Last weekend, the world woke up to yet another mass shooting. This time, it was a gay night club in Orlando, Florida, that took the hit. The massacre left around 50 people dead and 53 more injured. Omar Mateen, 29, a US citizen, who used an AR-15-style rifle and a handgun, was killed on the scene. The entire world is once again asking one question. Why?
In the viciously polarised times we live in, how one frames the Orlando shooting depends on the questions one asks as well as the questions one leaves out. Was it anti-gay bigotry or radical Islam? Or was it that American bugbear: gun violence. Thousands of miles away in India, what lessons can we draw from America’s deadliest mass shooting? Preliminary investigations revealed some facts. US President Barack Obama said the shooter was possibly inspired by extremist exhortations available online. FBI director James Comey said Mateen was on a watchlist over an inquiry, but he’d been taken off it after the inquiry was closed in 2014. In propaganda statements, the Islamic State hailed Mateen as a “soldier of the Caliphate”. The killer reportedly declared allegiance to ISIS in a last-minute call to emergency number 911. There is no evidence yet that he was in fact directed by ISIS or that it was part of a larger plot. But Orlando, unsurprisingly, is now part of America’s electoral joust, with both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton weighing in. While Ms Clinton said it involved terrorism, homophobia, and easy access to guns, Mr Trump zoned in with his signature Islamophobia. Justifying his earlier threat to ban all Muslims from the US if he became President, Mr Trump attacked Ms Clinton, insinuating while he was a friend of gays and other sexual minorities, Ms Clinton would bring in more people who threatened their freedoms and beliefs.
In all likelihood, all pieces of the Mateen story played some role or other in precipitating the bloodbath. But don’t expect polarisers to admit that, especially in poll season. Radical Islam poses a huge danger. No doubt about that. Nor do Indians need reminding of the horrors of terror attacks. Investigations will eventually reveal if Mateen was indeed self-radicalised and what led the Afghan-born American to be swayed by extremist ideology. It will also reveal if he was drawn into a bigger external plot. But acknowledging the dangers Islamic extremism poses doesn’t mean being blind to the other factors. There is no point pretending, as some are doing, that US gun laws didn’t play a huge role in the massacre. Irrespective of what the US National Rifle Association or its supporters say, it seems amazing to someone living outside America that it is perfectly legal for someone under FBI scrutiny to buy an assault rifle.
Last, but not least, the attack shows acute homophobia. Was Mateen a homophobe because he became a radical Islamist? Many argue Islamic extremism and homophobia go hand in hand, that Mateen was a fundamentalist Muslim first, and everything else followed. Some have even suggested that he was a closet gay. Islamic extremists have killed gay activists in Bangladesh. But neither homophobia nor mass shootings are the result of Islamic extremism every time. How does one explain all other horrific mass murders? Like the burning of the UpStairs Lounge, a New Orleans gay bar, in 1973. An arsonist set fire to the bar, killing 32 people in less than 20 minutes. Or the 100,000 hate crimes reported to the FBI between 1991 and 2007 where sexual orientation ranks as the third-biggest factor in triggering violent prejudice, according to the website Salon. It is fair to ask how many Muslims were involved in those crimes.
Gays have a terrible time in Islamic nations, as elsewhere, but America’s homophobia didn’t begin with ISIS’ emergence. What does all this have to do with India? Lots. The common denominator in all hate crimes is bigotry, which translates into extreme intolerance of everyone and everything which clashes with a bigot’s imagined ideal society. It is true all bigots don’t pick up a gun and start shooting. But it’s also true that no one really knows when a bigot will turn violent. Past instances tell us that bigots who cannot deal with clashing views are attracted to and are susceptible to extremist ideologies.
There is serious bigotry of all kinds in this country. With India still criminalising gay love, sexual minorities are not only harassed, they have been attacked and killed many times. Thankfully, we haven’t seen the kind of mass shootings of gays like elsewhere. But everyday violence and the discrimination they experience shows the bigotry within. Pehchan, an initiative of India HIV/AIDS Alliance, an NGO which works with sexual minorities, has collated statistics of attacks on them. There were over 3,300 acts of violence against sexual minorities between 2010 and 2015 in 18 states. Perpetrators included family members, local thugs, partners, the police and healthcare providers. Many of these don’t get reported to the police for obvious reasons. Things have only worsened after the Supreme Court set aside the Delhi high court verdict decriminalising gay sex. Homophobia is not the only form of bigotry that can lead to attacks and even murder in this country. Killing in the name of cow protection is another.
Think Dadri. Even today the website of one Gau Raksha Dal spells out its objective — “protection of all cows” — can only be “achieved by killing all killers of cows”. Then there’s the bigotry of racism. Africans and people from India’s Northeast have been attacked, sometimes killed. Bigotry must be nipped in the bud, before it takes a violent avatar. The antidote is education, in the widest sense of that word, which teaches tolerance.
Till we widen our mental horizons through truly liberal education, we always run the risk — including in India — that somebody will kill in the name of faith, another egged on by homophobia, and yet another simply because he/she never learnt how to cope with people whose worldviews differ. All it takes is a fanatic and a weapon of destruction.
