The terrorist attack by a jihadist in Orlando is not only the latest instance of an ISIS fighter killing Americans, but also a reminder that jihadists hate gays. Curiously, the organizations that fight for gay rights have been mostly silent about the dangers Islamic supremacism poses to their constituency. But then, as Douglas Murray puts it: “the battle for gay rights stop[s] at the borders of Islam.”
To be clear, jihadists do not necessarily hate homosexual acts (prohibited in the Qur’an). They hate “gays.” They may oppose the act, but they especially detest the “sinner” who makes the act his identity, rather than hiding and denying what most of the Muslim world tolerates as a common, if temporary, deviation.
To jihadist eyes, “gays” celebrate openly, in a very American fashion, what should be hidden. In Iraq, when the Shia militias round up and stone young males with “Emo haircuts,” they justify it as eliminating satanic, Westernized homosexuals. When Mahmoud Ahmadinejad spoke at Columbia University in 2007, he said: “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country…we do not have this phenomenon.”
As veterans of the Afghan wars know, homosexuality is not unusual among our allies and enemies alike. A declassified 2010 Pentagon study indicates that “Pashtun men commonly have sex with other men…have sexual relationships with boys and shun women both socially and sexually – yet they completely reject the label of ‘homosexual.’”
Long before Orlando, jihadists have publically executed gay men. In Raqqa, ISIS throws them off rooftops. Many Muslim countries rule by a version of Sharia law that imposes the death penalty for homosexuality.
Bruce Bawer, an iconic gay rights intellectual, warned of the dangers Islam posed to the West in general and to gay men in particular. Bawer witnessed rapid changes in Dutch and Norwegian society after an expansion of immigration by Muslims in the 1990s. “To them,” he wrote, “the infidel’s ‘law’ is a joke, and values such as pluralism, tolerance, and sexual equality are alien and immoral. They see Western society as the enemy, European men as wimps, European women as sluts.” But there was a special disdain for gay men, and Bawer documents toleration for them in the heart of liberal Europe “slipping away like sand through the fingers.”
The response to Orlando from gay rights groups has been tepid and confused. GLAAD calls the attack a “tragedy” but makes no reference to the ideology behind it. The ACLU calls it “a horrific event” and oddly ends its statement by expressing “solidarity with the Muslim community here in Florida and elsewhere” – as though Omar Mateen had targeted and killed Muslims.
Typing the word “Islam” into the search engine of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) website yields a “No Results Found” message. The group’s June 13 statement on the attack condemns “terror” but not Islamic terror. The GMHC might contemplate Bawer’s warnings and consider the crisis Islamic supremacism poses to the health of gay men.
And where are the Hollywood allies of the LGBT community? With very few exceptions they avoid Islam altogether. True, several made sure that cameras were present when they performed their #BringBackOurGirls routine, and many boycotted the Beverly Hills Hotel when the Sultan of Brunei (its owner) announced that he would henceforth rule his island nation with strict adherence to Sharia. But the attention span of the beautiful people seems short-lived. No one mentions the Chibok schoolgirls or their Boko Haram kidnappers anymore, and while the boycott has ended, the Sultan of Brunei still owns the Beverly Hills Hotel and still rules with Sharia.
Like most feminists organizations, most gay rights advocates have paid scant attention to Islam. Instead of (or in addition to) fighting Republicans and Evangelicals, or photographers and bakers who oppose gay marriage (Obama’s position until May 9, 2012) a careful reprioritization of their foes might lead them to a worthier enemy.
If so, I say welcome to the fight, and I humbly offer some unsolicited advice.
Seize the Orlando attack and turn it against Islamic supremacists. The celebrations of those killed, the concerts and telethons to benefit their families are natural educational platforms. Use them wisely. Call on your Hollywood allies and take advantage of their access to free publicity and legions of adoring fans.
Finally, and perhaps most important, find the face of your cause. Find your Malala. It might be Hussein Sabat, Mr. Gay Syria, whose boyfriend was killed by ISIS three years ago. Sabat now leads the precarious existence of a gay rights activist from his exile in Turkey. His message is a good start: “Everyone is scared of ISIS but it doesn’t stop me from living my life. I won’t let them be a barrier and I hate them more than I am scared.”
A.J. Caschetta is a Shillman-Ginsburg fellow at the Middle East Forum and a senior lecturer at the Rochester Institute of Technology.

blitz2b says
Oh it’s just mental illness…. Absolutely nothing to do with the religion of piece(s).
Myrtle Linder says
i can see that you have not read GOD’S WORD has to say about homosexuality, check out Deuteronomy 23;17; 1 Kings 14:24; Romans 1:26-28; 1 Corinthians 6:9-6,9-11; 1 Peter 2:11, Jude 7.
To GOD, it is an abomination to HIM. HE made man and HE did not intend them to commit abomination. It is a evil act against GOD and man!!!!
People who know nothing about the Bible should try to tell others how to live by it.
blitz2b says
You idiot, no one is denying that there are such verses in the Bible and no one is denying that homosexuality is an abomination in the eyes of God. However when did you ever see a Christian or Jew go out and kill scores of people to impart God’s judgement in them?
Don’t behave like an absolute ignorant just to defend an ideology that someday will sell you off as a sex slave to Islamic jihadis skiing the work of their despotic deity…
What a disgrace you are!
blitz2b says
I hate my phone…..I meant jihadis “doing” …. Not skiing for their despot Allah….. Although that would be a much better way to resolve an argument rather than lopping people’s heads off…. 😉
I must ask Myrtle. are you a member of the LGBT community who will perpetually blame right wingers for being homophobic while you defend Muslims against Islamophobia even when Islam is on a mission to eradicate all homosexuals?
If so, you disgust me….
B says
Really now would you show me another good book about the words homosexuality. Because I don’t believe God put that in there I believe man put that in there I believe they have bastardize the Bible they have use it as a weapon against many people for ages. If you’re going to claim one thing from one book let’s go to the New Testament which a talks about love peace and understanding where the hell is that in all of you good Christians where the hell do you get off telling anybody about the good book that you only pick and choose verse . God help you. Because if you believe the Bible it it’s entirety then you know that you’re off base and already doing gods bastardization. God never told you to take pieces of the Bible and use it as a weapon where did you get that crap from where the hell would you have heard the words to use against people outside of pastors who bastardize that Bible. I pray for you
Ann Inquirer says
You digress and are deflected, and do so at your peril, because it is jihadists who believe they have the right to kill you just for being an unbeliever, forget the gay part. Bottom line, it’s not the Christians killing those who do not align with them; It is the jihadists and has been that way for 1400 years and 300 million people killed (does not include all the slaves taken). You might consider where best to put your focus – the viper of 7th century psychopaths swaying in front of you.
SpiritOf1683 says
It is stupid people like you who is weakening the West. If you find Christians so repulsive, go and live somewhere suitable like Iran or Saudi Arabia. And please turn up to Mecca wearing a crucifix or better still a Star of David and see what happens.
gordon miller says
You’re right, if we consider Islam itself as a mental illness, and why shouldn’t we—it’s people living as if it’s still AD 680.
blitz2b says
Well I wouldn’t just blame the adherents of this noxious 7th century ideology alone, it is mainly the fault of the pandering left who have given credence to, and have made excuses for every single atrocity committed in the name of this fascist movement disguised as religion.
If the reins were put on in the very early stages of the Islamic resurgence that happened mid last century, the world would be a much better place and Islam would have probably been diminished to a miniscule number.
However with the traitorous self loathing left, our western civilization is on the brink of destruction.
Rick says
It is my understanding that sodomy is a common practice amoung muslim men. So what is behind this commonality? I suspect they have guilt feeling repressed and project it on to gays.
blitz2b says
It is the brazen declaration of one’s homosexual tendencies that Islam is against.
A Muslim man may be covertly attracted to males and even have sexual encounters with other men, however if he openly declares that he is gay, then he is dammed. That is something Muslims and even Islam will not tolerate.
Muslim homosexuals are required to lie about their feelings (even though they may act on them secretly), only then will Allah reward them with pure youth that will “serve” them for all eternity.
Jenny H says
The strong element of homosexuality running through many muslim societies is natural for cultures where the sexes are extremely separated and women are regarded with contempt. For many muslim men in such cultures, apart from having kids, why have sex with a contemptible subhuman, whom you normally don’t have much, if anything to do with, when you can have sex with an equal?
Concerning the lack of criticism of Islam by people who normally support gay rights, fear of retribution could explain that.
freewoman says
they cut women’s clitorises out so they don’t experience pleasure. If the partner is laying there like a martyr, it’s a real turnoff.
JMB says
Lets face it we are simply dealing with an uncivilised 7th century religion of darkness specially created for uneducated desert dwellers, it has absolutely no place in the 21st century.
blitz2b says
No not for them (Muslims) it isn’t…. Men have to be in control over every aspect of a women’s life…. She is not even allowed to enjoy copulation, in case she would want more from another partner.. For her the whole process of intercourse is so that her husband is satisfied and they make another jihadhi in the process.
In Islam Allah has made men weak and insecure. They ate not allowed to trust their wives or female relatives and beating women is celebrated…
Although they put on a macho facade, Muslim males are actually cowards because they prey on the weak and the weaker sex, all the while doing this with divine approval.
Debi Brand says
Rick, very briefly here, in short, revered works of tafsir provide, alongside the prohibition for men to see more than the one needed eye of potentially marriageable females is the prohibition for them to look at the beardless boys.
Why? Because as is so with the female, if the Muslim “man” sees the eyes, the hand, the feet, God forbid, the forearm and so forth, there is danger of lust.
So it is with the beardless boy, according to the works of the revered scholars of Islam.
Therefore, the prohibition comes under the Islamic tenet of prevention–barring the way and means to the final act of sin, by making illegal and “sinful” as the final act of sin all actions that lead to it.
In brief, as hadith provides, “Allah curses the ogler and the ogled at.” (as spoken to in Vol. 2 of the highly revered Comprehensive Qur’an Commentary, Ma’ariful Qur’an, p.458.)
As the same source provides on the just-cited hadith, “It means that the curse of Allah falls on anyone who looks at someone in an evil way, someone who is a non-Mahram; that is, someone outside the count of those in the family he is permitted to see because marriage with them is forbidden for ever.” (Ibid.)
It goes on, providing, “this is why such a nazir, the onlooker of the other, comes under the curse of Allah. As for the manzur ilaihi, the one looked at lustfully, the same curse will apply subject to his or her having deliberately and invitingly caused such a look to be cast.”
What’s more, with respect to “Allah’s curse,” Surah Al-Nisa provides, “…the one whom Allah curses you shall find no helper for him.” (Vs. 52.) Exegesis on the said verse, by the same stated source above, and others, states, hadith provides, the Messenger of Allah said, “ Cursed is he who does what the people of Lut used to do.” It adds on that, the hadith was “Narrated by Razin and appearing in Mishkat, the reference is to the male homosexual.”
But hadith, as the same source and others provide, also includes the female in the above said curse, as we read in the following hadith and others:
And the same revered work provides, on those who earn the curse of Allah, “’la ‘nah” being the Arabic Qur’anic word. “la ‘nah’ (translated as ‘curse’ in absence of a more exact equivalent) means being far removed from the mercy of Allah, extremely debased and disgraced.” It continues, “For such accursed ones admonitions are very stern.”
It continues, providing, “The Holy Qur’an says: (The accursed, wherever they be, are to be caught and killed massacre-like.) (33:61) This is their disgrace in the present life.”
Therefore, “Orlando.”
duh_swami says
They are only following orders as a test…Quran 8:17…You didn’t kill then amnd throw them under, Allah did it…That was about Badr,,,But6 The Battle of Badr has berm fought over and over, most recently in Orlando…Omar pulled the trigger, bit it was Allah who was behind it…
Alien Republican says
On Facebook conservative gay site “gaystream” has been shut down for being islamophobic.
Zuckerberg has been supporting Merkelfascism since past year. You see, we are “progressive” while the use is “retarded”. You may be slow but you are catching up quickly.
Welcome to the “imaginary” threat of islamisation.
Here some sentences from their site to give you an impression what they wrote originally in German. I’m sorry for being a crappy translator.
“”NO, YOU ARE NOT ORLANDO, if you are one of those people who against all facts keep monotonously repeating at every assault by fanatical islamists that it has nothing to do with islam.
NO, YOU ARE NOT ORLANDO, if you trivialize what happened by comparing the hate crimes of ISIS and other Islamic terrorist organizations with homophobic statements by Christians or Jews.
NO, YOU ARE NOT ORLANDO, if you capitalise on the victims suffering for your partisan interests by blaming the Orlando terrorist act on arms dealers or Donald Trump.
NO, YOU ARE NOT ORLANDO if you indiscriminately slandered as islamophobic and rightwing populists all those who have warned of the dangers Islam for transgenders and homosexuals.”
Nigel GFF says
Well observed. This classic case is a paradigm for ‘You duplicitous b*stards, able to lie out of both sides of your mouths’.
The comments you have quoted (from the erstwhile ‘gaystream’) are clearly heartfelt, dripping with frustration and a desperate need for non-befuddled thought from the “Je suis Charlie” brigade, those fair weather friends snatching at anything suitable to grind their pet agendas.
Jay Boo says
NPR perspective.
“Let’s look at both sides”
Did the unarmed victims somehow provoke the Muslim by their defenselessness.
Shouldn’t the victim have known that would make a typical Muslim angry?
Moses says
The gays we’re killed but instead of the left defending them as usual they ended up sacrificing them on the alter of political correctness .Clearly shows the left sympathies with Islam.
Jack Diamond says
Islam regards homosexuals as worse than murderers and treats them accordingly. The reaction to Orlando shows how much Islam is off the table. Republicans, Christians, guns, mental illness anything but Islam. At best a “perversion” of Islam. Because being critical of Islam let alone acting in self-defense, is somehow identified as a right-wing cause, and saying anything critical of Islam or Muslims would only further “their” agenda (even if it is truth).
And yet… the cognitive dissonance could make the head explode. The prevalence of homosexuality in Islamic countries (for centuries), what is (clearly) accepted (with a wink and nod?) and what is not; the fact Muhammad, who knew his audience well, gave his Arab followers ghilman young boys as a reward in paradise, just not in this world, yet ghilman young boys have been “enjoyed” in this life from those times to these (think the Ottoman sultans); even today with reports of gayness in the purely Islamic Islamic State, such as here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/01/06/the-secret-hypocritical-gay-world-of-isis.html
indicating a sort of prison logic at work, the penetrator is not gay only the penetrated are really homosexual and worthy of punishment.
Angemon says
They signalled their virtue and moved on to the next headline-of-the-day.
African infidel says
Let jihadists and fanatical gays fight it out! It is fun to watch them blowing each other up!
I hate the jihadists, I don’t hate the “gays” as much but I am disgusted by their shameless, radical pro homosexual propaganda, their demonization of Christians and their pro-muslim, pro-jihadist attitudes. muslims and “gays” share one thing and that is hatred for Christians.
JMB says
Well said, I totally agree.
Angemon says
facebook.com/GaysAgainstIslam/
http://www.breitbart.com/national-security/2015/11/16/im-a-gay-man-and-mass-muslim-immigration-terrifies-me/
This is why blanket generalizations very often fail.
quotha raven says
“Typing the word “Islam” into the search engine of the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) website yields a “No Results Found” message.”
I was familiar with the NYC branch of the GMHC and I must say, this astounds me. I simply can’t believe this STUBBORN willful self-deception. The Ostrich Approached taken to the level of an art!
Cheers!
quotha raven
quotha raven says
Make that “Ostrich Approach”…qr
quotha raven says
Note to self: cut fingernails))) qr
JMB says
Why do jihadists Kill Gays? because they a violent savages following a 7th century religion of darkness, simple as that.
As a practising Christian I do not support or condone homosexuality, it is generally and quite clearly condemned in the Bible. As a student of the Bible I find the account of the destruction of Sodom & Gomorrah more relevant than ever as I see the Western world becoming totally obsessed with the promotion and acceptance of homosexual activities.
As one of the 98% of normal human beings I find the very thought of a homosexual act totally unnatural and quite revolting.
But would I co out and kill or even bash a homosexual? NO. That is the difference between our civilisation based on Christianity and the rule of law as opposed to the Islamic world. Again, if Muslims want to enjoy the benefits of living in our world they must accept that there will be things they don’t like such as gays have the full protection of OUR laws. Otherwise GO BACK TO WHERE YOU CAME FROM.
Guest says
I already know why Jihadist hate gays. They hate any thing written against them in the book of lies called the, “Quoran.” It doesn’t matter if they’re also human, Mohhamod’s teachings kills morality
Morag says
Thanks, hadn’t noted this before, but it makes sense down the Islamic rabbit hole.
They make a distinction between the act and the people doing it, which has parallels in western religion, but their take again illustrates the fundamental discord between western religion and Islam.
The Islamic way is to hate the sinner, not the sin.
APOC SANTILLI says
Despite what the Bible says, and I am a God fearing man. Despite what the Koran says, Homosexuals that are American citizens are protected by our Constitution and should not be treated any different than heterosexual man and women, and I mean no differently. No special laws, no special bathrooms. They have a right to exist and be free and I will fight any Muslim or any extremist that tries to take that right away from them. I’m not homosexual, ex SOG’s know what we should be fighting for and it isn’t what we are or were fighting for in Iraq or Afghanistan. But that’s another story..