“I feel Al Jazeera English is a reliable source of information, and I think what they are offering is a perspective from the Middle East region, but the professionalism of the reports, including on lesbian topics, has global standards,” says Hossein Alizadeh, Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission (IGLHRC).
Gay activist El-Farouk Khaki says Al Jazeera English’s entry into Canada is good news for the representation of queers in media.

“What we suffer from is invisibility in Canada within the larger Muslim community,” says Khaki. “Some of the more traditional, conservative groups do not recognize our existence.”

Al Jazeera English regularly reports on gay issues. In recent months, its coverage included segments about the gruesome murders of close to 100 gay men by al Mahdi Shi’ite militias in Iraq in 2009, the killing of gay youths in a Tel Aviv club last summer and India’s court decision to decriminalize gay sex.

But Al Jazeera’s Arabic network “is not interested in covering gay rights issues the way Al Jazeera English does,” says Alizadeh. Comparing Al Jazeera Arabic with Al Jazeera English “is like comparing apples and oranges.” Al Jazeera Arabic is geared towards a Middle Eastern audience and does not challenge cultural values or orthodox religion, he says.

“Gay activist El Farouk Khaki”–now where have I heard that name before? Oh yeah, it was here:

On May 23, 2009, Khaki made the opening remarks at a Queers Against Israeli Apartheid event to “reignite Toronto’s queer community in the fight against apartheid”.15 Shortly after, B’nai Brith condemned him and implied that he is “part and parcel of the anti-Israel machinery that continues to churn out hateful and divisive propaganda.”16

B’nai Brith executive vice-president Frank Dimant said Khaki should be subject to “disciplinary action” by Pride Toronto. Khaki is the 2009 parade grand marshal for Toronto’s pride parade.16

In retort Khaki with his partner Troy Jackson formed the Human Positive foundation, an organization which stands for Justice, Freedom and Dignity for All peoples to speak above the “anything said in critic of Israel is antisemitism” propaganda movement. Khaki a Human Rights Activist believes that no country is above critique. As a result his Human+ Float was the recipient of Best Embodiment of the LGBTTIQQ2S award from Pride Toronto

Quel honor. I salute Mr. Khaki. Oh, not for his prize-winning float, which I’m sure was a beaut. No, I’d like to thank him for shedding light on a little discussed phenomenon–i.e., that you can be a bona fide “moderate” and still be every much an enemy of Israel as any fire-breathing radical.
In “honour” of float boy and A-J English’s Canadian debut, I’m reviving one of my favorite parodies:

Come on, babe, why don’t we paint the news?
And Al-that-Jaz.
We’re gonna praise some ‘rabs
And then we’ll slam some Jews
And Al-that-Jaz.
Start your day with scenes of lots of gore
It’s sure to stir the blood and leave you wantin’ more.
But then we’ll say again
It’s just like CNN
And Al-that-Jaz.

Don’t you love those scenes from Palestine?
And Al-that-Jaz
That ghastly Gaza stuff has gotta blow your mind.
And Al-that-Jazz.
Who’s to blame?
You know it’s hard to tell
If it’s America or if it’s Is-ra-el.
But you will never lose if you just blame the Jews
And Al-that-Jaz.

Oh, we’re first to scoop with those Osama tapes
And Al-that-Jaz.
Then it’s great to show you who decapitates
And Al-that-Jaz.
Poke some fun at Arab despots.
See who shows up in our guest spots:
Someone who you’ll wanna boo
And Al-that-Ja-az

Don’t you think it’s kind of like the Ceeb?
And Al-that-Jaz.
Oh, look, there’s Avi L., who is our token Hebe.
And Al-that-Jaz.
Sure, we know that we cannot go far
Broadcasting Hockey Night in sunny, hot Qatar
Don Cherry–Mr. Big–ain’t gonna do that gig.
And Al-that-Jaz.

Oh, just tune us in and then turn off your brain
And Al-that-Jaz.
You will soon be hooked and singing this refrain
And Al-that-Jaz:
“Golly, it’s so good to see ya,
Better than al-Arabiya.
We’re so queer for al-Jazeer’
And all that jazz.”

* Welcome to my Arabs gay page. View Turkish/Arab gay galleries and porn videos featuring the cutest Turkish/Arab gay boys with giant dicks. Don’t forget to bookmark my site. Enjoy! *

An officer of the regiment detaining Baha Mousa, a Basra hotel worker, when he was beaten to death said his soldiers held the view that “all Iraqis were scum”, it was disclosed today.
One officer tried to mount an “arse covering” exercise after Mousa’s death, while others expressed ignorance of basic rules covering the treatment of prisoners, the public inquiry into the incident heard.
A military intelligence officer, identified only as SO staff officer 17, told the inquiry she was “amazed” at questions senior officers asked her about how prisoners should be treated.
Hooding, stress positions, noise-producing equipment and sleep deprivation were prohibited in a Joint Intelligence Committee document in 1972, the inquiry heard. They were banned by Edward Heath, then prime minister, after their use in Northern Ireland.

The above is from Richard Norton-Taylor’s “Soldiers viewed all Iraqis as ’scum’, Baha Mousa inquiry hears” (Guardian). C.I. asked if I could work in a link and I’ll do better, I’ll provide an excerpt and talk a little bit about Baha.

Baha worked at a hotel. He was not a ‘deadly’ person or an ‘insurgent’. How do I know? Do you have a job? How do you get there?

Do you know how Baha got to and from work? His father would pick him up.

No, that’s not the profile, is it?

Baha was at work one morning and the British stormed in. They had no cause to hold Baha or the others. (But some Brits did help themselves to some cash in the hotel and maybe they were afraid they’d be ratted out?) So Baha and his co-workers were taken to a British prison where they were tortured. Baha was tortured to death.

His father testified at the inquiry early on.

I’m trying to think what else I remember (from C.I.’s coverage of it). He had over 90 injuries — received while in British custody.

Oh, he was 26 years old.

His whole life ended. And his crime was working at a hotel. Being a desk clerk at a hotel. And I can make this a Baha entry. Didn’t realize that but I went back into the e-mail C.I. sent me and she says that Sam Marsden (Scotsman) also has a strong article which explains that after Baha was killed, Major Michael Peebles started calling around about procedures leading a witness to say that was nothing but “an exercise in covering someone’s arse”.

I don’t know if anyone’s going to get punished. As I remember C.I.’s early coverage, some of the people testifying included others who were held prisoners. And they gave compelling testimony. But sometimes the truth isn’t enough. Even when it’s backed up. Sometimes the white wash is fixed before the first person testifies.

That may be the case here. Hopefully, it’s not.

Here’s C.I.’s “Iraq snapshot:”

Tuesday, April 27, 2010. Chaos and violence continue, the post-election chaos continues, Chalabi and boy pal set to ban even more candidates, Amnesty releases a new report on the targeted in Iraq and more.

Amnesty International issued a PDF format warning report today entitled “Iraq: Civilians under fire,” click here. The human rights group’s 28 page report focuses on the groups targeted in Iraq:

Hundreds of civilians are still being killed or maimed every month in Iraq, even if the past two years have seen an overall reduction in the number of civilian deaths. As a result, safety and security remain key concerns for Iraqis — especially for those who, because of their religious, ethnic or other identity or because of their profession or work, are particularly vulnerable to be targeted for violent attack.
Although civilians have been killed, injured or otherwise abused by Iraqi security forces and foreign troops based in Iraq and by members of private military and security companies, most killings of civilians are being carried out by armed groups.

For the report, Amnesty spoke to a wide range of Iraqis in Iraq as well as to Iraqi refugees in Jordan and Syria and other countries. The targeted include those are who are targeted for speaking out or for reporting on abuses. “Women who have taken the lead in confronting violence against women and promoting women’s rights,” the report notes, “have been directly targeted because of their activities, notably by members of Islamist armed groups and militias. Some have been attacked and killed because of their efforts to promote gender equality.” The report notes:

Wars and conflicts, wherever they are fought, invariably usher in sickeningly high levels of violence against women and girls. All parties to the armed conflict in Iraq have been involved in violent crimes specifically aimed at women and girls, include rape. Perpetrators have included members of armed groups, militias, Iraqi government forces and foreign military forces. In addition, women and girls continue to be attacked and sometimes killed by male relatives and Islamist armed groups or militias for their perceived or alleged transgression of traditional roles or moral codes. Most of these crimes are committed with impunity.

Relatives attacking women include not only husband but “fathers, brothers and otehr relatives, particularly if they try to go against the wishes of the family.” Another targeted group would be composed of the religious and ethnic minorities. Unlike other targeted populations, they are guaranteed (a small amount of) representation in the Parliament — or some are. Iraq’s now dwindling Jewish population, for example, was never had set-aside seats in the Parliament. We cover the persecution of religious minorities regularly and will do so in another snapshot this week so we’ll instead focus on one of the least reported ongoing persecutions: the assault on Iraqi’s LGBT community.

Members of the gay community in Iraq live under constant threat. They are confronted by widespread intolerance towards their sexual identity and scores of men who were, or were perceived to be, gay have been killed in recent years, some after torture. Violent acts against gay men have occurred against a background of frequent public statements by some Muslim clerics and others condemning homosexuality.
. . .
The wave of attacks on gay men in early 2009 coincided with statements by Muslim clerics, particularly in al-Sadr City, urging their followers to take action to eradicate homosexuality from Iraqi society. They used language that effectively constituted incitement to violence against men known or alleged to be gay.
Gay men face similar discrimination as women under the legislation that provides for lenient sentences for those committing crimes with an “honourable motive”. Iraqi courts continue to interpret provisions of Article 128 of the Penal Code as justification for giving drastically reduced sentences to defendants who have attacked or even killed gay men they are related to if they say that they acted to “wash off the shame”. In its rulings, the Iraqi Court of Cassation has confirmed that the killing of a male relative who is suspected of same-sex sexual conduct is considered a crime with an “honourable motive”, thus qualifying for a reduced sentence under Article 128.
Although provisions under Articles 128 have been amended in the Kurdistan Region by Law 14 of 2002 and, therefore, may no longer be applied in connection with crimes committed against women there, they continue to be applicable throughout the whole of Iraq in connection with crimes against gay men.
For example, on 24 October 2005 the Court of Cassation of the Kurdistan Region confirmed the conviction for murder and one-year prison sentence imposed on a man from Koysinjak who had confessed to killing his gay brother earlier in 2005. The court found that he had killed his brother with “honourable motives” because he “wanted to end the shame which the victim of the crime had brought over his family by practicing depravity and by being engaged in homosexuality and prostitution.” The court also accepted that a one-year prison sentence was in this case appropriate for premeditated murder, a crime which carries the death penalty.

You can kill a gay man and get away with it in Iraq. Which sort of makes John T. Fleming look like a lying prick. (Much worse than that but I can use “prick” and still manage work safe language.) Fleming is with the US State Dept. Last June, Seth Michael Donsky (Boston’s Edge) reported:

John T. Fleming, who heads public affairs for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, takes pains to point out that homosexuality is not a crime in Iraq. “Homosexuality,” he pointed out in a recent e-mail to EDGE, “is outlawed by more than 85 countries and is punishable by death in several Islamic states . . . but Iraq is not one of them.”

Being gay’s not a crime in Iraq . . . except it is. And if you kill a man because he’s gay and you’re a family member you can walk. Much, much more complicated than Fleming’s ‘informed’ explanation. From a US official acting the fool to a British one, Paul Canning (Pink News) explains David Miliband (Foreign Secretary) is providing one whopper after another:

He said: “Under Labour the UK will continue to be a beacon of hope for LGBT people.”
This delusion sounded a lot like Home Office minister Phil Woolas’ article last year, when he wrote that he was proud of the attendees of the London Pride march who’d found sanctuary in the UK — never mind that his office would have refused them and fought tooth-and-nail to remove them.
The pair should form a double act.
An Amnesty International report released today said that gays in Iraq have no protection from the state and are allegedly even being targeted by some security forces. Yet Miliband’s ‘beacon’ government would tell those seeking our sanctuary they could safely return and be “discreet”.

Also at Pink News, Jessica Green covers Amnesty’s report and notes, “An Amnesty International report claims that the UK and several other European countries are breaching United Nations rules on returning vulnerable Iraqi asylum seekers.”

The internally displaced are also targeted, especially if they attempt to return to their homes. The Palestinian refugees in Iraq remain targeted and vulnerable to assaults “mainly by Shi’a militias.” And, of course, the residents of Camp Ashraf — Iranian dissidents — remain targeted by Nouri al-Maliki in his attempts to curry favor with the Iranian government. The report closes with recommendations for a number of groupings in Iraq. We’ll note two. First the US could

* Exercise due diligence and protect the human rights of all civilians in Iraq.

* Ensure prompt, impartial and thorough investigations into all attacks on and other violent crimes against civilians by US forces, and bring those resposible to justice in conformity with internation law and without recourse to the death penalty.

For those in government in Iraq?
* Exercise due diligence and protect the human rights of all civilians in Iraq.

* Review and improve protection measures for human rights defenders, other critical voices and vulnerable groups, including by consultation with representatives of groups at risk.

* End discrimination, including with regard to protection measures, on the basis of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, origin, colour, religion, sect, belief or opinion, or economic or social status — as required by Iraqi and international law.

* Ensure prompt impartial and thorough investigations into all attacks on and other violent crimes against civilians, and bring those responsible to justice in conformity with international law and without recourse to the death penalty.

* Immediately disarm all militias.

* Train and instruct law enforcement personnel to identify at risk individuals or groups and ensure effective protection measures.

* End the indication of holder’s religion on identity cards in light of the risk of grave human rights abuses entailed in the inclusion of religious affiliation on identity cards, in consultation with religious minority communities.

* Abolish legislation that provides disproportionately lenient sentences for perpetrators claiming “honourable motives” for crimes against women and members of the gay community perceived to be transgressing traditional gender roles or moral codes.

* Ban or enforce existing bans on harmful traditional practices for girls, namely female genital mutilation and forced and early marriages.

* Provide assistance to all displaced people, including shelter, health care and other essential needs.

* Do not forcibly return any refugees or asylum-seekers to countries where they are at risk of human rights violations.

For the global community, the recommendations include: “End all forcible returns to any part of Iraq; any return of rejected asylum-seekers should only take place when the security situation in the whole country has stabilized.” Friday on Free Speech Radio News, it was noted that Denmark was forcibly returning an Iraqi refugee.

Sondre Bjordal: A resigned atmosphere hung over the small group of protestors this afternoon after Umaeed the Iraqi asylulm seeker who had since 2002 was led by police to the gates. Umaeed is one of about 280 aslyum seekers including some two dozen children who are effected by an agreement between the Danish and Iraqi governments that lets them repatriate asylum seekers even if their lives may be in danger in the war ridden country. Under the agreement, Iraq has promised their safety but the UN doubts that promise can be fulfilled. Forced repatriations now happen about once a month. Umaeed’s pregnant wife told FSRN that she now sees little hope for the future.

Umaeed’s wife: I don’t know what to do. I can’t provide for myself. I can’t. A woman with two children can’t provide for herself. And the children of course need their father.

Sondre Bjordal: As many as 200,000 Muslims live in Denmark where limiting immigration has become a major political issue.

That was pointed out by a FRSN friend who also informed me that I was wrong (I was wrong) and that FRSN had noted the Friday’s bombings on Fridays:

In Baghdad today, numerous bombs exploded across the city — at least 58 people are dead. Varying reports say there were between 6 and 13 blasts — most targeted Shia mosques during Friday prayers. The blasts follow yesterday’s announcement that yet another high level al Qaeda leader was recently detained. In the past week, US and Iraqi forces have killed at least three high level al Qaeda in Iraq leaders, and detained a number of others.

As noted, I was wrong in yesterday’s snapshot. My apologies for my error and thank you to a FRSN friend for calling me and correcting me.

Amnesty’s also notes how the continued election confusion isn’t helping either. It’s not surprising that Iraq has yet to form a government. No one’s surprised by that, not even Chris Hill. What’s surprising is that roadblocks keep being tossed out there to prevent talks to forming a coalition — such as yesterday’s disqualifying of candidates — including two who won seats in the Parliament. Today US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton issued the following statement:

On March 7, I congratulated the people of Iraq on their national elections, which were a clear demonstration of their commitment to democracy and a future without fear and intimidation.
Iraq’s Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC), the United Nations, the Arab League, and both international and domestic observers declared those elections to be free of widespread or systematic fraud. The United States respects the legal avenues that Iraq has set up for challenges to candidates and to electoral results. However, for challenges to be credible and legitimate they must also be transparent and must accord with the laws and mechanisms established for the conduct of the elections. Investigations into allegations of fraud should be conducted in accordance with IHEC procedures. Similarly, candidates should have every opportunity to answer charges against them. Transparency and due process are essential to protecting the integrity of the process and preserving the confidence of the Iraqi people in their democratic system.
The United States does not support a particular party or candidate. We seek a long-term partnership with an Iraq that is stable, sovereign and self-reliant. As a friend and partner, the United States calls upon Iraq’s leaders to set aside their differences, respect the courageous ballots of the Iraqi people, and to form quickly a government that is inclusive and represents the will of all Iraqis and their hope for a brighter future in a strong, independent and democratic Iraq.

Mu Xuequan (Xinhua) reminds, “Before the elections, the IHEC banned more than 500 politicians, mostly Sunnis, from running in the national vote over alleged links to Baath party.” Firas Al-Atraqchi (Huffington Post) shares a fear, “The decision by an Iraqi court to disqualify dozens of candidates — including one winner from the Iraqiya coalition led by former premier Iyad Allawi — for alleged ties to the Baath party could push the country closer to civil war.” It’s a common fear. Osama Al Sharif (Arab News) notes, “Iraq is tailspinning into a bottomless pit of terrorism, sectarian violence and political disarray. Since the March 7 elections, the government has become dysfunctional while the country’s various political parties and alliances continue to engage in futile bargaining that has prevented any of them from clinching the required majority to end the impasse.” Also noting disturbing events which might be trends is Simon Tisdall (Guardian):

Last Friday saw a series of bomb attacks on Shia targets in Baghdad and Anbar, in the Sunni triangle. Some of the carnage was attributed to al-Qaida in Mesopotamia, purportedly to avenge the killing by US forces of its two most senior leaders. But the savagery was reminiscent of the mosque bombings in 2006 that sparked Sunni-Shia sectarian warfare — and was seen as an attempt to rekindle it.
Iraqi soldiers who arrived on the scene of one of the bombings were stoned by angry Sunnis who oppose the Shia-led government. Ominously, Moqtada al-Sadr, the Iran-based foe of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, has since said his Shia Mehdi army, demobilised under a 2008 truce, is ready to step in to protect worshippers. His “offer” resurrected the spectre of the militia battles of old.
In a separate incident last week, the family of a Sunni tribal chief who supported the US-initiated programme to build a Sunni alliance against al-Qaida was butchered after gunmen stormed their home in Tarmiya, north of Baghdad. Police said the man’s three young sons had their throats cut while his wife and daughter were shot in the head.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post’s Leila Fadel reported that troops from Iraq’s predominantly Shia army beat and tortured dozens of Sunni men in Radwaniyah, west of Baghdad, after the killing of five soldiers. The incident was said to have underscored the gulf of mistrust separating the two communities.

UAE’s The National Newspaper notes, “Certain Shiite factions are using a variety of procedural tricks to weaken Iraqiyya, the secular party led by Ayad Allawi, which won the most seats in last month’s elections. We have seen these games before. The infamous de-Baathification Committee, led by Ali Al Lami and Ahmad Chalabi, themselves running for parliament, disqualified hundreds of candidates, alleging that they had ties to the banned Baath Party. Cooler heads were able to limit the vendetta’s damage and there was no boycott of the election.” And of course, yesterday saw al-Lami and Chalabi get their way yet again as 50 candidates from the March 7th election were announced banned. Ma’ad Fayad (Asharq Alawsat Newspaper) reports, “Iraqiya spokesman Maysoon al-Damluji told Asharq Al-Awsat via telephone from Amman on Sunday that ‘the Iraqiya bloc will go the UN Security Council — as Iraq remains under Chapter VII of the UN Charter — as well as the European Union, the Arab League, and the Organization of the Islamic Conference, in order to protect the political process in Iraq.’ He added that ‘the US signed a security agreement with Iraq taking responsibility to protect the democratic process in Iraq which Iraqis died for’.” Today’s Zaman reports, “Iyad Alawi, the leader of the Iraqi election-winning al-Iraqiyya bloc, said on Tuesday in Ankara that his cross-sectarian alliance will not let a small group of judges take the political process hostage, referring to a ruling by an Iraqi election court that disqualified 52 candidates, including one al-Iraqiyya winner — a decision that threw Iraq’s disputed election results into even deeper disarray.”

Jason Ditz: It’s a dispute about the election which is now a month and a half ago and we still don’t have any real effort to form a government by any of the parties and we’re not even really clear who won because the election commission has announced that they are recounting all the ballots in Baghdad which is something that Maliki has wanted since the election because his party didn’t do as well in Baghdad as they thought but since the election commission is so close with Malaki there’s kind of assumption that these recounts are going to be designed to ensure that he get a few extra seats.

Jason Ditz is with Antiwar.com and Scott Horton interviewed for Antiwar Radio.

Scott Horton: Give us the lowdown on the three major blocs and the compromises that are not being worked out. I mean it’s a parliamentary system, they need a majority in their one big House of Representatives to chose their prime minister, right?

Jason Ditz: Right no one of these parties is going to get anywhere near a majority. Right now the preliminary talk showed Iraqiya which is Ayad Allawi’s bloc which is sort of a secular bloc and has a large number of Sunnis in it leading with 91 seats. Maliki is just behind with 89 seats. And then the third place finisher ,which is kind of a king maker, is Moqtada al-Sad’r Iraqi National Alliance which has 70 seats

Scott Horton: Right and it’s important I think when you call it Moqtada al-Sadr’s Iraqi National Alliance, as you explained on the show the last time you were here — it’s really no longer the Hakims’ Iraqi National Alliance. The older Hakim, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, has died, his son has taken over and apparently Sadr has really muscled into control over that entire group.

Jason Ditz: Right the younger Hakim never appeared all that interested in politics. And he tried, he isn’t all that savy either. So. The Surpeme Islamic Iraqi Council barely got any seats in the election, I mean they’re –

Scott Horton: Are they going to stay in the coaltion with Sadr or is there a chance that they might split off and go join with Maliki’s new party?

Jason Ditz: Well there’s been some talk that they might do that. But Hakim has also spoken favorably about Allawi being the winner of the election and that Allawi should be allow to form a government. So I’m not really sure that they’ve made any decision to change.

And UPI reports today that the extra-legal Justice and Accountability Commission announced, via Chalabi’s boy pal Ali al-Lami, that it was reviewing nine “would-be lawmakers” to determine if they were ‘Ba’athists.’ And I really don’t mean to kick the stupid, I really don’t. But I will note — without naming him — that if indeed the US had — as he falsely reported — worked out an agreement for Nouri and Ayad to share the prime ministership (splitting it in half by years), then all of this wouldn’t be taking place. I will note that his fanciful ‘reporting’ never ceases to amuse even if it never quite matches up with reality. Surveying events, Robert Dreyfuss (The Nation) draws some conclusions:

The latest evidence of Iran’s maneuvering in Iraq: the pro-Iranian Iraqi National Alliance and its ally, the so-called Justice and Accountability Commission (JAC), have struck again, this time disqualifying several winning candidates in the March 7 election and threatening to disqualify many others. (In January, you’ll recall, the Commission barred more than 500 candidates from the ballot on spurious charges that they were members or supporters of the Baath Party, the former Arab nationalist party that was a powerful force in pre-2003 Iraq, going back to the 1950s.)

Meanwhile Caroline Alexander (Bloomberg News) reports that Nouri’s cabinet “passed a five-year development plan” today. The Parliament is over. The newly elected, once sworn in, will be the Parliament. But currently the country has no Parliament. Why is Nouri using this time to push through things like five-year plans? And if we followed the $186 billion he’s committing/giving to various people in this plan, might we find he’s buying off influence — with other blocs or possibly judicial types?

The at-risk population remains at-risk. Nothing’s changed. One at-risk population in Iraq is journalists. Alsumaria TV notes, “The Committee to Protect Journalists urged the Pentagon on Monday to probe the death of journalists in Iraq by US forces.” We noted that in yesterday’s snapshot. There’s been more than enough time for it to make into the news cycle . . . but try to find it. France’s AFP does and notes, “The New York-based media rights group published its 2010 ‘Impunity Index’ earlier this month, a list of a dozen countries where journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes – topping the list was Iraq with 88 unsolved journalist murders.” There’s Reuters’ article. Excuse me, where’s the US outlet covering it? And not a wire service. Where’s the newspaper covering it or all the ‘reporters’ working on the style section today? Where’s NPR covering it or are they too busy covering Billy Carter 2010?

In Iraq today, Reuters notes 2 college students were shot (one dead, one wounded) in Kirkuk, a Mosul shooting claimed the life of 1 police officer and left another wounded and police exchanged fire injuring “a child and a man” while two Mosul roadside bombings left two people injured.

And that’s going to be it except for a message from me. I’m hearing what we’re being asked to note, stuff e-mailed to the public account. We will note the DPC tomorrow. I’m told it’s too wide — the press release — to be copied and pasted and I’m not going to ask the friend I’m dictating this too to retype a lengthy press release. For the same reason, an event in Tennessee can’t be noted here. Both will be noted in the morning entries tomorrow. However, not those but other things. I’m not interested. I am not interested in your need to scream “RACIST” in order to score some political points.

Stop sending me your crap. Don’t send me your crap about so and so being treated poorly by a racist press. I’m not in the f**king mood. Is that clear?

Senator Roland Burris was treated in a racist manner and you never spoke up. And you never defended him. So why don’t you just sit your White ass down and think about your actions.

The press followed that lead that people like you created with regards to Roland Burris but the press had enough sense to reconsider when they saw, with their own eyes, how it looked as Senator Burris was not seated. Is the press “racist”? It can be. It can follow the mood of the country. It can usually do some self-examination as well. I’m sick of all this “Oh, this is what the press is, that’s what the press is” b.s. from people who don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. I’m less and less enchanted with some of the media criticism that’s being churned out these days by people who don’t even understand the way the media works. I grew up in a media family and I do understand how it works, I understood before I was ten.

I’m not really sure if it’s that people don’t understand it or that they want to make charges to work the ref. But I don’t have time for it. Stop it. Don’t send me another thing. And here’s one more thing to all you people with websites wanting endlessly to be noted here. You don’t have to link to me, I don’t give a damn. If I wanted attention, I wouldn’t be “C.I.” online. But I do care that none of you cover Iraq. So in the future, when you’re asking for yet another favor, why don’t you include when you last noted the ongoing Iraq War. And if it hasn’t been in weeks, how ’bout you don’t bother with an e-mail?

As Katya says in Russia House, “I hope you are not being frivolous, Barley. My life now only has room for truth.”
The world does not revolve around New York. I know that surprises you. I know you wanted to go to town on Eliot Spitzer. And I know I said it was a political hit job and you should be defending him. You didn’t, did you? Still think you made the right call on that? Going smutty work out real good for you? Going smutty work out real good for Wall Street?

Did you defend Noam Chomsky? Oh, no, you didn’t do that either did you. You don’t do too much at all, do you? But you scream “Racist!” to advance Democratic politics — even though you yourself are not a Democrat.

I am offended that I’m being pulled into this nonsense. I’m not in the mood for this s**t and it’s exactly what’s going to make us go back to only including things that have to do with Iraq or that a personal friend of mine asks to be noted. Stop abusing the public e-mail account and, honestly, grow up. I’m passing this stupid e-mail over to Elaine who will probably comment on it at her site.

* Welcome to my Middle Eastern gay site. Check out Morocco gay porn and films featuring the hottest Morocco guys with gigantic dicks. Don’t forget to bookmark my site. Enjoy! *

UIC Pride is essentially a group with two main goals: to create a community in which LGBT individuals can feel safe and accepted and to educate UIC and the wider community on LGBT issues that may be overlooked or ignored. It is the second of the above goals that is being fulfilled in this piece.

The Middle East isn’t exactly the best place in the world for human rights in general and LGBT rights in particular. Homosexuality is illegal in Bahrain, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Gaza, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen, with penalties ranging from three years in prison to death. In Iraq, homosexuality was illegal until 2003, after the US invasion. In Egypt and Jordan, homosexuality is technically legal but there is absolutely no protection from hate crimes or honor killings; gays are often persecuted under lewd conduct laws, and there are reports of gays seeking asylum elsewhere. The Palestinian Authority has legalized homosexuality and there are even LGBT organizations for West Bank Palestinians . . . However, these organizations are located in Israel.

Amidst all of this oppression, one nation stands up for what is right: Israel. In Israel, homosexuality has been legal since 1963 de facto and since 1988 de jure. Israel is the only nation in the Middle East that allows same-sex couples full adoption rights. It is the only nation in the Middle East that allows gays to serve openly in the military, something even our nation has yet to allow. Israel even recognizes same-sex marriages performed abroad, as there is no civil marriage in Israel.

In 1951 Israel signed the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees covenant, guaranteeing asylum for anyone persecuted on the basis of sexual orientation. In concordance with this, Israel’s Interior Ministry has said that any gay Palestinian can apply to remain in Israel indefinitely, making Israel one of the few options available to desperate and oppressed gay Palestinians. Gay Palestinians in the territories are often accused of collaborating with Israel and arrested and/or are pressured into becoming suicide bombers to purge their moral guilt. We showed a film with the UIC Levine Hillel Center this past year with a plot along those lines.

Israel is not perfect. Last year there was a fatal attack at a Tel Aviv gay and lesbian center when an extremist gunman entered and opened fire. Though this attack drew condemnations from all across Israeli society and the highest levels of government, it shows that there are still obstacles to overcome in Israel. That’s what’s so amazing about Israel though; the obstacles can, and likely will, be overcome. Furthermore, although gay Palestinians are able to apply to stay in Israel, many do not. It could either be that they’re unaware of their rights or they fear they’ll be deported if they go through the authorities. They know what will happen to them if they’re sent home and they grew up learning to mistrust the Israeli government.

Despite Israel’s flaws, it is still amazingly progressive when it comes to sexual freedoms. Some organizations that claim to fight for gay rights would do well to remember that. Many of them end up fighting on the side of Israel’s enemies, their enemies, the enemies of freedom, those who would kill them sooner than look at them. While hating on Israel may be fashionable these days, we have decided to stand on the right side of history.

We choose to stand with freedom and democracy, with the only chance for a prosperous Middle East. We stand with those in Arab countries who long for the same rights we have won in America, and even more so in Israel. We stand with the best hope Middle Eastern LGBT individuals have. We stand with Israel.

We pray for peace in the Middle East. We pray for all those throughout the region and the world who are forced to hide who they are and for all those who will be unable to do so and have to face the consequences.

And finally, we wish Israel a very happy sixty-second birthday with many more to come

In Islam, homosexuals (called qaum Lut, the “people of Lot”) are condemned in the story of Lot’s people in the Qur’an (15:73; 26:165) and in the last address of the Prophet Muhammad. However, attraction of men to beautiful male youths has been a part of the culture of some Islamic societies and the attraction is not generally condemned in itself.

With regard to lesbian homosexuality, some have argued that since penetration is not involved, female homosexual acts should be less severely punished. Shari’a (Islamic law) is most concerned with public behavior and outwards, so there is no strong condemnation of homosexuality if it is not displayed in public. 1
Homosexuality in the Qur’an

The following passages are taken from the Abdullah Yusuf Ali translation of the Qur’an.

“We also sent Lut: He said to his people: Do ye commit lewdness such as no people in creation (ever) committed before you? For ye practice your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds. And his people gave no answer but this: they said, “Drive them out of your city: these are indeed men who want to be clean and pure!”" (Qur’an 7:80-82)

“Of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males, And leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing (all limits)! They said: “If thou desist not, O Lut! thou wilt assuredly be cast out!” He said: “I do detest your doings:” “O my Lord! deliver me and my family from such things as they do!” So We delivered him and his family,- all Except an old woman who lingered behind. But the rest We destroyed utterly. We rained down on them a shower (of brimstone): and evil was the shower on those who were admonished (but heeded not)! Verily in this is a Sign: but most of them do not believe. And verily thy Lord is He, the Exalted in Might, Most Merciful.” (Qur’an 26:165-175)

“Would ye really approach men in your lusts rather than women? Nay, ye are a people (grossly) ignorant! But his people gave no other answer but this: They said, “Drive out the followers of Lut from your city: these are indeed men who want to be clean and pure!” But We saved him and his family, except his wife; her We destined to be of those who lagged behind. And We rained down on them a shower (of brimstone): and evil was the shower on those who were admonished (but heeded not)!” (Qur’an 27:55-58)

“And (remember) Lut: behold, he said to his people: “Ye do commit lewdness, such as no people in Creation (ever) committed before you. Do ye indeed approach men, and cut off the highway? – and practise wickedness (even) in your councils?” But his people gave no answer but this: they said: “Bring us the Wrath of Allah if thou tellest the truth.” (Qur’an 29:28-29)

“If any of your women are guilty of lewdness, Take the evidence of four (Reliable) witnesses from amongst you against them; and if they testify, confine them to houses until death do claim them, or Allah ordain for them some (other) way. If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, Leave them alone; for Allah is Oft-returning, Most Merciful.” (Qur’an 4:15-16)

Homosexuality in the Sharia

While there is a consensus that same-sex intercourse is in violation of Islamic law, there are differences of opinion within Islamic scholarship about punishment, reformation, and what standards of proof are required before physical punishment becomes lawful.

In Sunni Islam there are eight madhhabs, or legal schools, of which only four still exist: Hanafi, Shafi’i, Hanbali, Maliki. The main Shia school is called Ja’fari, but there are Zaidi and Ismai’ili also. More recently, some groups have rejected this tradition in favor of greater ijtihad, or individual interpretation. Of these schools, according to Michael Mumisa of the Birmingham-based Al Mahdi institute:

* The Hanafi school does not consider same-sex intercourse to constitute adultery, and therefore leaves punishment up to the judge’s discretion. Most early scholars of this school specifically ruled out the death penalty, others allow it for a second offence.
* Imam Shafi’i considers same-sex intercourse as analogous to other zina; thus, a married person found to have done so is punished as an adulterer (by stoning to death), and an unmarried one, as a fornicator, is left to be flogged.
* The Maliki school says that anyone (married or unmarried) found to have committed same-sex intercourse should be punished as an adulterer.
* Within the Ja’fari schools, Sayyid al-Khoi says that anyone (married or unmarried) found to have committed same-sex intercourse should be punished as an adulterer.

It should also be noted that the punishment for adultery requires four witnesses; by analogy, all schools, require four witnesses to the physical act of penetration for the punishment to be applied.But if otherwise any other proof is found through modern methods such as DNA testing or so the punishment can be implimented.

According to the modern Islamic scholar Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s summary:

“The jurists of Islam have held different opinions concerning the punishment for this abominable practice. Should it be the same as the punishment for zina, or should both the active and passive participants be put to death? While such punishments may seem cruel, they have been suggested to maintain the purity of the Islamic society and to keep it clean of perverted elements.” 2

History of Homosexuality in Islamic Societies

17th cent. painting of Mahmud and Ayaz (Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art). The love of the Sultan (in red) for his slave (in green) has entered Islamic legend as a paragon of ideal love.

The chaste love of men for youths has been regarded as something sacred in many Islamic socities, as reflected in the romantic love literature of Muslim Spain and in the Qur’an where Paradise contains beautiful male virgins. Occasionally, these literary praises extended to more carnal forms of desire, as can be seen in the poetry of Abu Nuwas and many others. In Islamic teaching, however, while homosexual desire and love might be accommodated, same-sex intercourse is prohibited as a violation of the natural boundaries set by Allah.

Early Islamic cultures, especially those in which homosexuality was entrenched in the pre-Islamic pagan culture, were renowned for their cultivation of a homosexual aesthetic. They reconciled their new religion using a hadith ascribed to Muhammad declaring male lovers who die chaste to be martyrs: “He who loves and remains chaste and conceals his secret and dies, dies a martyr.”

The result is a religion that allows love between those of the same gender as long as they do not have sexual intercourse. Ibn Hazm, Ibn Daud, Al-Mu’tamid, Abu Nuwas, and many others wrote extensively and openly of love between men. However, in order for the transgression to be proven, at least four men or eight women must bear witness against the accused, thus making it very difficult to persecute those who did not remain celibate in their homes.

The intended meaning of “same-sex intercourse” is sexual intercourse between two or more males, or sexual intercourse between two or more females. It does not mean the act of masturbation, nor does it have anything to do with nocturnal emissions, both of which are considered to invalidate wudu and require the Muslim to take a full bath or shower before his or her next prayer, but are not otherwise punishable under Sharia.
Homosexuality Laws in Modern Islamic Countries

Same-sex intercourse carries the death penalty in five officially Muslim nations: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, Sudan, and Yemen. 3 It formerly carried the death penalty in Afghanistan under the Taliban, and in Iraq under a 2001 decree by Saddam Hussein. The legal situation in the United Arab Emirates is unclear. In many Muslim nations, such as Bahrain, Qatar, Algeria or the Maldives, homosexuality is punished with jail time, fines or corporal punishment. In some Muslim-majority nations, such as Turkey, Jordan, Egypt, or Mali, same-sex intercourse is not forbidden by law. However, in Egypt gays have been the victims of laws against “morality”.

In Saudi Arabia, the maximium punishment for homosexuality is public execution, but the government will use other punishments, i.e. fines, jail time and whipping as alternatives, unless it feels that homosexuals are challenging state authority by engaging in a gay rights movement. 4 Iran is perhaps the nation to execute the largest number of its citizens for homosexuality. Since its Islamic revolution in Iran, the Iranian government has executed more than 4000 people charged with homosexual acts. In Afghanistan after the fall of the Taliban homosexuality went from a capital crime to one that it punished with fines and prison sentence, and a similar situation seems to have occurred in Iraq.

Most international human rights organizations, such as Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, condemn laws that make homosexual relations between consenting adults a crime. Since 1994 the United Nations Human Rights Committee has also ruled that such laws violated the right to privacy guaranteed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covent on Civil and Political Rights. However (except for nations such as Turkey that were required to change their laws to be eligible to join the European Union) most Muslim nations insist that such laws are neccesary to preserve Islamic morality and virtue. Of the nations with a majority of Muslim, only Lebanon has an internal effort to legalize homosexuality. However, some Muslims have expressed criticism of the legal sanctions used against homosexuality.

Reasons given by Muslims condemning the executions include: the fact that some legal schools (e.g. Hanafi) regard it as unjustified; the argument that the death penalty is not specified for it in the Qur’an; the idea that the punishment is unduly harsh; and opposition to the idea that the state’s laws should be based on religion. The introduction of the AIDS pandemic in the Muslim world has also promoted more discussion about the legal status of homosexuality as the legal sanctions against homosexuality have made it difficult to intiaite any educational programs directed at high risks groups.

While executions and other criminal sanctions curtail any public gay rights movement, it is impractical to give criminal sanctions to all homosexuals living in a Muslim country, and it is common knowledge (to foreigners visiting a Muslim country) that some young Muslim men will experiment with homosexual relations as an outlet to sexual desires that cannot be met in a society where the sexes are often kept segregated. These discreet and casual homosexual relations allow men to engage in premartial sex with a low risk of facing the social or legal sanctions that would occur if they involved in adultery or fornication with a woman that might result in a pregnancy. Most of these men do not consider themsleves to be gay or bisexual.

A related problem to full enforcement of the laws against homosexuality is that while the sexes are often segregated, men are encouraged to developed close friendships with other men, and women are encouraged to develop close friendships with other women. Also, the Islamic law requires a certain number of male and female witnesses to the homosexual act to testify in court. Islam does place a strong value on the right to privacy in the home and thus homosexual relations that occur in private are theoretically outside the bounds of the law, although that is more theory then reality.
Liberal Islamic Stances on Homosexuality

Some self-described liberal Muslims accept and consider homosexuality as natural, regarding these verses as either obsolete in the context of modern society, or point out that the Qu’ran speaks out against homosexual lust, and is silent on homosexual love. However, this position remains highly controversial even amongst liberal movements within Islam, and is considered completely beyond the pale by mainstream Islam.

For Samir*, a 34-year-old gay man living in Saudi Arabia, each day is a denial. He lives in Mecca, the holiest city according to Islam, and is acutely aware of the stigma that surrounds his gay lifestyle.

“I’m a Muslim. I know it’s forbidden, but I can’t help it,” he tells ABC News, clearly conflicted.

“I pray to God to help me be straight, just to avoid hell. But I know that I’m gay and I’m living as one, so I can’t see a clear vision for the future.”

Samir, like many gay men in the Arab world, guards his sexual orientation with a paranoid secrecy. To feel free he takes long vacations to Thailand, where he has a boyfriend, and spends weekends in Lebanon, which he regards as having a more gay-tolerant society.

But at home in Saudi Arabia, he is vigilant. Samir’s parents don’t know of his lifestyle. He says his mom would kill herself if she found out. They constantly set him up with women they consider potential wives. At work, Samir watches his words, careful not to arouse the suspicion of colleagues.

“You can’t let a word slip that makes you seem gay-friendly or gay,” he says. “Before you make a move you have to think.”

Samir occasionally goes to Saudi cafes known to be popular gay hangouts, but his public engagements stop there. He and his friends are constantly wary of officers from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, the kingdom’s religious police, who patrol for and punish men they suspect of being gay.

Homosexuality is illegal in Saudi Arabia, but the charge calls for four witnesses to make a case. Arrests by the religious police are far more arbitrary. In a recent case they apprehended one man at a Jeddah shopping mall, suspecting he was gay from his tight jeans and fitted shirt.

“I’ve been invited to private parties for gay men in Jeddah, but I never go because I know what would happen if we were caught,” Samir told ABC News.

“Unless it’s a VIP house — if the party is at the home of one of the princes or one of the sheiks then you’re protected.”

In Saudi Arabia, where men and women are strictly separated, there is some space for gay life. Gay men can go cruising — a term for picking up partners — and socialize in male-only sections of cafes and restaurants. In line with sex-segregated social norms, gay lovers can often spend intimate time together without arousing suspicion.

But gays and lesbians in Saudi Arabia still need to accommodate the pressures of public life, in some cases pairing off to accommodate a freer lifestyle.

“There is a gay group of girls in Saudi looking for gay men to marry. It’s the perfect solution,” says Samir, adding that he wouldn’t mind a lesbian wife of his own.

Online Freedom but With Entrapment Risks

For Samir, the dozens of emerging Web forums for gay Arab men are a freer alternative to the offline Saudi society. I met him in one such forum, called Arab Gay Love, e-cruising for new friends and partners. Some of the users there surf with screen names that specify their sexual role: “top” or “bottom.” Among Arabs, it seems, a mix of stigma and machismo steers gay men toward the former.

“The more masculine you are, the more likely you are to label yourself as a ‘top.’ It re-enforces this feeling that you’re not really gay,” said Ahmed*, a gay Palestinian born in Kuwait. “They’re more comfortable with being tops, because it’s easier to negate the gay stigma.”

Gay Web Sites Blocked in Many Arab Countries

Web forums like arab-gay.com and manhunt.net are inaccessible in many Arab countries, blocked by state-run web filtering software. Using proxy servers men can get around the bans to the blocked sites, connecting with potential dates and building a knowledge base for gay life in the Arab world.

One blog from Syria, largely considered a repressed society, details a tourist’s guide to gay hangouts in Damascus and Aleppo.

“You could almost pick up guys everywhere, you just need to have a good gaydar. …There are four hammams in Damascus where you could play safely, but always be careful,” he writes, then listing the most popular “hammams,” or bath houses. He goes on to name the Safwan Hotel in

Lattakia as “the most famous gay-friendly hotel in the region.”

From his home in Mecca, Samir can surf the web forums and Facebook groups that connect him to the gay Arab world. But he does so with care, fearing that authorities will follow and flag gay activity online.

“You cannot be safe and intimate online. … he government can track everything. If they have their eye on you, they can follow your every move,” he says.

If Samir’s approach seems paranoid, it’s conditioned by horror stories of harsh crackdowns by Arab governments on gay life. In Egypt, where police have systematically arrested and tortured suspected homosexuals, vice squads have logged on to chat rooms posing as gay men. Forming friendships under a false identity, the police set up an expected first date, then meet their “suspects” with a brutal arrest.

“I was waiting for that guy I chatted with on the Internet a couple of days before that day, right in front of McDonald’s in Heliopolis. & It was almost 1 p.m., when I found four big guys surrounding me,” one victim of police brutality told Human Rights Watch after being set up on a false date.

“I was fighting and yelling in the street. I was dragged, almost carried to the police car … taken to the station, the ‘Adab’ Section, which takes care of prostitution, raping and, recently, homosexuality.” Human Rights Watch documented dozens of Web-based entrapments — men arrested by Egyptian police then tormented with beatings, electrocution and anal examinations.

The vice squad’s practice of covertly hunting gay men in chat rooms cooled once the teeming gay Internet scene in Egypt slowed down. Fear and suspicion effectively shut down one of gay Egypt’s few free outlets. At one point online entrapment was yielding one arrest per week, according to Human Rights Watch.

The Web was part of a greater crackdown in Egypt, a country that was once a liberal environment for homosexuals. (One gay Palestinian who has studied Arab homophobia described 20th century Egypt as the “San Francisco of the Middle East.”) Social and authoritarian attitudes toward homosexuality began to change after the Egyptian Revolution in 1952, and grew steadily harsher through the 1990s as the secular state gave way to a growing Islamic puritanism.

Government-led assaults on homosexuals intensified in 2001. The pivot point was a mass arrest known as the “Queen Boat” incident. In the early morning hours of May 11, 2001, police raided a floating nightclub called the Queen Boat, a then-popular gay hangout moored on the Nile River. Suddenly surrounded by uniformed and undercover members of the Cairo Vice Squad, dozens of gay men were arrested, detained and tortured.

U.S. Government Has Been Quiet About Gay Crackdown in Iraq

What ensued from the Queen Boat arrests was a show trial — forced confessions, some extracted under torture and a media circus designed to amplify public fear and maximize the government’s political gain from the arrest. Though Egypt claims to have no law against homosexuality, it routinely criminalizes and prosecutes gay men under a law prohibiting “juhur,” or debauchery, a charge originally levied for prostitution.

In the heat of the case, one article in the state-owned Al-Gomhoureya newspaper gave full names and identifying details of the accused, depicting the arrested homosexuals as part of an underground religious cult. The paper ran one headline, “Satanist Pervert Surprises: They Called Themselves God’s Soldiers and Practice Group Sex in Private and Public & Meetings Every Thursday at Queen Boat,” cited in the Human Rights Watch report.

Analysts point out a number of ways the Egyptian government gains from crackdowns like the Queen Boat raid. News pages full of homophobic rants are a useful distraction from issues like a faltering economy and rampant corruption, which erode government support. In the same stroke, the state gains ground against its Islamist opponents by attacking homosexuals — trumped-up offenders against Muslim values. “They want to reassert their relevance and position themselves as defenders of morality is one way to do it,” said Scott Long, an expert who helped produce the Human Rights Watch report.

“One of the ways Arab authorities prove they’re bona fide is by cracking down on people that everyone hates. Hardly anyone is going to stand up and stick up for homosexuals,” he said.

Long applies his analysis to other governments in the region. In 2005, authorities in Abu Dhabi, part of the United Arab Emirates, arrested more than two dozen men in the desert town of Ghantout at an event state officials characterized as a mass gay wedding. The UAE announced the men would receive lashings, jail time and forced hormone and psychological treatment. The case was eventually overturned on appeal, after news of the trial drew criticism from human rights activists and the U.S. State Department.

The U.S. government has been comparatively quiet, though, through a more recent and more deadly crackdown in Iraq. In attacks that accelerated last February, Shiite militiamen have carried out a series of beatings and assassinations of gay men, occasionally with the help of the Interior Ministry, according to Scott Long of Human Rights Watch. Al Qaeda in Iraq, a rival Islamist group, has also reportedly attacked gay men in Iraq, in what human rights activists call a clear moral cleansing campaign.

“The easiest group to attack are gay people, both politically and in regards to the militias’ Islamist aims. & They can’t stop women from going to work, they can’t stop couples from being together in public, but they can attack gay men,” said Michael Luongo, a gay rights expert and author of the book “Gay Travels in the Muslim World.”

“If you want religious credibility you attack gay people,” he said of the Islamist brigades. The recent spate of attacks followed a succession of sermons in Iraqi mosques, attacking the scourge of homosexuality. As in the case of Egyptian arrests, suspected homosexuals were detained, tortured, and forced to give names of other gay men for authorities to pursue.

Small Space for Gay Pride

Long recently traveled to Iraq to document the attacks and advocate for gay Iraqis under attack.

“There’s a campaign to kill them,” he said, describing how homosexuals have learned to protect themselves by keeping a low profile. “They hide. People turn off their phones, change their e-mail addresses, and stay home.”

Outside the spaces of hostile discrimination, homosexuals in the Middle East do manage to form a community and enjoy a freer lifestyle.

Israel, perhaps the most tolerant state in the Middle East, has a thriving gay community. Last year thousands attended the annual gay pride parade in Tel Aviv, though the event has drawn right-wing protests and attacks. A similar parade in Jerusalem, a more socially conservative environment, took place with police protection along the parade route.

Up the coast in Lebanon, a relatively liberal Arab society plays host to the first gay rights group in the Arab world. Members of Helem, an acronym in Arabic for “Lebanese Protection for Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgenders,” are activists at their own peril. In a country that moves back and forth between secularism and religious politics, the group and its gay community center are creating a space for their freedom.

In other parts of the Arab world gay life has to fit into whatever space is provided, and the borders are constantly moving. In Dubai, arguably the most modern city in Arabia, gay expats have little trouble living and loving freely. Rashid, a young Lebanese expat who lives with his partner in Dubai, knows he has it better than most. Unlike many gays in the Gulf, Rashid has come out to his parents, and felt comfortable meeting men and dating as he grew up in Abu Dhabi.

Locals, he says, have a harder time. “The Europeans and Westerners are more comfortable with their homosexuality. The locals, the Saudis and Bahrainis, are less open about it,” Rashid told ABC News.

“One friend, an Emirati, was discovered to be gay at 1999 and his family disowned him. Last we heard he was deported, he can no longer come back to the UAE, and lives in France.”

The mix of tolerance and discrimination across the Middle East creates little opportunity for a cohesive gay rights movement. Moreover, the local take on homosexuality is out of line with the Western norm, a notion of being gay as a recognized minority group.

“The phrase ‘to be is not to do’ is how I explain it,” said Luongo of homosexuality in the Arab world. In other words, being gay is an act, not an identity. When gay pride does emerge, it is associated with the West, and an invading cultural colonialism. The pushback on any budding gay rights movements will likely continue, part of ongoing discrimination against homosexuals in the Middle East. There, gays will continue their negotiated lifestyle, knowing that they live and love under scrutiny.

*Name changed to protect identity

The tens of millions of Arabic-speaking users of Microsoft’s popular Bing search engine have a problem. When it comes to searching for gay rights in Egypt, breast-feeding information in Algeria or sex advice in Jordan, they are out of luck. Bing is censoring search results in the Arab-speaking world, according to a prominent American research organization. The ban applies to search results in both Arabic and English found using Bing’s Arab portal.

A partial list of banned terms is shown above. But here’s the big problem… all the evidence points to Microsoft voluntarily censoring their search engine. No Arab countries asked them to censor search results. According to the Open Net Institute:

Microsoft’s explanation as to why some search keywords return few or no results is that “sometimes websites are deliberately excluded from the results page to remove inappropriate content as determined by local practice, law, or regulation.” It is unclear, however, whether Bing’s keyword filtering in the Arab countries is an initiative from Microsoft, or whether any or all of the Arab states have asked Microsoft to comply with local censorship practices or laws.

It is interesting that Microsoft’s implementation of this type of wholesale social content censorship for the entire “Arabian countries” region is in fact not being practiced by many of the Arab government censors themselves. That is, although political filtering is widespread in the MENA region, social filtering, including keyword filtering, is not practiced by all countries in MENA. ONI 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 testing and research found no evidence of social content filtering (e.g., sex, nudity, and homosexuality) at the national level in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya.

Meanwhile, MIT’s Technology Review parsed the Open Net report and found something very interesting. It seems that Microsoft is obsessed with the gays:

ONI performed the study by testing the search terms inside the countries. Banned words include “sex,” ” “intercourse,” “breast,” “nude,” and many more in both the English and Arabic language. The investigators also made a curious discovery: Bing engineers remembered to bar ordinary Arabs from searching for the word “penis” but not for the word “vagina.” But they left no stone unturned when it came to blocking words that might lead to sites having to do with homosexuality.

Local portal of Bings in nearly all countries or languages allow users to choose whether to use “safe search” or not. Arabic has the dubious distinction of being the only language in which users are forced to use a “nanny filter.”

Among other Arabic-speaking countries, Egypt, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon and Libya do not require search engine filtering at the national level. So, it seems, Microsoft threw internet users in those country under the bridge in order to please Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Andy Greenberg notes that Microsoft is hypocritically a member of the Global Network Initative, which fights against censorship around the world. So why the embrace of sweeping web search censorship? Unlike rivals Google and Yahoo, Microsoft is a prolific pay-software producer with extensive sales in hyperconservative Arab countries. Despite piracy being endemic in the greater Middle East, Microsoft still makes a pretty penny there.

So what is a Bing-loving Egyptian to do when he wants to search for porn? Well, Microsoft strangely decided to filter based on domain destination rather than IP address… the regular US-based Bing page still provides sexxay search results to anyone in the Arab-speaking world who opens it.

BAGHDAD – Days before a deployment to Iraq last year, the 26-year-old soldier’s sergeant told his troops that they would get to know one another pretty well over the next few months.

“I’m in trouble,’’ the specialist remembered thinking. He feared comrades would find out he is gay. Worse, he said, they could figure out that he has been dating another soldier in the combat arms battalion for more than five years. Their careers were on the line.

The reaction during the soldier’s yearlong deployment – nobody asked about it – offers new insight into how today’s military might adapt to a repeal of the ban on openly gay service members sought by President Obama and top Pentagon officials. The specialist didn’t exactly tell, but by the end of the tour, his sexual orientation had become a poorly kept secret – and his career was undamaged.

“I don’t know if I won any hearts and minds among the Iraqis,’’ said the specialist, who returned home from Iraq recently. “But I did among my brothers in arms because I did my job well and went above and beyond. I was respected.’’

A younger and more liberal corps of soldiers has given rise to a degree of tolerance in today’s military, an institution soldiers describe as still largely unwelcoming of gays, according to interviews with more than a dozen enlisted troops and officers, both gay and straight.

Underground gay communities have emerged at bases across the United States and even in war zones. In Iraq, one e-mail group maintained by gay troops includes a database where soldiers post their instant-messaging screen names and the base where they’re stationed. Dozens have profiles on gay dating sites, some posing in uniform.

In recent years, service members and researchers say, a growing number of gay troops have disclosed their sexual orientation to supervisors and comrades. They say they are buoyed by a sense that wartime commanders are increasingly reluctant to lose skilled troops to a ban many now view as archaic.

But even if the current law and policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell’’ is repealed, gay service members are unlikely to come out of the closet in large numbers, service members said.

“An openly gay soldier would have a lot to overcome,’’ said Matthew Gallagher, a former Army captain and popular blogger who left the Army last year. “It is a culture fueled entirely by machismo, and it definitely has a bit of locker-room homophobia.’’

Gallagher, 26, who is straight, said he nonetheless thinks openly gay service members should be allowed to serve. “At the end of the day, the military thrives off of pragmatism, and nothing matters more to soldiers.’’

Other officers disagree, arguing that lifting the ban could demoralize an institution strained by two ongoing wars and the toll of nearly a decade of combat.

“Due to the nature of what soldiers do, we discriminate against the too young, the too old, the infirm, the overweight, the physically unfit, and women,’’ said a senior commander who has served in Iraq, speaking on the condition of anonymity to argue against the administration’s position.

Officers often notice that their soldiers may be gay. There was something different about the 26-year-old specialist, his commander said in an interview. “He didn’t discuss his orientation with anyone, but after his peers got to know him it was apparent.’’

The specialist’s rudimentary command of Arabic and broad range of skills made him an asset. “I don’t think his orientation became an issue, because he maintained a professional appearance and performed like any other soldier,’’ said the captain.

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Istanbul/Beirut – Homosexual men in the Arab world live in constant fear. Shiite militias in Iraq torture them to death, and in Saudi Arabia they risk a flogging.

Though there are prominent politicians, actors and artists in Arab countries whose homosexuality is an open secret, they, too, can expect harassment and criminal prosecution if they ‘out’ themselves.

Lesbianism remains such a taboo in the patriarchic societies of the Middle East that it is hardly discussed in public. Lebanon is so far the only Arab country where gays and lesbians are safe to avow their sexual orientation.

In Syria, where homosexuals face from six to 12 months in prison for ’shameless behaviour,’ there is now a Web site, at least, that deals with the concerns of gays and lesbians.

Whether they belong to the Muslim majority or Christian minority, most Arabs justify their rejection of homosexuality with religious arguments.

‘Since the invasion of the American occupiers, the phenomenon of homosexuality among young men has spread in all regions of our country, and to them we say, you bring shame on us with your behaviour,’ Iraqi Sheikh Hassan al-Asari called out to the congregation at the Kufa mosque in the holy Shiite city of Najaf on a recent Friday.

The mosque was full, and thousands of Shiite Muslims listened attentively to the words of al-Asari, regarded as a confidant of radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr.

In a report last August titled ‘They Want Us Exterminated,’ the advocacy group Human Rights Watch described how far this hate toward homosexuals, couched in religion, can go. Homosexual Iraqis told of death squads that torture, mutilate and murder gays.

A number of the masked men who attack gays also rape them. Though it may seem inconsistent, some men in Turkey and the Arab world consider only the ‘passive’ partner in a sexual act between two men to be homosexual and effeminate. The ‘active’ man, however, retains his masculinity.

Homosexual men are even banned from serving in Turkey’s armed forces, ‘homosexual’ being defined as a man who can be proven to have ‘assumed the passive role’ during sex with another man.

People in the Middle East also have difficulty with the nomenclature of homosexuality. Sexual acts between members of the same gender are such a taboo in Arab countries that most Arabs either use expletives when referring to gays and lesbians or speak of ‘abnormal behaviour.’

In the United Arab Emirates, where ‘abnormal sexual relations’ are punishable by up to three years in prison, police last year launched an anti-homosexuality campaign whose official title was ‘Let’s protect our society’s traditional values!’

And in Saudi Arabia, the most conservative Arab state, a man who wears makeup and women’s clothing is called a ‘daughter of the sheikhs.’

“Sadj” is the colloquial Arabic word for “gay” in most countries of the Middle East. While a more appropriate adjective “mithli” (“like me, similar, same-(sex)”) has found its way into the elite academic vernacular of contemporary Arab society, “sadj” is the term I heard most during my travels in the Middle East. Meaning, roughly, “peculiar” or “strange,” sadj is the easy way to classify a homosexual in the Arab world. The concept of homosexuality, of intimate and romantic same-sex relations, is still so taboo, that there is no need to delve farther than that one word. Forget butch or fem or any other adjectives you’ve come to appreciate as descriptive markers in Western gay society: sadj pretty much covers all the bases. More a result of culture than of religion (but now, unfortunately, reinforced by the three dominant monotheistic religions of the region), homosexuality in the Middle East nowadays is something people don’t particularly care to talk about. In some more progressive parts of the region, people understand and recognize that these “sadjeeyeen” exist, but there is no need to discuss them. Morocco is one of these places.

If you juxtapose Morocco (Maroc, in French) against many other countries in the Arab world, such as Sudan or Iraq, the sliver of North Africa looks likes a calm oasis for Middle Eastern gays and lesbians. While sporadic acts of violence against homosexuals is definitely a threat, they pale in comparison to the recent violence that has flared in post-invasion Iraq. And while many Moroccans are just as torn on the issue as most Arabs across the Middle East, Morocco tends to be a more lenient society overall than other North African countries. Morocco itself is a patchwork of cultures and languages, ranging from Berber to Spanish, Portuguese to Arab, and French to Senegalese and sub-saharan African. Most Moroccans are descendants of the Berbers, the original inhabitants of the the “maghreb” region of North Africa, including the current Moroccan ruler, King Mohammed VI. Throw in there a mix of all the ethnicities listed above and you have a country steeped in cultural diversity and plurality. In my opinion, this kind of melting pot of cultures, minorities, languages, and religions is the ideal environment for the acceptance of homosexuals. Look at the United States or Britain: two countries with relatively accepting social policies with historically large immigrant populations. Currently Morocco has the potential to reach the level of acceptance needed for an open society that embraces homosexuals, but with the rising threat of Islamic fundamentalism and extremism, as well as a cultural revival aiming to bring Morocco back to the seventh century and the time of the Prophet Muhammad, homosexuals (at least Moroccan homosexuals) continue to be looked at, thankfully in a mostly nonviolent manner, as taboo: as “sadj.”

This doesn’t mean that Morocco is anti-gay. On the contrary, the country has come a long way under the auspices of the current royal regime. In 2005, King Muhammad VI endorsed a grand, sweeping reform of the mudawana, or Moroccan family code, that extended much needed basic human rights to Morocco’s women and children, much to the chagrin of many fundamentalists. In addition to the family law reforms, King Muhammad VI has expanded (if only by a small measure) the power of Morocco’s parliament and has endorsed the idea of more powerful multiparty political system. While Morocco’s monarchy is not going anywhere anytime soon (the king is considered a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad), many in Morocco are becoming more and more impatient with the royal house. And while most homes and shops are equipped with portraits of their youthful king, it is common to find many Moroccans who would rather see the throne abolished, to be replaced by a more democratic system or an Islamist-led regime. New rumors about the king emerge everyday and can result in a strict response from the Moroccan government if leaked to the press or published online. The most entertaining, and personally interesting, rumor I stumbled across during my time in Morocco is that the king himself may be homosexual. Young, in his forties, and an avid water sportsman, many street vendors sell smiling photos of the king on vacation jet skiing in the south of France. Very rarely do you see pictures of the Moroccan ruler with his young wife or child. One of the juiciest rumors came this past summer, when it became known that the Moroccan king had decided to take a vacation to a private chateau outside of Paris, sans his wife or child, and, presumably, in the company of men. Could the Moroccan king be gay? For most traditional Moroccans, this would result in a blasphemy so intense it could threaten the throne itself. The idea of a gay member of the Prophet Mohammad’s lineage would be disastrous for the royal family and Morocco’s system of constitutional monarchy. Unfortunately, we may never know. Any questioning the king’s sexuality would almost certainly result in a swift backlash by the royal house and the Moroccan authorities. It is important to note that this type of response by the Moroccan government is not reserved for questioning their ruler’s personal life alone, almost any publicized opinion of the king can result in imprisonment or trial.

The king aside, Moroccan society, especially urban communities, are becoming slightly more open to homosexuals in their presence, if not the accepting of the actual concept itself. Marrakech, for example, is the largest city in southern Morocco and the tourist hub of the country. Known for its pink hued buildings, winding “souks” (markets) and djemma el-fnaa, or Square of the Dead, once used to display the executions of prisoners but now used for outdoor food stalls and entertainment, Marrakech is the Morocco many think of when considering the country for a vacation. With the desert to one side and the looming High Atlas mountains to the other, Marrakech is truly a magical city. This is made more so by its recent transition into a more decadent venue. Bars and clubs are springing up across the new city, inviting Moroccans to sit back, sip a beer (another taboo across much of the Middle East) and socialize with singles outside of the home and immediate community. Across town, in the old city, gay Europeans are coming in droves to buy up expensive real estate to renovate traditional Moroccan riads, or courtyard homes, into summer homes. Many rural Moroccan gays are leaving their villages and farms to settle into apartments and homes in Morocco’s new flashy vacation city. Walking through the djemma el-fnaa one evening, I met several gay Moroccan men, all out enjoying themselves and their new found urban freedom. This new liberalism has even resulted in the publication of a “Hedonists Guide to Marrakech”, part of a series of tour books usually reserved for larger, more European destinations. Agadir, Casablanca, and Fez, three other Moroccan cities, are also working to catch up with Marrakech’s success, expanding their new cities and allowing the construction of discotheques, bars, and other places that encourage mingling amongst the Moroccan youth.

In short, Morocco is no France or Spain. To be openly homosexual is still dangerous, if more to one’s reputation and family honor than to one’s physical safety as in other Middle Eastern countries. While the king still calls all the shots and the press is heavily censured, the diverse history of the Moroccan people is creating a moderate atmosphere in a conservative neighborhood of the world. More and more Moroccan gays are finding it easier to meet each other and live their lives, especially in cities such as Marrakech. Gay travelers are finding an option in the Middle East to experience Arab culture and not fear for their safety, although modesty is absolutely required when in public. And while the Moroccan dialect still uses words such as “sadj” to describe homosexuals, many are finding themselves apathetic and, in some rare cases, open to same-sex relations. After returning home from living in Morocco, I called my host brother to tell him that I am gay. I was almost more nervous than when I came out to my parents. I expected immediate rejection from my host family, a crumbling of cross cultural relations I had nurtured over the past year. To my surprise my host brother and other Moroccan friends completely embraced my sexuality. “Who cares?” my host brother exclaimed, “You are my brother, and I love you for who you are.”

I only hope that this feeling of acceptance and openness will become more and more widespread in Morocco in the years to come.

Might is right?

No! Might is not always right but it can impose its rights on you.It can bully,intimidate,coerce or bomb you into submission.

The West have perfected the art of ‘might is right’ into a new form of colonialism, deploy either by the might of the pen or the barrel of a gun.

In the case of Iraq, Afghanistan now Pakistan and soon Yemen and very soon Iran the gun speaks louder than the pen.Where literacy is low and the pen has no effect the gun would be the weapon of choice.

The Talibans respect only two things, Islam and Pastunwali, no guns and bombs are going to scare them off.The Brits have seen it,the Russians got their balls fried and the Amercian offering themselves a journey to hell.It’s going to be a long and senseless war.

In Afghanistan, keeping young boy as company is not uncommon.Sodomy not only exists in Genesis 19.24 and God’s retribution for impenitent sins.Today, divine retributions come still in its familiar forms, the acts of God.

In Malaysia, the axiomatic ” pen is mightier than the sword” has proven its might and stabbed Malaysians right in the hearts.

In the hearts and minds, Malaysians are bought.It’s no more the court of justice that be the judge of Anwar Ibrahim’s sodomy case, it’s the court of public opinion that have decided his innocent.

Washington Post (in my previous post here.) in its hard hitting editorial warned Malaysia that the Obama administration and other Western governments interested in stability in Asia should make clear that the imprisonment of Mr. Anwar would be a blatant human rights violation — and not in Malaysia’s interest.

A kind of threat?

Isn’t Malaysia a sovereign nation and has its own rule of law?

The might of Western powers have made them into believing theirs are the only righteous path and the rest of the world is nescient and, therefore, must be taught a lesson, whatever it might be, from human rights to doesn’t matter how contorted morality is in the eyes of the Easterners, the way of the West is superciliously prettier.Submit or be damned.

Homosexuality, as we all know, exists all over the world and in every culture. Most religion, particularly the Abrahamic religions do not look kindly upon it.In the Bible, the story of Lot and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah was about divine anger against sodomy.

In some Middle Eastern countries you are dead meat if you are caught or known to be gay. It’s viewed as a sickness and sexual perversion.In Eastern Asia they are mostly tolerated but kept under the lid.In the West they have gained celebrity status, excepted and viewed as the right of an individual and where the burqas and minarets are seen as bigger evil than sodomy.

In most part of Asia including the very modern and squeaky clean Singapore sodomy with same sex partners is a crime.Old Mr Lee wanted the whole sodomy law to be repelled but, somehow, his government was not in favour of such drastic change.As in the words of his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong “it could send the wrong signal and encourage LGBT activists to ask for more concessions, such as same-sex marriage and parenting.”

In 2007, Singapore amended its Sodomy Law and decriminalised sodomy among heterosexual partners but still makes it an offence among same sex partners.Maximum imprisonment for sodomy in Singapore is 2 years.However, no one had been charged in recent times.

In Malaysia sodomy is much more serious offence,if convicted a maximum of 20 years is allowed under the law.

In some Middle Eastern countries you could get killed for being gay, not necessarily by the law but by maniacal homophobic.

With the exception of Anwar Ibrahim there have been no other sodomy case in Malaysia. As long as there was no police report against a person the government have no business charging him.In the case of Anwar, a police report was lodged by an aggrieved party.The right place to decide the case is the Malaysian court of justice,not the Western press,not the court of public opinion and not Anwar’s court of courtiers.

In many truly Asian countries, I don’t consider the Middle East as truly Asian, most people have no problem with gays, we, somehow tolerated them and ignored whatever their sexual orientation.Some are open about it, most are closet case.

The Assyrians have a long history dating back to biblical times. The rise of Assyria, a kingdom in northern Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) began around 1350 BC. At its height (730-650 BC), the Assyrian empire controlled the Middle East from the Gulf to Egypt, but it collapsed in 612 BC.

Today, there are about two million Assyrians living in Iraq, 700,000 in Syria, 400,000 in the USA and about 500,000 in the rest of the world.

They have their own language and alphabet.

They are almost all Christians: Chaldean church 45%, Syriac Orthodox 26%, Church of the East 19%, Syrian Catholic 4%, others 6%. See list of Assyrian religious links.

THE ISSUE OF same-sex sexualities in the Arab world is a political and intellectual minefield, and more so since 9/11 than before. In a bizarre twist, neoconservatives and other rightists who were hostile for decades to the lesbian/gay movement(1) have repackaged themselves as defenders of oppressed Arab women and gays. Responses from the left have been divided.

When international human rights or LGBT (lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender) groups have issued alerts lately about persecution of Middle Eastern LGBT people (most often in Iran), some anti-imperialist gays have denounced the critics for contributing to the Republicans’ (and some prominent Democrats’) war drive. Others, closer to the politics of Against the Current, have insisted on the importance both of opposition to U.S. intervention and of solidarity with LGBTs.

The arguments have rarely shown much knowledge of the sexual cultures of the Arab world, however, or included much analysis of how imperialism and sexuality interact. Overcoming this lack of understanding is a crucial and urgent task.

The right’s reliance on arguments about women’s and sexual freedom makes it increasingly difficult to be an anti-imperialist or antiracist in the United States without integrating gender and sexual analysis. Similarly, international feminist and LGBT movements are hamstrung by their relative weakness in and ignorance of the Arab world. They badly need to take up the task of linking imperialism, gender and sexuality.

This task is not made any easier by the paucity of serious scholarship on sexualities in the Arab world. Lesbian/gay studies has focused mostly on modern Europe and North America. Fortunately more work has been done in recent years on dependent-world LGBTs. But Africa and the Middle East are the parts of the world where LGBT communities are least visible and LGBT movements most harshly repressed.

This helps explain why scholarship on Arab same-sex sexualities has been relatively thin on the ground. People outside the Arab world, who often don’t know it well or even speak Arabic, have published most of what exists in English. While academics in North America and Europe have many times more resources, the knowledge and experience of researchers in and from the Arab world are indispensable.

Joseph Massad, an associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, has now walked out boldly into this minefield with his book Desiring Arabs. Massad is no stranger to controversy. His earlier work concentrated on Jordan and Palestine, not exactly fields where calm, collegial discussion is the rule in U.S. academe – least of all at Columbia, a hotbed of right-wing Zionist hate campaigns of which Massad has been a prime target. Naturally and rightly, the left and defenders of Palestinian rights have come to his defense.

Desiring Arabs has brought Massad a new crowd of detractors. His criticisms of North American and European efforts to identify, defend and free gay people in Arab countries(2) have been met with a wave of accusations. An online review of Desiring Arabs by a staff member of The New Republic, after describing police torture of a Palestinian gay man in graphic detail, charged Massad with an “insidious attempt to convince the world that men like this one are somehow figments of the Western world’s imagination.”(3)

Another review by Brian Whitaker, former Middle East editor of the London Guardian, accused Massad of reflecting “essentially the same ideas” as the Jordanian Islamic Action Front when it denounced women’s rights as an “American and Zionist” attack on the nation’s “identity and values.”(4) These are excerpts from the relatively nuanced attacks; other diatribes on the net have been more scurrilous.
No Homophobe

Massad is clearly no homophobe and has no sympathy with torturers or fundamentalists. On the contrary, Desiring Arabs is an important resource for serious students of sexualities in the Arab world. It confirms that same-sex sexual desire and behavior were widespread in Arabic literature during the centuries when Arab civilization was at its height.

Above all, the book does a service to scholarship comparable to what Kate Millett did in Sexual Politics or Dennis Altman in Homosexual Oppression and Liberation: it analyses the sexual ideologies of a wide range of 19th- and 20th-century literary works, many of them inaccessible to non-Arabic speakers. In the process Massad shows respect for and familiarity with queer theory, the dominant current today in LGBT studies.

For all its merits, however, Desiring Arabs has major flaws. Like many queer theorists, Massad seems more interested in literature than in reality. He leaves crucial questions about Arabs’ sexual behavior and identities not only unanswered – answers admittedly hard to come by in countries where mass surveys or in-depth interviews about sexuality are rarely feasible – but largely unaddressed.

While his criticisms of activists’ and academics’ Eurocentrism are often justified, he seems to suggest that the international lesbian/gay rights movement is largely to blame for the persecution of people engaged in same-sex sexualities in the Middle East today. Yet his own research shows that this persecution predated international LGBT activism by many decades.

Massad rightly rejects many lesbians and gays’ essentialism (“we were born this way” and “we are everywhere”). However, he does not engage seriously enough with the more substantial scholarly work that has been done on global same-sex sexualities. As a result, he doesn’t recognize that LGBT studies have not always shared the essentialist impulses of many ordinary LGBT people. On the contrary, many theorists have emphasized that same-sex sexualities have been socially constructed in the course of history, and that these sexualities were and are extraordinarily diverse in different parts of the world.

Edward Said warned in his classic book Orientalism against notions that “there is such a thing as a real or true Orient (Islam, Arab or whatever)” or “that there are geographical spaces with indigenous, radically ‘different’ inhabitants.”(5) Massad describes Said not only as “a mentor, a friend, and a colleague” but also as “a surrogate father” (xiii) and seems to heed Said’s warning when he writes, “My point here is not to argue in favor of non-Western nativism and of some blissful existence prior to the epistemic, ethical, and political violence unleashed on the non-West.” (42)

Nonetheless, his book tends to idealize the indigenous sexual culture of the Arab world. He repeatedly dismisses signs of lesbian or gay life in the Arab world as outside impositions, fabrications or shameful attempts by Arabs to mimic Europeans or Americans. He fails to come to terms with the reality that the Arab world too is increasingly part of a global capitalist order and that its contemporary sexualities are likely to be hybrid and diverse.
Beyond Gay and Straight

On one central issue Massad is right: his insistence that traditional Arab sexualities were not based on a “hetero-homo binary.” (40) This will be a difficult point for many U.S. readers to grasp, given how deeply the division between “gay people” and “straight people” has shaped our common-sense understanding of sexuality. Most scholars agree, however, that this binary conception is a fairly recent development, and that there have been innumerable other ways of conceiving sexuality.

Massad’s reading of the Koran, later Islamic religious texts and medieval Arabic love poetry confirms what other historians have found: that Arabs in the first centuries of Islam simply did not classify human beings in this way. It is less clear how much continuity there is between this traditional Arab sexual culture and the sexual culture of the contemporary Arab world.

Despite Massad’s skepticism, there are self-identified lesbians and gay men in the Arab world today. But distinctive lesbian/gay identities as they exist in North America and Europe do seem less visible in Arab countries than in most other regions. Many Arab men who have sex with other men do not identify at all as gay, transgender or even bisexual. Some of them fuck transgender or other males, concealing this sex from public knowledge; others simply have discrete sex with one another.(6)

As Massad points out, this means that the tactics that LGBT movements have used elsewhere cannot simply be imported unchanged into the Arab world. For example, in a culture where people can engage in same-sex sexual behavior without necessarily identifying as gay, it is doubtful what it means to call on them to “come out.” People whose lives include both same-sex and different-sex relationships have to be free to decide when, where and how they speak up.

Massad has strong arguments for rejecting the insistence that desire is “embedded in the body and can only be freed in an individualist project of liberation through public confessionals” (365) – though even in the Arab world, transgender people and others do sometimes feel that their desire is embedded in their bodies.

The scholars in LGBT studies who laid the foundations for a social constructionist approach should be sensitive to the pitfalls of binary thinking. Yet as Massad shows, when it comes to the Arab world some of the most distinguished theorists can succumb to Eurocentrism. This Eurocentrism contradicts the main thrust of the history of sexuality since the 1970s. Even worse, it ignores the key lesson of 20th-century liberation struggles: that each oppressed people needs to find its own way to free itself through understanding and transforming its own unique social formation.

Massad is better at showing how Arab sexual cultures do not work and cannot be freed, however, than in analyzing how they do work and can be freed. There is still an enormous amount of work to be done before this question can be answered. Nonetheless, Massad could have benefited a bit more from analyses by other scholars.

Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe’s anthology Islamic Homosexualities, for example, contains more useful insights than Massad allows in his passing, cutting reference to it. (170-71) A reader who knew the book only from Massad’s comments would never guess that Roscoe and Murray denounce Eurocentrism and the tendency to tell the “history of homosexuality as a progressive, even teleological, evolution from pre-modern repression, silence, and invisibility to modern visibility and sexual freedom.” They even contrast the relative uniformity of modern “Western” homosexuality to the “variety, distribution, and longevity of same-sex patterns in Islamic societies.”(7)

Massad barely discusses the social relations that made up classical Arab sexual culture. For example, his account of classical Arabic poetry makes clear, as others have, that boy love was an important theme for a major Abbasid poet like Abu Nuwas. But he casts little light on the dynamics of what Murray and Roscoe call “age-differentiated homosexuality,” either in classical times or in the Arab world today.

He also devotes virtually no attention to another component of Arab sexual culture: transgender. Studies have shown transgender’s importance as a form of same-sex sexual expression in many parts of the underdeveloped world, including Muslim countries like Pakistan and Indonesia. There is evidence from several continents that working-class and poor people in particular are more likely than middle-class people to engage in transgender relationships as opposed to lesbian/gay relationships.(8)

Transgender people have shown an impressive capacity for radical organizing and action, to the point of virtually taking over the World Social Forum in Mumbai in 2004. Forms of transgender have been identified in at least some Arab countries, as among the hassas of Morocco and khanith of Oman.

Yet Massad passes over the subject in virtual silence. He denounces the International Lesbian and Gay Association for saying that transvestite dancers are popular in Egypt; he comments that this was “a nineteenth-century phenomenon” and complains that time “is never factored in when the topic is Arabs and Muslims.” (167) But elsewhere he mentions the popularity of female impersonators as singers in Cairo in the 1920s and ’30s, and of a female impersonator on Syrian TV as late as the 1980s. (364)

Massad’s snipe is one example of how he tends to substitute discussions of ideology (Is time a factor in discussing Arabs?) for discussions of reality (Is transgender still a significant phenomenon in the Arab world?).
Empire and Culture

Imperialist domination of the Arab world is increasingly politicizing sexuality. Is Massad open to sexual politics within Arab countries, or only to a defense of Arab sexual culture against imperialism? Can Arab anti-imperialists opt for solidarity with women, transgender people and youth in their own region, with all this implies for transforming the existing sexual culture? The Islamist political movements that currently have hegemony over the oppositions to U.S.-backed regimes clearly prefer the defense of tradition – as they selectively define it. But the choice remains open.

There is neither a historical nor a logical connection between anti-imperialism and cultural nativism. The British Empire was careful not to interfere with Islamic domination of civil society in countries it ruled like Egypt and Pakistan. By contrast, Muslim Turkey’s fierce resistance to colonization after the First World War and Muslim Indonesia’s struggle for independence after the Second World War involved far-reaching secularization. It is no accident that Turkey and Indonesia have stronger LGBT communities and movements today than almost any Arab country.(9)

Still today in the Arab world, repressive regimes linked to imperialism use sexual repression as a cover. Many of the Arab regimes whose repression of same-sex sexuality is most notorious, like the Saudi kingdom and Egypt, are among the closest U.S. allies in the region and among the Arab countries best integrated into the neoliberal world economic order. And U.S. right-wing lip service to lesbian/gay rights is worse than useless to LGBT Arab people.

The Shiite parties, militias and gangs that dominate Iraq today are guilty of vicious repression of people engaged in same-sex sexualities, which the U.S. occupiers have hardly lifted a finger to stop. In one incident in 2007, an Iraqi LGBT activist heard Americans talking in the next room while Iraqi police were torturing him.(10)

Massad consistently assumes that the presence of lesbian/gay identities in the Arab world is a result of European and North American cultural influence. His wide-ranging analysis of 19th- and 20th-century literature does show, as he says, that “cultural production as a whole has been marshaled, consciously and unconsciously, toward … shaming non-Europe into assimilation.” (416) But he hardly tries to make a case for cultural causes of gay identity as opposed to other factors; he only occasionally puts forward a class or economic analysis.(11)

In fact, the spread of lesbian/gay identities in the dependent world probably owes less to outside cultural influences than to social causes like mass migration to cities, more waged labor by women, higher wages, commodification of everyday life, assumption of some traditional family functions by the state, and the spread of modern medicine with its penchant for classification.(12) The relative scarcity of lesbian/gay identities in Arab countries would then be due less to weaker European and North American influence (which seems doubtful) than to factors like the region’s relatively low rate of female-paid employment.

Another factor is probably what Gilbert Achcar calls “the Arab despotic exception”: the fact that the United States has continued to back dictatorships in the Middle East, due to its vital economic and geopolitical interests there, rather than risk the kind of transitions to nominal democracy that it has allowed in much of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of Asia.(13) The result has been less freedom for political and social organizing, and specifically for LGBT organizing, in the Arab world.
Repression

Massad makes clear at many points in Desiring Arabs that he deplores the repression of same-sex sexuality by Arab governments. What has generated most of the controversy around the book is the chapter (by far the shortest one) where he blames this repression largely on the lesbian/gay groups, human rights organizations and “discourse” that he calls the “Gay International.”(14)

Speaking of the crackdown on same-sex sexual activity in Egypt following the 2001 Queen Boat raid, for example, Massad says, “The Gay International and its activities are largely responsible for the intensity of this repressive campaign.” (184)

“By inciting discourse about homosexuals where none existed before, the Gay International is in fact heterosexualizing a world that is being forced to be fixed by a Western binary,” he says. (188) The “sexual rights agenda … has led to much repression and oppression in the contemporary Arab world.” (375) He even says that Islamic fundamentalism has an “unwitting alliance” with the “crusading Gay International in identifying people who practice certain forms of sex.” (265)

The irony of this line of argument is that Massad provides so much evidence that hostility to same-sex sexualities in the Arab world long predated the arrival of LGBT movements. He describes a host of modern Arab attempts to deny, downplay or condemn traditional Arab openness to same-sex sexual desire.

He notes that erotic poetry focusing on youths or men “disappeared completely as a poetic genre” around the late 19th century. (35) He devotes almost 20 pages to 20th-century Arab critics’ denunciation of the poet Abu Nuwas’ praise of youthful male beauty. (76-94)

He describes a paradigm shift in the work of Egyptian Nobel Prize-winning author Naguib Mahfouz, from the 1947 novel Midaq Alley, which portrays same-sex sexuality as commonplace but public awareness of it as shameful, to the 1957 novel Sugar Street, which portrays male same-sex desire as an “illness.” (272-90) And he shows how Arab literature since the defeat in the 1967 war with Israel has been pervaded by images of humiliating, emasculating penetration of Arab men.

Taken as a whole, this suggests a drastic, century-long transformation of Arab sexual culture, in large measure completed before the modern lesbian/gay movement was born with the 1969 Stonewall rebellion.
European influence undoubtedly played some role in this transformation, as shown by colonial laws against “sodomy” still on the books in many former European colonies. Doubtless other factors, neglected by Massad, played a role as well, as in the case of modernizing, nationalist and Stalinist regimes elsewhere in the dependent world.(15) But protests by international LGBT and human rights groups have undoubtedly been more a reaction than a contributing factor.

The power of these organizations is derisible compared to that of the former colonial empires, the U.S. military, major multinationals or the international financial institutions. Imperialist governments have shown virtually no interest in supporting them with more than an occasional press release. Arab governments may vilify these organizations in their propaganda, but Massad provides little evidence that they have had any significant effect on law or policy, even negatively.

Furthermore, while international LGBT organizations are largely European-led and often Eurocentrist in their thinking, they are far from having a unified agenda for the Arab world, as the 2001 Egyptian Queen Boat raid showed.

For example, Act Up Paris responded to the raid with a protest at the Egyptian embassy, whose slogans included a demand to “free our lovers.” This slogan would hardly have been welcomed by the Egyptian defendants, who were not defending themselves as open gay men, let alone as men with European lovers.

If this were typical of the European movement, Massad’s charges would be vindicated. But in fact, at the next Euromediterranean Summer University on Homosexualities, an annual LGBT gathering in Marseille, a lone representative of Act Up Paris faced a barrage of criticism from virtually every other participant in the discussion for his group’s insensitivity and counterproductive tactics.

Massad’s argument becomes even less plausible when he asserts that the Egyptian police “do not seek to, and cannot if they were so inclined, arrest men practicing same-sex contact but rather are pursuing those among them who identify as ‘gay.’” (183) This is the opposite of the truth: the police rarely know whether the people they harass, arrest or torture identify as gay. There is hardly a law or policy on earth that uses this as a criterion for police repression.

The sequence of cause and effect is the reverse, as historians have shown: the common experience of repression can contribute to the development of transgender, gay and lesbian identities. In any case, the dominant sexual ideology that Arab states have developed over the past century has increasingly led to repressive practices against same-sex sexual behavior, and did so before lesbian or gay identities had begun to emerge. Clearly the identities are not the cause of the repression.
Love and Solidarity

In at least a few Arab countries, some people engaging in same-sex sexuality have begun responding to repression by assuming LGBT identities and even organizing LGBT groups. The Lebanese group Helem is one example. Interestingly, it suspended its LGBT advocacy in 2006 to turn its headquarters over to relief efforts for victims of the Israeli invasion, working with a range of other Lebanese organizations.(16)

Among Palestinians in the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel, the LGBTQ the Q here stands for "Questioning" - ed. group Al-Qaws has been working since 2001 “not simply to mimic an existing model of queer identity/community, but to provide a social space for LGBTQ Palestinians to independently engage in a dialogue about our own visions and ideals for a community.”(17)

As Arabs engaged in same-sex sexualities begin adopting LGBT identities, they may form more lasting relationships and speak more of their love for one another. This would cast doubt on Massad’s assertion that in the Arab world the goal of sexual desire is “consummation and not romantic love.” (363)(18)

Contrary to conservative ideologies now gaining ground, sexuality does not require any justification in romantic love or in stable partnerships sanctified by marriage. Pleasure is its own sufficient justification. But neither should same-sex desire necessarily be limited to episodic gratification “on the side.” Love too has its rights.

No one can know for sure if, when, how or in what forms Arab LGBT communities and movements will develop.(19) In particular, no one knows for sure what proportion of Arabs who have sex with people of the same sex identity as lesbian, gay, transgender or bisexual. But this is no argument against solidarity with them. Nor is it an argument for privileging those who have LGBT identities, as international movements tend to do – or those who have no such identities, as Massad does.

In the age of neoliberal globalization, power relations between colonizers – witting or unwitting – and colonized cut across LGBT movements, anti-imperialist movements and for that matter the Marxist left. The fact remains that all the victims of oppression today badly need allies in the imperialist countries, who have access to far greater resources.

Cultural sensitivity and respect for self-determination are essential. But neither should stand in the way of solidarity with the victims of repression by regimes whose vicious sexual puritanism often goes hand in hand with their subservience to an imperial agenda.
Notes

1. Older readers may remember Midge Decter’s notorious article “The Boys on the Beach,” Commentary vol. 70 no. 3 (Sept. 1980).
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2. The chapter of Desiring Arabs that sets out Massad’s criticisms of international LGBT groups is based on his article “Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World,” Public Culture vol. 14 no. 2 (Spring 2002).
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3. James Kirchick, “Queer Theory: The Columbia Professor Who Also Doesn’t Think Gay People Exist in the Middle East,” The New Republic online (www.tnr.com), Oct. 15, 2007.
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4. Brian Whitaker, “Distorting Desire,” Gay City News, Sept. 13, 2007.
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5. Edward Said, Orientalism, New York: Vintage Books, 1979, 322.
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6. According to Iwan van Grinsven, Limits to Desire: Obstacles to Gay Male Identity and Subculture Formation in Cairo, Egypt, Nijmegen: n.p. 1997, 37, some Egyptian men speak of ‘face-to-face’ sex, meaning that anal intercourse is avoided so as to evade issues of masculine/feminine or active/passive roles.
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7. Will Roscoe and Stephen O. Murray, “Introduction,” in Murray and Roscoe, Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History and Literature, New York: New York University Press, 1997, 4-6. Roscoe also gives an interesting account of the sexual culture of pre-Islamic Arabia, and of the emergence of the sexual culture of classic Arab civilization from the interaction between this pre-Islamic culture and sexual cultures of the Persian, Byzantine and Western Roman empires that the Arabs conquered: Roscoe, “Precursors of Islamic Male Homosexualities,” in Islamic Homosexualities, 55-86. Given the influence of pre-rabbinical Judaism on Islam, the sexual culture of pre-Islamic Arabia might be illuminated by a comparison with the sexual culture of the ancient Hebrews: see Daniel Boyarin, “Are There Any Jews in ‘The History of Sexuality’?” Journal for the History of Sexuality vol. 5 no. 3 (1995), 333-55.
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8. I summarize the evidence in my “Introduction: Remapping Sexualities,” in Peter Drucker (ed.), Different Rainbows, London: GMP, 2000, 24-25.
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9. See my “Introduction” to Different Rainbows, 29.
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10. Doug Ireland, “Iraqi Gay Activist Arrested, Tortured,” Gay City News, May 3, 2007.
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11. In an otherwise vigorous defense of Desiring Arabs, Yoshie Furuhashi has commented that Massad has “relatively little to say about the role of the emergence and development of the capitalist mode of production, with its tendency to proletarianize, urbanize, atomize, and commodify people, in the emergence and development of a discourse of sexuality under capitalist modernity.” (http://montages.blogspot.com/2007/10/desiring-arabs.html)
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12. I make this argument at length in the “Introduction” to Different Rainbows, 14-25.
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13. Gilbert Achcar, “The Arab Despotic Exception,” in Eastern Cauldron: Islam, Afghanistan, Palestine and Iraq in a Marxist Mirror, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004, 69-74.
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14. On its face, the term “Gay International” suggests an analogy with the Communist International. It seems like a curious choice of epithet for someone like Massad, who seems in some sense to identify with the left.
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15. See my “Introduction” to Different Rainbows, 31-32, 34.
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16. www.helem.net; “Lebanese gay group helping refugee relief,” Pink News, September 1, 2006.
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17. Haneen Maikey, “Rainbow over Palestine,” guardian.co.uk, March 10, 2008.
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18. Massad’s assertion may not do justice even to the classical Arab conception of sexual desire. John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century, 27, notes for example, “In Islamic Sufi literature homosexual eroticism was a major metaphorical expression of the spiritual relationship between God and man.”
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19. In my conclusion, “Reinventing Liberation,” to Different Rainbows, 217-20, I suggest that LGBT movements in the dependent world are likely to often be alliances of a range of groups with distinctive sexualities and identities.
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A Yemeni view

Calm analysis of Yemen’s problems, by Yemenis from inside the country, is rather scarce but Abdullah al-Faqih, Professor of Political Science at Sana’a University, provides exactly that in an article headed “The challenges of dealing with Yemen’s deep crises”.

It’s a clear and concise review of the main problems facing Yemen, and how they came about: the war in the north, the southern secessionist movement, al-Qaeda and the economy. It doesn’t say anything very new but for anyone wanting to catch up on the current situation this would be an excellent starting point.

Faqih’s views on what should be done are also interesting and I’ll quote his conclusion in full:

President Saleh’s foremost concern is to retain total economic and political power in his own hands as long as he lives, and to hand it down to his son afterwards. The US and the international community are concerned about the threat al-Qaeda poses to regional and international peace and many educated Yemenis are concerned about the potential for tension between Saleh’s goal and that of the international community.

Of all his enemies in the south and north, al-Qaeda appears to be the least dangerous and less of a threat to what he values most. In fact, he has had it on his side on at least few occasions. Saleh might not be using al-Qaeda or the Houthis to blackmail neighbouring and friendly countries, as some of his critics often suggest, but it is obvious that he lacks a strong incentive to be rid of al-Qaeda once and for all or to reach a settlement with the Houthis. With Saleh and his country’s future depending largely on what the outside world says and does, al-Qaeda is an insurance policy for dancer and stage, but can also become an accelerator for the collapse of both of them.

The international community’s options in Yemen are very limited. On the one hand, it cannot turn its back on Yemen without risking disastrous consequences; on the other, it cannot rally behind Saleh against his opponents either in the north or south or even against al-Qaeda alone while leaving the other two for Saleh to handle alone.

Any sound strategy to tackle Yemen’s complexities should meet several conditions: (1) it should be comprehensive in scope and inclusive of political, economic and security issues; (2) it should aim as its priority to dismantle the ongoing political conflicts in the north and south –the Saudis, in particular, should immediately stop paying the bills of the war in the north and direct the money instead towards development and reconstruction; and (3) the international community should fully engage Saleh using a combination of incentives and disincentives.

Containing the secessionist movement in the south and preventing Yemen from degenerating into a Somalia-like state will require restructuring and strengthening the Yemeni state and political system in ways that will allow meaningful power-sharing, accountability, the de-personalisation of power and the rule of law. Parliamentarianism, deep decentralisation, bicameralism, proportional representation and free media are all key components to any viable solution to Yemen’s current myriad problems.

The separation of south and north is almost impossible and if allowed could lead to the breakdown of the country as a whole into warring tribes, sects, regions and ideological orientations. As in Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and elsewhere, only extremist groups focusing on passion and advocating terror can gain advantage in the event of a split.

BAGHDAD—In a private meeting with Mohammed Bahr al-Ulloum, President Bush urged the Iraqi Governing Council president to amend the recently ratified Iraqi constitution to protect the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. “The Iraqi constitution, signed just a few short weeks ago, will usher in a new era of democratic freedom in Iraq,” Bush said. “But there are some unlawful and unholy acts that the constitution’s original drafters could not have possibly intended to protect.” Bush then told al-Ulloum he must act quickly and decisively to preserve his country’s most sacred tradition.