Pro-queer Muslims challenge prejudice
This year’s Sydney Mardi Gras gave many people the opportunity to say something about the issues that concern lesbian, gay, bisexual, intersex and transgendered (LGTBI) people. Most floats in the parade voiced their support for same-sex marriage.
Muslims Against Homophobia, a recently-formed support group for queer Muslims in Sydney, made a groundbreaking appearance in the parade. It said something equally important and urgent: “Queer Muslims need acceptance!”
There is much stigma attached to homosexuality in Muslim societies. In some Muslim nations homosexuality is still criminalised, and is even punishable by death in some, such as Saudi Arabia and Iran.
In the past, most Muslim societies were sexually permissive, and were even viewed as lascivious by colonial Western nations.
Some Muslim countries, especially those in the Middle East, had a widespread homosexual culture that tolerated sexual relationships between men.
But the moralistic colonial authorities, mostly strict Christians, disapproved of sex between men and banned it. More recently, with the rise of harsher forms of Islam in conservative Muslim circles, homosexuality is now viewed mostly as a sign of Western decadence that poisons Muslims.
Most Muslim societies do not recognise homosexuality as a different identity, but what they generally stigmatise and criminalise is sexual intercourse between men.
There are many social and political obstacles, which make it hard and impractical to advocate queer rights in these conservative societies, where different identities and subcultures can’t usually freely flourish.
Although sex is a natural part of life according to Islam (unlike Christianity, which traditionally promoted celibacy) it is generally strictly regulated to take place only between married heterosexual couples.
The most important obstacles of all are the repressive regimes in most Muslim countries, which do not provide mainstream people with rights and freedoms, let alone minorities like queer people.
But despite this gloomy picture, homosexuals in these countries, which don’t usually allow their people to express their diverse identities honestly and freely, generally live in secrecy and network quietly - unlike out-and-proud Western homosexuals.
They avoid getting into trouble by leading a double life, some managing a heterosexual marriage and a same-sex relationship at the same time.
In Turkey, a secular and more liberal Muslim country, Istanbul’s homosexual community has a pride week and a gay and lesbian parade in late June every year as part of a niche counter culture.
Homosexual rights in Muslim countries will be probably achieved as part of a general struggle for civil rights in these nations — just like the civil rights movement in the US in 1960s, which also triggered the homosexual rights movement.
------------------
I'd post a link but I cannot at this stage.
I would dare say there is going to be outrage from the extremists over this in coming years.
I personally think they are dreaming.
Forum
Pages: 1 
