Islam and Homosexuality
I've gotten all sorts of odd criticism for a remarks or quotes really, of something I told a reporter on CNN.com respecting homosexuality and Islam. I stand by them. Some said I should have emphasized the potential hazards of the Arab spring on homosexuals. Well first I wasn't asked that question (why do people think when you're quoted you get to choose exactly what to emphasize? It's not a criticism of the report, which was quite good, it's just that it's not me writing it and so I don't get to decide what I'll be quoted on.) But even if I was, I will say I cannot see how it can truly be concluded that the Arab spring will make matters worse for homosexuals in the Arab world. The reality is it's already pretty darn bad, and the idea that somehow it's worse because now the police are less a presence and so lawlessness abounds and the vulnerable are more at risk by the evil radical Muslims doesn't work as against gays. It works in Iraq as against Christians, potentially in Egypt as against Copts, I don't know, but that's because those groups are properly described as vulnerable. Gays, in particular gay men, are more properly described as despised. As such, they were never protected by the police in the first place as Christians were. I know of people tried for killing Christians, it isn't remotely controversial that such people should be punished as severely as if they killed any human being. Yet if someone can point to me to a single instance where a person was actually put in jail for killing a homosexual in Mubarak's Egypt, frankly I'll be impressed. My experience is that no such thing happens. Baudouin Dupret has a wonderful piece on praxilogical approaches to Islam where he recounts what I find to be more common in cases of violence against homosexuals. The police open a file, they have to, the state can't actually pretend to sanction extralegal killings, and they pretend to look into it and then drop it. More or less like lynching investigations in the prebellum South, the only reason it might be slightly better to be gay in Sadr City now than black in Forsythe County then is at least you can pretend to be straight.
What surprises me more, however, is the Islamophobic hate mail I've been getting on this subject. Not so much its existence, I get that stuff all the time, but rather the use of the prevalence of homophobia in Islam to demonstrate its fundamentally intolerant, hateful nature, and this generally from conservative sources who as you might recall ran an entire campaign in 2004 (not that long ago) on the basis of being against gay marriage.
So let me see if I follow. We have to hate Muslims. And the reason we have to hate them is because they hate gay people, which until about five minutes ago was precisely what we were telling you to do. But now we're not, we're now enlightened, and the fact that they aren't is the proof that they are in fact evil and intolerant and have always been, words you might have used against us until five minutes ago, but now you can't, because you see, we're tolerant now. Or most of us are. Or some of us are. Or maybe it's just a few of us. But don't worry about those who aren't, it's the Muslims who aren't tolerant who are the problem. they think it's okay to kill people who are gay. We of course opposed hate crimes legislation on that basis, but forget that for now. It truly causes one's head to spin.
I think this all arises because there has been a dizzying sea change in attitudes towards homosexuality in the West generally and the US in particular that is quite stunning, far quicker than anything comparable as with blacks in the civil rights era. And so you have on the one hand the Arab world, which is generally very very intolerant of gays, not perhaps any more than it has been in the recent past, but really not much better. And you have general understandings of core Islamic texts, which have remained consistent on this point as well. All of this more or less meshed tolerably well with US feelings for some time, until really quite recently. And then the divergence happened, quite quickly, and those Arab/Muslim attitudes as against homosexuality which once seemed sensible to Americans, though perhaps more extreme than was necessary, suddenly seemed, or seem, quite horrific. Which on one level I see. It's certainly not for me to defend the more extreme, general Arab views toward homosexuality, which are pathological in many cases as to the violence implied by the hostility. It's just that the criticism is a little short sighted, in that it conveniently overlooks a rather recent US past, and assumes that attitudes on the part of a religion or a people as to a particular practice have always been what they are at that particular moment, and that they are essential to the religion or the people in question. Of course that's not the case, ideas change, always have, and no less in Islam (which once had generally positive views on slavery on pretty strong textual bases too but certainly no longer) than anywhere else. The longer view wouldn't be exactly optimistic on the future of gays in the Arab world,. but perhaps not as necessitarian or strident as the haters seem to be as to be consisently calling for their extermination through violence. Change happens everywhere, it's all just a matter of time.
HAH
What surprises me more, however, is the Islamophobic hate mail I've been getting on this subject. Not so much its existence, I get that stuff all the time, but rather the use of the prevalence of homophobia in Islam to demonstrate its fundamentally intolerant, hateful nature, and this generally from conservative sources who as you might recall ran an entire campaign in 2004 (not that long ago) on the basis of being against gay marriage.
So let me see if I follow. We have to hate Muslims. And the reason we have to hate them is because they hate gay people, which until about five minutes ago was precisely what we were telling you to do. But now we're not, we're now enlightened, and the fact that they aren't is the proof that they are in fact evil and intolerant and have always been, words you might have used against us until five minutes ago, but now you can't, because you see, we're tolerant now. Or most of us are. Or some of us are. Or maybe it's just a few of us. But don't worry about those who aren't, it's the Muslims who aren't tolerant who are the problem. they think it's okay to kill people who are gay. We of course opposed hate crimes legislation on that basis, but forget that for now. It truly causes one's head to spin.
I think this all arises because there has been a dizzying sea change in attitudes towards homosexuality in the West generally and the US in particular that is quite stunning, far quicker than anything comparable as with blacks in the civil rights era. And so you have on the one hand the Arab world, which is generally very very intolerant of gays, not perhaps any more than it has been in the recent past, but really not much better. And you have general understandings of core Islamic texts, which have remained consistent on this point as well. All of this more or less meshed tolerably well with US feelings for some time, until really quite recently. And then the divergence happened, quite quickly, and those Arab/Muslim attitudes as against homosexuality which once seemed sensible to Americans, though perhaps more extreme than was necessary, suddenly seemed, or seem, quite horrific. Which on one level I see. It's certainly not for me to defend the more extreme, general Arab views toward homosexuality, which are pathological in many cases as to the violence implied by the hostility. It's just that the criticism is a little short sighted, in that it conveniently overlooks a rather recent US past, and assumes that attitudes on the part of a religion or a people as to a particular practice have always been what they are at that particular moment, and that they are essential to the religion or the people in question. Of course that's not the case, ideas change, always have, and no less in Islam (which once had generally positive views on slavery on pretty strong textual bases too but certainly no longer) than anywhere else. The longer view wouldn't be exactly optimistic on the future of gays in the Arab world,. but perhaps not as necessitarian or strident as the haters seem to be as to be consisently calling for their extermination through violence. Change happens everywhere, it's all just a matter of time.
HAH
I would say the same curious short sighted attitude and arrogance exists towards Muslims on other subjects as well. To hear Westerners and their politicians talk you would think that women's rights, freedom of speech, laws against slavery and child labour, democracy and social mobility had been with the West for at least 500 years! At least.
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It's a good point, and sorry for taking so long to put it up. It was buried in spam, due to a filtering error.
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