This is Trump's America

Radical Christian Extremism.

Yes, Radical Christian Extremism, and yet, the worst mass murderer in American History is a gay Muslim.

how about, just extremism, as in evil extremism, no matter the can it comes in....

#3: Yes, and the worst solo mass shooter in history was a white Christian (self-described Crusader) in Norway.

As for this guy being gay, if he was he certainly wasn't proud of it. So I'm guessing the shooting was motivated by his anti-gay sentiment and not his own sexuality. Of course, this idea that he was secretly gay is exactly the kind of intimation or rumor that right-wing shitheads jump on.

Ansel always goes a march too far.
He takes a legitimate issue and pumps it up.

Read the comments on "man wearing a neo-Nazi armband on the Seattle ferry" (starting #129):
https://www.thestranger.com/blogs/slog/2…

@3 not even close

The Oklahoma Federal Building bombing killed 168 people and wounded 680.

And then of course there are the organized massacres involving the KKK in the reconstruction south with murders in the thousands.

And if you then include Native American genocide and atrocity we get into the tens of thousands- if not millions.

I remember that this happen to this mosque after 9/11. A lot of us in the region came out to support and protect it.

I guess nuts works both ways.

4/Wild Bill: how about, just extremism, as in evil extremism, no matter the can it comes in.

I happen to agree with Blaise Pascal, who wrote: “Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.”

@3: Osama Bin Laden holds that title because of 9/11 - although not by the solo gunman distinction. Bin Laden was as guilty just as Charles Manson was -- despite the proxy.

@5 - If he was closeted gay, which does now seem very plausible given the many many witness who saw him at Pulse hitting on & dancing with men over three years, then it folds back to religion telling him that who he actually is was fundamentally wrong. A viewpoint reinforced by family and cultural expectations. Which all led to a clearly tormented inner conflict & self-hate that such tremendous cognitive dissonance causes.

"Religions" far too often teach us to doubt our own personal truths, teach us that we're wrong, and that we should try to strive for a sanctioned image of what a "man" or a "woman" is supposed to be.

He attempted to resolve the internal distress --as so many do with their inner conflicts-- by destroying the external representations of his self-hatred: People happy and comfortable with their sexual orientation.

@12 - Bingo.

#13: Yeah, I understand that. That wasn't my point. My point is that hating gays because you are gay and can't live with it is a hate crime. The poster I was responding to implied that right-wing Christians are off the hook because the killer here was a Muslim and possibly a deeply closeted, self-hating gay guy. And I'm saying you can be gay and bisexual and still commit a hate crime against gay people. Just like you can be a Christian "crusader" and commit murder. And yeah, religion is the common denominator here.

Correction: My point is that killing gays because you are gay and can't live with it is still a hate crime against gays.

@12: exactly.

Extremism in all aspects seems to be on the rise worldwide. Our 'smaller' world seems to be amping up allegiances and tribalism/nationalism/fundamentalism in many ways. Even much of the rhetoric being screamed from the extreme left in our primary season would count as extremism in my opinion. It seems like our new ego-focused social media makes our personal views seem more important than they are. Was Islam/homosexuality/guns/self-loathing/etc a factor? Yes. But any one of those things didn't make this happen. It is the willingness of 'normal' people everywhere to think their own shit don't stink and everyone else's reeks beyond belief that perpetuates all of this and disturbs me most.

There's a huge difference between fundamentalist Islam and Christianity. Although you can find links to preacher nut-jobs like the one speaking to Republican candidates last year calling for extermination - he and other wacky preachers nearly always follow up with the concept of redemption. The wages of sin is death but your salvation is that Christ absorbed all that guilt for you, as long as you accept him as your lord and savior.

In Islam there is no redemption or salvation. ISIS and radical Islamists have the divine blessings from Allah to toss gays off tall buildings or stone women to death for adultery or other things.

totally agree with #6 @Not Good Red Herring Either

Ansel's heart seems to be in the right place but if he keeps this up he'll be known as the left wing version of Donald Trump.

@20: Typical half-cocked tirade whenever you have to do any serious contemplation or thinking. You could provide intelligent rebuttal, but your perpetual anger always gets in your way.

@23: Wow.

Anyhow, I have to laugh when you assume I'm a fundamentalist Christian. I was baptized Episcopalian, but only at the insistence of my grandmother - who upon hearing that none of her four grandchildren were baptized demanded my parents pile us into our Ford Falcon station wagon THAT DAY to trek on down to the Church of the Holy Faith in Santa Fe, NM for the blessed ceremony. The only other times I go to churches and catedrals are for weddings, funerals, and as a tourist.

But even if I was a fundamentalist Christian, it would add no credence to your blabbering nonsense.

Project much?

@25: You need to be consistent so that you don't appear sexist. Better to say BAN WHITE PEOPLE.

@24: Don't bother, he thinks what he believes and says literally changes reality. He decided yesterday that the Orlando shooter was not a Muslim at all, for reasons he completely made up.

@19: "In Islam there is no redemption or salvation."

Categorically false.

Islam holds that redemption is possible through adherence to the faith and repentance for sins. (It's actually easier to achieve redemption in Islam as they do not hold the Christian doctrine of original sin, thus eliminating the need for Christ's intercession.)

You should read up on theology before spouting off about it.

The treatment of those who are regarded as sinners and infidels by various Muslim fundamentalists is horrific. But it is not out of line with the way that earlier generations of Christians treated their own sinners and infidels - with full Biblical justification.

@29: Okay, I stand corrected on that. Thank you.

@30- So you're never going to claim there's a substance difference between Fundamentalist Islam and Fundamentalist Christianity again, right?

@31: Huh? There are obvious and substantive differences between the fundamentalist "denominations" of the religions. The questions are of which has more power over societies and in particular minorities and civi liberties and freedom of religion.

29/Backyard Bombardier: The treatment of those who are regarded as sinners and infidels by various Muslim fundamentalists is horrific. But it is not out of line with the way that earlier generations of Christians treated their own sinners and infidels - with full Biblical justification.

So, for example, a guy who tortured animals as a kid but stopped doing it and has grown up to be, for the most part, a good citizen is equivalent to a guy who who is still torturing animals?

19/raindrop: There's a huge difference between fundamentalist Islam and Christianity.

I couldn't agree more.

I've mentioned this before but will do so again. Remember Andres Serrano, the artist who did the infamous "Piss Christ" -- a photo of a crucifix submerged in his own urine -- a number of years ago? (it was actually quite a beautiful image...I saw it at an gallery on First Ave.) He pissed off a lot of Christians, some of the images were attacked/slashed and he received death threats. But...was he murdered by an outraged Christian? No.

Now, consider an artist in a Muslim country doing "Piss Muhammed". Think he'd live? I highly doubt it. When a number of Muslims go batshit crazy over cartoons of Muhammed, imagine the over-the-top-frothing-at-the-mouth rabidity there would be over an image of Muhammed in piss.

There was an artist who was killed by a Muslim fundamentalist. His offense? He worked with the Somali-born writer and politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali to produce the short film Submission (2004), which criticized the treatment of women in Islam. On November 2, 2004, Van Gogh was murdered while cycling to work by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch-Moroccan Muslim. Bouyeri shot Van Gogh eight times with a handgun. Not content with that, the bloodthirsty Bouyeri then cut Van Gogh’s throat with a large knife and tried to decapitate him. He attached a note to the body with a smaller knife. Van Gogh died on the spot. The two knives were left implanted. The note was addressed to and contained a death threat to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who went into hiding (I'msurprised she hasn't been murdered by now.)

On another thread, in a discussion with "lark2", I mentioned a column Nick Kristof wrote in the NYTimes a couple years ago, entitled "The Diversity of Islam." Kristof was defending Islam against those cretins who see all Muslims as bad but even Kristof acknowledged that " brutality, sexism and intolerance . . . constitute a significant strain within Islam". As an example of this brutality and intolerance, Kristof wrote: "A lawyer friend of mine in Pakistan, Rashid Rehman, was a great champion of human rights and religious tolerance — and was assassinated this year by fundamentalists who stormed his office."

@33: I don't recall saying anything of the sort. My point is that facile discussions of Islam's inherent "brutality, sexism, and intolerance" don't have much value beyond trying to portray the Islamic world as fundamentally different from, and irreconcilable with, the "civilized" West.

There is plenty of brutality, sexism, and intolerance in the Christian Bible. Christianity has been used to justify atrocity, and there are Christians today who commit atrocity in the name of their religion. The reasons such actions are not as widespread as Islamist terrorism today have much less to do with the inherent moral superiority of one religion over another than with history, time, and geopolitics.

Muhammed was born about 1450 years ago. 1450 years after the birth of Christ, Christian Europe was just coming out of the Crusades - a brutal series of Holy Wars and invasions of the Middle East - and just heading into the Reformation, with its own accompanying brutal wars within Europe. The Spanish Inquisition was just around the corner. Heretics, witches, and various other misfits were being burned alive for their sins, in the name of Jesus Christ.

If we want to confront Islamism and temper its excesses, we have to understand what we are dealing with. This includes recognizing the commonalities with the evolution of Christianity and the Western world. There is nothing within Islam that would prevent it from its own version of the Christian Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment.

Heretics, witches, and various other misfits were being burned alive for their sins, in the name of Jesus Christ.

Key word: were. Like the kid who had tortured animals but has stopped. One the other hand, there is currently a certain component of Islam that is currently killing people they view as infidels. Like the guy who is still torturing animals.

discussions of Islam's inherent "brutality, sexism, and intolerance" don't have much value beyond trying to portray the Islamic world as fundamentally different from, and irreconcilable with, the "civilized" West.

I realize that some (and perhaps many) people may see that as "inherent" part of Islam but just want to point out that, in the piece where that "brutality, sexism, and intolerance" phrase is used, Kristof isn't saying it's inherent. He's just saying there's a "significant strain" currently in Islam with those characteristics.

I'm somewhere in the middle. I'm with Kristof but I also think there is an inherent difference between Christianity and Islam and it has to do with the actions of their "holy" figures: Jesus and Muhammed. Except for one incident, where he threw moneychangers out of the temple, Jesus was not a violent figure (and, let's face it, even booting those guys out was hardly a real violent act.) In contrast, Muhammed was a warrior (for part of his life.)

There is nothing within Islam that would prevent it from its own version of the Christian Reformation and the Age of Enlightenment.

Well nothing, that is, except for rabid Islamic militants who murder Muslims who would like to see reforms and enlightenment in Islam. As just two examples, see Kristof's comment above about the murder of his Pakistani friend by fundamenalists and see also Liberal Bangladesh blogger killed by mac…. "At least four atheist bloggers and a secular publisher were hacked to death in Bangladesh last year. . . . Several foreigners have also been murdered in recent months in Bangladesh, which has also suffered attacks on minority Sufi and Shiite Muslims.

P.S. beyond trying to portray the Islamic world as fundamentally different from, and irreconcilable with, the "civilized" West.

Apparently a number of Muslim countries see their Islamic world as irreconcilable with the "civilized" West...

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Laws prohibiting religious conversion run contrary to Article 18 of the United Nations' Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states the following:

"Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance."

Afghanistan, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Syria voted in favor of the Declaration. Other Islamic nations have responded by criticizing the Declaration as an attempt by the non-Muslim world to impose their values on Muslims, with a presumption of cultural superiority and by issuing the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam—a joint declaration of the member states of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference made in 1990 in Cairo, Egypt. The Cairo Declaration differs from the Universal Declaration in affirming Sharia as the sole source of rights, and in limits of equality and behavior in religion, gender, sexuality, etc.

@36/@37: "Key word: were."

Well, yes. That is sort of my point. Christianity went through an excessively long and bloody phase of fanaticism and brutality. Read about what happened to the Muslims and Jews of Jerusalem in 1099, or to the Cathars (and everyone else) in Béziers in 1209. Read up on the Thirty Years War, or the various Inquisitions, or the witch hunts. There is precious little that Daesh and its ilk can do that hasn't already been done many times over.

But just as there were progressive and humane elements within Christianity that eventually became dominant, there are significant progressive and humane elements within Islam. I would even argue that those elements are far more dominant within the Islamic world today than their Christian counterparts were in the 1400s.

Islam is not the enemy. Fanaticism and ignorance are the enemy, and they can wear many guises.