Was killer gay?
Conflicted Muslims who feel sexual desires are sinful may be susceptible to recruiters
WASHINGTON— Terrorist. Murderer. Homophobe. Gay man? It is far too soon to know for sure. But anecdotes related to journalists this week raise the possibility that the killer who slaughtered 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Omar Mateen, was attracted to men himself.
The stories add a complicated wrinkle to the narrative of an unstable loner and Daesh loyalist drawn to his target by the unadulterated homophobia typical of Islamist extremists. Terror experts, though, said there would be nothing shocking about a closeted man devoting himself to a group that conducts gruesome executions of gays and lesbians.
“It’s rare, but he certainly wouldn’t be the first,” said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “It’s entirely possible that he would be gay and also believe in this fundamentalist, extremist interpretation of Islam.”
A British teenager who joined Daesh in Syria engaged in flirtatious texting with the young man who helped him make the trip. A gay British Muslim, now an agnostic, once contemplated a bomb attack in Londonwhile he was an extremist drawn to radical Islam in an attempt to “cure” his sexuality.
“In another case in the States, the individuals who engaged in terrorist activities were actually engaging at the same time in homosexual activities,” said Lorenzo Vidino, director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, who has detailed knowledge of the case but said he could not provide details because they are not public.
One gay couple told The Canadian Press that Mateen, 29, had visited the Pulse Orlando nightclub on numerous occasions for up to three years. A man in Mateen’s 2006 police academy class told the Palm Beach Post that the killer had asked him out on a date. Other men told MSNBC and the Los Angeles Times that Mateen had used gay dating apps.
The classmate said that he, Mateen and others would hang out, sometimes going to gay nightclubs, after classes at Indian River Community College police academy. One night, he said Mateen asked him if he was gay. He said no, because he wasn’t telling people he was gay at the time.
“We went to a few gay bars with him, and I was not out at the time, so I declined his offer,” said the former classmate, who asked that his name not be used.
“He said, ‘Well if you were gay, you would be my type.’ I said OK and just went on with the night,” he said. “It was not anything too crazy, but I take that as a pick-up line.”
He believed Mateen was gay, but not open about it. Mateen was awk- ward, and for a while the classmate and the rest in the group of friends felt sorry for him.
“He just wanted to fit in and no one liked him,” he said.
Jim Van Horn, 71, told The Associated Press that Mateen was a regular at the club.
“He was trying to pick up people. Men,” he said.
While he didn’t know Mateen well, Van Horn said: “I think it’s possible that he was trying to deal with his inner demons, of trying to get rid of his anger of homosexuality.”
Recruiters and propagandists for extremist groups promise salvation through fundamentalist Islam and violence in its name. Their claims might be attractive, the experts said, to troubled Muslims who feel shame or fear afterlife punishment over their sexual desires.
“In the radicalization process . . . one of the common things that they say is ‘repent.’ This is sort of a recurring thing: ‘If you do this, you would have washed away your sins of the past. Seek salvation. This is your salvation,’ ” said Kamran Bokhari, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Policy.
Gartenstein-Ross said “guilt about one’s shortcomings” is a frequent theme in extremist recruitment. The recruiter for the “Lackawanna Six,” a group that went to Afghanistan soon before 9/11, made them feel “they fell short as Muslims and that going over to Afghanistan and going over to Al Qaeda was the only way they wouldn’t be doomed.”
“Obviously not all routes to Islamic terrorism are highly ideological,” he said.
“When you fall short of your ideals,” he said, “and you belong to a militant group that promises you salvation for killing others, the fact that you fall short of your ideals can in fact be an impetus to act, as opposed to being a deterrent.” With files from Paul Wells, The Palm Beach Post