In the aftermath of the Orlando mass killing at a gay nightclub in the early morning hours of June 12, 2016, statements made both before and after the incident reveal a gap in understanding why such acts of domestic terrorism will only continue.
On March 29, English-born Imam Farrohk Sekaleshfar spoke to an audience at the Husseini Islamic Center in Sanford, Florida. His topic was “How to deal with the phenomenon of homosexuality.” His solution was straightforward. Sekaleshfar said, to be “compassionate” towards homosexuals, “Let’s get rid of them now.”
As he has openly declared in other speeches on the subject, including one at the University of Michigan in 2013, Sekaleshfar explained in accordance with Islamic law, the penalty for homosexuality is death.
Incredulously, Sekaleshfar claimed it is not the homosexual that is to be hated, but the act, because “the sinner is Allah’s creation” and “you could never hate Allah’s creation.”
Thus, as he explained below, the homosexual is killed out of love.
“We see the physical killing as something brutal, and this is the point when human hatred toward the act has to be done out of love. You have to be happy for that person… we believe in an afterlife, we believe in an eternal life… and with this sentence, you will be forgiven and you won’t be accountable in the hereafter… (In that way) it’s for his own betterment that he leaves.”
While Sekaleshfar further explained conviction under Islamic law requires a homosexual act be witnessed by four people, apparently that part of the sermon was not mastered by the Orlando shooter—Afghan-American Muslim Omar Mir Seddique Mateen.
Meanwhile, Mateen’s father tells anyone willing to listen his son’s attack “has nothing to do with religion.” He claimed his son became incensed a few months earlier after observing two men kiss in Miami and believes that is what precipitated the massacre. Such a comment, by a Muslim who well understands his religion’s mandate is to kill homosexuals, obviously was meant for public consumption to deflect responsibility for the attack from Islam.
Interestingly, a leader at the Islamic Center in Florida where Sekaleshfar gave his March 29 speech on homosexuality told a news reporter before the Orlando shooting the Center had the right to invite any speaker it wanted. He also went on record to say he did not believe there was any reason for concern the talk would incite violence.
Following the Orlando attack, President Barack Obama sought to assign collective responsibility for it to America’s gay-haters and gun enthusiasts:
This massacre is therefore a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school, or in a house of worship, or a movie theater, or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision as well.
Promoting the killer as one of “us,” Obama suggested, “We need to demonstrate that we are defined more — as a country — by the way they (the victims) lived their lives than by the hate of the man who took them from us.”
Missing from Obama’s comments of contributing factors to the shooting was any mention of Islam and its inherent fear of homosexuals. It should be most telling of the lengths to which Obama will go to hide the truth about Islam. He demonstrated no hesitancy in the past to condemn America with claims of Islamophobia; yet, now, he offers no condemnation for Islam’s homophobia.
Rest assured, in the day’s ahead, we will hear the cry of Islamophobia directed at non-Muslims but no mention of homophobia directed at Muslims.
Missing from Obama’s comments too was placing collective responsibility on an America that has become so blind to political correctness it allows imams like Sekaleshfar freely to spew their sick ideology — seeking to kill homosexuals — at universities and Islamic religious centers in the U.S.
Sadly, what Sekaleshfar preaches as part of Islam is not extremist doctrine at all but, rather, part of Islam’s corpus.
There is a major disconnect Obama has promoted ever since taking office. He has repeatedly sought to preach Islam as a peaceful religion despite its links to global terrorism in the 21st century. Any reference at all to Islam he makes is in the context of extremists having hijacked the religion. What he does not want Americans to understand is this: It is not extremists who have hijacked Islam, trying to give it a violent spin; it is moderates who have hijacked the religion, trying to give it a peaceful one.
Even in the wake of the fifty lost lives in Orlando, Obama refuses to be truthful about Islam’s inherently violent undertone. How many more lives must be taken from us before he speaks truthfully about it?
As Forrest Gump would simply explain Islam’s violent link to terrorism today to an American public blinded by Obama’s deceit, “It’s the religion, Stupid!” Until Americans understand this and take appropriate action to curtail it, they can expect the cycle of Islamic terrorism to continue unabated.
Lt. Colonel James G. Zumwalt, USMC (Ret.), is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the U.S. invasion of Panama and the first Gulf war. He is the author of “Bare Feet, Iron Will–Stories from the Other Side of Vietnam’s Battlefields,” “Living the Juche Lie: North Korea’s Kim Dynasty” and “Doomsday: Iran–The Clock is Ticking.” He frequently writes on foreign policy and defense issues.
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