In the wake of the ISIS/Daesh terrorist atrocity in Paris, it may be tempting to resort to knee-jerk racism and sectarianism. Of all people, the LGBT community should know much better. Welcome to some thorny questions around 'intersectionality.' Let's get real about one thing- Christianity is no better than Islam when it comes to sanctioning anti-LGBT atrocities and interpersonal homophobic and transphobic violence, as well as excusing or condoning the maintenance of gay male criminality and discrimination against LGBT individuals within employment, accommodation and goods and services provision, legitimising hate crimes against LGBT individuals and giving credence to anti-LGBT hate propaganda. Nigeria, Uganda and Russia are no better than Iran, Iraq and Brunei when it comes to these issues. In New Zealand, our primary opponents are the Christian Right. Moreover, we also need to recognise what the opponents of pluralist co-existence with mainstream Muslims are actually saying, and the fact is that they're endorsing these extremist racist and sectarian stances mostly because of the abject failure of their anti-LGBT agendas, so they are seeking new pariahs and new excuses for social exclusion and discrimination within western societies. If the radical right's Islamophobes have their way, innocent Syrian refugees will be stopped from resettling away from their war-torn country, even if they're noncombatant elderly or innocent children, or even be deported back to war-torn Syria or Iraq. If there are LGBT Syrians and Iraqis among the refugee outflow, they will be prevented from resettlement as well, throwing them back into the arms of ISIS, which has murdered gay men through throwing them off tall buildings if they capture them. Innocent Muslims will be imprisoned in concentration or 'detention camps.' Mosque building will be prohibited, and there will be moral callousness displayed toward those who launch arson attacks on such places of worship, or spray scabrous graffiti over Muslim graves and cemeteries. Innocent Muslim women, children and the elderly will be the victims of hate crimes, or worse, within Western Europe and the United States. Moreover, sanitising Christianity's role in this tragedy is the last thing that we should be doing. Over the last millennium of western history, there were the Crusades which began in the eleventh century, anti-Semitic pogroms aplenty, German Catholic and Lutheran anti-Semitism and its responsibility for fomenting the environment that culminated in the Nazi Holocaust, European colonialism and its brutality against countless indigenous people, and today's radical fundamentalist Christian Right movements, which preach that it is okay to attack feminism, conceal Catholic clergy pedophilia, ban abortion and maintain criminalisation and discrimination when it comes to gay men and sex workers. In terms of foreign policy, they also argue that torture is an 'appropriate' solution to terrorism, the death penalty is okay even if it is based on institutional racism, and that there are no shades of opinion or nuance or political diversity within Islam (so moderate Muslims "don't exist".) By saying this, I am not excusing or condoning conservative Muslim homophobia or transphobia in Malaysia, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria or Brunei. However, just as there are liberal Christians who actively resist the perversion of their faith against feminism, LGBT rights, abortion rights or other religions, there are also liberal Muslims, albeit mostly within western societies, who also do so. In any case, our quarrel is not with the Federation of Islamic Associations of New Zealand (FIANZ), whose only act against LGBT rights has been their parliamentary submission against the Marriage Amendment Act in 2013, which went no further than that. LGBT New Zealander's have been the victims of hate crimes, social exclusion and discrimination ourselves. We should not encourage or condone it, given that Islamophobic fundamentalist Christian or white supremacist opportunists who condone and advocate such draconian attacks on Muslim civil liberties, human rights and democratic freedoms within a pluralist society have never been our allies either. Quite the opposite. So let us actively dissent and discourage any moves to represent all New Zealand Muslims as "advocates" of terrorism. There is no credible evidence whatsoever that they are. Craig Young - 18th November 2015