WHAT'S WRONG WITH BEING GAY AND MUSLIM?

WHAT'S WRONG WITH BEING GAY AND MUSLIM?
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The Quranic verses usually cited as condemning homosexuality are by no means as clear or unequivocal as people imagine.

Shortly after the new civil partnership law took effect last December, two lesbians arrived at their local register office to tie the knot. Both were Muslims and both were wearing hijab.

As far as I have been able to discover, this was the first Muslim "gay wedding" in Britain. It wasn't covered in the media at the time and I'm not going to give any clues now as to who the women were, but I can assure you it did happen. Someone I know well acted as a witness at the ceremony.

About the same time, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, head of the Muslim Council of Britain, denounced such partnerships as "harmful" for society. "It does not augur well in building the very foundations of society: stability, family relationships," he said in an interview with the BBC. "It is something we would certainly not, in any form, encourage the community to be involved in."

Sir Iqbal also described homosexuality as "not acceptable" in terms of health and morality.

Though there are many Muslims who take an even harder line, denouncing gay people as "paedophiles and Aids carriers" and likening homosexuality to a "cancer tumour" that must be eradicated, Sir Iqbal's remarks - together with the MCB's reluctance to engage in dialogue about homosexuality - have triggered exactly the sort of conflict that another prominent British Muslim warned against six years ago.

In 2000, Zaki Badawi - an elderly but far-sighted scholar who was head of the Muslim College in London - took the unprecedented step of giving an interview to Gay Times.

"In Britain," he said, "we Muslims are in a minority, and it should not be our task to encourage intolerance towards other minorities."

Dr Badawi, who died earlier this year, told the magazine: "Homosexuality has always existed and continues to exist in all Islamic countries ... Many high-ranking leaders in the Islamic world are gay."

Recalling the film My Beautiful Laundrette, which portrays a love affair between a British-Asian Muslim and his white boyfriend, he described it as "a useful reminder to the Muslim community that they cannot simply sweep gays and lesbians under the carpet".

It is true, of course, that most Muslims today regard homosexuality as bad and do try to "sweep gays and lesbians under the carpet", but this is a product of society rather than their religion. The vast majority of Christians and Jews held a similar view half a century ago but since then significant bodies of opinion in Judaism and Christianity have begun to question it.

Today, opinion in both Christianity and Judaism covers a broad range from outright hostility to complete acceptance, with many shades in between. As a result, it is no longer possible to speak of a single "Christian" or "Jewish" view of homosexuality. So far, there has been no comparable debate within Islam - but that doesn't mean to say it can't happen.

There is a widespread misapprehension - repeated yesterday in readers' comments about Peter Tatchell's article - that the Qur'an "is plain in its condemnation of homosexuality". It is not plain at all and it depends, as with the Bible, on how you interpret the relevant verses. Nor is there any sound theological reason why Muslims should condemn anyone simply for being lesbian or gay.

Nevertheless, while attitudes towards homosexuality in the west over the last few decades have generally been liberalising, Muslim countries have been moving in the opposite direction. This is largely a result of international politics. Perceptions of a domineering west, coupled with fears of globalisation and modernity have brought a revival of imagined "customs and traditions", along with the spread of rigid and puritanical versions of religion. Historically, though, Muslim societies have been relatively tolerant of sexual diversity - perhaps more so than others. Evidence of this can be found in classical Arabic literature, in the accounts of early travellers, and in the examples of Europeans who settled in Arab countries to escape sexual persecution at home.

Muslim societies have also traditionally recognised that people can be attracted to members of their own sex, and have usually seen nothing wrong in that. It is worth remembering that in the Qur'anic vision of paradise, along with the famous 72 female virgins, the faithful enjoy endless supplies of drinks (non-alcoholic, of course) served by handsome young waiters.

In orthodox Muslim teaching, the question of sin arises only when people act upon their sexual impulses, but same-sex acts are not among the small number of crimes for which a penalty is specified in the Qur'an. What punishment - if any - should be applied is a matter of opinion and interpretation. Furthermore, the levels of proof required by Islamic law are so high that if the rules are properly applied no one need ever be convicted unless they do something extremely blatant, like having sex in the street in broad daylight.

The general idea in Islam is that sex should take place within a legalised framework that includes conventional marriage but can also extend to other forms of contractual relationship (such as slavery in the days when that was practised). The original purpose of this was to avoid disputes about parentage and inheritance in the event of pregnancy - an issue that is unlikely to arise in the case of same-sex couples.

In terms of Islamic law, same-sex acts are normally treated as equivalent to adultery (in the case of a married person) or fornication (in the case of an unmarried person). The issue here is not that they are both of the same gender but that their relationship is not legally recognised.

This, in a sense, is the Islamic Catch 22: gay couples are at fault for not being married, and yet they are not allowed to regularise their relationship in the way that straight couples can.

Just like the Bible, the Qur'an has a number of verses that are popularly regarded as condemning homosexuality. As in the Bible, they are comparatively few and open to a variety of interpretations. What the Qur'an actually says about this is discussed more fully in my book Unspeakable Love (published next week), but the key point is that the verses usually cited are by no means as clear or unequivocal as people imagine.

As in Christianity, Islamic arguments against homosexuality centre on the tale of the prophet Lot (or Lut as he is known in the Qur'an) and the destruction of Sodom. The Old Testament version of the story was debunked by Christian scholars years ago and, on any sensible reading, is irrelevant to homosexuality as we know it today. The Qur'anic version is remarkably similar and open to similar critiques, and yet its popular interpretation is hardly ever challenged by Islamic scholars.

Within Christianity, the debate about homosexuality has become a test case in a much wider battle between two conflicting approaches to religion. On one side are the conservative or orthodox forces, who take a generally inflexible and legalistic view of scripture, while on the other are the progressives, who focus on the overall spirit of their faith rather than the letter, and are more willing to reinterpret it in the light of new understandings about human behaviour.

One early example of a progressive view, as applied to homosexuality, came from the Quakers way back in 1963:

Surely it is the nature and quality of a relationship that matters: one must not judge it by its outward appearance but by its inner worth. Homosexual affection can be as selfless as heterosexual affection, and therefore we cannot see that it is in some way morally worse.

Homosexual affection may of course be an emotion which some find aesthetically disgusting, but one cannot base Christian morality on a capacity for disgust. Neither are we happy with the thought that all homosexual behaviour is sinful: motive and circumstances degrade or ennoble any act ...

... An act which expresses true affection between two individuals and gives pleasure to them both, does not seem to us to be sinful by reason alone of the fact that it is homosexual. The same criteria seem to us to apply whether a relationship is heterosexual or homosexual.

In comparison with Christianity today, the progressive forces in Islam are extremely weak, though they do exist. The reasons for their weakness are mainly historical or social and have nothing to do with the nature of Islam itself. The result, unfortunately, is that all sorts of dogmatic rubbish invoking the "fixed principles of Islam" is allowed to pass unchallenged. You can even find prominent scholars who seek to eradicate left-handedness in much the same way that they try to "cure" homosexuality.

One extraordinary and horrific example of following supposedly divine rules without applying common sense occurred in 2002 when fire broke out at a girls' school in Mecca. Saudi religious police were on hand to ensure that those trying to escape were properly attired in headscarves and black abayas. Eyewitness accounts told of girls being forced back into the burning building to retrieve their head-coverings. Several who went back died in the blaze - the price of enforcing fixed principles.

People who adopt this sort of religious outlook love nothing better than reducing moral dilemmas to a simple choice of black versus white. But real life is rarely like that. More often, it is necessary to weigh the benefits of various courses of action and consider if any harm is likely to result from each. This is what the religious police failed to do in the Mecca school fire, and it is what Islamic scholars fail to do when arguing against homosexuality. They urge gay men to seek a "cure" (even though it is unlikely to succeed and could be psychologically harmful), and tell them to find a wife as soon as possible.

In the rush to condemn homosexuality, they are happy to disregard the consequences - and the immorality - of the solutions they recommend. The popular cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi, describes homosexuality as a crime against women, but if pressurising gay men into marriages that they do not want, and may be totally unsuited for, is not a crime against the rights of women, it is hard to know what is.

Beyond the theological and scriptural arguments there is also a perception among Muslims that gay people necessarily have a dissolute - and therefore un-Islamic - lifestyle. If Sir Iqbal Sacranie wants to discourage his fellow-Muslims from all-night clubbing, drug taking and anonymous casual sex, it's fair enough. But in that case, why condemn civil partnerships? Aren't they a better alternative?

If a gay Muslim couple fall in love, get hitched at the register office and settle down to a life of domesticity, cuddling up together in front of the telly with a cup of cocoa at night, does Sir Iqbal really see anything seriously bad in that?

By Brian Whitaker
The Guardian
Friday 5 May 2006

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NOTE: Extracts, narration, paraphrases and replication from multiple sources. Please contact LMU if you require references.
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