this was written 2yrs ago. just now came across. but, still seems good for understanding the 'opening' (al fatiha) of new queer space in islam.
Thursday, July 07, 2005 Islam & Homophobia Islam is seen by some as being particularly homophobic, and conjures up images of veiled women and fanatical bearded imams stoning homosexuals to death in public squares. While this picture in part springs from widespread Islamophobia, and does scant justice to the day-to-day reality of how homosexuality is accommodated in practice within the billion-strong Islamic world, it is not entirely without foundation. Homosexual acts are a capital crime in several Muslim countries. In many others, including Pakistan, they carry mandatory prison sentences. In Iran, Islamic hardliners who came to power in 1979 imposed the death penalty for homosexual acts, in accordance with Islamic law, or shariah. Many of those condemned have been stoned to death, in accordance with some interpretations of the shariah. Precise information on the number of such executions is difficult to establish, says Nassim, a member of Homan, a gay group for Iranians living in the West. This is because the Iranian press suppressed reports of homosexual executions following strong protests from Western gay activists about the killings. In the early years of the Islamic regime, however, when all activities deemed "un-Islamic" were openly and vigorously repressed, there were well-documented accounts of whole groups of people at clandestine homosexual parties being rounded up and executed without any evidence of homosexual activity having taken place. This zeal to rid Iran of homosexuals went directly against the limits set even by the shariah, which expressly forbids spying to prove homosexual acts have been committed, and, furthermore, demands that four male Muslims of sound mind witness the act of penetration for the death penalty to be incurred. This standard of proof, if properly followed, makes prosecutions for homosexual acts almost impossible in practice - though Nassim claims that the Iranian authorities themselves regularly acted as "witnesses" in order to secure convictions. Nevertheless, the result is covert tolerance, if not overt acceptance, of homosexuality in the majority of Muslim countries, as long as it is not publicly seen or talked about. The present is a time of monumental upheaval in Iran, with liberal reformers having won a landslide victory in the Iranian Parliament. However, says Nassim, it is simply too early to assess what impact, if any, this will have on the situation for homosexuals in Iran. In Afghanistan, meanwhile, where shariah law is also in operation, the fundamentalist Taliban regime's preferred method of execution is to bulldoze a wall onto the guilty parties, who are made to lie in a trench dug especially for this purpose. Whole villages turn out for these occasions, with relatives of the condemned among those forced to watch. The Taliban have made no sign that these executions are going to stop, despite protests from human rights agencies such as Amnesty International. Many western countries now have large Muslim populations. In Germany, there are three million Muslims, mainly of Turkish origin, while France has two million north African Muslims. In Britain, the Muslim community is predominantly from the Indian subcontinent and numbers one-and-a-half million. Of these, an estimated 75,000 are homosexual (a figure based on a report on British Muslims by the Runnymede Trust in 1998). Muslim religious leaders in Britain officially reject homosexuality completely. Alongside churches, synagogues and Sikh and Hindu temples, Muslim organisations such as the Islamic Party of Britain have been organising petitions protesting against the Government's attempts to scrap Section 28. Ricky Potts, the acting Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Officer at the University of Wales in Bangor, was horrified to be asked to sign a petition, against the scrapping of Section 28, drawn up by the Islamic Presentation Centre International Limited. The petition claimed that to scrap the Section would expose children "to immoral values and practices [and] will also undermine the institutions of the family and damage the fabric of our society. Any teaching in school which presents homosexual practices in a morally neutral way is profoundly offensive and totally unacceptable to all communities and religions." Such political action takes its inspiration from an orthodox interpretation of Islamic doctrine. Sheikh Sharkhawy, a senior cleric at the prestigious Regent's Park Mosque, in a written response to my questions, compares homosexuality to a "cancer tumour", which must be removed to preserve the health of society. Viewing homosexuals as "paedophiles and Aids carriers" who have no hope of a "spiritual life", he openly and unashamedly argues for the execution of gay males over the age of ten and life imprisonment for lesbians. Like many orthodox imams, he views homosexuality as a symbol of a peculiarly "Western" decadence, claiming that "homosexuality is not tolerated in Islamic countries". More liberal imams, such as Sheikh Zaki Badawi of the Ealing Muslim College, refuse to pigeonhole homosexuality in this way. Speaking to Gay Times, he said that "the film My Beautiful Laundrette [which centres on the love of a gay Muslim man for a white former racist] should serve as a useful reminder to the Muslim community that they cannot simply sweep gays and lesbians under the carpet. Homosexuality has always existed and continues to exist in all Islamic countries. Indeed, many high-ranking leaders in the Islamic world are gay." Sheikh Badawi categorically rejects homophobic violence. "In Britain," he says, "we Muslims are in a minority, and it should not be our task to encourage intolerance towards other minorities." He is one of the few Muslim figures who advocates the teaching of homosexuality in the context of sex education lessons in schools, as long as it does not challenge the "normality" of the traditional heterosexual family by "promoting" homosexuality. However, toleration does not equal acceptance, and even he considers homosexuality to be a "problem" similar to alcoholism, which is against Islamic teaching, even though being an alcoholic or gay does not disqualify one from being Muslim. Such attitudes from within the Muslim community have made positive validation of a gay Muslim identity extremely difficult. Not surprisingly, many gay people from Muslim backgrounds simply leave Islam. At a recent meeting on the subject in Leicester (where there is a large Muslim population), a young gay man who had rejected Islam said simply, "It's a choice between praying and sucking cock - you can't do both at the same time." Other gay Muslims who are very religious often become severely depressed as a result of the internalised guilt they feel at their closeted sexuality. Compared with homosexuals from other faith denominations, the situation for gay Muslims of faith has been noticeably bad. For many years now, gay and gay-friendly Christian organisations and individuals, such as the Rt Revd Richard Holloway, the Bishop of Edinburgh, have very publicly denounced homophobia while affirming the possibility of being gay and remaining true to one's faith. In the past three years, the homophobia of Islamic orthodoxy has begun to be challenged by gay Muslims themselves. It all started with the formation of a ground-breaking new homosexual Muslim group, Al-Fatiha, in the US in 1997. Al-Fatiha is the brainchild of Faisal Alam. Facing the same dilemmas as other gay Muslims, he searched the internet to find information about homosexuality and Islam. Finding absolutely nothing there, he set up his own internet discussion group (listserv) for gay Muslims from all over the world to discuss issues of common concern in a safe environment. The listserv has now grown to over 1,500 members worldwide, from America to Indonesia. The first Al-Fatiha Retreat, attended by 40 people, took place in Boston in October 1998. Faisal Alam crossed the Atlantic in November 1999 to form an Al-Fatiha chapter in this country. The very first meeting of Al-Fatiha UK brought together 30 men and women from all over Britain to the basement of a bar in Old Compton Street, Soho - the heart of London's gay scene. Faisal convened a second meeting in Leicester and a third, also in Soho, before returning home to the States. At these gatherings, people shared the intricacies of their lives as well as discussing some of the theological arguments for a pro-gay Muslim position. Many had their own tales to tell of ostracism and feelings of isolation, but also inspirational stories of being gay and Muslim. The name Al-Fatiha is taken from the title of the first chapter of the Koran, and signifies "the Beginning" or "Opening". It consists of an invocation for guidance from Allah, who is referred to as "the Compassionate, the Merciful One". Faisal Alam believes that these qualities - and not the fundamentalism of extremist groups - represent the true essence of Islam. In addition, Faisal explains, the "Opening" refers hopefully to the beginning of a dialogue through which the mainstream Muslim community will come to acknowledge the millions of gay Muslims in its midst and open its arms to them. Despite the severe hostility homosexual Muslims had experienced from their communities, some people at the early meetings of Al-Fatiha UK were wary of provoking an Islamophobic backlash by highlighting exclusively Islamic homophobia. Ali, a sexual health worker from NAZ who runs an HIV forum, had been forced to move after unsolicited visits to his home from an imam from the Balham mosque and some of his followers. They demanded that he stop his work, which, they said, was "corrupting" the Muslim community, "or else". Yet, says Ali, "I believe that what they did was not Islamic in the sense I understand Islam. There is considerable Islamophobia in Britain, and the last thing we as gay Muslims want is to be marginalised twice over, once for being gay and again for being Muslim." Yet this dilemma is little understood by the wider gay community. A leader article in the September 7th, 1998 issue of the now-defunct London-based gay magazine Metropolis even called for homophobic Muslims to be deported back to their country of origin. "While we understand that the extreme homophobia of some Muslims leads non-Muslim gay people to characterise Islam itself as homophobic," says Ifti, an Al-Fatiha spokesperson, "we have to be very careful to make a distinction between the two so as not to alienate potential straight Muslim supporters and to offer homosexual Muslims the possibility of being true to their faith. We have to emphasise the fact that interpreting the religious texts is a dynamic process and that application of religious laws must take into account the changing social context. While we recognise that we have many powerful allies in the non-Muslim community, we must also recognise that, ultimately, the situation for gay Muslims of faith can only be improved by changing attitudes from within the Muslim community itself. This is the revolutionary task Al-Fatiha is attempting to carry out." Al-Fatiha members have been active in UNISON, Britain's largest public sector trade union, which has many gay Muslim members. UNISON's National Gay and Lesbian Committee (which has 2,500 members) passed a resolution last year which supported Al-Fatiha in its activities while condemning the homophobic persecution of gays in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, plans are underway to open a chapter of Al-Fatiha in Jerusalem - a city which is considered the third holiest in Islam, after Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia. This chapter will operate with the help of the Jerusalem Open House, a multi-faith gay centre co-founded by Rabbi Steven Greenburg, the US's only openly gay orthodox rabbi. A copy of the Koran and resources for gay Muslims are to be housed at the Open House's library. In this way it is hoped to help create dialogue between the city's sharply segregated religious communities as well as offering help for homosexual Muslims. Within the next two years Al-Fatiha hopes to connect with LGBTQ Muslims and organise support and discussion groups around the world. Al-Fatiha is not the world's first gay Muslim organisation. An earlier San Francisco-based group, called the Lavender Crescent Society, misjudging the situation completely, sent five members to Iran in 1979 following the overthrow of the Shah and the coming to power of the hard-line Ayatollah Khomeini, in the hope of creating an Iranian gay Muslim movement. The five were taken straight from the airport to a place of execution and killed. Gay Iranians were forced to go underground after this. Even within the West, gay Muslims are bound to attract a certain level of hostility. An organisation called Min-Alaq was formed in Toronto in the early 1990s, but folded after threats from religious fundamentalists. Al-Fatiha has also received death threats just before some of its events, though no incident has occurred so far. For the forthcoming Retreat in London, the Metropolitan Police are in contact with the New York police to assist in security concerns. "We are aware of the potential negative reaction from fundamentalist groups in Britain, such as Al Muhajiroun, and will take all necessary precautions to ensure the event goes smoothly," said an Al-Fatiha UK spokesperson. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "lgbtdiscuss" group. 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