Recent Murders in the UK Reveal the Prejudice against Discussing Anti-Gay Bigotry When It Comes from Muslims

Last Saturday, Khairi Saadallah fatally stabbed three homosexual men in the English town of Reading. Douglas Murray comments on the British media’s strange response:

It has since emerged that the twenty-five-year-old suspect, who is now in police custody, came to the UK from Libya in 2012. He is reported to have come to the attention of MI5 last year as an individual who had the potential to travel overseas for terrorism purposes. . . . So far, [however], there has been almost no interest expressed in the possible motives of the attacker. Quite possibly there is a mental-health component. . . . But anything else to see here? Any other reason why a migrant from Libya who was given asylum in the UK might want to go around stabbing gay men? Well who would even ask such questions? What do you want to find? Bigot.

But if the attacker from Saturday night had been a white skinhead, or a neo-Nazi, or had been wearing a big red MAGA hat, I am fairly confident that the gay press and all of the mainstream media would be crawling over every angle of this story by now with an unparalleled fury, hurling allegations of “adjacency” against all of their favorite enemies. As it is I am reminded of nothing so much as story after story over recent years. Stories like when Omar Mateen walked into the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida four years ago and gunned down 49 people.

People know after a story like this that it isn’t good. . . . But they have made a very basic calculation. The calculation is that dead gays aren’t good. But they aren’t as bad—indeed they are a price worth paying—compared to asking any of the questions that sane people would ask after an attack like this. . . . The fear [is] that talking about Islamic homophobia as a potential motive in this case might increase prejudice of some other kind. It’s a calculation of a very cynical and inept kind.

Read more at Spectator

More about: Homosexuality, Islamophobia, Radical Islam, Terrorism, United Kingdom

To Stop Attacks from Yemen, Cut It Off from Iran

On March 6, Yemen’s Houthi rebels managed to kill three sailors and force the remainder to abandon ship when they attacked another vessel. Not long thereafter, top Houthi and Hamas figures met to coordinate their efforts. Then, on Friday, the Houthis fired a missile at a commercial vessel, which was damaged but able to continue its journey. American forces also shot down one of the group’s drones yesterday.

Seth Cropsey argues that Washington needs a new approach, focused directly on the Houthis’ sponsors in Tehran:

Houthi disruption to maritime traffic in the region has continued nearly unabated for months, despite multiple rounds of U.S. and allied strikes to degrade Houthi capacity. The result should be a shift in policy from the Biden administration to one of blockade that cuts off the Houthis from their Iranian masters, and thereby erodes the threat. This would impose costs on both Iran and its proxy, neither of which will stand down once the war in Gaza ends.

Yet this would demand a coherent alliance-management policy vis-a-vis the Middle East, the first step of which would be a shift from focus on the Gaza War to the totality of the threat from Iran.

Read more at RealClear Defense

More about: Gaza War 2023, Iran, U.S. Foreign policy, Yemen