Erik Sieven writes:
It might be right to say that the Orlando attack was no Islamist attack. But I don´t buy into the argument, that it can´t be so because Maheen supported different groups like Hezbollah and IS which fight each other.
For example when a Russian with a swastika tattoo yells “Heil Hitler” and “Russia first” and attacks a foreigner in Russia, do you say “no he can´t be a Nazi because he both supports Russian nationalism and Nazis, and those were enemies”. No, of course you say he is Nazi, a dumb one on top, because Nazis hated Russia (well there aren’t really non-dumb Nazis).
Maheen might have been a Islamist, and only because he is too dumb to at least tell apart different Islamist groups he says he supports does´t change anything.
He wasn’t an Islamist. He was barely even a Muslim, and everyone says he was not a practicing Muslim anyway.
Look, global jihadists hate homosexuals and feel that they need to be killed. When you say that Mateen was a global jihadist, then you say that he believed that homosexuals were so evil that they needed to be killed. But this is not what he believed. Why? Because Mr. Mateen was quite gay himself!
Mateen also liked to drink. He spent most of his time in nightclubs and gay bars. That’s not what a global jihadist does. Global jihadists think drinking is a serious crime and think that nightclubs and bars, especially gay bars, ought to be attacked. Or at least those in Muslim countries should be attacked. Now if you say Mateen was a global jihadist, then you say that he attacked this place because it was a nightclub that served alcohol and he believed that those things are evil. But that’s not what he believed at all. Mateen loved to drink and he spent most of his time in nightclubs and bars.
The idea that this boozing, barhopping gay man was some sort of an Islamist is madness. He was not an Islamist. He was barely even a Muslim. That is, he was a Muslim in name only, as secular as they come.
I would say that this was gay on gay crime. Or maybe an extreme case of gay panic on Mateen’s part. I think he was just another mass shooter like James Holmes or Cho.