Impacted communities warn against the unleashing of further violence through racist, anti-Muslim hate speech.
By Sarah Lazare / AlterNet
Sunday morning’s horrific mass shooting at an Orlando, Florida nightclub is being met with mourning, outrage, heartbreak and international solidarity, as well as words of caution against the unleashing of further cycles of violence through anti-Muslim and xenophobic incitement.
Approximately 50 people were killed and 53 wounded when a man opened fire at the Pulse club in the midst of Gay Pride month. The shooter has been identified as U.S. citizen Omar Mateen, who was killed by police.
Cindy Wiesner, a queer Latina Miami resident and national coordinator for Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, told AlterNet, “I am so saddened and angered by the senseless lives lost, people injured and a community that will be permanently marked by this. I worry about the fodder of hate and revenge that Trump and his kind will produce. Will he now opportunistically defend Latino people and LGBTQ people’s lives or are we just collateral damage?”
The Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity, which works to support and empower LGBTQ Muslims, declared in a statement released on Sunday, “This tragedy cannot be neatly categorized as a fight between the LGBTQ community and the Muslim community. As LGBTQ Muslims, we know that there are many of us who are living at the intersections of LGBTQ identities and Islam. At moments like this, we are doubly affected.”
“We reject attempts to perpetuate hatred against our LGBTQ communities as well as our Muslim communities,” the organization continued. “We ask all Americans to resist the forces of division and hatred, and to stand against homophobia as well as against Islamophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry.”
In a vacuum of information, media outlets and politicians are speculating about Mateen’s ties to terrorist organizations, with Florida senator Bill Nelson insinuating that Mateen had links to ISIL, while acknowledging such information is unconfirmed. USA Today tweeted out an outrageous news bite referencing Mateen’s parents, who were born in Afghanistan, stating, Omar Mateen “was a U.S. citizen, but some of his family is not.” Such response comes in the midst of an election cycle marred by anti-Muslim incitement, accompanied by a spike in Islamophobic hate crimes.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump—who has proposed banning non-American Muslims, killing the family members of ISIL, “forcing” Mexico to build a wall and deporting millions of immigrants—is opportunistically using the massacre to boast that he is “right on radical Islamic terrorism.”
Meanwhile, Hermelinda Cortes, organizer with the queer liberation organization Southerners on New Ground, told AlterNet that racist, xenophobic rhetoric further erodes the safety of LGBTQ people, many of whom are undocumented, refugees, Muslims and people of color. Cortes emphasized that the Orlando attack was “part of a larger trajectory and cultural backlash against the LGBTQ movement fighting to be free,” citing North Carolina’s extreme anti-LGBTQ law, House Bill 2. “We are taking this attack in that context and don’t see it as an isolated incident.”
As a case in point, while there is a pressing need for blood donations, many gay and bisexual men are barred from donating due to discriminatory FDA rules.
Many argue that this painful moment requires solidarity and a more nuanced response.
“Homophobia, transphobia, and patriarchy kills on a daily basis,” Darakshan Raja, founder of the Muslim American Women’s Policy Forum, told AlterNet. “All of us must do better to show up for LGBTQI/gender non-conforming communities and end this violence.
“Simultaneously we need to be careful of the narrative around the shooter,” Raja continued. “Islamophobia won’t fight homophobia/transphobia, especially when these systems are interconnected.”
Ashley Green, a Tampa Bay-based organizer with the Florida-based organization Dream Defenders, agrees. “Seeing our brothers and sisters targeted for who they love is sad and tragic,” Green told AlterNet. “We need to reject homophobia and Islamophobia. One form of hate can’t justify another.”
Equality Florida noted in a statement released Sunday morning, “Gay clubs hold a significant place in LGBTQ history. They were often the only safe gathering place and this horrific act strikes directly at our sense of safety. June commemorates our community standing up to anti-LGBTQ violence at the Stonewall Inn, the nightclub that has become the first LGBTQ site recognized as a national monument.”
“We are heartbroken and angry,” the organization stated, “that senseless violence has once again destroyed lives in our state and in our country.”
Sarah Lazare is a staff writer for AlterNet. A former staff writer for Common Dreams, she coedited the book About Face: Military Resisters Turn Against War. Follow her on Twitter at @sarahlazare.
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“In a vacuum of information, media outlets and politicians are speculating about Mateen’s ties to terrorist organizations, with Florida senator Bill Nelson insinuating that Mateen had links to ISIL, while acknowledging such information is unconfirmed.” So it isn’t enough to quell the speculation that Mateen had links to ISIS that he called 911 in the middle of the attack and pledged his allegiance to ISIS?
The FBI has got its head up its ass when they interviewed this guy 3 times, and he was still able to purchase guns legally. The head of the FBI should be fired.
This is just the tragedy du jour and we’re all supposed to be obligated to do a week of mourning. I’m tired of it. The news will be co-opted by this for a week because it glues eyeballs to the tube so nothing else of the nation’s business will get done or talked about. Next week it will be something else yet nothing will be done about getting guns off the street. I’m not mourning; I’m sick and tired of this whole fucking country’s culture with guns in every popular TV show and movie. It’s F’ed up.
John–
With all due respect, on what grounds should the FBI have prevented Mateen from being able to purchase guns? The law is the law, and someone can be a bad guy or sociopath or make vile statements and legally purchase guns. If his wife had sworn out a complaint on spousal abuse, and if the local L.E. had pursued the complaint and obtained a conviction, then there might have been legal grounds for preventing him from purchasing more guns, but in Florida possibly not. The law needs to be changed, not the head of the FBI (at least not because of this tragedy).
I value your perspective on most topics; I think you missed the mark on this one. Yes the culture of folks being so afraid of everything that they want (& think that they need) large capacity firearms for _sustained_ gunfights is f’ed up.
You mean to tell me that the FBI can interview a guy as a suspected terrorist and then decide he’s alright after all so no need to put him on the list to deny him the right to buy assault weapons? So he’s telling his co-workers he has ties to terrorists and the FBI is called in. What is that all a big joke – about his telling people he had ties to terrorists? I guess second amendment rights trump everything else. We wouldn’t want to deny anyone their toys, would we?
Yes, I mean to say that there isn’t actually a list of “suspected terrorists” who can be denied the right to purchase firearms. I don’t like it, but that’s the state of the law. The FBI can investigate and interview you, and they can put you on a no-fly list for ties to potential terrorists, but explicitly they can’t prevent you from legally purchasing guns. And even if the FBI spent less time following political activists, there’s still a fundamental limit to how many potential terrorists the FBI could track closely at once.
And yes, it does feel very strange to me to be “defending” the FBI.
The FBI can put you on a no-fly list but can’t put you on a no-buy list. Who can put you on that list?
According to the NBC news tonight, if the FBI is investigating you, you can not buy weapons at least without the FBI being informed. During the time Mateen’s case was open with the FBI, this was the situation. But then the FBI, stupidly in my opinion, closed the damn case giving Mateen carte blanche to go out and buy an assault rifle no questions asked. Is this stupid, or what? I still say the head of the FBI should resign.
No one: there is no “no-buy list”. Only if you are convicted of a felony or a couple of specific other offenses can you lose your “right” to buy a firearm. I believe that some states provide for a court order against purchase or bearing under some mental health conditions. I’m not an expert.
From the Orlando Sentinel article http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/pulse-orlando-nightclub-shooting/os-orlando-nightclub-omar-mateen-profile-20160613-story.html
“Nothing in Mateen’s background prohibited him from legally buying those guns, and the head of the state agency that oversees gun permits in Florida told reporters Monday that the system worked the way it was designed, The News Service of Florida reported.
…
He was eligible to buy as many guns as he liked because he was not a convicted felon, and was not facing a felony charge or a misdemeanor domestic violence charge. He was not a drug abuser, a fugitive, the subject of a domestic violence injunction, someone who was in the country illegally, someone who had been dishonorably discharged from the military or someone who had been found by a judge to be mentally incompetent.”