2016 June 18^th

This is another look at the Orlando nightclub massacre. There is no doubt that Omar Mateen did it; the reason he did it has been subject to speculation. He said that he was killing people in the name of ISIS, an extremist Muslim religious group.

A picture of Mateen has emerged that will help us understand why what happened has happened. From the time this man was in the third grade, he had trouble controlling his temper. He struggled to understand school because his family at home did not speak English. His father was an Afghan immigrant and, as with many religious Muslims (and Christians), very homophobic.

Mateen’s first wife left him after a few months of marriage because of his temper and his insistence on controlling her. His associates at work also commented on his inability to control his temper.

He was obviously a devout Muslim. He made two trips to Mecca despite the fact that only one is required in the lifetime of observant Muslims. These trips, and some of his comments about ISIS brought him to the attention of the FBI. They interviewed him twice but found no evidence to suggest that he was a terrorist risk. At that time he wasn’t. A problem now arises because of Mateen’s sexuality; there is mounting evidence that Matten was bi-sexual. He subscribed to homosexual dating sites and he was a regular at the same gay bar in Orlando where he committed the murders.

Here we have a devout Muslim who cannot control his temper and who must deal with the fact that he is bi-sexual, a sexual orientation very specifically proscribed by his religion. Homosexual behavior incurs the death penalty in many Muslim countries and some Christian groups in our own country demand that believers kill homosexuals. Pastor Kevin Swanson, whom I’ve discussed before, happily sites various scriptural sources for his belief that gays should be murdered.

Mateen now has an intolerable conflict. He is attracted to men as well as women but his religious beliefs make this totally unacceptable. What action can he take that will compensate for this defect of character? I believe that his decision to murder as many of the patrons of this gay nightclub as he could was his attempt to compensate for his religiously unacceptable gay urges. He claimed that he was dedicating this killing to ISIS; this, perhaps, to assure that he gets some religious merit for the act. Isis was happy to accept the credit in spite of having little if anything to do with Mateen’s act beyond providing the motivating guilt and the hope of some ecclesiastical reward.

I doubt that this was “a terrorist act” in the usual meaning of the term. Its origins seem very different from the motivation for the Boston Bombers, the San Bernardino killers, or other high profile Muslim killers.