While the national media are quick to condemn conservative politicians who oppose stricter gun laws for offering their “thoughts and prayers” to those many victims of the tragic Orlando shooting, the media have said little about the Muslim scholar, Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar, who was preaching the death penalty for gays in Orlando this past April and, earlier, in 2013.
A Google News search of Sekaleshfar’s name reveals that only a few news organizations covered the story: Daily Mail, Washington Times, Breitbart News, Fusion, Daily Telegraph, The Australian, and a few others.
A search of Sekaleshfar’s name reveals zero results on other major news outlets, such as the Associated Press, ABC, NBC, CBS, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
According to the Washington Times (one of the few news organizations to cover the story), the Sekaleshfar spoke at the Husseini Islamic Center in Orlando in 2013, where he claimed death was the compassionate response to gays. Despite protests from local citizens (recorded on Channel 9 news), he was invited back to speak again at the Center in April of this year. As the Washington Times reports, “The center defended the invitation on free-speech grounds.”
According to The Daily Telegraph, Sekaleshfar claims that “his lectures had been taken out of context,” and that what he prescribed only applied to Islamic countries, not the West. Sekaleshfar also claims that he could not have inspired the shooting because he is a Shiah Muslim, and the shooter, Omar Mateen, claimed allegiance to ISIS. According to Sekaleshfar, although the death penalty for gays is justified, ISIS “has been killing homosexuals in the most wrongful way for years now.” According to the Los Angeles Times, however, Mateen was reported to have claimed allegiances to multiple opposing terrorist sects including Al Qaeda (Sunni) and Hezbollah (Shiite).
The media has an abysmal record of ignoring radical Islamic preachers and congregations in America, and even of acting as their useful idiots. When a 2011 U.S. drone strike killed Anwar Al Awlaki, he was a leader of Al Qaeda in Yemen. But before that, the New Mexico-born imam was hailed by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR and others as a moderate “Muslim leader who could help build bridges between Islam and the West.”
