Professor Bennoune Publishes Op-ed on Orlando Shooting in Huffington Post

Professor Karima Bennoune published an op-ed in The Huffington Post on the June 12 mass shooting in a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida that left 49 dead.  The attack was committed by an Afghan-American who reportedly professed allegiance to the terrorist group known as the Islamic State, leading to questions regarding the possible role of Islamist beliefs in motivating the killings.

"I am grateful to those who are righteously rushing in to defend Muslims from the inevitable backlash and deplorable discrimination in the shell-shocked wake of this massacre," writes Bennoune. "However, I would also ask them not to do so by downplaying the harsh realities of Islamist political ideology and the way it purveys hatred against many groups, including gays."  Professor Bennoune also saluted the work of groups like Muslims for Progressive Values that are fighting both homophobia among Muslims and discrimination against Muslims among the general population at the same time.

Karima Bennoune is an author, lecturer, teacher, and international law scholar as well as the first Arab-American to be honored with the Derrick A. Bell Award from the Section on Minority Groups of the Association of American Law Schools. In 2014, she was awarded the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for her book Your Fatwa Does Not Apply Here: Untold Stories from the Fight against Muslim Fundamentalism, now available in paperback from W.W. Norton & Company. In October 2015, she was appointed UN Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights.  She was recently presented with the 2016 Rights and Leadership Award by IANGEL, the International Action Network for Gender Equity & Law.

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