PENSACOLA, FL—It's been all over the news: Mohammed Alshamrani, a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the Royal Saudi Arabian Air Force who was training at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, shot and killed three sailors on the base last week—and it's recently been revealed that one reason for the massacre may have been that one of Alshamrani's instructors had referred to the Saudi trainee as "Porn Stache" because of the shape of his mustache.
Most news stories have referred to the killings as possibly a "terrorist attack," and the few so far that have mentioned the "Porn Stache" use have noted that the "insult" occurred back in April, but it's clear that the term was hurtful enough to Alshamrani that he filed an official complaint about it. Moreover, Michael Daly of The Daily Beast noted that in mid-April, Alshamrani obtained a Florida hunting license which, thanks to a loophole in the law, allowed him to purchase a 9mm Glock 45 semiautomatic pistol with an extended magazine—the same type of gun involved in the shooting—at a gun shop in the Pensacola area.
"Lieutenant Alshamrani reported that the confrontation came at the end of a meteorology class, when the instructor, James Day, asked whether students had any questions before he dismissed them," The New York Times reported in a story published yesterday.
"The instructor then turned to Lieutenant Alshamrani and asked whether he had any questions, addressing him as 'Porn Stash'—spelled that way in the complaint—in an apparent reference to the mustache of a porn actor."
"'Laughing, he [Day] continued to ask, "What? Have you not seen a porn star before?"' the lieutenant wrote in his complaint, according to the summary. 'After I did not respond, he just let go of the subject.'"
But there's a very good chance that Alshamrani had indeed "never seen a porn star before."
"[L]ittle is known of Lieutenant Alshamrani’s life in Florida during his months as a trainee, and the incident in April appears to have been upsetting enough that two American students in the class helped him file his complaint, according to the person who spoke with him about it."
But the issue may not be Alshamrani’s life in Florida so much as his early sexual education in Saudi Arabia.
According to Omar Attia, who lived in Saudi Arabia for his entire middle- and high-school education, "there is no subject/course called 'Sexual Education/Health,' as in US or Europe, nothing even close to that."
Rather, sexuality is dealt with in only two respects: The first as part of Islamic religious education, which informs students "what a married couple can and cannot do during sexual intercourse. Basically, anal sex and intercourse during a woman's period are strictly forbidden." Adultery, Islamic divorce and male homosexuality are also covered. The second is in Biology classes, where students are shown drawings of male and female genitalia but no photographs of same, and are taught the relationship of hormones on puberty, but nothing more than that.
Sexually explicit content is strictly forbidden in most of the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, and any discussion of sex and sexual education that could be found on the internet, even on Wikipedia, are blocked by government edict.
Alshamrani’s instructor appears to have been completely ignorant of that, and considering Alshamrani’s early education, it would hardly be surprising that he would consider the term "Porn Stache" as a major insult.
"According to the communication describing the encounter, Lieutenant Alshamrani was visibly upset and reported what happened to managers of CAE USA, which provides instruction to civil and military aviation students," according to the Times' report. "The American student who helped the lieutenant draft the complaint was one of two who accompanied him when he went to file it, according to the person who spoke with the Saudi trainee about the complaint. The CAE managers offered to have the instructor apologize, but Lieutenant Alshamrani turned that offer down, and instead spoke to the naval office that oversees international students, the person said."
Moreover, a week after the complaint was filed, Alshamrani was again assigned to that same instructor for simulated flight training, but when Alshamrani complained, the training was postponed until another instructor could be found.
Assuming for a moment that addressing Alshamrani as "Porn Stache" would have been considered by the recipient as a major insult, given his lack of sexuality education, journalism is replete with instances where use of similar terminology has driven people to violence—all of which points up the necessity of making sure that all school-age children have a good grounding in scientifically-based sex education. Sadly, such education continues to be lacking, and according to the website AmericanProgress.org, "only 20 states and the District of Columbia require sex and/or HIV education to be medically, factually, and technically accurate, while 27 states require lessons that stress abstinence, and 18 states require instruction that teaches students to engage in sexual activity only within marriage."
Hopefully, none of those 27 states will be the source of another mass murderer.
