When I woke up this morning, I was horrified to see the news, ‘20 people dead in mass shooting in Orlando’. I wondered, ‘Is this for real?’. The number of casualties is now over 50 and this shooting is labelled as ‘the worst mass shooting in US history’ and ‘worst terror attack since 9/11’. Later, more investigation into this shooting revealed that it was carried out by Omar Mateen, an Afghan-American Muslim. His father told that Omar was offended by gays kissing each other in Miami, FL.
The media is describing this person, ‘another deranged person’, ‘mentally disturbed’, ‘man who committed senseless violence’, ‘another man who did not learn to love’, ‘another detached person’. America and the West has been drinking the koolaid of political correctness for the last five or six decades and is not seeing the reality. A culture that denies the Word of God has to stoop down to such shallow descriptions of evil.
Why would a US born, handsome Muslim young man kill over fifty people in a gay bar? All three Abrahamic religions – Judaism, Christianity and Islam – consider homosexuality as a heinous sin against God, but they deal with it differently. Their diagnosis is the same, but they offer different treatments. Judaism’s Torah prescribed capital punishment for homosexuality, but the majority of Jews no longer believe in the applicability of Torah in our times. That is the reason you can walk into any gay bar in Tel Aviv, without worrying an Orthodox Jew quoting Torah, and shouting, ‘Jehovah is holy’ and blowing up your back. Omar Mateen was shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and during his shooting spree, he took his cell phone, and in an action movie like fashion, he called 911 and informed them his allegiance to ISIS.
Why a Bible thumping Baptist would not go into a gay bar and kill gay people shouting ‘Jesus is holy’ quoting Leviticus? The answer is simple and a critical difference between Islam and Christianity: Grace. As Christians we do not enforce capital punishment for homosexuality prescribed in the Leviticus because we have passed from Law to the Grace. That is the whole point of the Epistle to Galatians. In that letter to Galatian believers, beloved apostle was stressing the importance of leaving the Law and adhering to the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. Islam’s message is, ‘don’t embrace the grace and forgiveness of God in Christ , but rather live by the Law’.
Homosexuality is condemned in strongest terms in Islam. Read the following verses from Quran.
“If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, leave them alone; for Allah is Oft-returning, Most Merciful.” (Qur’an 4:16)
Quran commands ‘punish both men who commit lewd acts’. Punishment is a vague term that includes penalties from slapping on the wrist to the slitting of the throat.
“We also sent Lot. He said to his people: “Do you commit lewdness such as no people in creation committed before you? For you practise your lusts on men in preference to women: you are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds….And we rained down on them a shower of brimstone: Then see what was the end of those who indulged in sin and crime!” (Qur’an 7:80)
At least seven times, Quran reminds its readers what homosexuality rendered to the people of Lot, referring to God’s judgment over Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 19).
Following hadiths reveal more of Islam’s stance on homosexuality. A Hadith is a collection of words, actions and habits of Muhammad. Though not as supreme as Quran, they nevertheless, offer us a glimpse of how Islam’s most important prophet thought of homosexuality.
Abu Dawud (4462) – The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, “Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Loot, execute the one who does it and the one to whom it is done.”.
Abu Dawud (4448) – “If a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death.”
al-Tirmidhi, Sunan 1:152 – [Muhammad said] “Whoever is found conducting himself in the manner of the people of Lot,kill the doer and the receiver”
As of today, there are 10 countries in the world where homosexuality is punishable by death: Yemen, Iran, Iraq, Mauritania, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, United Arab Emirates. Note all 10 countries are Muslim majority nations.
When our politicians,theologians and journalists inform us that it is only the ‘extremists’ of cadres such as ISIS who chase homosexuals, remind them above verses from Quran and Hadith which explicitly recommend dreadful punishments to all homosexuals. What Omar Mateen did was not a ‘senseless act of violence’ or ‘mentally disturbing behavior’ or ‘a symptom of bipolar disorder’ (the last one by his ex-wife from Boulder, Colorado), but a logical outcome of a serious interpretation of Quran and Hadith.
We have a tendency in the West to describe any violent act as an outcome of a mental disorder. This view is an outgrowth of naturalism and materialism, because these secular philosophies do not take human free will and human evil into consideration. They do not believe in the ‘Truth’. When asked, ‘What is your religion?’, the ex-wife of Omar Mateen said, ‘I believe in all religions, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism’. This is the mindset of modern Americans and many Westerners in general. They believe there is good and evil in all religions. G.K. Chesterton said, ‘When a man stops believing in God he doesn’t then believe in nothing, he believes anything’. In Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov claims that ‘If God does not exist, then everything is permitted’. Since the West and modern Christendom said farewell to the God of the Bible, they are now in a precarious situation where they believe in anything and allow anything in the name of ‘tolerance’, except Orthodox Christianity.
Islam lives in history. They still bemoan the loss of Alhambra. From day one of its inception, Islam has been a religion of militant missionary zeal. In the first 100 years after the death of their prophet, Islam’s foothold extended from Pyrenees Mountains in France to Thar Desert in India. To subjugate the whole world and to bring it under the dominion of Allah is a central doctrine of Islam, not a fringe idea of some extremists. Yet, when President Bush informed us that Islam is a religion of peace, we bought it. It has as much evidence in history as the Saddam Hussein’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, which Mr.Bush cited as the reason for invading Iraq in 2003.
Sadly, massacres such as Orlando Shooting won’t stop. Omar Mateen is born to Muslim parents immigrated from Afghanistan. Tsarnaev brothers responsible for Boston Marathon bombing in 2013 were born to Muslim parents immigrated from Chechnya. While most immigrants from Muslim countries live peacefully, all it takes is a few individuals like Omar to inflict massive casualties on infidels. The vast majority of Muslim parents don’t recommend killing infidels to their children, but at their dinner tables,, they reveal,quoting verses from Quran, what they really think of homosexuality in unmistakable terms. if you want to verify this, watch a few videos posted by the father of Omar Mateen on his Facebook page.
LGBTQ met Islam long time ago in Asia, Middle East and Africa. In Africa alone, homosexuality is illegal in over 37 countries. Now they met in Orlando, Florida. Sadly, their confrontations continue in big cities and small towns as Muslim immigrants become significant part of their population. High tide of secularism, loss of traditional marriage and family, post-Christian social structures – West is going through a severe demographic decline. It is paying a big price for abandoning Christianity, especially in terms of its demographics. Without demographics, a culture cannot sustain its virtues for more than one or two generations. Whether Donald Trump likes it or not, immigration is inevitable in any culture that neglects basic functions of human life such as family and raising children. Germany took over 1 million people from Syria. They better beef up security at their Oktoberfest, because Islam strictly forbids consumption of alcohol. You can have your own opinions, but you cannot have your own reality. The confrontation between liberal West and fundamentalist Islam is inevitable as mass immigration and globalization increase.
According to Edward Gibbon, the fifth reason for Decline and Fall of Roman Empire is, ‘the decay of religious faith; faith fading into mere form which has lost all contact with reality’.
We have stopped using Christianity and Bible as tools to test the ideas of our time. We are drinking from the pool of political correctness and lost all contact with reality.
To summarize, criminalization of homosexuality is not a fringe idea of a few gun toting extremists living in Sub Saharan Africa. It is integral part of Islamic teachings.
Is there Hope? Yes, there is hope for all of us in Lord Jesus Christ. “Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life” John 6:68. America became a great nation because of Lord Jesus. He alone has the words of eternal life. No matter who says it, I don’t care whether it is from Harvard or Oxford, whatever is contrary to the teachings of Bible or our Lord, it is doomed to fail.
May Lord comfort the families of the victims who perished at Pulse, Orlando. Peace!