Emma-Kate Symons is right (“The hate that Obama dares not speak its name”, 14/6). It is lame for President Obama to say the Orlando crime was “a case of homegrown extremism”. Once more he sells his country short. Muslims disdain homosexuality. The American protestant churches do not and the Pope does not.
A Muslim massacring the patrons of a gay bay in Florida is not a homegrown activity. The US is a majority Christian country. Islam is not homegrown. It comes from the Middle East. Absent that transplantation, the dead gays in Orlando would be alive. Not homegrown, Mr Obama, not at all.
Ross Terrill, Harvard University, USA
Both of Islam’s leading countries, Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, enthusiastically impose their death penalty for homosexuality. How do our elitist PC Western leaders (think President Obama) even momentarily entertain the latest Islamist mass murderer’s father’s patently ridiculous protestation that his son’s crimes had “nothing to do with religion”?
Bryan Connor, Cloncurry, Qld
So Sheik Sekaleshfar was in Orlando last month blatantly telling Muslims to “kill homosexuals”. He’s now in Sydney being welcomed by the Hussein Islamic Center as a speaker (“Gay death cleric preaching in Sydney”, 16/4). As a gay man I’m outraged and disturbed; why are we talking about Islamic State and gun control?
Alastair McKenzie, Omeo, Vic
The Orlando Islamist atrocity surely indicates the absolute urgency for action on two fronts.
Firstly, as the Koran is not set out in chronological order, Islamic scholars need to identify the edicts from Mohammed during his Mecca period, when there were messages of peace and tolerance in contrast to his Medina period, when the messages changed to those of violence and intolerance. Secondly, such an analysis of the Koran would then need Islamic leaders possessed of significant intelligence and courage to disseminate this information in the Muslim world, teaching that the original approach of Mohammed is correct and the Medina approach should be rejected.
Without this reformation of Islam, the world will continue to suffer the terrorist consequences.
Dick Crane, Killarney Heights, NSW
Economically and militarily it’s the most powerful nation on the planet. The mystery is why or how the US has achieved that status, despite what by any objective assessment is sheer populist idiocy when it comes to “the right to bear arms”.
Bob Curren, Kensington Park, SA