We can’t ignore the religion of the Orlando gay club gunman, by Douglas Murray.

Even the FBI is now admitting that [Omar Mateen] would appear to have had ‘leanings’ towards radical Islamic ideology. Perhaps that’s why, shortly before his murder spree, he called 911 to declare his allegiance to the Islamic State (which has since claimed responsibility for the massacre).

Here’s a prediction. If the gunman from last night had proved to have been a Christian fundamentalist, every person he had ever associated with would by now be being crawled over not just by law enforcement but by the press. Senior church figures and political leaders across America and the rest of the world would have condemned the act and said how important it is to root out such hatred from people’s hearts. Every group, individual or fellow-traveller who was in any way associated with the gunman’s ideology would be forever tarnished by association even if they had no connection to the gunman himself. …

Almost every single Imam in America and elsewhere will deny that there is any connection between the gunman’s beliefs and theirs. … It is just two months since we learned that 52 per cent of British Muslims believe that being gay should be made illegal in the UK. When that poll was released very nearly the entirety of the UK’s Muslim leadership and spokespeople attacked not the bigotry of their own community, but the poll. It is always the same story.

I say again: In the weeks to come, the PC and the media will spin and white wash this, kicking up a cloud of irrelevant distractions. But in the final analysis another Muslim has killed a bunch of non-Muslims, filling a pattern strongly in play since the sixth century — a simple truth the PC will vigorously deny and avoid: “sheer coincidence.”

hat-tip Stephen Neil