Table Of Content
Volume I
SAMAR HABIB,
Editor
Foreword by Parvez Sharma
PRAEGER
An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC
VOLUME I
Foreword by Parvez Sharma ix
Acknowledgments xv
Introduction: Islam and Homosexuality xvii
Samar Habib
1 Islam and the Politics of Homophobia: The Persecution of Homosexuals
in Islamic Malaysia Compared to Secular China
Walter L. Williams
2 Longing, Not Belonging, and Living in Fear 23
Badruddin Khan
3 Public Displays of Affection: Male Homoerotic Desire and Sociability in
Medieval Arabic Literature 37
Jocelyn Sharlet
4 Islam and the Acceptance of Homosexuality: The Shortage of
Socioeconomic Well-Being and Responsive Democracy 57
Tilo Beckers
5 Gays under Occupation: Interviews with Gay Iraqis 99
Michael T. Luongo
6 Reading and Writing the Queer Hajj 111
Omer Shah
7 Sexual Orientation: The Ideological Underpinnings of the Gay Advance
in Muslim-Majority Societies as Witnessed in Online Chat Rooms 133
Max Kramer
8 "Because Allah Says So": Faithful Bodies, Female Masculinities, and the
Malay Muslim Community of Singapore 163
Nur 'Adlina Maulod and Nurhaizatul jamila jamil
9 Mithliyyun or Lutiyyun? Neo-Orthodoxy and the Debate on the
Unlawfulness of Same-Sex Relations in Islam 193
Barbara Zollner
VOLUME 2
10 The Social Construction of Religious Realities by Queer Muslims 223
Christopher Grant Kelly
11 Is There a "Gay-Friendly" Islam? Synthesizing Tradition and Modernity
in the Question of Homosexuality in Islam 247
Christopher Grant Kelly
12 Neither Homophobic nor (Hetero) Sexually Pure: Contextualizing
Islam's Objections to Same-Sex Sexuality 269
Aleardo Zanghellini
13 Implied Cases for Muslim Same-Sex Unions 297
Junaid Bin jahangir
14 Queer Visions of Islam 327
Rusmir Music
15 Queer, American, and Muslim: Cultivating Identities and Communities
of Affirmation 347
Mahruq Fatima Khan
16 "You're What?": Engaging Narratives from Diasporic Muslim Women
on Identity and Gay Liberation 373
Ayisha A. Al-Sayyad
17 "Everywhere You Turn You Have to Jump into Another Closet":
Hegemony, Hybridity, and Queer Australian Muslims 395
Ibrahim Abraham
18 Marketing Diversity: Homonormativity and the Queer Turkish
Organizations in Berlin 419
Ilgin Yorukoglu
19 Touch of Pink: Diasporic Queer Experiences within Islamic
Communities 445
Ahmet Atay
20 Sexualities and the Social Order in Arab and Muslim Communities 463
Rabab Abdulhadi
About the Editor and Contributors 489
Index 495
It is an honor to write the foreword for this excellent and thoughtful
anthology that dares to visit some of the darkest corners of the taboo that
permeates the consciousness of that unlikely creature: the gay or the lesbian
Muslim, and certainly every other category that falls in the spectrum of
sexuality as we understand it in much of the West.
I write with fierce urgency because I realize now more than ever that
some of our most bitter battles in this new century will be fought on the
frontlines of religion. The generations that follow us will deal with the
consequences of rising extremisms in every faith. A very quick look into
the fabric of America, the profoundly religious and moralistic society I live
in, makes one realize that the gay marriage debate in this nation is
fundamentally about the Church.
In making my documentary film, A Jihad for Love, I traveled to the very
heart of Islam and reached a conclusion that perhaps is not immediately
appealing to the readers of this book. In my lifetime I do not see Islam
drafting a uniform edict saying that homosexuality is permissible, but then
again, a ruling of that nature cannot be imagined as coming from the
Vatican either. The case of Islam becomes further problematized because
there is no one kind of Muslim. More than a billion Muslim people inhabit
this planet, and, as A Jihad for Love proves, they inhabit geographical,
linguistic, and cultural spaces that are enormously different. In fact, nothing
in the religion can fall into the problematic monolith discussed most often
in the independent media of Western societies. Sunni Islam in itself, being
the religious denomination of the majority, has four major schools of
thought: the Hanafi, the Hanbali, the Maliki and the Sha'afi, and they have
never quite agreed on what to do with "the homosexual." The Shiites in Iran
thrive on a culture of disagreement that permeates all of the corridors of
learning that always lead up to the holy city of Qom.
As A Jihad for Love explains, the Quran, to some, is pretty specific about
homosexuality, and debating contexts and semantics is un-Islamic. Many
scholars within Islam have also argued that the very ijtihad or independent
reasoning-that the gay Imam from South Africa, Muhsin Hendricks, brings
up eloquently at the end of the film-is not an option because the doors to
that were closed in the seventh century. Some who have agreed with the
premise of the need for ijtihad have also said that the exercise is not
available to every Muslim but only to the most learned alim in our ummah.
This note of pessimism, however, should be read more as a note of
caution as we rush into seeking solutions that are merely theological. For
our times, history has seemingly been divided into an easy before and after
narrative following September 11. Much is made every day in the media
and in the countless books produced since of the need for an Islamic
Reformation. As I travelled to make the film, and then with its finished
form, I realized that the process was ongoing and, if anything, the moment
of Islamic reformation is now. We are living it. The question that comes
with that knowledge is whether the "problem of homosexuality" is and even
needs to be on the front burner for the many debates that Muslims need to
have.
Having met more Imams and religious figures over the years than I can
even count on my fingers, I realize a few things. Theological bickering can
often be counterproductive, especially when one engages in questions of
context and language and especially when the majority believes that the
book itself is the literal word of God. Perhaps in that time of Jahilliyah,
even our troubled and unlettered Prophet on hearing that first command,
ikra, "recite" or "read" depending on whom you are talking to, did not
comprehend the extent of the theological universe built with language in all
of its contradictions and nuances. Clearly our Prophet did lay the
foundations of an egalitarian system and perhaps he truly did create the
firstever written constitution, the "Meccan Constitution," in the city
formerly known as Yathrib. However, within that constitution and certainly
in the seemingly rigid theology that would follow his lifetime, the language
and the pronouncements were a product of the time. Our Prophet himself
was a true man of his times. Islam, surprisingly, was laying forth a sexual
and moral universe with rules and codes that had mostly been unavailable
to the Jews, the Christians, and yes, the polytheists that inhabited Arabia
