The Intercept: Stop Exploiting LGBT Issues to Demonize Islam and Justify Anti-Muslim Policies

Critical coverage of the Orlando mass killing is being published in The Intercept and Informed Comment.

The aftermath filtered through the corporate media is ahistorical and aligns perfectly with the American foreign policy establishment and its purposes ranging from Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump.

Notes Zaid Jilani as the corporate media, Clinton and Trump all flee from facts and reason:

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump reacted to the Orlando shooting with evidence that they can agree on at least one thing: bombing people. Both candidates called for an escalation of the U.S.-led bombing campaign against ISIS in Syria and Iraq.

... Clinton suggested during her post-Orlando speech Monday afternoon that 'We should keep the pressure on ramping up the air campaign'

That ISIS/ISIL has nothing to do with the killer in Orlando is of no relevancy to Clinton and Trump who want to bomb someone, somewhere.

Elsewhere, Juan Cole has another dose of sanity at his site, entitled, Top 7 ways to tell if Someone is lying about being a ‘Salafi Jihadi’.

Flaming Islamophobia is chronicled by Glenn Greenwald:

... When it comes to Jews and Christians, people instinctively understand how bigoted and deceitful it is to cherry-pick particularly offensive excerpts from their holy books and use them to demonize all contemporary Christians and Jews.

Indeed, a standard tactic of neo-Nazis and other various anti-Semites is to cite ugly excerpts from the Talmud — including ones purportedly endorsing Jews holding non-Jews as slaves or lying to and stealing from non-Jews — as evidence of the dishonesty and untrustworthiness of Jews generally. We all understand that this tactic is so vile, unscholarly, and anti-intellectual precisely because modern adherents to those religions interpret and apply (or ignore) those provisions in all sorts of ways.

Exactly the same is true of Muslims, yet an entire cottage industry of pseudo-intellectual charlatans — including ones who admit to never having even read the Quran — uses exactly this tawdry tactic to demonize Islam (watch this social experiment where people are read heinous Bible passages and falsely told they are from the Quran). There are literally millions upon millions of Muslims who hold positive views about, and engage in positive interactions with, gay people with regularity (which is why it’s almost always true that those most devoted to demonizing Islam are the ones who know the fewest number of Muslims (just as is true of LGBTs, ironically)).

Madness over madness as the lunatic Trump and the Queen of Chaos fight over details.