Responding to Blond's Topic about Islam and LGBT

[Alexander Blue 1,335]

@Blond

This is the history of homosexuallity in islam

Muslim societies have ignored their own history of accepting homosexuality, latching on to a twisted colonial legacy instead.

Days after Omar Mateen went on a shooting spree inside a gay nightclub in the United States on Sunday, killing at least 49 people, clues to his possible motivations are emerging.

…

[Yet] the 29-year-old was reportedly a regular at Pulse and even used a gay dating app. Reports of him having asked men out have surfaced over the last few days, with his ex-wife claiming she believed he was gay. She also said that Mateen’s father, an immigrant from Afghanistan, had mocked him for his sexual orientation. One of the first statements made by Mateen’s father after the shooting was, in fact, that homosexuals can be punished by God.

Stigmatizing homosexuality

Could the attack, then, have been driven by Mateen’s sexual orientation and the shame associated with homosexuality amongst Muslims today – rather than Islamist terror? “Transgressive sexuality and conservative religion can be a toxic mix,” writes David Shariatmadari in the Guardian. “If Mateen felt conflicted about his interest in gay men, it could have been because he believed his faith would condemn him for it”.

While a clear motive is yet to be established, it is a fact that modern Muslim societies condemn and shame homosexuality. In most Islamic countries, Muslims cannot come out as gay without risking stigma and bodily harm.

It is, however, important to point out how recent this homophobia is. For much of history, Muslim societies have been incredibly permissive of same-sex love.

Golden Age

At the height of the Islamic Golden Age – a period from the mid-8th century to the mid-13th century when Islamic civilization is believed to have reached its intellectual and cultural zenith – homosexuality was openly spoken and written about. Abu Nuwas (756-814), one of the great Arab classical poets during the time of the Abbasid Caliphate, wrote publicly about his homosexual desires and relations. His homoerotic poetry was openly circulated right up until the 20th century.

Nuwas was an important historical figure – he even made a couple of appearances in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (known in Urdu as Alif Laila). It was only as late as 2001 that Arabs started to blush at Nuwas’ homoerotism. In 2001, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, under pressure from Islamic fundamentalists, burnt 6,000 volumes of his poetry.

Most modern Muslims, therefore, have little knowledge of what the Islamic Golden Age was really about, even though they keep on wanting to go back to it.

“ISIS have no idea what restoring the Caliphate actually means,” a tweet by Belgian-Egyptian journalist Khaled Diab said. “In Baghdad, it’d involve booze, odes to wine, science… and a gay court poet.”

Baghdad was, till the time the Mongols invaded and destroyed it, the cultural capital of much of the world – the New York City of its time. If Nuwas and his homoerotic poetry could represent the height of Baghdadi culture, it is natural that other Muslim societies would also be quite open to homosexuality. As historian Saleem Kidwai puts in the fabulous book Same-Sex Love in India, “Homoerotically inclined men are continuously visible in Muslim medieval histories and are generally described without pejorative comment.”

Writing on same-sex love

In fact, far from being pejorative, Muslim societies once openly spoke of same-sex love, even celebrating it at times. Mahmud of Ghazni, a towering sultan of his time (971-1030), was actually held up as an ideal for, among other things, deeply loving another man, Malik Ayaz.

Mughal Emperor Babur wrote of his attraction to a boy in the camp bazaar in his 16th-century autobiography – a celebrated work of literature in the medieval Muslim world.

In the 18th century, Dargah Quli Khan, a nobleman from the Deccan travelling to Delhi, wrote a fascinating account of the city called theMuraqqa-e-Dehli (The Delhi Album), which described just how mundane homosexuality was in Indo-Islamic society. At the public bazaars, male prostitutes solicited openly and Khan spoke admiringly of how “young good-looking men danced everywhere and created great excitement”.

Till the 19th century, Muslims treated homosexuality as a part and parcel of life, so much so that students were exposed to romantic stories of homosexual love – a position untenable even today across parts of the Western word. Kidwai writes:

Sadi’s classic Gulistan, containing stories of attraction between men, was considered essential reading for Persian students. Ghanimat’s Nau rang-i ishq, a seventeenth century masnavi describing the love affair between the poet’s patron’s son and his beloved Shahid, was a prescribed text in schools.

Islamic law

Of course, theologically, Islam did consider homosexuality to be sinful, based on the Quranic story of the people of Lut (Lot in the Bible). Interestingly, though, the Shariat, the umbrella term for the various legal codes and schools governing Muslim societies, have no punishment for homosexuality per se – sexual relations between men are outlawed under the larger rubric of adultery. Even then, convictions for homosexuality could only be carried out if the sexual act was testified to by four eye witnesses. This was such a high bar that commentators on Islam such as Hamza Yusuf have characterized the outlawing of homosexuality in the Shariat as a sort of “legal fiction”. Indeed, unlike medieval Europe, instances of homosexuals being punished are rare in medieval Muslim societies.

So what caused Muslim societies to go from coolly reading homoerotic poetry to outlawing and stigmatizing same-sex love? It’s tough to nail down an exact reason but here’s an interesting coincidence: there are five Muslims countries where being gay isn’t a crime. All that the five – Mali, Jordan, Indonesia, Turkey and Albania – share in common is that they were never colonized by the British.

Colonial influence

In 1858, in fact, the Ottoman Empire decriminalized homosexuality (a status inherited by Turkey). This was two years before the British Raj created the Indian Penal Code, Section 377 of which proceeded to outlaw homosexuality in modern-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

So deep was the influence of the 1860 penal code in India that conservative Hindus continue to hold homosexuality to be immoral and in the nearly 70 years since Independence, Parliament has not been able to overturn the law. Subramanian Swamy, Member of Parliament from the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party even went so far as to claim: “Our party position has been that homosexuality is a genetic disorder.” This is near-bizarre given that Hinduism, unlike Islam or Christianity, does not even have any textual condemnation of same-sex love.

It appears as though Muslim (and Hindu) conservatives, without knowing it, are actually copying the Victorian mores of 19th century colonialism, while ignoring their own history. This at a time when even Western European cultures have pulled up their socks and gone on to ensure that human rights are available to their people irrespective of random externalities such as the gender they happen to be attracted to.

 

Quran : 

Quran doesn't have a direct talk about gays , but it doesn't reject gay people.

"And Lot said to his people, you come obscene what you have before you from one of the worlds * You come to men lust without women, but you are a lot of mischief" "Al A'raaf"

"When their brother Lot said to them, do not you fear? I am a faithful messenger to you. So fear Allah and obey me." And what I ask of you is a reward that I will make only to the Lord of the worlds " "Al-Shua'raa"

"And when our messengers came to Abraham the prophets said: We destroyed the people of this village that its people were unjust * He said that Lot said we know where to save him and his family but his wife was one of the great" "Al-Ankaboot"

These verses are used by nowadays Muslim , to reject gay people , but Gay Muslim scholars reject that , and say it has other meanings.

Hendrix says that the word "gay" was not mentioned in the Qur'an, pointing to the need to return to the context in which each verse came down. "The torment of Lot is because the sex they practiced was a man's rape of a man as well as theft and assault on others. A man's love for a man (or a woman for a woman) is measured by the same framework isn't fair.

 

 

[Alexander Blue 1,335]

sorry for the long post

[Decodekid 30,652]

1 minute ago, Alexander Blue said:

sorry for the long post

don't apologise, it was a nice read 

[moonsago 7,285]

Wow... it was such an interesting and eye opening read. Honestly thank you so much! 

[gabeoz 7,915]

This is an extremely interesting read to say the least. It can really highlight the negative effect the Western world has on the Muslim world.

[Edonis 28,974]

I and many other members have routinely spoken about this in multiple threads that talk about homosexuality and Islam. Unfortunately people like the one you tagged in OP don’t listen and sadly don’t care. They’re so deep into their own personal beliefs and notions about other cultures through experience or story that they don’t want to listen to reason or logic. It’s sad. But thank you for highlighting some of the Islamic history and why modern propaganda in Middle East is so problematic and anti-Islamic. 

[joanoflark 3,824]

Thank you for sharing this , it was an amazing read. 

[FABian 852]

Thanks for the history lecture.

However, it doesn't change the very real modern problems homosexuals have in most Islamic states. 

[grndmothrmonst 150]

3 hours ago, Alexander Blue said:

sorry for the long post

Amazing read. Did you write this?

[PartySick 172,477]

Love it  I remember @Didymus bringing this up quite a few times when the conversation came to religion and homosexuality. Thanks for sharing

Homophobia isn't a religious issue, it's a human issue. Religion is simply a tool and even if a religious text doesn't say to hate someone, words can always be twisted to fit a malicious intention. That's what happened when the Bible tells of men wanting the flesh of angels and lying with men and that's what happened with the Qur'an too. A little knowledge goes a long way.

[Melech 9,900]

The past doesn’t matter though. 

[Alexander Blue 1,335]

6 hours ago, grndmothrmonst said:

Amazing read. Did you write this?

i wrote some parts of it and others are from some articles

[doppelganger 4,021]

Which is exactly why we need to push for cultural diversity and exchange. I genuinely think migration and globalisation is good for the world. Islam is currently so defined by the middle east (in particular saudi arabia) that we often forget that muslims come from all sorts of ethnicities- and are people with the same wants and needs as any other people. 

I myself am born muslim - I don’t practice for obvious reasons - but no matter how much i hate the politicisation of organised religions, i’m not going to judge people for having faith. What I think is important is to engage in a healthy and positive discussion. 

[River 127,344]

Iraq/Babylon used to be the Sin City of that time..

I think Judaism broght the ‘homosexuality is a sin’ idea, to make them different and “better” than the others.

We have a lot of documents that showing that homosexuality was accepted and even considered as a something divine and very good for the society, army etc.

@Alexander Blue I read long time ago that a gay pedophilia was accepted in some muslim countries, can you speak about that too? Is it still happening? Or is it even true?!

[Melech 9,900]

19 minutes ago, River said:

Iraq/Babylon used to be the Sin City of that time..

I think Judaism broght the ‘homosexuality is a sin’ idea, to make them different and “better” than the others.

We have a lot of documents that showing that homosexuality was accepted and even considered as a something divine and very good for the society, army etc.

@Alexander Blue I read long time ago that a gay pedophilia was accepted in some muslim countries, can you speak about that too? Is it still happening? Or is it even true?!

Yes that is true. But it wasn't only in Muslim countries. Pedophilia was also accepted in Ancient Greece. This is ****ed up either way.