Virus of Faith Strikes Again - Massacre of Innocents in Florida

Published on Sunday, 12 June 2016
160612080110-03-orlando-shooting-0612-exlarge-169 Picture Source: CNN

During the early morning of Sunday, June 12, in Orlando, Florida, Omar Mateen Siddiqui, a self-described Islamist, killed 50 people in a nightclub frequented by gays. More than 50 people were critically injured. Born of Afghan immigrant parents, Omar Mateen was 29 years old and declared his allegiance to ISIS in a last minute 911 call. His mayhem was carried out by an assault rifle and lasted for a few hours.

In Bangladesh, last April, spurred by the same hateful ideology of the global terror network Al-Qaeda, its Bangladesh affiliate Ansar Bangla hacked to death Julhas Mannan and Mahbub Tanoy who were associated with a magazine devoted to gay issues. The global reach of hate towards the LGBT community, inspired by religious texts, is wide and deadly.

On behalf of the Muktomona community, we strongly condemn this heinous hateful attack. Our heartfelt sympathies are with the families of the deceased and with the injured. We believe Islam or the society from which Mateen Siddiqui derived his hatred is not going to take any responsibility for this massacre; there will be no introspection. Not only that, we find the comments on the social media by a large segment of population in the Islamic countries are supportive of this monstrous act. We hope the world will soon realize that adhering to the hateful messages of the ancient religious scriptures is an obstacle to building a peaceful, progressive and tolerant world.