Omar Mahmood

Responses on Muslim social media to violence committed in the name of Islam have become infuriatingly predictable, as we saw in Fort Worth, San Bernardino and most recently in Orlando. The knee-jerk reaction is to deny that these attacks have anything to do with true Islam, and to tar anyone who says otherwise as Islamophobic. But that defensive, oversensitive attitude is simply evasive. We need an honest conversation about Islam itself.

That’s not what we’re getting. The day after the central Florida massacre, more than 200 Muslim leaders and scholars from America and beyond issued a response titled A Joint Muslim Statement on the Carnage in Orlando. It was signed by influential figures such as Yasir Qadhi (the widely followed dean of academic affairs at the Al-Maghrib Institute), Hisham Mahmoud (a lecturer at Harvard’s Islamic Studies Program) and even Yusuf Islam (the singer formerly known as Cat Stevens).

Their statement condemns the massacre, distances it from Muslims, and stresses that we must all live in harmony. That much is predictable, and commendable. But the statement fails to give American Islam what it needs most, and what is missing from the political and social media response: intellectual honesty.

The statement reads, “Any such acts of violence violate every one of our Prophet’s teachings.” This conveniently overlooks the fact that the prophet Mohammed condemned homosexuality and called for violence against gay people. He is recorded by numerous authorities as having said, “Wherever you find people committing the sin of the people of Lot, kill the one doing it and the one to whom it is done.” Beyond that, the Islamic canon contains plentiful condemnation of homosexuality. What the post-Orlando statement proves is that the Muslim-American establishment will not dare confront the issue of literalism — whether the prophet Mohammed's teachings must be taken literally or whether they can be adapted to modernity.

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And that is the very issue that the massacre in Orlando lays bare. The “this isn’t real Islam” line ends here. Orlando shooter Omar Mateen was ostensibly associated with violent strains of Islam, pledging allegiance to the Islamic State terrorist group, but these violent strains follow the same texts as do the mainstream. Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar, who studies and teaches religion in Iran, has openly called for the killing of gay people. “Death is the sentence,” he said in 2013. Just this spring, he spoke at the Husseini Islamic Center near Orlando. The 200 Muslim leaders who issued the statement can wash their hands of Sekaleshfar and his conclusion all they want, but they will find themselves in the same literalism trap.

Mainstream Muslim-American imams or religious leaders believe that everything the prophet said was true. Cognitive dissonance is the fundamental psychological issue that is swept under the rug, but that needs to be a conversation in American mosques. On the topic of homosexuality, most American-Muslim scholars, such as Yasir Qadhi, will argue that in a pluralistic society such as that of the United States, we must tolerate lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Americans even while we believe that they live sinful lives.

More liberal American-Muslim leaders will advocate that we are obliged to fight for the LGBT community. Reza Aslan and Hasan Minhaj, after last year’s Supreme Court ruling legalizing gay marriage, followed the liberal line in An Open Letter to American Muslims on Same-Sex Marriage. They cited the Quran ("Be just, for this is closest to righteousness") and said God's mercy and compassion extends "to all people, not just those who are straight.”

But if it were really that simple, their letter would not be necessary. Their logic, unfortunately, is torn apart by any honest reading of the prophet’s words.

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It is obvious that Muslims as a whole are peaceful people. Although it is clear that the silent majority of American Muslims are at least opposed to homosexuality, only the most minuscule number would support something as atrocious as the Orlando massacre. In fact, 42% of American Muslims are in favor of same-sex marriage. But the conversation that needs to be had is a psychological, textual one.

The question has existential implications for what must be thousands of closeted, gay and lesbian American Muslims. I know gay Muslims who live in hiding, who endure a never-ending psychological torture. There are many indications that Omar Mateen was conflicted about his own sexuality. And yet the discussion that might have enabled him to deal with his guilt is nowhere to be heard.

We can talk all we want about Islam's relationship with America, about Islamophobia, about homophobia. But the issue is Islam itself. Can we still read the Quran and the prophet’s words literally in the 21st century? Until we can ask that question in American mosques, Islam will have an uneasy relationship with modernity.

Omar Mahmood is a USA TODAY Collegiate Network fellow. Follow him on Twitter: @UrduDervish.

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