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Regulars at Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida have reported that Omar Mateen, the shooter who killed 49 people at the venue on June 5th, was a regular there. One man also told the police that he messaged with Mateen on a gay dating app for a year.
While it is not clear how Mateen viewed his sexuality, these revelations raise the question of whether his alleged homophobia was used as a mask for his own conflicted feelings. In an interview on CNN, Mateen's ex-wife, Sitora Yusufiy, said she did not know if he was gay, but that "he did feel very strongly about homosexuality."
Within the Muslim community in the United States, LGBTQ believers were once a taboo. Now, many have a human presence, and in some places, they are celebrated. Individuals like Hussain Turk, who is gay, was a leader of the Muslim student association at UCLA where he studied law and served as an editor of the Journal of Islamic & Near Eastern Law. He says gay Muslims and their allies have been able to reinterpret and revitalize Islam for themselves.
Sarah Eltantawi, a professor of comparative religion at Evergreen State College, has also seen this shift first hand as an ally of the queer community. Over a decade ago, she helped found a national organization that explicitly welcomed queer Muslims. The organization eventually folded, in part because that was a red line for the community at the time.
Now, she says, the amount of change that has happened within the Muslim community is striking, even as there is still an incredibly long way to go.
Click on the 'Listen' button above to hear our full discussion with Hussain Turk and Professor Eltantawi.
