An American-born man who has pledged his allegiance to the ISIS gunned down 50 people early Sunday at a gay nightclub in Orlando. This is the deadliest mass shooting in the United States and the nation’s worst terror attack since 9/11. The gunman, Omar Mateen, 29, of Fort Pierce, Florida, was interviewed by the FBI in 2013 and 2014 but was not found to be a threat. According to FBI, Mateen called 911 during the attack to pledge allegiance to ISIS and mentioned the Boston Marathon bombers. Mateen carried an assault rifle and a pistol into the packed Pulse club about 2 a.m. Sunday and started shooting indiscriminately. After a standoff of about three hours, while people trapped inside the club desperately called and messaged friends and relatives, police crashed into the building with an armored vehicle and stun grenades and killed Mateen.
Apart from the easy availability of guns, questions that are raised across the world today is, ‘what triggers such an act?’ Is it a deranged mind that is set off by radical religious ideology? Ideology that condemns gay people as being ungodly and sinful and who therefore deserve to die? That ISIS sympathizers have reacted by praising the attack only goes to show just how radicalized Islam itself has become. A shocked President Obama called the shooting an act of terror and act of hate. Indeed Mateens act reveal the difficulty in addressing a new style of terrorism: violence partly inspired by the Islamic State but not directed by its leaders.
In America, reaction to the human tragedy has evoked a range of opinions. While gun violence often polarizes people into camps that condemn the idea of easy availability of fire arms and terrorist attacks unites countries in grief and resolve, Orlando defies these positions. Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee has used this incident to call for a ban on Muslim immigration even while expressing his empathy for gay people. Obviously both positions are aimed at winning votes. Hillary Clinton his rival has been more measured in her comments. America at this juncture requires serious introspection on gun laws and of on dealing with radical religious fundamentalism that is taking root in its soil. But remarks such as the kind mouthed by Donald Trump on Muslims per se could result in more hate crimes as fundamentalists hardly use logic. They are driven by hatred and ideology. It’s a complex world that requires a more complex set of political skills to run the country, any country! Those skills are found wanting, even as dysfunctional individuals run amok! We are looking at a grim, unsafe future.