--- In lgbti-poc@yahoogroups.com, "Hillman Mark" <mhillman@...> wrote:
>
> Very interesting - wish I could have been one of those Siwan men
at that time
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: lgbti-poc@yahoogroups.com [mailto:lgbti-poc@yahoogroups.com]
On Behalf Of red_door83
> Sent: 17 July 2008 6:31 PM
> To: lgbti-poc@yahoogroups.com
> Subject: [lgbti-poc] Outcast heroes: the story of gay Muslims
>
>
>
>
> Outcast heroes: the story of gay Muslims
> From Britain to Egypt, gay men are stigmatized and attacked. But
some are starting to fight back.
>
> Ali Orhan is laughing. We're sitting in the café in
> the Docklands Asda - no expenses spared here at Attitude! - and he
is chuckling the most terrible, melancholic chuckle I have ever heard.
>
> He is describing a day eighteen years ago when he picked up his
parents at Heathrow airport. He was 21 years old, and they were
returning from their annual holiday to Turkey. Ali knew he was gay -
he had always
> known - but his sexuality wasn't flickering across his mind that
that summer day, as he stood waiting in the arrivals lounge. He saw
them waddling towards him with their suitcases and a strange woman.
He waved. He had bought his mother a bunch of flowers. His parents
had brought something for him too: a wife.
>
> "Within five days, we were married," he says now, his dark laughter
melted away. "It had always been there as I was growing up, I
suppose, this knowledge that marriage was compulsory, and that you
only had sex
> within marriage. It was like going through puberty or growing a
beard, something that just happened to you. But I was in denial. And
then it happened, so suddenly, and I couldn't see any way out."
>
> Growing up in Britain's Turkish community in the 1970s, Islam was
more a cultural presence than a deep religious commitment. "Religion
wasn't a huge thing in
> our family. My younger brothers don't even believe. The only time
we discussed faith was when my parents wanted to end an argument:
it's in the Koran. You can't argue with it. It's the word of God."
>
> And the word of God, it seemed to Ali then, was that Turkish boys
marry the girls their parents select for them. "We stayed married for
ten months. I never tried to kid myself. She was very attractive,
articulate, and a lovely person, but there was no way I was ever
> going to be attracted to her physically. I knew I was never going
to fulfill her or be the husband she deserved, and the guilt was
eating me. She had given up everything in Turkey - her whole life -
for me, and
> I had nothing to offer her."
>
> "The one thing I did that I'm proud of in that whole terrible part
of my life is that I never consummated the marriage," he continues,
in a soft, measured voice. "We shared a bed for ten months but we
never had sex. I knew that once we had slept together, she
> would be seen a ruined goods and she would never be able to marry
again. She obviously couldn't understand my attitude, and began to
think there was something
> wrong with her. She even tried coming on to me, which for a Muslim
woman is an incredibly humiliating thing."
>
> Ali was so afraid of telling his parents about his sexuality that
he tried to make his wife leave him. He got male friends to put
lipstick on his collar so she would think he had another woman. He
would stay out late without any explanation. Nothing worked.
>
> "Then one night I came home and finally told her I couldn't ever
love her," he says. "There was a phenomenal amount of family and
community pressure for us to not get divorced. Getting permission took
> another three months. Finally my parents gave in, but on one
condition: that I take her back to her parents in Turkey and explain
why."
>
> It was potentially a death-wish: go to a very
> conservative part of Turkey, and tell a group of
> religious men that you are divorcing their daughter because you're
gay. Ali went. "My one saving grace in their eyes was that I hadn't
`defiled' her. Because of that, I survived." He lived - but the day
he returned,
> his parents explained that he was no longer their son. They told
him bluntly that they never wanted to see him again, not even on
their deathbeds.
>
> Nearly two decades later, there is still complete silence from all
of his relatives. I ask if he is angry with them. "No," he says,
almost surprised by the question. "I had tarnished the whole family's
character: their eldest son wasn't a man, he hadn't slept with his
wife. I don't blame them for what they did. It was damage limitation
for them within the
> community. That was their whole world, and if they had stood by me,
that world would have come crashing down. They would have been
outcasts. What right have I got to ask them to do that? They had to
choose between
> their son or their world."
>
> There is a family eating their dinner two tables away from us. I
wish they would leave; I wish Ali never had to see another family
again. After such a terrible experience, it would seem natural for
Ali to renounce Islam, the religion that seemed to wreck his life.
But he explains, "If anything, I've become more religious since
leaving home. I have a much stronger understanding of my faith now.
In times of crisis, it's my faith I turn to. At my lowest point, when
I was first expelled from my world, it was Islam that kept me from
the edge. I would have committed suicide without my faith."
>
> "The only thing I have left that identifies me with my family, with
my community, with my life before I was disowned, is my religion," he
continues. "Nobody can take that away from me. It's the last shred of
the person I used to be." He considers himself today to be
> a devout Muslim - indeed, more devout than many of the people who
cast him out. "It's not like the Muslim community isn't aware that
there are gay Muslims. But as long as they stay married and only have
gay sex on
> the side, they're tolerated. I think that's
> disgusting, and I wasn't going to play that game. If I had been a
hypocrite, if I had cheated on my wife and actually been a much worse
Muslim, then I would still be with my family and my community."
>
> Yet he believes that the Koran does clearly condemn
homosexuality. "If there was any pro-gay interpretation, I would have
seized on it. The only ammunition I have is that the Koran makes it
clear that no Muslim has the right to judge another Muslim. Only
Allah has that right."
>
> Ten years ago, the words `gay' and `Muslim' seemed like polar
opposites, and an out gay Muslim seemed as probable as a black member
of the Ku Klux Klan. All of the seven countries that treat
homosexuality as a
> crime punishable by death are Muslim. Of the 82 countries where
being gay is a crime, 36 are predominantly Muslim.
>
> Even in democratic societies, Islam remains
> overwhelmingly anti-gay. Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi, director of the
Islamic Society of North America, says "homosexuality is a moral
disease, a sin, a corruption... No person is born homosexual, just as
nobody is born a thief, a liar or a murderer. People
> acquire these evil habits due to a lack of proper guidance and
education."
>
> Sheikh Sharkhawy, a cleric at the prestigious London Central Mosque
in Regent's Park, compares homosexuality to a "cancer tumour." He
argues "we must burn all gays to prevent paedophilia and the spread of
> AIDS," and says gay people "have no hope of a spiritual life." The
Muslim Educational Trust hands out educational material to Muslim
teachers - intended for children! - advocating the death penalty for
gay people, and advising Muslim pupils to stay away from
> gay classmates and teachers.
>
> But some gay people like Ali have begun to contest this reading of
Islam. There have been a small number of groups for gay Muslims over
the past twenty years,
> and their history is not encouraging. A San
> Francisco-based group called the Lavender Crescent Society sent
five members to Iran in 1979 after the Islamic revolution there to
spur an Iranian gay movement. They were taken straight from the
airport to a remote spot and shot dead. Gay Iranians went underground
straight after. Even in the West, a Toronto-based group called Min-
Alaq was formed in the
> early 1990s but closed down after fundamentalists threatened to
murder all its members.
>
> And then came Al-Fatiha. With seven branches across the United
States and offices in London, Johannesburg and Toronto, these gay
Muslims ain't going to shut up
> or scuttle away. They are here and they are fighting. The group -
whose name is taken from a Koranic term meaning `the beginning' or
`the opening' - was set up in 1997 by Faisal Alam.
>
> Faisal, now 27, arrived in Connecticut from Pakistan when he was 10
years old. In an unfamiliar rural area with "more cows than people",
he explains, he found his faith a source of comfort and inspiration.
He
> became very active in the local mosque and a leader in his Muslim
youth group. Yet when he was sixteen he began to realize something
was wrong - "something I didn't have a word for."
>
> He started a relationship with an older male convert to Islam, but
it fizzled out and - in the classic gay Muslim pattern - he became
engaged to a very religious woman. Fortunately, she broke it off
after a year
> because "she had a feeling in her heart that something was deeply
wrong."
>
> When he started college, Faisal embarked on a dual existence: the
good Muslim boy by day and the gay boy by night. His parents found
out about his sexuality when someone copied some of his internet
messages to a
> gay chat-line and distributed them at his family's mosque. "My
mom's first reaction was to say, `You can't be a Muslim any more,'"
he explains.
>
> Nineteen and desolate, he sent out an e-mail that started an
avalanche. "Is anyone out there a gay Muslim?" he asked in a
discussion list linking Muslim student societies across the US. Most
of the responses were filled with revulsion - "There is no such thing
> as a gay Muslim!" they howled. But there was a trickle saying, "I
though I was the only one."
>
> As a network for those people - and for gay Muslims across the
globe - he established al Fatiha. "The Muslim community as a whole is
in complete and utter denial about homosexuality," he explains. "The
conversation hasn't even begun. We are about 200 years behind
Christianity in terms of progress on gay issues. Homosexuality is
still seen as a Western disease that infiltrates Muslim minds and
societies."
>
> He admits that al Fatiha is dealing with troubled, torn
people. "For each of us, it's a struggle. Probably 90 to 99 percent
of gay Muslims who have accepted their sexuality leave the faith.
They don't see the chance for a reconciliation. They are two
identities of your life that are exclusive." One gay man - who asked
not to be named - summarized this
> belief that the two poles of his identity could never meet: "It's a
choice between praying and sucking cock," he said. "You can't do
both."
>
> Yet Faisal is trying to articulate a pro-gay Islam. He believes
that the homophobia of most contemporary Muslims is based not on
their faith but on their culture, and there is a surprising amount of
scholarly research to back him up. The punishment for almost all
> crimes is laid out very clearly in the Koran - 100 lashes for
fornication, for example - but there is no punishment mentioned for
homosexuality anywhere. There is one passage that is often
interpreted as legally
> forbidding homosexuality, but it is comparatively mild: "And as for
the two of you who are guilty thereof, punish them both. And if they
repent and improve, then let them be. Lo! Allah is merciful."
>
> There are seven references in the Koran to the "people of Lut" -
named `Lot' in the Christian and Jewish holy texts - which is a town
destroyed for the immorality
> of its men. But the conventional interpretation - that this
`immorality' took the form of gay sex - is increasingly being
contested. Mushin Hendriks, an American Muslim scholar and a gay man,
claims that the
> story of Lut "sees God destroying men because of male rape, sodomy
and promiscuity. But there is a difference between sodomy and
homosexuality, between
> rape and love. The story says nothing about homosexual love."
>
> During the Prophet Mohammed's lifetime, there was not a single
recorded case of a punishment or execution for homosexuality. It is
only two generations after Mohammed, under the third Caliph, Omar,
that a gay man
> was burned alive for his `crime'. Even then, it was fiercely
debated, and many scholars argued that this was contrary to the
traditions of the Prophet.
>
> Several scholars and historians have proven that homosexuality was
fairly common at the time of the Prophet. They have also shown that
at certain points in history gay people were much more tolerated - and
> indeed, sometimes celebrated - in Muslim societies than in Europe.
Before the twentieth century, the regions of the world with the most
prominent and diverse gay behaviours on display were in northern
Africa and southwestern Asia - Muslim lands. The
> current gay-hating, homicidal climate in Muslim countries is a
fairly recent invention.
>
> Look, for example, at the homoerotic poetry that flourished in
Spain after the Muslim conquest in 711. This is stuff that wouldn't
be out of place in the porn section of Clone-zone: "I gave him what
he asked
> for, made him my master/ My tears streamed out over the beauty of
his cheeks" and so on. Or how about the ninth century Caliph of
Baghdad, who "gave himself over entirely to dissipated pleasure in
the company of
> his eunuchs and refused to take a wife"?
>
> These pockets of gay freedom persisted in some areas right up to
the early twentieth century, when Victorian colonial influence
started to erode their tolerance away. For example, the oasis town of
Siwa, located in the Libyan desert of Western Egypt, sounds
> like something from a Bel Ami movie. The
> anthropologist Walter Cline described it in the 1930s: "All normal
Muslim Siwan men and boys practice sodomy. Among themselves the
natives are not ashamed of this; they talk about it as openly as they
talk about love
> of women and many, if not most, of their fights arise from
homosexual competition."
>
> Another visitor, the archaeologist Count Bryron de Prorock
reported "an enthusiasm that could not have been approached even in
Sodom. Homosexuality was not only rampant, it was raging." Men would
marry each other with great ceremony, and this was only stamped out -
by non-Muslims - in the 1930s.
>
> Al Fatiha is not as mad a project, then, as it might initially
seem. Along with the homophobic strands, there have been strands in
Muslim thought for a very long time encouraging tolerance of gay
people; they
> have simply died away. Today, there are some groups who are
prepared to kill in order to prevent a pro-gay Islam from being
revived. In 2001, Al Mujharoun - a fanatical British-based
fundamentalist group who believe in establishing "the Muslim Republic
of Great
> Britain" - issued a fatwa against Al Fatiha. They said any member
of Al-Fatiha is an apostate (traitor to the Muslim faith), and the
punishment for apostasy is death.
>
> Faisal refuses to be intimidated. "We're challenging 1,400 years of
dogma. There's bound to be a battle," he explains. Ali has had death
threats too. A group of black-clad men even turned up at his flat one
night "to make it very clear that if I wanted a quiet life I
> should shut up about being gay." I asked if he
> considered being quiet. "No, I moved," he laughs.
>
> Despite the threat of violence, at least in democratic societies
gay Muslims can wrestle with their dual identity. For most of the 50
million gay Muslims in the world, this isn't an option. They are more
likely to be worried about avoiding imprisonment or even
> execution. For example, when 52 gay men were recently arrested and
jailed for attending an unofficial gay club in Egypt, even the Egypt
Organization for Human Rights (EOHR) refused to condemn their prison
> sentences. EOHR's Secretary-General, Hafez Abu Saada,
said, "Personally, I don't like the subject of homosexuality, and I
don't want to defend them."
>
> In Lebanon, one of the more free countries in the Middle East, a
popular weekly TV programme - Al Shater Yahki - discusses sexuality
and includes gay voices. Even there, every gay person speaks from
behind a
> mask, or they would risk being killed.
>
> Marianne Duddy, executive director of Dignity/USA, the oldest and
largest gay Catholic organisation, explains, "In many ways, Al-Fatiha
and the first wave of gay Muslims exactly parallel where gay
Catholics were 25 to 30 years ago. Our first five years were just
about putting the words `gay' and `Catholic' in the same sentence. I
pray they have a very deep faith." And even now, the Catholic Church
is hardly a model of tolerance. The Pope describes gay marriage as
> "evil", calls on gay people to be celibate, and has acted at the
United Nations to block protection of the human rights of gay people.
But things are far better than they were for gay Christians. Gay Jews
have made
> incredible progress, with the largest group of rabbis in America
openly endorsing gay marriage.
>
> Yes, the fight for tolerance within Islam is going to be very long
and very painful. There will be many more casualties. But one day the
beheading of gay men in the Middle East and the internal exile of men
like Ali will be remembered the way we remember the burning of
witches today. When that day comes, men like Ali Orhan and Faisal
Alam will be seen as heroes.
>
> Source of this story:
>
> http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=395
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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