An act of "domestic terrorism" - or part of a larger looming disaster
An act of "domestic terrorism" - or part of a larger looming disaster

According to FBI Special Agent Danny Banks, the Orlando mass murderer had “leanings toward radical Islam.”

Leanings? According to reports, he called 911 to announce his allegiance to ISIS - and ISIS was only too glad to accept responsibility.

According to the NY Times, the F.B.I. investigated him for possible terrorist ties in 2013 and 2014 but did not believe him to be a threat. The 2014 investigation centered on a possible link between the murderer and Moner Mohammad Abusalha, an American from Florida who became a suicide bomber for an extremist group in Syria.

Orlando, Florida and Tel Aviv, Israel are not that far apart.

Only days ago, two Jihadist shooters murdered four people in Tel Aviv at Max Brenner’s Café. They were stopped before they could kill any further.

A single Jihadist shooter murdered 50 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando—yes, Orlando, the home of Disneyworld. He was not stopped in time…..

Who was he and why did he do it?

When we first heard that the massacre took place in a gay nightclub,  people assumed that the killer was probably a homophobic right-winger. That is not the case.

Our killer’s name was Omar Siddiqui Sateen. He was a first generation American citizen, born in New York City in 1986. His parents came here from Afghanistan—the land of perpetual war and tribal barbarism, the land of the infamous “dancing boys” the young sex slaves of grizzled Taliban commanders. Mateen once lived in Ft. Pierce, and recently lived in Ft. Saint Lucie, about 120 miles away from Orlando.

Siddiqui Mateen murdered 50 people and wounded 53 more innocent civilians in an Orlando Gay nightclub.

One wonders if there was no security or no sense of potential danger in Florida, USA as compared to Tel Aviv, Israel which is long used to precisely such attacks.

The massacre has been categorized as an act of “domestic terrorism.”

The Ft. Pierce Islamic Center describes its members as hailing from 22 countries, including Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Palestine. At its website, it proclaims that Islam is a “religion of peace” (not a religion of “submission” as the word plainly implies); the mosque site “strongly condemns” any and all acts of terrorism.

Until we know more, what may we safely conjecture?

Omar Siddiqui Mateen is:

a) a very bad Muslim because he perpetrated a terrible act of terrorism;

b) a lone wolf jihadist, influenced by no one;

c) a jihadist influenced by an imam, by friends, by internet videos;

d) a gay man who could not accept his sexual identity;

e) a straight man whose ex-wife fled because he beat her every day—according to the Washington Post, this is what his former wife and her family have said;

f) an angry man who became increasingly sexually frustrated;

g) an insane man whose act had absolutely nothing to do with terrorism or with his chosen targets-- indeed, his ex-wife is quoted as saying that he “was not a stable person” but I believe that that is how she is characterizing his wife-battering;

h) he was abused as a child by war-traumatized parents in a war that was caused by Western imperialists—Sateen was not himself caught up in a war zone, he was born here, in New York City;

i) an uneducated man who could not find work and who finally snapped—except Sateen had a degree in Criminal Justice and was “working a security job” and was licensed to pack and carry;

j) a man traumatized by “Islamophobia”—only “Islamophobia” does not really exist;  

k) a homophobic man who, according to his father, became “angry when he saw two men kissing in Miami” a few months ago. His father believes this was a “hate crime.” If Mateen became angry two months ago, this means that he carefully planned his massacre; it was not a spontaneous act of deranged passion.

A “hate crime?” Muslim countries not only persecute homosexuals—they torture and execute them. Arabs who live in the Middle East flee to Israel for asylum. Ironically, gays in America march for “Palestine,” where they could be killed for their lifestyle, not for Israel.

However, many Muslim men are homosexuals but it is forbidden and they have not usually thought of themselves as “gay.”

Tom Trento of United West warned that a mosque in Florida was preaching “death to gays.” Perhaps Mateen was influenced by such teachings.

Or perhaps he had simply joined ISIS and was carrying out their bidding.