As I write this (it’s Sunday morning, 5:00 a.m. PST) the news is breaking that
an Orlando gay nightclub has been attacked by a gun-wielding 29-year-old son
of Afghan immigrants, Omar Mateen, who appeared to “’have leanings towards’
radical Islamist ideology,” according to the FBI.” At least twenty
people are dead, and forty-two are wounded. Mateen died in a gun battle with
police.
One can easily imagine what will be – and already is – happening in the wake
of this horrific tragedy: the War Party will be quick to jump on this as proof
that we must go abroad in search of monsters to destroy, and carry on the endless
“war on terrorism” to the very ends of the earth. Donald Trump’s followers will
be quick to pounce on this as evidence that their surrealist program of not
allowing Muslims into the country must be implemented immediately: it doesn’t
occur to them that they are already here – and they aren’t going anywhere.
Although Mateen’s parents came from Afghanistan, he was born here in 1986 and
was an American citizen. Unless Trump and his followers are saying we have to
deport all Muslims – a proposal that not even The Donald has floated – Trumpism
appears to offer no solutions. The San Bernardino shooter was also an American
citizen, born and raised here. And as I have pointed out before, there is no
way to establish a religious test for entry into the US for the simple reason
that there is no way to tell who is a Muslim: does it really need to be said
that a potential terrorist isn’t going to answer truthfully?
We don’t yet know what Mateen’s motives were: his father, interviewed by NBC
News, says
he was angered
by seeing two men kissing in Miami recently. That may or may not have anything
to do with his religious beliefs; and yet even if the sight of two men kissing
did violate the gunman’s religious sensibility to the point that it sparked
the worst mass shooting in American history, in the end it matters not at all.
The US has a
little over 3 million Muslims within its borders, most of them citizens.
This isn’t going to change. And the idea that “fifty percent” of them “want
to replace the Constitution with sharia law,” as one Fox News “expert” asserted
on television hours after the shooting, is just making stuff up.
Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, is a political
figure of some note in Afghanistan, or at least in the Afghan diaspora. Although
a US resident, and apparently a citizen, he is a declared candidate
for the Afghan presidency. His party, known as “Durand Jirga,” recently
merged with the “Greater
Afghanistan” movement, and demonstrated
in front of NATO headquarters calling for “heavy armaments” for the Afghan
military and sanctions on Pakistan. Candidate Mateen regularly denounces
…