The Situation for LGBT Muslims

by: El-Farouk Khaki

 The Global Context

Although sexual minorities enjoy increased global visibility and even equal marriage rights in some countries, LGBTQ [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender/Transsexual, Queer] people around the World continue to be the victims of many forms of discrimination, violence, and persecution from state, as well as by non-government individuals and groups, simply because of their identity.   Their ill-treatment ranges from: verbal abuse; discrimination in housing, employment, education, health, protection, and religious freedom; persecution in the form of arbitrary arrest, extortion, criminalization and even death, by judicial as well as non-judicial agents.

According to 2002 Human Rights Report, ‘they are tortured, raped, imprisoned, subjected to forced medical treatment, denied the right to form sexual or familial relationships with their partners, denied access to, or legal bonds with, their children, harassed, discriminated and ostracised at school, work, in places of worship and by their own family’.

The increasing courage and visibility of LGBTQ people in the assertion of their existence has sadly produced a backlash from government, religious institutions and segments of civil society’.

“Religion” & Fundamentalism:

The open hostility displayed by religious leaders and communities is perhaps the most dangerous, firing passion and hatred in the name of the Benevelont Creator.

While some religious denominations, mainly Protestant Christian churches and reform Judaism, have developed theology that affirms the humanity of LGBTQ people and their agency as God’s creation, most traditional religious groups - including the Catholic church, evangelical Christianity, Orthodox Judaism and Muslim leaders - actively reject and deny LGBTQ people their equal agency before God and their human rights and human dignity in society.

Official governmental sanctions against sexual minorities range from forced psychiatric treatment, to the criminalization of same sex activity with fines, prison sentences, and hard labour in many countries, including the USA, Uganda, Jamaica, Morocco and Singapore.

In many Muslim countries, same sex activity is punishable by flogging and even executions.  There continue to be increasing reports of public floggings and even executions in Saudi Arabia, hangings in Iran and now, the execution of gay or suspected of being men in Iraq by so called Islamic militias and groups.

The public persecution of sexual minorities is however only the tip of the proverbial iceberg:  the violence and oppression that they fear and face is mostly invisible and emanates from all sectors of society.  LGBTQ people in Muslim countries live secret shadowy existences in constant fear of not only government sanctioned harm, but also of their families, societies and ‘Islamic fundamentalists’.

As many Muslim countries and societies struggle against Western and most recently American hegemony and post-colonial transnational and multinational interests, LGBTQ people have faced increased demonization and targeting as people turn to an interpretation of Islam that is politicized and which demonizes anyone and anything that is the ‘Other’ and which does not fit into a narrowly defined space of what is and is not acceptable.

It is therefore ironic that the Muslim world, considered by the West for many years to be too liberal and open sexually has seen the tide reverse as the ummat continues to be gripped by the clutches of fundamentalism.

Fundamentalism, according to Women Living under Muslim Laws [WLUML] defines fundamentalism as ‘the use of religion to gain and mobilise political power’, and a utopian if not naïve black and white analysis that advocates and strives for a return to a pure moral superiority [that arguably never existed in the first place].

The control of sexuality, in particular the sexuality of women and of gay men who do not conform to the heterosexual and patriarchal paradigm, has become central to the cause of religious fundamentalists. 

The aim of fundamentalism is to gain and mobilise political power through the use of religion, ethnicity, culture or nationality. The language, reasoning and methodology used by the perpetrators of attacks on LGB people, clearly demonstrates the use of religious, ethnic, cultural and/or national arguments as well as the aim of gaining or mobilising political power.

A common element to the various forms of ‘fundamentalisms’ is their claim to ‘return to the fundamentals’ or to restore the essence of their ethnic, religious or cultural values. This essence is seen as somehow ‘pure’ and morally superior. Central to this ethnic, religious or cultural ‘purity’ is a sexual purity that is usually a particular form of heterosexuality. Sexuality is only accepted when taking place in a prescribed (heterosexual) format within strictly defined rules, including for example marriage, monogamy, male dominance, female submission, etc.

The fundamentalist movement's control of sexuality, archaic definitions of gender, the oppression of political, religious and ethnic minorities, and the suppression of voices of dissent, are sad, misguided and false attempts to return Muslims back to a time/space of authenticity, when no such return is possible or even desirable if constructed in terms of excluding of women from public space including the mosque, attacks on gays and lesbians as sinners (as manifest in public hangings in Iran and Iraq, whippings in Saudi Arabia, accusation of blasphemy and apostasy in places such as Pakistan), and the stoning of raped women in Somalia.

This prescribed form of ‘sexual purity’ is heterosexual in nature and usually requires male control over female sexuality: the essence of patriarchy.  The very existence of feminists and gays and lesbians is a threat to the heterosexist and patriarchal paradigm.

This is true not only for Islam.   In August 2002, speaking of the events of 9/11, American Rev. Jerry Falwell said:  

“I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say 'You helped this happen’.”

Persecution:

With the advent of Wahabi style Islam spearheaded by Saudi Arabia, the so called Islamic revolution in Iran, LGBTQ people and women in the Muslim world are easy targets for demonization and used by despotic and tyrannical governments to assert their ‘morality’ and commitment to religion and traditional society and culture by cracking down on those that are painted as ‘traitors’, ‘westernised’ or ‘unbelievers’.

The Egyptian government, in efforts to placate its fundamentalists, launched a campaign against gay men that included raids of the ‘Nile Queen’ and the arrests of scores of gay men who were publicly exposed, humiliated and tried [and sentenced] for ‘habitual debauchery’ and/or contempt of religion.  The names, pictures and addresses of the men charged became matters of public record.  The Egyptian police also launched a wide internet entrapment campaign to weed out and arrest gay men.  Regardless of the outcome of each case, lives and families have been ruined.

In Lebanon, a country known to be more liberal and ‘gay tolerant’ states in the Arab world, employees of a Internet provider hosting the gay website  www.gaylebanon.com were arrested in 2000.  The human rights activist from MIRSAD, a Lebanese human rights organization, was arrested when he protested the raid.   The director of MIRSAD and the Director of the internet provider were charged and convicted of defamation under the Military Penal Code.

In Saudi Arabia, public floggings and reports of executions continue to filter into the media.

In Malaysia, the allegedly liberal Muslim government of Mahathir Mohammed attacked political threat Anwar Ibrahim with charges of alleged homosexuality as part of a campaign to discredit him and remove him from the political arena as he was perceived to be a political threat to the President.

Similar tactics have been used by the ‘Islamic’ government of Iran to target political and social dissidents while at the same time gay men and women continue to face public executions.   Most recently, the importation of Iranian style Islam into Iraq has seen the executions of gay men by ‘Islamic’ militias.

And throughout the Muslim world, the ‘honour killings’ of LGBTQ people and women continue unchallenged and without public outcry. 

Hope:

Recognizing this to be the sad reality of LGBTQ Muslims throughout the world, there is hope and all is not lost.

Queer Muslims in efforts to find comfort, solidarity and community have in the West been able to form communities both on the internet and as physical communities.

These groups include Salaam:  A Social support Group for Lesbian and Gay Muslims in the early 1990s in Canada, and the subsequent formation of Al-Fatiha USA in 1998, followed by the subsequent rebirth of Salaam:  Queer Muslim community in Canada as well as groups such as Imaan Uk and the Safra Project [UK], al-Fitrah and the Inner Circle in South Africa.

A necessary part of the struggle of these communities has been to deal with the theology of hate that condemns queer Muslims to eternal damnation by the same God that people call ‘al-Rahman’ and ‘al-Raheem’.

Islamic scholars revisiting the traditional interpretations of the Quran used by fundamentalists to attack queer Muslims have embarked on a brave journey.  Professor Scott Kugle in his chapter in the book ‘Progressive Muslims on Gender, Justice and pluralism’ edited by Omid Safi, a noted Iranian scholar, challenges the traditional interpretation of the story of Lot in the Quran using contextual translations.  He concludes that the story of Lot does not speak of homosexuality, but of same-sex rape and inhospitality to travellers as the crime of the people of Lot, who raped male travellers and robbed them, despite the Arab/Middle Eastern social imperative of hospitality towards the traveller.   Similar conclusions have also been drawn by other scholars and researchers who are uncovering texts and documents that suggest a different picture of Islam’s tolerance, if not acceptance of homosexuality and homosexuals.  Some of the research, such as that of Faris Malik, suggests that the Prophet’s own household included openly homosexual men.  Groundbreaking work on lesbians by Kecia Ali is initiating conversations that have till now, been relegated to apocryptica.

These brave individuals and scholars are not alone. In this post 9/11 era, the reassertion of the liberal and progressive voice innate to Islam by progressive Muslims including the creation of internet based communities such as the Network of Progressive Muslims, and organizations such as the Progressive Muslim Union in the USA and the Canadian Muslim Union in Canada that support and advocate for the rights and human dignity of LGBTQ people as mainstream Muslim groups gives hope to a better world for all.

As Hanadi Loubani of the Canadian Muslim Union states:  In so doing they reassert the humanist tradition in Islam that liberated slaves and women, that prescribed justice and mercy as the foundations of faith, that scorned racial and ethnic bigotry and recognized the Divine in the faiths of others.

The resurgence of progressive voices in the house of Islam in the post 9/11 era, symbolized in an avowed "Not in my name" and "Not in the name of my God," are paving the way to a renewed concept of democracy that will resurrect the liberating spirit of Islam for women, sexual minorities and for us all.