At 2 a.m. on June 12, 2016, an individual shooter opened fire in Pulse nightclub, a gay club in Orlando, Florida, during their Latinx night. This tragedy became a hostage situation until police stormed in at 5 a.m., resulting in 49 lives lost and another 53 injured. It is now the deadliest shooting in American history, since Virginia Tech in 2007 and Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Before entering the club, the suspect was armed with an assault rifle, a handgun and another unidentified device. The suspect was later identified as Omar Mateen.
This case is currently being investigated as a possible act of terrorism, according to FBI Special Agent Ronald Hopper; there are suggestions that the individual may have had leanings toward a particular ideology. Although he pledged allegiance to three different terrorist groups, Hezbollah, ISIS and Al Qaeda, the groups hate each other and for true allegiance he'd have to be Sunni and Shia, making it unlikely that he was deeply involved. And although his parents were from Afghanistan, I’d like to point out that Omar Mateen was a U.S. citizen born in New York and a registered Democrat, meaning his hatred and homophobia were probably home-grown.
As I scrolled down the pages of news on the morning of June 12, I thought, “Please don’t be Muslim.” As a student, I have studied Islam and the Qur’an, learning about the religion and its true messages, and I generally found it to be a beautiful text, filled with messages of love, tolerance and phrases like “compete with each other in doing good” (Surat al-Ma’ida, 48). It is a highly misunderstood and complex book that discusses peace more than war and, contrary to popular belief, mentions Jesus by name 21 times more than it mentions Muhammad by name, both highly important prophets in the religion. Of course, like the Bible and Torah, there are parts of it that are a bit old school, which we need to acknowledge are more for audiences around 2,000 years ago. We no longer accept the “eye for an eye” punishment, unless someone is using an old holy text literally in relation to its violence as a few smaller religious groups all around the world do.
With a heightened awareness of Islam and Muslim practices and beliefs, as a citizen I have watched time and time again as the Islamophobia in America increases in light of tragedy where the suspect happens to be of this faith. It simultaneously infuriates me and breaks my heart: blanketing an entire religious group with the actions of a few is the type of logic only racism, fear and ignorance can produce. I knew that if this person was of this faith that this would happen again and this man’s faith would be on trial more than his individual actions and what allowed them to be carried out.
What we as a country need to remember moving forward in the face of this tragedy is that individual radicals are not the majority. Islam is a religion practiced by over 1.6 billion people across the world, roughly about one-quarter the world’s population, many practicing different types of the faith, speaking many different languages and coming from different cultures. Although this community is vast and highly diverse, they do share their faith and generally consider other Muslims as a part of the umma, or family of Muslims. Sharing religious beliefs, the Muslim communities across the world and their religious leaders have labeled violent and extremist groups like Daesh as un-Islamic. Just because a terrorist group calls themselves the “Islamic State” does not make them a state and based on their actions that strictly violate the Qur’an, like killing innocent people of different faiths and the same faith, it does not make them Islamic.
Because the actions of the killer were not Islamic, especially during the holy month of Ramadan, it is important when discussing this attack that we don’t use phrases like “radical Islam” or “radical jihadist.” By calling this horrific attack and hate crime "Islamic" even in a "radical" sense, it perpetuates Islamophobia by implying that the act was in a way Islamic which it was not. The same goes for the word “jihad,” as the word means holy struggle and is a legitimate tenet of Islam. Both of these do not describe what happened that night. We must use language that is fitting for the situation like terrorism, homophobia and hate crime.
This is a horrific hate crime against the LGBTQIA community as well as people of color within that community and all over the world. Homophobia, racism, Islamophobia and radical terrorism are the bigger issues here and they are intersectional in terms of hatred. And when these hatreds are spread and acted upon, it can ignite more hatred. This eventually reveals holes in our laws; the resulting issues from this hatred, regarding background checks, gun control and gun violence. Not only did the shooter have a handgun, but he had an assault rifle. If you google, “assault rifle,” the first thing that pops up is a definition reading: “A rapid-fire, magazine-fed automatic rifle designed for infantry use.” On top of that, it is possible to buy them in America without a background check or even a valid license, something I initially learned through a video, a video of a member of Al Qaeda. If this is the case and terrorists know about it, why haven’t previous tragedies inspired positive changes in relation to accessing these weapons?
There is no reason for guns like this to be so easily accessible to those who clearly should not have them. We have seen this before in Newtown and Aurora where military-style guns like the AR-15 and similar designs are used for massacres, not survival, defense or hunting. And because these weapons are so easily getting into the wrong hands, it means something needs to change.
Although incidents like this occur elsewhere, gun violence here is a severe national problem. According to BBC News in their article "Guns in the US: The statistics behind the violence", “of all the murders in the U.S. in 2012, 60 percent were by firearm compared with 31 percent in Canada, 18.2 percent in Australia and just 10 percent in the UK.” And although it isn’t unique to America, because our statistics are currently alarmingly high in terms of mass shootings and school shootings, this needs to be looked at by Americans right now as an American problem. If we accept this as the norm, nothing will get fixed, nothing will get better and nothing will change.
Moving forward when discussing this tragedy, and not to be bleak but the probably avoidable tragedies in the future involving guns, we need to not focus and blame the tragedy on the religion or skin color of the shooter, but we need to focus on the out-of-control homophobia, Islamophobia, racism and gun violence problem in America. It’s time to stop using fear and blame to distance ourselves from reality; these aren’t foreigners illegally obtaining military-style weapons and shooting our schools, churches and nightclubs, although they could if they wanted to right now thanks to the loopholes. These are legal, U.S. born citizens and, clearly too easily, purchasing weapons designed for mass shootings when they shouldn't be allowed to at all. Although I believe it is unnecessary to take away guns completely as most people are responsible owners, I do think it is time for background checks to be made mandatory and loopholes in the laws to be closed for terrorists and those who are not educated, stable and healthy enough to responsibly own them.
The Senate filibuster on June 15, 2016 until the early morning of June 16, 2016 was definitely a start but socially a lot of work needs to be done, too. Instead of succumbing to fear and hatred, learn about Islam, learn about the LGBTQIA community, call out hatred when you hear it, stop using "gay" synonymously with words with negative connotations like "stupid" or "weird," teach others, accept others and spread love. In addition to this, please call or email your senator and state representative; it’s time to start having conversations again, meet somewhere in the middle with those of different views and do something once and for all about this problem as a country.
