws than the US (France had 19,000,000 civilian-owned guns in 2007, by the way. Source: The Guardian, UK.), that just goes to show that gun control doesn't work. Meanwhile, even the most passing glance at the statistics on gun violence in France or Belgium tells a completely different story. The only thing that the attacks in Belgium and France prove is that well-financed, trained, determined terrorists can exploit criminal networks to carry out attacks anywhere in the world. However, an attack like the kind committed in Pulse could never happen in those countries, because an unhinged, lone-wolf loser like Omar Mateen would never be able to walk into a gun store and buy an assault rifle in far less time and with far less paperwork, testing, or scrutiny than he would ever require to receive a license to drive a car, then use that rifle to commit an atrocity. In France and Belgium, these kinds of attacks required money, time, planning, and preparation. As we have seen over and over again in the US, any lunatic with a grudge can get his hands on a gun and go kill people.
I could go on, but if you don't see the problems with your comparison katy, no amount of facts and evidence will ever sway you.
You completely misunderstood my argument. I said this guy, this Islamic terrorist who planned an attack for who knows how long, would have easily been able to get around every new gun control measure the government wants to institute. Why? Because he was a security guard, had no criminal record as an adult, and no mental health record either. He wasn't even on a watch list because the FBI removed his name due to lack of evidence. And even if he had been unable to legally purchase a gun, he would have been able to get his wife and co-conspirator to buy them for him or buy them from the black market.
It is in Obama's interest to turn the attention away from his failures to watch this guy and make it into a debate about our 2nd Amendment instead. If Mateen had done this at Disney World, we would be talking about anti-Islamic attacks and mosque fires like we saw after San Bernadino (another government failure).
The only reason I mentioned Brazil was not to make American gun violence seem less, but to point out that we have neighbors who also have a gun and drug culture, and they would love to exploit a new black market if they could. It also highlights what happens in a place swimming in guns when they are banned to law abiding citizens. And short of a total ban on guns, not one of these measures would have prevented any of the mass shootings we are talking about. Adam Lanza stole his guns from his mother after he murdered her. The rest had no records so were able to purchase them legally.
And further, I am okay with certain gun control measures. We should ban internet sales and loosen HIPAA laws so mental health history can be added to the check. I don't want people on the no-fly list or watch list to be banned because I don't trust a government so hostile to half its citizens, and people can be put on them for no reason or being rude to a flight attendant. And it's darn near impossible to get your name off the list. Even Ted Kennedy had trouble getting his name off the list, and he was well connected.
And that may stop a lot of the mass shootings, but not these types of mass shootings. Because those guys plan these things for months. It's not an impulse crime.
How do I know? I'm trusting the officials who have said so. So far, nothing has come up. If it does then I will accept that.
The authorities have no reason to lie about connections, since in the past when someone has had connections it is revealed to the public.
I'm sure the cell company will have records of all phone calls made from his phone. I'm sure they have checked that already. A foreign language...ooh scary.
The authorities haven't finished their investigation, and have no reason to tell us everything until they do. And did I act like a foreign language was scary? No! I just said they said he made a phone call and spoke in a foreign language to someone. Could it have been his wife or someone in a foreign country? You know, like a terrorist network?
If you would just read my post without getting angry about the gun thing, maybe you could understand the point I was trying to make.
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