The PointBy Daniel Greenfield

As the Pulse attack anniversary rolls around, the media has rolled out its usual stories accusing Governor Scott of homophobia. And trying to class the attack as a hate crime, rather than a terror attack.

But despite the lies the media shoved at us in the days after the attack (and some of the dubious claims made by the terrorist’s father), his agenda was clear and consistent.

“In the name of Allah, the merciful,” Omar Mateen told the police. “Praise be to Allah, and prayers as well as peace upon the prophet of Allah. I let you know, I’m in Orlando and I did the shootings.” Allah is missing from the hundreds of media stories about the Pulse attack which all mention homophobia. But Omar never spoke of gay people during his talks with police. He called himself an “Islamic soldier” and described the attack as revenge for the death of Abu Waheed; a senior ISIS leader.

Omar was not, despite media claims, secretly gay. And he may not have even known that he was attacking a gay nightspot.

Salman’s trial cast doubt on everything we thought we knew about Mateen. There was no evidence he was a closeted gay man, no evidence that he was ever on Grindr. He looked at porn involving older women, but investigators who scoured Mateen’s electronic devices couldn’t find any internet history related to homosexuality. (There were daily, obsessive searches about ISIS, however.) Mateen had extramarital affairs with women, two of whom testified during the trial about his duplicitous ways… As far as investigators could tell, Mateen had never been to Pulse before, whether as a patron or to case the nightclub. Even prosecutors acknowledged in their closing statement that Pulse was not his original target; it was the Disney Springs shopping and entertainment complex. They presented evidence demonstrating that Mateen chose Pulse randomly less than an hour before the attack. It is not clear he even knew it was a gay bar. A security guard recalled Mateen asking where all the women were, apparently in earnest, in the minutes before he began his slaughter.

In short, and I know this is a hopeless request, stop lying.

The people who were killed aren’t any less victims because of the randomness of the attack. Much like the people who died on 9⁄ 11 and in countless other terror attacks since then. They were targeted because they were non-Muslims in an Islamic terror plot whose goal was to extinguish the lives of as many non-Muslims as possible.

We should remember them and honor their memory. But the lies about what happened will cost future lives down the road. Because the problem isn’t that Omar was secretly gay or any of the other nonsense. The problem isn’t guns. It’s not homophobia.

It’s Islamic terrorism.