Florida Night Club Shooting - at least 20 dead - impact on US elections?

What if they are apostates?

 

What if they are apostrophes?

 

Then they are probably living in fear of being murdered.

 

He was born into a family that practiced extreme Islam.

He was a regular at the Mosque.

Multiple friends have said he was very religious.

He has made multiple pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia in the last few years.

He clearly didn't know his head from his ass when it comes to Islam...

 

your welcome, bobby. as long as you have folks citing this "terrorist's" superior knowledge of all-things terrorism, i'll continue to post it. yes, i'm saying screw the evidence, therefore post EVIDENCE and quotes from an FBI director on the case. lol. nice narrative, whatever the hell it is that you're pushing.

also...

pick, prod, poke, and post whatever evidence you deem relevant from the investigation/security reviews and fit it into whatever false context you want. i chose mine from the FBI director over this case.

 

title of article i posted:

"Omar Mateen may not have understood the difference between ISIS, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah"

islam is not isis, al-quaeda, or hezbollah. what are you even talking about?

 

Persecuted atheists, freethinkers, and gay people from the Middle East are the immigrants you would most want in the West. They aren't a security threat, they face imminent danger at home, and they welcome the secularism and freedom of western countries.

Instead of falling over backwards to white knight for the most retrograde religious fanatics in the Middle East that sing songs about killing Jews and burn people in cages, we should be welcoming the people those assholes throw off rooftops. Atheist bloggers in particular seem to have it bad, particularly in Bangladesh.

That's why I feel odd when I read about the Muslims in Berlin demanding to build mosques in German universities or violently protesting the German government for condemning the Armenian genocide. I would think if I was going to Humboldt University, I'd be going there to study Karl Marx, or Bertolt Brecht, or maybe the history of the Cold War, or Adorno and the Frankfurt School -- not to import my flavor of religion and demand it be a part of their culture.

I wouldn't expect to move to Doha or Cairo, and start a riot because I can't study Judith Butler and stage burlesque political street theater shows [like my ex-wife did in Tel Aviv], but if people in Doha and Cairo want to get the hell out and do it in New York, we should put them at the top of the refugee list.

 

I agree, of course, that supporting the Taliban movement isn't a moderate position. What I found in your link that he specifically said was: "Our brothers in Waziristan, our warrior brothers in [the] Taliban movement and national Afghan Taliban are rising up. Inshallah the Durand Line issue will be solved soon.”

I'm curious if this is more about expressing solidarity with members of a group that is fighting a common, detested enemy over this Durand Line issue, or if he actually supports the Taliban movement and its policies itself. Did he say anywhere that he wants Afghanistan to revert its laws back to what the Taliban imposed when they were in power? If he's a genuine Taliban supporter, I'm somewhat surprised he'd openly declare this in an online video.

Saying “God will punish those involved in homosexuality…not an issue that humans should deal with”, to my mind, is not an extremist position. At least, its not a position I'd expect from a Taliban supporter. It is a misguided religious position, to be sure, but so long as he's not also advocating for gays to be punished in "the real world" I don't think that in itself qualifies him to be considered an extremist. The notion that God will punish gays in the afterlife is a fairly mainstream, Evangelical Christian position as well, as far as I'm aware.

 

Doesn't answer my question, what if they are Apostrophes? What if they are Ellipses or Tildes?

These are the answers we need....right after finding out their sexual orientation.

 

They seem pretty certain that it is and are prepared to die and kill innocent people to prove their convictions on the matter.

It would be like me saying Israeli settlers who burn Palestinian olive trees aren't real Jews. They are as Jewish as the ones who fight against them and get arrested for trying to stop them. We don't get to use the one true scotsman fallacy to ignore the elements of a tribe that embarrass us, unfortunately.

 

I'm sorry I was slow to understand that you were mocking me and not guilty of a typographic error. I generally do my best to take you and your nuanced opinions seriously.

 

What if the title was "Omar Mateen named European Footballer of the Year" but the content inside was the same....would that mean the article would be about a soccer trophy?

The content of the article is referring to allegations coworkers of his made 3 years ago. Does that really override the evidence that he was a radicalized Muslim?

 

Which is why I think the west should prioritize them as immigrants rather than the ones who publicly proclaim a desire to murder them.

 

I was just making a joke, I'm not for any ban in the first place.

 

This is stupid.

One of my closest friends was born into a family that still practices extreme Islam. In fact, members of his extended family were arrested for an alleged terrorist plot.

He is a regular at the mosque for business networking, which is common throughout the Middle East.

He's made multiple pilgrimmages to SA to protect his mother and sisters during their pilgrimmage, which is common throughout the Middle East.

Like almost all Arabs, he hates US foreign policy deeply. There is no reasonable explanation for the presence of foreign military bases other than invasion and no one in the world likes that.

He is an atheist, pacifist, multi award winning journalist talking about social affairs. You would never know that and you would have him cast as an extremist.

You are generalizing and you don't know your head from your ass when it comes to these peoples' culture, circumstances, society.

 

Maybe we should stop doing business with these countries.

 

[Educational Post]
No, actually there is a reason (a very obvious reason) why foreign military bases are in the Middle East -- it's because the people of the Middle East have a centuries-long track record of fighting themselves. In today's interconnected world, this fighting would create global instability and threaten our quality of life. Adult supervision is required, unfortunately.

Now, you could complain about interventionist policy, such as the brain dead decision making that went on with the Libya invasion, and I would have no disagreement. Hillary Clinton never met a war she didn't like (at least until a war that she authorized has public sentiment turn against it, then she opposes).


GOOD DAY

 

Earlier in this thread I mentioned how him traveling to Saudi Arabia for the Hajj shouldn't raise any suspicions because the Hajj is extremely ritualized and leaves little time for anything beyond the prescribed activities.

I see now that, apparently, he actually made two trips (2011 and 2012) to Saudi Arabia and they were for Umrah, not the Hajj.

FWIW, at least one of the trips was booked via a travel agency (as is required by the Saudis) and he should have been part of a group of about 5-20 people typically from the same city/region in the US. In other words, there should definitely be some Americans who can provide info about his activities during this trip.

The most relevant differences between the Umrah and the Hajj is that the former is much less organized/ritualized, can be performed (nearly) any time of the year and doesn't have nearly as many participants. What this translates to is that, even with cooperation from the travel agency, it will be more difficult to establish a timeline.

Most importantly, he could easily have been exposed to radicalization via a preacher or some random mosque, etc. The Umrah visa permits travel only between Mecca and Medina, but the cities have many minor (unregulated) mosques that he could have easily grabbed a taxi-ride to. This possibility is much more likely since the itinerary leaves a lot of free time.

----------------------

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/06/15/mateens-twin-trips-to-saudi-arabia-raise-suspicions.html

I'd like to comment on some of the assertions made in this article.

Hajj packages can be quite expensive, but Umrah packages can be as cheap as $1500 depending on the time of year.

His second trip stopping in the UAE is not unusual at all since Emirates operates many flights to US. I can't imagine this being relevant to his radicalization.

I don't see how he could have ended up in Yemen, but then again I'm not an expert

Performing Umrahs in consecutive years at such a young age is pretty unusual and I can see why some may think that he "felt he had many sins needing rectifying". Having said that, ascertaining a "why" for his trip (if it wasn't purely for radicalization purposes) is complicated and delves into the realm of psychology. Perhaps he felt felt it could help with his aggressive behavior? Perhaps he felt frustrated by his shortcomings (police academy)? Perhaps he felt he needed to make the trips to appease his father and maintain his image as a "good son"?

 

It's actually fairly common to do the Umrah twice. Maybe it happened in Saudi, but seems unusual that he would go the route of paying excessive amounts of money for a Umrah package. Those things are overpriced.

In 2016, you don't need to travel anywhere to be radicalized.