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Eman Abdelhadi, 26, is a PhD candidate at New York University whose work focuses on gender in the American Muslim world. Born in Missouri to an Egyptian mother and Palestinian father, she identifies as queer, and has been open with many members of her community since she first began dating women. When asked about the tragedy in Orlando, and whether Mateen was inspired by religious extremism, she struggles to hide her frustration."When something like this happens in America, Islam becomes the main topic of discussion," Abdelhadi tells VICE. "The narrative was first that Mateen was a homophobe because of Islam. Now that we're told that he may have been secretly gay, the narrative has become that he was self-hating because of his Islam. They want to divorce Mateen from all the factors in American society that created him, but there is nothing foreign about Omar Mateen."The young man was, after all, born in New York*. If early reports about his life are to be believed, he had a relatively uneventful childhood, but became increasingly unstable as a young man—exhibiting signs of mental health issues. Just as was the case for mass murderers Adam Lanza, Jared Lee Loughner, James Holmes, and Dylann Roof, those problems were either ignored by authorities or overlooked by those closest to them. The only notable difference between those white men and Mateen, of course, is that the latter was brown and Muslim, the extremist ideology he flirted with supposedly Islamic."I wish we didn't have to be brave just to continue living." —Jordan Alam
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