There is no such thing as Islam
The refusal to use the term “Muslim extremist” or “Islamic terrorism,” is stupid, and the insistence that extremism and terror are intrinsic to Islam is no less so.
To claim, for example, that jihadism is a distortion of Islam is to assume there is an “Islam” to distort. There isn’t. There’s no such thing as Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, or Buddhism; there are only variant readings of the texts and teachings of these faiths by people who see their particular reading as legitimate and perhaps exclusively so.
The other day I overheard someone arguing that Omar Mateen acted the way he did because he was a repressed homosexual and not because he was a Muslim. Maybe so, but that doesn’t make Islam irrelevant to his situation. The reading of Islam in which Mr. Mateen was raised—as his father’s statements make clear—had no compassion for homosexuals, and expected them to suffer the wrath of Allah if not in this world than in the next. If Omar was gay, his reading of Islam left him with no way to accept himself or others like himself. His reading of Islam fostered a violent self-loathing. But his reading of Islam isn’t “Islam.” Would he have attacked the Pulse nightclub if he had been raised with a more liberal and accepting reading of Islam that allowed him to love freely and openly? I don’t think he would. Islam isn’t the problem; his reading of Islam is the problem.
Every religion has its illiberal and violent readings, and every religion has its violent and oppressive faithful who see those readings as True. Unless and until we can admit that there are hateful and illiberal readings of every religion, we cannot push back against them, and as long as we imagine that any one reading is THE authentic expression of a religion, nothing will change.