'Evil' homosexuality: an Arab and Islamic perspective

I've pondered often about the strange relationship that others have imposed on the Arab world regarding homosexuality and immorality. Orientalists traditionally had always infused a subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) eroticism into their subject matter to the point that many in the West often think of Arabs as oversexed and decadent yet pretending to be just and moral, "Boys are for pleasure, women are for breeding". At the same time, in the Arab and Islamic world, there is the hysteria surrounding perceived decadence in the West, with a special place reserved for that most "heinous of crimes", homosexuality. As Ahmedi Nejad said at an American University, "In Iran we have no homosexuals like you in the West". Ludicrous at one level yet perhaps true true to some extent, though not as he had in mind when saying this. I'm working my way through Foucault's history of sexuality and it is a remarkable and lucid polemic which attempts to break down the history of sexuality in Western civilization. Foucault is particularly clear that he is examining Western civilization, which impressed me. Whilst Ahmedi Nejad might consider himself to be outside of this discourse - colonialism, imperialism and the slow inculcation of many youth in the majority world with Western values through the media means that the West's nervous illnesses and dispositions are things which we must out of necessity address appropriately. Perhaps knowing their origin helps, but this in no way detracts from the urgency of understanding and dealing with them.

Foucalt tells us that there is an intricate interplay between power and pleasure. Power, through society, law and religion, seeks to bring the deepest and most private sexual desires out into the light. By transforming these feelings and acts into discourse in every way, it also categorises it, controls it, titillates it and encourages it. The inevitable "rebellion" of libertarianism is only a reaction to this exercise of power and in fact reinforces it and is reinforced by it. Rather than making the sexual diminish and controlled, it in fact ellicits it, encourages it and promotes it, on all levels. Censorship provokes discussion, and discussion centred on sexuality, on issues which would not have been given second thought, in spite of the disapproval of others, and elevated to an importance which would appear trivial to people from other ages and societies.


What I've been trying to understand for some time now is how Arab literary texts during the Islamic heydey dealt with the matter casually, in spite of the clear Islamic position against the practice, and contrasting this with the hysterical obsession we have in the Arab world today with sexual 'perversion'. I believe that in many ways, this hysteria is a product of how power has moulded Western societies and discourse about sexuality, something which has, in fact, been implanted onto our own Arab people through occupation. Victorian prudishness regarding sex is one of the unfortunate residues of European occupation that has distorted our perceptions of sex and how we deal with it, how we relate it to children and how we practice it ourselves. It is now seen as a dirty, hidden thing, ideally between man and wife, and to which children are not to be made aware of. A secret pleasure. Yet, a quick look at many Hadith by the Prophet Muhammad as well as in the Quran shows us that there is a frankness in discussion about sex. It is mainly focused on the structure of relations between the man and the woman and on what is to be avoided in terms of sexual practices. So a woman is told not to have sex with her husband during her period, anal sex is not allowed and adulterous or homosexual relations are forbidden. Sex, in itself, is not dirty, it is not shameful, it is a natural human need which the Prophet himself acknowledges, but within the framework provided by Allah. For a person concerned with finding Allah, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, the justification for adhering to the laws is in achieving proximity to the creator and in avoiding the haram where it creates distance from Him. There is no hysteria, it is not personal and it does not bring out the pathological insecurities which it elicits with some people today.

Yet I wish to avoid falling into this pitfall that all bad has come from the West, though much harm has come from that part of the world. The 'Power' which Foucault refers to often in his texts is, from what I understand it, a very real thing which we see everyday. It is not some abstract concept, like Plato's Forms. It is something which is present in all societies, albeit named differently. It was there when the prophets railed against the injustice and immorality of their peoples and exists today to great extent everywhere. The Great Arrogance, as Iran calls America, is only a manifestation, on a larger scale, of the complex interplay of relationships and customs in societies which, though acting as a social glue of sorts, can also be a mask behind which injustice is justified and allowed to exist. The merchant princes and ruling families of Mecca tried to kill the Prophet Muhammed because he challenged this power structure, this influence it wielded on society. So this is by no means a Western concept, it simply exists in a much more powerful and effective manner in the West through the engine of naked capitalism. It is these same "localised" expressions of power which find it useful to generate hysteria and continue this imported prudishness over peoples sexuality. Understanding this bizarre situation does not cause any conflict to a Muslim, it simply allows us to differentiate between condemning or rejecting a practice according to the laws of Allah with all the relevance or irrelevance it deserves, and between pandering to the rabid hysteria of the many, infected by the immorality of Power, wherever it may be and in whichever form it is found.