RUTHFULLY YOURS

The terrorists are pickled in hatred that simply does not allow for the humanity of “the other” and insists that individuals exist only as representations of religions, objects, and social or political points of view.

The American homeland — free speech, religious institutions, open inquiry in academia, our military and our way of life — is under attack.

America’s blessing is a political system built on tolerance of “the other.” Not all of us, not all the time — remember, we used to buy and sell our fellow human beings — but the principle to which we aspire is tolerance of “the other.”

But our national blind spot is not seeing that we share this lovely space with people who want to kill us for the peculiar people we are.

It is a lot to process. Omar Mateen, the American-born son of Afghan parents, murdered 50 people and wounded scores of others in a gay nightclub Sunday. The first surprise is that it was not a surprise, especially to the FBI. Mateen was the subject of investigations in 2013 and 2014. “He was a known quantity,” a source said. “He has been on the radar before.” But Assistant Special Agent Ronald Hopper told reporters, “Those interviews turned out to be inconclusive, so there was nothing to keep the investigation going.”

Omar Mateen’s father probably wasn’t terribly surprised. He told NBC News “that his son became angry after seeing two men kissing a few months ago in Miami.” He speculated that could have triggered his decision to kill. “This has nothing to do with religion,” his father added.

After over 50 Americans were brutally slaughtered and over 50 wounded on their own soil in the latest Islamic terrorism attack, it’s utterly shameful that President Obama cannot bring himself to say the words “radical Islam”. Equally abhorrent are Muslim Brotherhood groups, such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), sending out their taqqiyah deception squads to feign sympathy for victims of Islamic terrorist attacks, and referring to this most recent bloodbath as a hate crime.

President Obama, not to mention Bernie Sanders, is calling for more gun control. Most Western world leaders and politicians are living in fantasyland when they blindly claim that guns are evil rather than condemn the supremacist ideology behind radical Islam, that believes gays, non-believers, apostates, and others, must die, as mandated in the Koran and other Islamic doctrine. “We know enough to say that this was an act of terror and an act of hate,” stated President Obama. Not a peep about radical Islamic terrorism.

Democrat nominee Hillary Clinton also refers to the Orlando jihadist attack as an act of terror and hate. “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism,” Hillary tweeted in November. If Islam has nothing to do with terrorism, then why was only an imam — and not a rabbi, priest, or swami — invited to speak at the first press conference after the Orlando slaughter at the Pulse Nightclub?

Mujammad Musri, president and senior imam of the Islamic Society of Central Florida, also mentioned nothing about radical Islamic terrorism. The imam did, however, warn the media to refrain from “rushing to judgment and from sensationalizing the story, because we do not want the story to be shifted from the focus of what it is. It is a horrible tragedy.” But again, nothing about a jihadist attack.

Is it any wonder that attacks against American citizens are being perpetrated when funding and ideology are being exported from radical Islamic countries like Saudi Arabia or Iran to Islamic centers and schools in the U.S.? When radical imams from abroad are welcome to speak at U.S. universities and mosques?

At least 50 people are dead in Florida, killed for their presumed homosexuality by a Muslim who proclaimed his allegiance to ISIS as he opened fire in a nightclub that proudly proclaimed itself “a gun free zone”.

The conclusion, according to the for-the-moment US president, is that more laws must be passed to restrict access to guns:

“How easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school or in a house of worship or a movie theater or in a nightclub,” a reference to other mass killings that have punctuated recent US history.

“We have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be.”

The simple act of passing laws, of course, solves every conceivable problem at a stroke. That is why no America smokes marijuana or snorts cocaine, because there are laws that declare such activities illegal. Similarly, should America’s Second Amendment ever be overturned, no one bent on using terror to make a point will ever be able to obtain a weapon.

Omar Mateen called the cops to pledge his fealty to ISIS as he was carrying out his mass murderer in Orlando early Sunday morning. Twelve hours later, the president of the United States declared that “we have no definitive assessment on the motivation” of Omar Mateen but that “we know he was a person filled with hate.”

So I guess the president thinks Mateen didn’t mean it?

Here again, and horribly, we have an unmistakable indication that Obama finds it astonishingly easy to divorce himself from a reality he doesn’t like — the reality of the Islamist terror war against the United States and how it is moving to our shores in the form of lone-wolf attacks.

He called it “terror,” which it is. But using the word “terror” without a limiting and defining adjective is like a doctor calling a disease “cancer” without making note of the affected area of the body — because if he doesn’t know where the cancer is and what form it takes, he cannot attack it effectively and seek to extirpate it.

So determined is the president to avoid the subject of Islamist, ISIS-inspired or ISIS-directed terrorism that he concluded his remarks with an astonishing insistence that “we need the strength and courage to change” our attitudes toward the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community.

That’s just disgusting. There’s no other word for it.

Omar Mateen, a U.S.-born son of Afghan immigrants, was already known to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which twice investigated him over hints of radical leanings before closing those cases as inconclusive.

Federal agents are now trying to piece together how the 29-year-old Mr. Mateen became the gunman police say is responsible for the worst mass shooting in U.S. history.

The night of the Orlando nightclub attack, Mr. Mateen called emergency services and proclaimed allegiance to Islamic State. The FBI is probing the attack as a terrorism act.

Mr. Mateen’s call echoed FBI concerns about him in 2013, “when he made inflammatory remarks to co-workers alleging possible terrorist ties,” said Ronald Hopper, an FBI official in Orlando. The bureau, “thoroughly investigated the matter, including interviews of witnesses, physical surveillance, and records checks,” he said, and “ultimately, we were unable to verify the substance of his comments and the investigation was closed.”

What triggered the 2013 investigation, said officials briefed on it, were “wild” claims he made to co-workers about having family and friends in al Qaeda and Hezbollah, and connections to the Boston Marathon bombers. When FBI agents first questioned him, he didn’t admit to making the claims and didn’t have a full understanding of the terrorist groups, they said, suggesting he was making up his claims.

When FBI agents questioned him again, he admitted to making the statements, saying it was simply bluster and he hadn’t known what he was talking about, officials said. Those earlier claims have fueled doubts regarding Mr. Mateen’s assertion about acting on behalf of Islamic State.

“He seems to be looking for any opportunity to associate with the terrorist group du jour,” a senior U.S. official said Sunday. CONTINUE AT SITE

A young American Muslim pledging allegiance to Islamic State is now responsible for the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. Can we finally drop the illusion that the jihadist fires that burn in the Middle East don’t pose an urgent and deadly threat to the American homeland?

We hope so after the Sunday morning assault on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando that killed at least 51 and wounded 53 as we went to press. The killer was Omar Mir Seddique Mateen, the son of immigrants from Afghanistan who was heard shouting “allahu Akbar” (God is great) as he fired away. Mateen attacked a popular night spot for gays, who are especially loathed in Islamist theology.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, and it rarely does so unless it played some role. CNN and others reported that a U.S. official said Mateen made a 911 call during the attack in which he pledged allegiance to Islamic State and mentioned the 2013 Boston marathon bombing.