Eye on ‘Gay Muslims’

Khaled Diab has written up a review and author interview of Brian Whitaker’s Unspeakable Love: Gay and lesbian life in the Middle East – and I would be inclined to read then ignore these, had they not been published in Al-Ahram Weekly in a more condensed form. I’ve written about Whitaker’s book before, but haven’t got myself a copy yet. I’ve just noticed that he’s added his theological theories (without detailed analysis) to his blog, so I’ll come back and tackle those directly in my next post. First, let’s tackle Diab. He quotes Whitaker as saying:

I don’t particularly see Islamic scholars as a force for social change. If the experience of the Christian church is anything to judge by, some will eventually revise their view of scripture in the light of reality; others will stay where they are and ultimately be deserted by many of their followers.

Well, to throw back a quip, I believe we need to revise our view of reality in the light of scripture. That may sound like a terribly fundamentalist perspective (hey, what’s wrong with that?), but it’s perfectly valid to state that our worldview is better shaped by divine revelation than by changing social norms and masters of a media-supported agenda.

So while homosexualists insist that homosexuality is a matter of innate identity, and that sexual practices are unobjectionable as long as they’re consensual, we continue to affirm that inner feelings do not define people, and that all acts ultimately need God’s consent and otherwise should not be promoted in society at all.

By the way, Whitaker observed, in a rather out-of-proportion article back in January:

Sunni clerics, especially those influenced by Saudi Wahhabism, like to assert their authority by forbidding anything that might be remotely pleasurable.

Now I’ll look at the five paragraphs Khaled Diab wrote in summary (not necessarily accurate) of Whitaker’s argument about the Islamic position being unclear, under the title of “The power of dogma“.

One major barrier to a broader acceptance of homosexuality is dogma. Whitaker’s book tackles the theological arguments in detail. He explores the thorny issue of whether Islam actually forbids gay love or whether social attitudes are the problem.

Don’t you just love when it’s called “gay love” so that Islam or its scholars are seen as being “against love”? What is forbidden is, to use a neutral term, homosexual acts. We don’t need to go into the popular negative words that have been used to describe such acts. 

Sunni and shi’ite Islam’s five main mathaheb (schools of law) have widely divergent opinions on the legal treatment of homosexual acts. In addition, most Muslim countries do not rely exclusively on Islamic jurisprudence but draw on numerous secular sources in their body of law. More liberal Arab countries, such as Tunisia, Lebanon and Egypt base much of their legal system on French law and the Belgian constitution served as a model for several Arab states. One negative example is the British introduction of anti-sodomy laws in what is now Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates.

None of that detracts from the clear Islamic stance on the acts being forbidden. While some juristic schools may prescribe a ta’zeer (discretionary) punishment to be decided by a qualified judge after due process, that doesn’t mean that Islam is silent on the matter.

Like some of their Christian and Jewish counterparts, certain Muslim scholars tend to focus on certain types of sexual acts, and not sexual orientation per se, frowning upon ‘sodomy’, since they regard it as a waste of sexual energy because it cannot end in procreation. Nevertheless, Islam has, since its inception, recognised the recreational side of sex. For instance, a woman is allowed to seek a divorce from her husband, if he does not satisfy her sexually. And medieval Muslim sex manuals described an array of inventive positions.

Certain Muslim scholars? OK, Khaled, try to make it look like a crazed minority. So tell us the names of the other scholars, you know, the ones who think homosexuality is fine and well, and what contributions they have made to Islamic scholarship in general.

It’s true that most scholars’ responses to questions on homosexuality (as far as I’ve seen) fail to make a clear distinction between the matter of actions and that of attractions, despite this being a fairly obvious distinction to make (the first hadith in Bukhari’s collection is “Actions are but by intentions…”) and it being something these scholars would certainly affirm if it were pointed out to them that such clarification was required.

Islam gives a view of sex as both for procreation and enjoyment. That doesn’t mean that enjoyable sex is automatically allowable sex, as the permissibility of an action depends on it not being prohibited by the Shari’ah (the Qur’an and Sunnah, then juristic analogy and consensus). And by the way, using “Muslim sex manuals” as evidence in a juristic debate is pretty lame, to say the least.

Many Islamic scholars who claim that the Quran forbids homosexuality refer to the story of the prophet Lot and the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. However, ‘sodomy’ – or ‘Lutiya’, as we call it in Arabic – is a huge misnomer, since God, according to the Old Testament, is angry at Sodom’s “pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness”. Likewise, the Quran does not spell out the nature of the crime committed by Lot’s people, save for their corruption and the rejection of the prophet God sent to them.

“Sodomy” is pretty accurate (while lutiyah or liwaat is, in my opinion, a rather unjust attachment of the name of a noble prophet to a despicable act!). The Qur’an informs us in a remarkably eloquent verse that the Sodomites (actually they are not named as such in the Qur’an, but as “the People of Lut”) were the inventors of homosexual acts.

It says (in my own literal rendering of 7:80): “And Lot, when he said to his people: ‘Do you commit the abomination in which none at all preceded you, in all the worlds?’” The famous exegetes (such as Abu Hayyan, the renowned linguist) have commented on the construction {منْ أَحَدٍ} as being a strong emphasis that there were none who committed such acts before the Sodomites (even, according to my understanding, in the animal kingdom!).

So what did the Sodomites get up to? Well, first of all, don’t quote me the Old Testament to prove your point, for God’s sake! The Qur’an does indeed “spell out” that they committed same-sex acts, as we find in the verse quoted above (see also 11:69ff, 15:57ff, 21:71ff, 26:160ff, 27:54ff, 29:26ff and 54:33ff). The passages in Surahs 7, 26 and 27 mention only the crime of approaching men sexually instead of women, so putting their ultimate destruction down to “their corruption and the rejection of the prophet” is deeply dishonest (or at best, outrageously ignorant) of Khaled Diab.

UPDATE: See Why were the Sodomites destroyed?

Even more dubiously, some scholars point to a Hadith (saying of the prophet) of questionable authenticity that men should not imitate women and vice-versa.

Why is it dubious? It is one of numerous hadiths on this issue, many of which are much stronger in import than that one. It’s strange that Diab hasn’t quoted, for example:

“Allah curses the one who does the actions of the people of Lut.”
“If a man comes upon a man then they are both adulterers.”

I confess to not having researched the various hadiths on the subject as to their authenticity etc., but I can tell you that I’ve quoted these ones from a fatwa by the wonderful Sheikh Taha Jabir Al-Alwani.