Just after the deadly mass shooting at Orlando's Pulse gay nightclub on June 12, 2016, Max Bearak and Darla Cameron of the Washington Post published an article entitled: Here are the 10 countries where homosexuality may be punished by death.
As a reminder, Omar Mateen shot and killed 49 people and wounded 53 other people making this horrific event the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in United States history. It is also the deadliest act of violence against the LGBT community in our nation. Mateen had pledged his allegiance to ISIL (ISIS).
In their Post article, Bearak and Cameron shared an updated map of LGBT rights around the world and countries where homosexuality is punishable by death. They explain, "In some, the sentencing derives from an interpretation of sharia law. There are some in which provisions for the death penalty exist but have never been carried out. In others that we haven't included, non-state actors who control swaths of land either summarily execute or sentence homosexuals to death."
As you read the names of countries on the list, please ask yourself this question: What do these countries have in common?
1. Yemen
2. Iran
3. Mauritania
4. Nigeria
5. Qatar
6. Saudi Arabia
7. Afghanistan
8. Somalia
9. Sudan
10. United Arab Emirates
Their unmistakable commonality is that they are all Islamic countries.
With these facts and a growing litany of documented stories of radical Islamic violence around the world, one must ask the question: Why are liberals and progressives so protective of Islam?
Cantankerous comedian Bill Maher is one of the few on the Left asking this same question. He contends that liberals are so afraid of being called Islamophobes that they will not denounce brutality committed in Islam's name.
Case in point is how the Left treats two Muslim American women.
Asra Q. Nomani is a very liberal Muslim woman. She is with the Left on abortion and many other social issues, but she committed the unpardonable sin, she voted for Donald J. Trump for president and wrote explaining her actions.
Her turning point in the presidential election came from the WikiLeaks emails of Hillary Clinton. These documents revealed Clinton's knowledge of Qatar and Saudi Arabia providing clandestine financial and logistic support to ISIL, while at the same time the Clinton Foundation was receiving multimillion-dollar donations from these two Islamic countries.
Nomani is a former Wall Street Journal reporter and co-founded the Muslim Reform Movement. She is against American Muslim women being forced or cajoled into wearing the traditional head-scarf called the hijab. She has an ongoing public feud with a much more conservative Muslim woman named Linda Sarsour.
Linda Sarsour was one of the four major organizers of the Woman's March on Washington D.C. the day after president Trump's inauguration.
Sarsour is a conservative Muslim woman promoting the wearing of the hijab. Working with the progressive mayor Bill de Blasio, Sarsour fought hard and won the fight in forcing New York City public schools to recognize two Islamic holidays.
So now I ask another question: Why does the Left like the conservative (more fundamentalist) Muslim woman over the liberal Muslim woman?
The liberal Muslim, Asra Q. Nomani asks hard questions and doesn't make excuses for the violence perpetrated in the name of Islam. She also reports the truth as she sees it.
Recently the New York Times published her hard-hitting article showing how the billionaire George Soros has ties to over 50 partners of the Women's March on Washington (and the Hillary connection).
Shakespeare spoke of misery acquainting a man with "strange bedfellows." With head-scratching disbelief, can there be any stranger bedfellows than the Left and conservative Islam?
Could their bonding agent be the false narratives they both perpetuate about how terrible the United States was and is? Hatred for the United States is almost as common on many American college campuses as in the madrasas of the Islamic world.
© Ron F. Hale, January 23, 2017
Ron Hale came to Christ at the age of 23 and surrendered to ministry one year later. After serving in the Midwest for 25 years in various church and denominational roles, Ron returned home to Jackson, TN, and has served on staff at West Jackson Baptist Church for nine years. He enjoys writing, research, and serving on the SBC Executive Committee. © Ron F. Hale, September 21, 2015
