Source: The New York Times
ORLANDO, Fla. — When Dr. Joseph Ibrahim heard that the attack at the Pulse nightclub may have been linked to terrorism, he caught himself fearing any kind of link to his own Muslim, Middle-Eastern roots.
Please, he thought, don’t let Ibrahim appear anywhere in the gunman’s name.
Dr. Ibrahim — who heads the trauma unit at Orlando Regional Medical Center, and generally goes by Joey — had already spent hours repairing gunshot wounds in the bodies of Latino men and women, many of whom were the sons and daughters of immigrants, too.
Yanked from bed by a phone call at 2:15 a.m., he was doing what he had trained for. His old friends from his hometown in Tennessee werepulling for him. But it was hard to escape the pairing: the son of one Muslim immigrant from the Middle East trying to save the lives of mostly gay Latinos whom another son of Muslim immigrants tried to kill — all in a chunk of verdant Florida built on Disney joy.
“Maybe we’re a target because of our diversity and tolerance,” Dr. Ibrahim said after a morning of surgery on Wednesday. “Here you constantly see people from all over the world, and it’s wonderful.”
This is the Orlando that the shooting tore right through, a place that sees itself as a model of diversity, at ease with difference, with room for everyone and every ride. Even now, as the conversation outside Orlando zeros in on “radical Islam,” this city is awash in American flags, vigils with Republican and Democratic politicians trying to speak Spanish, and signs on churches, strip clubs, and restaurants with two catchphrases: “Orlando Strong” and “Orlando United.”
It is hardly a perfect union, one without pain, or frustration. Some Latinos have wondered why the shooting that left 49 people dead has become a gay-rights touchstone and not a Latino one. Some immigrants with loved ones among the dead have collapsed in the arms of local leaders, desperate for financial help, wishing for more of the support found in the larger Puerto Rican community.
Categories: America, migrants, Muslims, The Muslim Times, USA
Omar Mateen, 29, seems to have deliberately targeted the venue because it was a gay club. His father said a recent incident in Miami in which a gay couple were kissing in front of his wife and son made him very angry. Omar Mateen who lives in Fort St Lucie is the shooter. He family was from Afghanistan. There is only one developed country in the world that allows civilians to buy military style automatic weapons. There is only one developed country were massacres with those type of weapons happen again and again and again.
Killing innocent peoples is nothing to do with Islam.”In Islam there is no commandment to kill people by making such allegations against them. The cartoonists had exercised their freedom of expression, and freedom of expression is totally allowed in Islam. Even during the Prophet’s time there were several instances of ridicule, however the Prophet and his Companions neither punished such persons nor asked anyone to do so. On every occasion of this kind, the Prophet’s Companions always tried to positively disseminate the message of Islam. They never tried to punish these people. The killing of those people who had published the cartoons is a gravely un-Islamic act in the name of Islam. What did killing Saddam Husain do. What did killing Osama Bin laden do? NOTHING!!!. There is a long long line of replacements. I don’t know the answers. He was asked by MI5 to join them…so you know he is working for them.
The killer is the product of western education, which makes a man stupid, selfish and corrupt. He was brought up as an American but the society considered him as a Muslim. He adopted all the evils of American culture. He suffered from identity crises and did not know where he belonged. I do not think that he could speak his read and write his mother tongue Persian or Pashto or Duree. He married twice and divorced twice just like other Americans. It is just possible that he inclined towards homosexuality. I think that this is one of the reason why he entered the Gay club for shooting the innocent.
Mateen was a mentally ill individual who committed a heinous, cowardly HATE CRIME. And now thanks to paranoid fear mongering, we are playing into Mateen’s twisted ploy to ELEVATE his snivelling sick act, transforming him and his crime into some international terror event. Mateen, knowing his country so well, has succeeded. We are turn this into something far more insidious than it really was. The act of a mad man carrying out his hatred of gays.
None of 7/7 bombers and British Muslim youths who are in Syria and Iraq are the product of Muslim schools. They are the product of British schooling which is the home of institutional racism with chicken racist native teachers. It is absurd to believe that Muslim schools, Imams and Masajid teach Muslim children anti-Semitic, homophobic and anti-western views. It is dangerously deceptive and misleading to address text books and discuss them out of their historical, cultural and linguistic context. It is not wrong to teach children that Jews are committing the same cruelty in Palestine what German did to them before or during Second World War. It is not wrong to teach children that anti-social behaviour, drinking, drugs, homosexuality, sex before marriage, teenage pregnancies and abortions are western values and Islam is against all such sins. This does not mean that Muslim schools teach children to hate westerners, Jews and homosexuals.
The British establishment is wrong in thinking that Imams are to blame for extremism. Imams are not solution to the problem for extremism. Extremism is nothing to do with Imams. Extremism is not created from abroad, it is coming from within. Britain fails to help Muslim communities feel part of British society. Race trouble is being predicted by the Daily Express, because of an ethnic boom in UK major cities. Muslim communities need imams for the solutions of their needs and demands in their own native languages. Muslim parents would like to see their children well versed in Standard English and to go for higher studies and research to serve humanity. The fact is that majority of Muslim children leave schools with low grades because monolingual teachers are not capable to teach Standard English to bilingual Muslim children.
A Muslim is a citizen of this tiny global village. He/she does not want to become notoriously monolingual Brit. None of 7/7 bombers and British Muslim youths who are in Syria and Iraq are the product of Muslim schools. They are the product of British schooling which is the home of institutional racism with chicken racist native teachers. It is absurd to believe that Muslim schools, Imams and Masajid teach Muslim children anti-Semitic, homophobic and anti-western views. It is dangerously deceptive and misleading to address text books and discuss them out of their historical, cultural and linguistic context. When a native Brit goes to Middle East, he is called a voluntary fighter. When a Muslim goes there he is called a terrorist. Double standard by the British society. Also lot of British Jews went to Israel to fight but on their return no action was taken against them.
IA
http://www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk