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