What's wrong wh beg gay and Mlim? | Brian Whaker | The Guardian

Contents:

• WHAT DO ISLAM SAY ABOUT BEG GAY?
• CAN A MLIM BE GAY?
• WHAT'S WRONG WH BEG GAY AND MLIM?
• EVERYTHG YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BEG GAY MLIM UNTRI
• IS HARAM TO BE GAY? SAME SEX RELATNSHIP ISLAM
• IS BEG GAY HARAM?

WHAT DO ISLAM SAY ABOUT BEG GAY?

Acrdg to the Internatnal Lbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Associatn, Turkey sr slightly better on measur of gay rights when pared wh some nearby Christian-majory natns such as Rsia, Armenia and Ukrae. Among them are two of the most popular Turkish entertaers of the past half-century: The late Zeki Muren was flamboyantly gay and the sger Bulent Ersoy is famoly transsexual.

CAN A MLIM BE GAY?

Their eccentricy has apparently add to their beyond the entertament dtry, the tradnal mastream Islamic view on homosexualy produc tolerance Turkey toward gays and creat starker problems Mlim natns that apply Shariah. The average nservative Mlim tak this story as a jtifitn to stigmatize gays, but there is an important qutn that serv nsiratn: Did the people of Lot receive dive punishment for beg homosexual, or for attackg Lot and his heavenly guts? The even more signifint nuance is that while the Quran narrat this dive punishment for Sodom and Gomorrah, cre no earthly punishment for homosexualy — unlike the Old Ttament, which clearly cre that homosexuals “are to be put to ath.

But signifint nam among them, such as the eighth-century scholar Abu Hanifa, the founr of the popular Hanafi school of jurispnce, argued that sce a homosexual relatnship did not produce offsprg wh an unknown father, uldn’t be nsired real Islamic basis for punishg homosexualy is the hadhs, or saygs, attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. Such jurispntial facts might help Mlims today to velop a more tolerant attu toward gays, as some progrsive Islamic thkers Turkey, such as Ihsan Eliacik, are enuragg. People’s private liv are their own bs, he argu, whereas the public Mlim stance should be to fend gays when they are persecuted or discrimated agast — bee Islam stands wh the downtrodn.

Yet those Mlims who sist on nmng gays should rell that acrdg to Islam, there are many ss, cludg arrogance, which the Quran treats as among the gravt moral transgrsns.

WHAT'S WRONG WH BEG GAY AND MLIM?

Ever sce the landmark US Supreme Court cisn on June 26 makg same-sex marriage legal the US, bate has emerged among Mlims worldwi about the mer of the lg, wh the obv implitn if they as Mlims approve or disapprove of a person beg a gay while profsg to be a Mlim.

“But many Mlims on social media lashed out, ” another utned, “sayg ‘qiyamah’, the day of judgement, was near while the story of Lot nmng homosexualy holy scriptur, cludg the Quran, is beg ignored. Leadg scholars of this field such as Joseph Massad have radilly ntted the manner which what he terms “gay ternatnal” has imperially domated the variety of homoerotic domas Arab and Mlim history.

Samar Habib’s eded two volum Islam and Homosexualy (2009) and Khaled El-Rouayheb’s Before Homosexualy the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 (2009) are exampl of such groundbreakg work. Stt Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, Homosexualy Islam: Cril Reflectn on Gay, Lbian, and Transgenr Mlims (2010) is another cril example, pl the work of other scholars such as Kecia Ali, Serena Tolo and Sara Omar. Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed wrote a ccial tobgraphy, The Koran and the Flh/Le Coran et la chair (2012), Jerry Wright’s Homoeroticism Classil Arabic Lerature, and Helie and Hoodfar’s Sexualy Mlim Contexts have expand our historil unrstandg of the issue, while Joseph Massad’s Dirg Arabs (2007) took the whole disurse of homosexualy radilly to task.

EVERYTHG YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT BEG GAY MLIM UNTRI

The legalisatn of same-sex marriage the Uned Stat will do very ltle to dimish the ep-rooted homophobia this untry, as ed the Emancipatn Proclamatn of 1863 did not entirely end racism; or Roe v Wa of 1973 end patriarchy, machismo, and misogyny; or Brown v Board of Edutn of 1954 end school segregatn, which has ntued apace along class l to this day. It n then e them all as exampl to enurage Mlims at large to participate open, hont, and rmed discsns articulatg and safeguardg their civil liberti across the board – which clus, but isn’t limed to, gay rights and the possibily of the acceptance of same-sex marriage wh Mlim muni.

How Amerin Mlims Mt Rpond to Orlando Israel's First Gay Major General Is No Cse for Pri The Real Opprsors of Gaza's Gay Communy Beit Pri Canceled After Organizer Detaed by Authori Lebanon last year beme the first Arab untry to hold a gay pri week, though the openg event was nceled bee of safety ncerns after threats of vlence. In Egypt, there have been police raids of spected gay gathergs and people have been put on trial g a vague legal text that equat homosexualy wh prostut and tri gays for "vlatg public moraly. " "Middle Eastern and North Ain untri have nounced the Orlando shootg when at the same time they crimalize homosexualy wh sentenc rangg om years prison to the ath penalty, " said Ahmed Benchemsi, munitns and advocy director for the Middle East and North Ai at Human Rights Watch.

IS HARAM TO BE GAY? SAME SEX RELATNSHIP ISLAM

In Syria, al-Qaida's lol branch as well as other Islamic surgent groups battlg ISIS, have also killed gays and some homosexuals have had to flee the untry for their own safety. "Sir Iqbal also scribed homosexualy as "not acceptable" terms of health and there are many Mlims who take an even harr le, nouncg gay people as "paedophil and Aids rriers" and likeng homosexualy to a "ncer tumour" that mt be eradited, Sir Iqbal's remarks - together wh the MCB's reluctance to engage dialogue about homosexualy - have triggered exactly the sort of nflict that another proment Brish Mlim warned agast six years 2000, Zaki Badawi - an elrly but far-sighted scholar who was head of the Mlim College London - took the unprecented step of givg an terview to Gay Tim. "Rellg the film My Betiful Lndrette, which portrays a love affair between a Brish-Asian Mlim and his whe boyiend, he scribed as "a eful remr to the Mlim muny that they nnot simply sweep gays and lbians unr the rpet" is te, of urse, that most Mlims today regard homosexualy as bad and do try to "sweep gays and lbians unr the rpet", but this is a product of society rather than their relign.

So far, there has been no parable bate wh Islam - but that don't mean to say n't is a wispread misapprehensn - repeated yterday rears' ments about Peter Tatchell's article - that the Qur'an "is pla s nmnatn of homosexualy". The issue here is not that they are both of the same genr but that their relatnship is not legally, a sense, is the Islamic Catch 22: gay upl are at flt for not beg married, and yet they are not allowed to regularise their relatnship the way that straight upl like the Bible, the Qur'an has a number of vers that are popularly regard as nmng homosexualy.

IS BEG GAY HARAM?

What the Qur'an actually says about this is discsed more fully my book Unspeakable Love (published next week), but the key pot is that the vers ually ced are by no means as clear or unequivol as people Christiany, Islamic arguments agast homosexualy centre on the tale of the prophet Lot (or Lut as he is known the Qur'an) and the stctn of Sodom. The Qur'anic versn is remarkably siar and open to siar criqu, and yet s popular terpretatn is hardly ever challenged by Islamic Christiany, the bate about homosexualy has bee a tt se a much wir battle between two nflictg approach to relign. On one si are the nservative or orthodox forc, who take a generally flexible and legalistic view of scripture, while on the other are the progrsiv, who foc on the overall spir of their fah rather than the letter, and are more willg to reterpret the light of new unrstandgs about human early example of a progrsive view, as applied to homosexualy, me om the Quakers way back 1963:.

They urge gay men to seek a "cure" (even though is unlikely to succeed and uld be psychologilly harmful), and tell them to fd a wife as soon as the sh to nmn homosexualy, they are happy to disregard the nsequenc - and the immoraly - of the solutns they remend. The popular cleric, Yuf al-Qaradawi, scrib homosexualy as a crime agast women, but if prsurisg gay men to marriag that they do not want, and may be totally unsued for, is not a crime agast the rights of women, is hard to know what the theologil and scriptural arguments there is also a perceptn among Mlims that gay people necsarily have a dissolute - and therefore un-Islamic - liftyle. If a gay Mlim uple fall love, get hched at the register office and settle down to a life of domticy, cuddlg up together ont of the telly wh a cup of a at night, do Sir Iqbal really see anythg serly bad that?