Mass shooting in Orlando

[MissJM1]

How sad. Inside a gay nightclub, they say there are hostages and the shooter could have an explosive

n my understanding, in UK law, religious beliefs don't trump homophobic discrimination when it comes to offering goods and services.

really? not sure about that. religious state schools are one of the few places in the UK where discrimination is pushed by our government.

When we start to tell people what they should believe or not believe then we are in big trouble of taking away not even freedom of speech, but freedom of thought.

Who wants to tell people what to think? with freedom of thought and speech come the non-freedom of not having your viewpoint challenged. you can have whatever thoughts and speech you want, but I am allowed to say how bigoted I think it is.

We should be challenging bigotry in all its guises, not only homophobia.

of course we should. but this thread is about 50 gay people being massacred in a club, so homophobia is central here.

We are in a weird place right now. For some reason, a guy can walk into a club, kill a huge number of people, say he did it because of islam, have an interpretation of the religion that is not obviously insane (he isn't saying he did it because of a passage in a Dr Seuss book) and yet people nonetheless want to claim this has nothing to do with the religion or its followers even when polls confirm that many muslims do have a negative view of homosexuality. And people criticising muslims about aspects of their faith are called bigots. How did this happen?

This doesn't happen with christians, and no doubt it's got something to do with one being the major religion of the country and the other being a minority one. But, I have seen many threads on MN where people lay into christians for their beliefs with no restraint and I never seen the B-word come up. Sure enough, one retort by the christians is that "you would never say that about muslims" because of political correctness and the fear of being labelled a bigot. and here it's happening.

I'm a Londoner and quite frankly I am fed up with loud and sometimes violent protests in central London by muslims. These are not insurgents but muslim people who live in Greater London. Their placard messages are full of hate, such as Democracy Go To Hell Death to the Unbelievers Islam Will Dominate the World Sharia Law for UK Kuffars Will Burn in Hell British Soldiers Burn in Hell This is all in the public domain and can be verified.

How dare they? In all my years I have never seen another religious or ethnic group protest so frequently or so vociferously. I don't see Hindus marching in Marble Arch, or the Sikhs. The last time the Sikhs protested was abut 45 yrs ago I believe, about not having to wear a crash helmet (because of the turban).

The Orlando shooting, and the killing of a married couple (both police officers) in France are all connected to Islam. There is no denying it, however much the other poster says otherwise. Oh, and by the way, the main participants in honour killings are father, uncle and brother. All perfectly great people until the female does something that displeases the men in the family.

I'm not surprised you found it frightening chilipepper. You are clearly a very frightened person. How terribly sad for you.

What a horrid and condescending way you have of expressing yourself.

The elephant in the room?

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3641118/KATIE-HOPKINS-won-t-Left-admit-inconvenient-truth-Islam-hates-love.html

I think it balanced to say that there is a disproportionate number of Left wingers amongst LGBT, and the ideology is don't dare mention the elephant in the room.

"Recent attackers/terrorists have been predominantly Muslim" does not equal "Muslims are predominantly terrorists".

I don't see how 'othering' a huge part of this county's and the world's population is going to help in making a tiny minority of people following one of the large world religions to feel more part of society in general and less likely to be radicalised??

What elephant in the room?
And I hope you are not using KH to back up any kind of argument, Diana

I'd say the majority have been petty criminals, druggies and thugs. Absolute losers.

"And only yesterday was much of the US celebrating the life of a Muslim, who spoke out against the things he believed were wrong. Including when people tarred all Muslims as terrorists."

From up near the start of the thread.

I hope those who marked his life, or even just read about it in all the obits, will remember at least some of the things said by him or about his religion and politics.

Well done, Ego and Pacific, for taking this portion of the debate somewhere else. No one is talking about Katie Hopkins. That link was there to illustrate the intolerance that is prevalent in that faith.

But, like a good little Regressive Leftie you have made it about KH instead of commenting on my remarks about the constant demos in London by ultra hostile muslims. At some stage you will have to put your ideology aside and start thinking commonsense. If a detective were to come upon some clues at a crime scene of some sort, he would be a hopeless detective if he decided to overlook some of them. Connect up the dots, ladies. Wake up.

Pacific - You may well say that, but some would say ^All terrorists are muslim, but not all muslims are terrorists.

some would say All terrorists are muslim, but not all muslims are terrorists.^

Only if they wanted to be wrong.

Do memories of the IRA really fade that fast?

I lived through the IRA times. 1969 is when the first IRA bomb went off in London. I remember in the 1970s vehicles in our car park being checked underneath, for example. I remember the bomb disposal man being blown up just off Oxford St.

There was the Baltic Exchange bombing in which one news cameraman died. And that was recently, in 1993.

Sure, all catholics in NI were supportive of the outrages but not all took up arms, but they sure assisted in passive ways. Also the whole of Eire were sympathetic to their 'lads'. What's your point?

My point is exactly what I said.

Anybody saying "All terrorists are muslim, but not all muslims are terrorists" is wrong.

I could augment my point, if you like, by asking why you said it? Even with the weasel-worded "some would say"?

But I'm actually fine with just flagging the falsehood and leaving it there.

No but there has been little IRA activity outside of NI for years.

Not all Muslims are terrorist by any means but it would be disingenous to suggest that there has been a big rise in the threat from this quarter. For many reasons Islamic militancy and certain doctrines and sects of the religion are growing. These include the framework of jihad as being something that Muslims should see as obligatory/desirable and some are acting on this belief framework.

I saw on a programme a former NI counter terrorism officer describe the structure of the IRA set up on TV. He said that it was like concentric circles, you have a hard core of very active committed terrorists, the those that help actively but don't actually commit acts, then those that passively help, say with money or goods, then those that do not provide material help but agree with the principle behind the acts. At each point there will be a larger number. In NI the numbers involved were large enough but not massive as the conflict was largely only of interest to those with Irish roots etc. He said the same applied to the Islamist threat but because Islam is a worldwide religion and comprises many millions of people the numbers are far greater in each circle. Yes the hard core is smaller than the overall but when you look at the numbers overall it makes the statistic threat far more likely. That is why worldwide there appears to be some act happening as frequently as it does. There are frequent attacks in ME, Europe has witnessed attacks as recently as this week and of course this one, there has also been the beheading of a Canadian man by Islamists in the Phillipines too.

Amongst most ordinary Muslims I expect there are a range of views as there is a whole range of involvement and depth of adherence to the religion.

If this act was perpertrated by a hardline Christian from the bible belt of America, would we be so quick to dismiss the role that religion and the beliefs of those communities in this? Wouldn't we be asking the question, what was he hearing to make him believe that this was the correct thing to do?

Do memories of the IRA really fade that fast?

No, they don't so what is your point about the IRA?

If this act was perpertrated by a hardline Christian from the bible belt of America, would we be so quick to dismiss the role that religion and the beliefs of those communities in this?

No, sporting, it would be impossible to be so dismissive of the role of Christianity if a similar outrage occurred. The diminishing of the reasoning behind the Orlando killings is already happening, just as it happened over Cologne and the other cities. All I constantly heard was a perfunctory "oh it's dreadful, but ...." and then the women's comments would downplay the perps actions and then go into overdrive about what a miserable life some of the migrants have, etc. It's deliberate diminishing, in the same way that a magician distracts an audience, so that the conversation becomes about the backstories of the rapists.

And there's another falsehood upstream as well. The thread's moved on, so apologies that this doesn't flow.

I was at people apparently saying that Christianity had moved on and was all nice and fluffy and pro-gay now.

It's great that particular Christians have moved on from their hardline anti-LGB and T stances. But Christianity hasn't: it still contains all the ingredients it did before, including the Bible verse that's used to justify anti-gay behaviour.

And right now, in Uganda, LGB and T people are being murdered under that justification. The "Kill The Gays Bill" (Anti-Homosexuality Act, 2014) has now been struck down for procedural reasons, but anti-LGB and T violence is still common - stoked by US evangelical Christians.

Assaults and murders of LGB and T people and "corrective rape" of lesbians are common in largely Christian countries like South Africa, Congo, Kenya.

The Anti-Gay Movement in Uganda Is Still Alive and Kicking
It’s Not Just Uganda: Behind the Christian Right’s Onslaught in Africa
HuffPo: Inside the Nightmares of Africa’s LGBT Refugees
and plenty more info if you care to google.

I am NOT trying to distract from criticism of some Islamist behaviour towards LGB and T people. But trying to puff up your argument against that behaviour (and god knows why you think you'd need to) by denying or minimising the suffering of LGB and T people under Christianity is factually wrong, and not helpful to them.

It also runs the risk you start to look less like you're actually pro-LGB and T rights, and more like a passing opportunist.

Some people appear not to understand that America doesn't have one single gun law, there are a range of laws including places where you simply are not allowed to carry a gun, and other places where you don't even need a permit to do so. If a shooting happens in a state where you aren't even allowed to carry, what's the reasoning behind blaming the carrying of guns for that crime?

Imagine that Scotland allowed people to carry guns and England didn't. A shooting happens in England, and people start to blame Scotland, saying that the right to carry a gun in Scotland needs to be removed. Because of a crime in England. Does that make sense? Because that's how I'm reading a lot of the criticisms of our gun laws. A shooting happens in a place where it's already illegal to carry a gun, so you want to make it illegal to carry a gun in other places. Because it worked out SO well for the last place..

Not all Muslims are terrorist by any means but it would be disingenous to suggest that there has been a big rise in the threat from this quarter.

Is anyone suggesting that? I may have missed it in the thread, but...

The strong anti-homosexuality in all parts of Africa is an African 'thing'. My friend & neighbour, Lionel, is Ghanaian and he thinks homosexuality is wrong. The hostility is not only from African christians, but also muslims and no-faith.

In fact, there is an antipathy to homosexuality in West Indians as well though not as strong. Uganda needs no help from outsiders, the anti-gay attitude is entrenched in all Africans, except the gay ones of course.

No one is suggesting Christians from some parts do not have antipathy towards LGBT people but in this particular case one of the motivational drivers was the perps religion. As Diana has stated many communities have these issues and not always driven by religion but more cultural. Nobody is suggesting we ignore the issues in these communities and I do believe Amnesty Internation have various campaigns in this respect.

Pausing I have many openly gay friends and I am strongly pro-LGBT as I want for my friends the right to live their lives in peace. But I also live in a strongly Muslim area and are aware of the flack that we can get if they choose to visit us here - most don't. A lesbian friend and her girlfriend had to move out of the area due to constant harassment by Muslim men specifically who took exception to them being there. Which should come above the other, one's right to believe what they like and act on it, or the other's right to live and love in peace?

I just stated that not all Muslims are terrorists because it seemed important to you that this was stated and that you seemed to believe that this was what was being put forward. I don't think any body is suggesting that every Muslim has got a Kalashnikov in their pocket!

So... you're being dismissive of the role of Christianity in the killings of African LGBT people.

And after your post just above at 10:27:08 and all.

You complain about double-standards... and then want to apply double-standards.

You know you can be pro rights of LGBT people and be critical of any religion? Go ahead and criticise the parts of Islam that are being used to persecute LGBT people. But please stop trying to exculpate Christianity when it's used the same.

If it really is LGBT rights you're concerned about.

That was to Diana.

If you want to get into my personal feelings I am actually Pagan, a belief that many LGBT people share. I do not like Christianity particularly and especially the more conservative forms there of having come under fire from them myself - they don't particularly like pagans. I am not a fan of much organised religion as a whole and feel that it has a habit of causing problems. When one person believes so wholeheartedly that they are right and all others are 'wrong' this is when it causes issues.

I actually dislike many aspects of religions and especially the ones which call for the freedoms of others to be curtailed. But this thread is not about all religions attitude to LGBT. It is about what happened to make one young man who on the surface appeared to have everything to live for, go and take the lives of 49 other innocent people and what may have motivated him.

Oh I'm with you in abhorring anti-LGBT behaviour, sportinguista. And in challenging it whether it arises in the guise of culture or religion. Mark Lamarr calling out Shabba Ranks, who was trying to hide under "culture", was a very fine moment indeed, IMHO.

I think you might have missed a post further up the thread though. DianaRoss said explicitly at Thu 16-Jun-16 08:41:25 "some would say All terrorists are muslim, but not all muslims are terrorists."^ Quick and easy to put to bed, and I wasn't going to let it stand, that's all.