The Orlando Massacre
By Azher Quader
President, CBC
Chicago, IL
Just as the Muslim community came off an emotional high with a show of worldwide love and adulation for their community’s enormously popular boxing legend, Muhammad Ali, who died a week ago, they experienced the horrific tragedy in Orlando, Florida, where a self-claiming ISIS sympathizer, went on a shooting rampage in a gay nightclub killing 49 and injuring 53.
Little is known about the shooter at this time except that he was born and raised in America, was married briefly a few years ago, with the ex stating he was physically abusive to her. His family came from Afghanistan and he was 29.
From what is known so far he acted on his own with no collaboration or instructions from anyone else. Hence the refusal by President Obama to label him as part of Radical Islam. The guns he used were bought legally. He is now dead. Muslim organizations from coast to coast have been quick to express their prompt condolences and forceful distancing statements, denouncing the killings and expressing their sympathies for the families of the victims.
Significantly also, several of those messages make no mention of the LGBT community, to which the victims belonged and for whom the sympathies were being expressed. The LGBT community here in Chicago on their part, have refused to blame the Muslim community for this terror act, asking all for restraint and calm. At a rally on Halsted street in Chicago, where hundreds gathered to show support for the LGBT community, several Muslims joined to convey their sympathy and support as well. That the gunman chose to carry out this deplorable act of terror in the middle of Ramadan, adds an extra measure of irony and injury, to the sensitivities of millions of peace-loving and tolerant Muslims, who are absorbed in praying and fasting this month and practicing to let go of anger and hate from their lives.
As has become a sad routine now, after each such mass shooting in America, there are passionate calls for gun control legislation, for improved mental health programs, for greater scrutiny and security and greater data collection. But the puzzle of violent extremism, whether ideological or random, continues to challenge and frustrate us threatening to create new norms in the way we are living compared to the way we used to live, just a few short years ago. Clearly there are many strands and many causes for violence. To think that any one agency or entity has the capacity, the power and the wisdom to solve this puzzle is to be naïve. There is a plethora of reasons and all appear to raise their ugly heads when least expected. It would appear to require profound changes in the ways we are attempting to find solutions. That may be easier said than done.
To be sure, anger does not happen in a vacuum. Circumstances that cause perpetual hardships and misery breed anger. Paradigms that are anchored in faulty assumptions and incomplete realities produce hate and hostility. Policies that are selfish and implemented without regard for the interests of others, create enemies not friends. Ideologies that refuse to see the light of reason through the prism of experience, lead to outcomes that can be troublesome and even disastrous, for the welfare of individuals and communities.
Coming back to Orlando, we will never know the full story or the circumstances that led the shooter on his deadly mission. To presume that he was ideologically motivated by the ISIS theology can at best be an assumption only. Based on that assumption, we can only conclude that he was terribly misguided. For while the Qur’an disapproves homosexual behavior, it unequivocally establishes the sanctity of life. No one gets authority to punish people for their behaviors, much less a license to kill. ‘Spreading mischief in the land’ as mentioned in the Qur’anic verse below, places the bar at a much higher level than can be reached by the practice of homosexual behavior in the privacy of a home. “We ordained for the Children of Israel that if anyone slew a person - unless it be in retaliation for murder or for spreading mischief in the land - it would be as if he slew all mankind: and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all humanity.” Qur’an 5:32 Many in the Muslim community struggle with the boundaries of individual freedoms they find sometimes discomforting within the societies they have come to adopt as their own. Many also find their desire to integrate and their concerns for assimilation, create confusing choices and dichotomies. But it does not have to be that way. We have neither to be confused nor fearful, if our understanding of our faith is anchored in the two foundational principles of ‘compassion’ and ‘justice’ with a generous supply of ‘reason’ to keep those two glued together. Only when we learn to balance freedom with fairness will we obtain clarity in our vision to live and let live in America, with dignity and peace. May Allah heal and comfort the Orlando survivors as they journey back to health and give patience to the friends and families of the victims who perished.
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