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California-based Islamic scholar Mustafa Umar said in a June 10, 2023 lecture at the Chino Valley Islamic Center that it was a mistake for the Muslim leadership in the United States to form a political alliance with the LGBT "lobby" after the September 11 attacks. He explained that Muslims has been so afraid that they would be "kicked out of the country" that they were willing to team up with anyone that was willing to talk to them, and he reflected that Muslims should not team up with something that is "intrinsically wrong" for the sake of building political power and intersectionality.
He said that similarly, Muslims should never support the Church of Satan or zoophiliacs even if they support Muslims' rights to build minarets for their mosques. Umar elaborated that this is the most urgent issue facing Muslims today, and that it is like a gun pointed at his head and the heads of his children. In addition, he praised Qatar for rejecting American pressure to bring rainbow flags into the stadiums during the FIFA 2022 World Cup. Mustafa Umar is the founder and president of California Islamic University, the Director of Education and Outreach at the Islamic Institute of Orange County, and an executive member of the Fiqh council of North America.
Mustafa Umar: "What people don't realize is when it comes to the LGBT lobby it's not simply about saying, 'oh well, you know what, there are certain people in America, and they're doing certain things that we don't approve of.' It's not just about saying, 'oh well, let them exist, let them do what they want to in their own private spaces or whatever it is... Let them have their own little nightclub or whatever it is.' That was not an issue, per say.
"The issue now is that they're going to normalize this type of behavior within society which is going to definitely affect society, and then they're going to bring it into the school curriculum, and then they're going to make sure that you wear the rainbow flag at work, and stuff like that – and that's a horrible idea. So the answer is no, we should not be doing that, because we can never support something that is intrinsically wrong.
"So to give you a simple example, there's a group called the Church of Satan. Satanists, right? They're a minority in this community. Are we going to say, 'you know what, we as Muslims, we're going to team up with the Church of Satan, the Church of Shaytan, basically people who worship Shaytan. Because of intersectionality, we need political power, and we're going to team up with every other minority.'
"There's another minority of people who are zoophiliacs, right? These are people who marry animals. Somebody married their dog – there are people like that. They marry their dog, they marry their cat, having a physical relationship with their dog or their cat, or horse or something like that. And you say: 'You know what, they're also a minority in this country; let's support them in every single thing that they do, and try to normalize this behavior so that they can also help us make sure that our masjid [mosque] can have a minaret on it and we don't get islamophobia'. That's a ridiculous idea.
"Unfortunately, the Muslim community or the Muslim leadership, we need to admit our mistakes when we make a mistake. The Muslim leadership post 9/11 got so afraid, got so scared, [saying:] 'Our visas are going to be revoked, we're going to get kicked out of the country, we're going to have to move somewhere else.' [So] they're just like: 'Let's just team up with anyone who's willing to support us' because there's so much hatred of Islam in the media and everything. So [Muslim] people are like, 'let's just team up with anybody who is willing to talk to us.' Not thinking about the long term consequences. When we look at that in retrospect, that was a huge mistake, and now it's coming back to bite us.
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"It's right in our face it's being shoved down our throat. That's why Muslims are talking about it. We need to talk about it; we're going to talk about everything else, too, but it's natural that we're going to talk about something that's literally like someone's putting a gun to your head, and you're like, you don't want me to talk about the gun? I'm asking you, please lower the gun; this is not healthy; please put it down. 'Why don't you talk about the Muslims in India?' I do, but there's a gun in my face right now and in my son's face, my daughter's face. They're pointing a gun at my daughter, and you want me to be like... 'Why don't you talk about homelessness?' Like I will, but not at the level of this urgency right now that's happening.
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"America is putting pressure on all societies, on Japan, and they tried to do it in the World Cup, on Qatar, but Qatar stood up, and they're like: 'Get your flags out of our stadium.' May Allah protect them; they did a fantastic job."
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