If homosexuals are real, then how can Islam disapprove of homosexuality?

Ok, from what I heard and read, some scientists “proved” that homosexuality is natural. Now while many, if not most, scientists refuted homosexuality and proved that it is unnatural, but I will go ahead and accept that homosexuality is natural for the sake of argument. I will take the worst case scenario in this article and still refute it by Allah Almighty’s Will.

It is important to know that it is also natural for us to incline toward lusting after the opposite sex. So does this now justify lust, fornication and adultery? The answer is obviously NOT.

Homosexuals are desperate to justify their actions through Religion. They always strive on proving that homosexuality is ok with GOD Almighty. Unfortunately for them, however, Islam does not condone homosexuality. Let us look at what Allah Almighty Said in the following Noble Verses:

“Of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males, “And leave those whom God has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing (all limits)!” (The Noble Quran, 26:165-166)”

“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 God if thou tellest the truth.” (The Noble Quran, 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 God ordain for them some (other) way. (The Noble Quran, 4:15)” If the lesbian woman or women repent, then she or they would be set free. See proof.

“If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, Leave them alone; for God is Oft-returning, Most Merciful. (The Noble Quran, 4:16)” The punishment is 100 stripes. See proof.

“We also (sent) Lut: He said to his people: “Do ye commit lewdness such as no people in creation (ever) committed before you? (The Noble Quran, 7:80)”

“For ye practise your lusts on men in preference to women: Ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds. (The Noble Quran, 7:81)”

“(We also sent) Lut (as an apostle): behold, He said to his people, “Do ye do what is shameful though ye see (its iniquity)? (The Noble Quran, 27:54)”

“Would ye really approach men in your lusts rather than women? Nay, ye are a people (grossly) ignorant! (The Noble Quran, 27:55)”

“A sura which We have sent down and which We have ordained in it have We sent down Clear Signs, in order that ye may receive admonition. The woman and the man guilty of adultery or fornication,- flog each of them with a hundred stripes: Let not compassion move you in their case, in a matter prescribed by God, if ye believe in God and the Last Day: and let a party of the Believers witness their punishment. (The Noble Quran, 24:1-2)”

“Nor come nigh to adultery: for it is a shameful (deed) and an evil, opening the road (to other evils). (The Noble Quran, 17:32)”

“O Prophet! When believing women come to thee to take the oath of fealty to thee, that they will not associate in worship any other thing whatever with God, that they will not steal, that they will not commit adultery (or fornication), that they will not kill their children, that they will not utter slander, intentionally forging falsehood, and that they will not disobey thee in any just matter,- then do thou receive their fealty, and pray to God for the forgiveness (of their sins): for God is Oft-Forgiving, Most Merciful. (The Noble Quran, 60:12)”

Also, Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, said:

‘Abd al-Rahman, the son of Abu Sa’id al-Khudri, reported from his father: The Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) said: “A man should not see the private parts of another man, and a woman should not see the private parts of another woman, and a man should not lie with another man under one covering, and a woman should not lie with another woman under one covering. (Translation of Sahih Muslim, The Book of Menstruation (Kitab Al-Haid), Book 003, Number 0667)”

This Hadith (Saying of the Prophet) is clearly saying:

1- A man can not see another man’s private parts (butt and groin).

2- A woman also can not see another woman’s private parts, including breasts except perhaps during the time of suckling a baby.

3- A man can not sleep with another stranger man in the same room.

4- A woman can not sleep with another stranger woman in the same room.

Note: Even bringing suspicion of being a homosexual, fornicator, adulterer or adulterous against yourself is forbidden in Islam.

The Prophet’s Commands are a must to follow according to the Noble Quran:

The authentic Sunnah (the way the Prophet lived) and Hadiths (Sayings of the Prophet) of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him. There are ample Noble Verses in the Noble Quran that Command the Muslims to follow not only the Noble Quran, but also the Commands of Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him:

“O ye who believe! Obey God, and obey the Apostle, and those charged with authority among you. If ye differ in anything among yourselves, refer it to God and His Apostle, if ye do believe in God and the Last Day: That is best, and most suitable for final determination. (The Noble Quran, 4:59)”

“God did confer a great favour on the believers when He sent among them an apostle from among themselves, rehearsing unto them the Signs of God, sanctifying them, and instructing them in Scripture and Wisdom, while, before that, they had been in manifest error. (The Noble Quran, 3:164)”

“Obey God, and obey the Apostle, and beware (of evil): if ye do turn back, know ye that it is Our Apostle’s duty to proclaim (the message) in the clearest manner. (The Noble Quran, 5:92)”

“(We sent) clear proofs and the scriptures. Now, We have sent you this reminder (Qur’an) so that you may demonstrate the revelations to them. Perhaps they may reflect and ponder! (The Noble Quran, 16:44)”

“When there comes to them some matter touching (Public) safety or fear, they divulge it. If they had only referred it to the Apostle, or to those charged with authority among them, the proper investigators would have Tested it from them (direct). Were it not for the Grace and Mercy of God unto you, all but a few of you would have fallen into the clutches of Satan. (The Noble Quran, 4:83)”

“Those who follow the apostle, the unlettered Prophet, whom they find mentioned in their own (scriptures),- in the law and the Gospel;- for he commands them what is just and forbids them what is evil; he allows them as lawful what is good (and pure) and prohibits them from what is bad (and impure); He releases them from their heavy burdens and from the yokes that are upon them. So it is those who believe in him, honour him, help him, and follow the light which is sent down with him,- it is they who will prosper. (The Noble Quran, 7:157)”

“Say: “Obey God, and obey the Apostle: but if ye turn away, he is only responsible for the duty placed on him and ye for that placed on you. If ye obey him, ye shall be on right guidance. The Apostle’s duty is only to preach the clear (Message). (The Noble Quran, 24:54)”

“So establish regular Prayer and give regular Charity; and obey the Apostle; that ye may receive mercy. (The Noble Quran, 24:56)”

“Ye have indeed in the Apostle of God a beautiful pattern (of conduct) for any one whose hope is in God and the Final Day, and who engages much in the Praise of God. (The Noble Quran, 33:21)”

“It is not fitting for a Believer, man or woman, when a matter has been decided by God and His Apostle to have any option about their decision: if any one disobeys God and His Apostle, he is indeed on a clearly wrong Path. (The Noble Quran, 33:36)”

“The Day that their faces will be turned upside down in the Fire, they will say: “Woe to us! Would that we had obeyed God and obeyed the Apostle!” (The Noble Quran, 33:66)”

“It is He Who has sent amongst the Unlettered an apostle from among themselves, to rehearse to them His Signs, to sanctify them, and to instruct them in Scripture and Wisdom,- although they had been, before, in manifest error;- (The Noble Quran, 62:2)”

“So obey God, and obey His Apostle: but if ye turn back, the duty of Our Apostle is but to proclaim (the Message) clearly and openly. (The Noble Quran, 64:12)”

Most of these Noble Verses were taken from Combat Kit To Use Against the “Quran Only” Muslims.

Lust is also not allowed:

“Say to the believing men that they should lower their gaze and guard their modesty: that will make for greater purity for them: And God is well acquainted with all that they do. (The Noble Quran, 24:30)”

“And tell the believing women to lower their gaze and be modest, and to display of their adornment only that which is apparent, and to draw their veils over their bosoms, and not to reveal their adornment save to their own husbands or fathers or husbands’ fathers, or their sons or their husbands’ sons, or their brothers or their brothers’ sons or sisters’ sons, or their women, or their slaves, or male attendants who lack vigour, or children who know naught of women’s nakedness. And let them not stamp their feet so as to reveal what they hide of their adornment. And turn unto Allah together, O believers, in order that ye may succeed. (The Noble Quran, 24:31)”

In the Middle East:

In the Middle Eastern culture, if my sister’s girlfriend(s) enter the house, then I am obligated to leave, or lock myself quietly in my room, until they leave.

Also, if a woman enters the house without her man, then either all men must leave the house, or get locked in their rooms, except for the young male children.

Notice “…that will make for greater purity for them…” This is what Allah Almighty Wants in order for Muslims to keep a Pure Society. Definitely no covets and no sexual arousings.

The Western Societies:

In the non-Muslim Christian Western societies, coveting is extremely high because their entire life style that they adopted promotes sexual sinning. Their women expose 99% of their bodies by wearing bikinis in beaches, the night clubs, pornography, immoral relationships with boyfriends and girlfriends, etc… all breed nothing but immoral and sinful societies.

More Noble Verses on covet in general, which includes lust:

“And do not covet that by which Allah has made some of you excel others; men shall have the benefit of what they earn and women shall have the benefit of what they earn; and ask Allah of His grace; surely Allah knows all things. (The Noble Quran, 4:32)”

“Cast not thine eyes on the good things which we have bestowed on several of [the unbelievers, so as to covet the same; neither be thou grieved on their account. Behave thy self with meekness towards the true believers; (The Noble Quran, 15:88)”

“Nor strain thine eyes in longing for the things We have given for enjoyment to parties of them, the splendour of the life of this world, through which We test them: but the provision of thy Lord is better and more enduring. (The Noble Quran, 20:131)”

“And serve Allah and do not associate any thing with Him and be good to the parents and to the near of kin and the orphans and the needy and the neighbor of (your) kin and the alien neighbor, and the companion in a journey and the wayfarer and those whom your right hands possess; surely Allah does not love him who is proud, boastful; (The Noble Quran, 4:36)”

An addition by brother KL – a new convert to Islam; may Allah Almighty always be pleased with him. Ameen.

(Emphasis below are mine)

Subject: Medical proofs that homosexuality is unnatur al.
From: KL
To: QuranSearchCom@yahoo.com
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 2006 14:55:51 +0100

I am a student of the third year of the faculty of medicine. When I was browsing your site
(http://www.answering-christianity.com/are_homosexuals_real.htm), I read the following sentence:

“Some scientists “proved” that homosexuality is natural. Now while many, if not most, scientists refuted homosexuality and proved that it is unnatural”

This is what the medical sciences have to say (I have learnt it during an lecture in Immunology):

Homosexual activity in males can cause infertility. That’s because if semen is ejaculated to the rectum during the homosexual intercourse, it can contact white blood cells (the lymphocytes) which start produce antibodies against sperms. Later those antibodies start destroying the man’s own sperms. This means that the man cannot have children.

I’m posting this because many Christian people still believe that there is nothing wrong with homosexuality. But no-one can seriously believe that a thing that makes one cannot have children is good and natural. Perhaps it would be good if you put this piece of medical evidence on your site, as it confirms what the Qur`an says about gays.

Humbly yours,
KL

Conclusion:

Neither homosexuality, lust, fornication or adultery are allowed in Islam. Therefore, even if a person thinks that he/she is a homosexual, then he/she needs to work on removing this evil desire from their heart and mind exactly as ordinary Muslims work on removing the evil desires of lust, fornication and adultery from their hearts and minds.

I have recently participated in a conversation among gay activists about Islam and homosexuality, in which I was astonished at the malice directed against all Moslems. Many of the accusations against Moslems in that exchange constitute slander, and people who pass along slander share the blame for slander, so I will place here only my statements, in chronological order, earliest to most recent, with, if anything, only such parts of the things I replied to as may be necessary to understand why I said what I said. Reading and responding to all these materials took quite some time, and I won’t subject you to the full extent of those materials.

False and malicious. There is not a single Islamist GOVERNMENT run by fanatics except the Islamic Republic of Iran. That there are temptations to Islamist purity in Moslem countries and even among some Moslems who have LEFT Moslem countries but did not realize that their leaving constituted rejection of Islamic rule over society, is beyond contention. But there are plenty of Christian, and Hindu, and , especially, Jewish extremists with violent hatred in control of their minds. This past week, Pat Robertson said that Haiti was punished because it had made a pact with the Devil, so Haitians deserved the misery they have suffered for over 200 years, and deserved the mass death and destruction this past week. Good Christian Pat Robertson.
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It wasn’t Moslems who burned homosexuals at the stake in Europe, but pious Christians in times of Inquisition, which burning is a possible origin of the term “faggot”. Israel has killed, directly or indirectly, perhaps 3/4 of a million to 1.25M Moslems in pursuit of their insane insistence on reconstructing a country that had vanished over 2,600 years before, or, as “Judea”, over 1,900 years earlier. That’s quite a death toll for a country that has never had so much as 6 million Jews, and most of it was done by the good old Christian U.S. of A. at Israel’s demand (in, for instance, two wars against Iraq, Israel’s most feared enemy). That means that Moslems really are only pikers when it comes to extremism and mass murder of their religion’s enemies.
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Certainly all religion contains within it the possibility of intolerant mass murder, and we have had plenty of that in the Christian West, from the Reconquista of Spain to the wars of the Reformation to the “troubles” in Northern Ireland. All religion is evil, because all religion tells True Believers that they are entitled to kill to defend the Faith or spread God’s Word to people who don’t want it.
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That Christianity today is the best of the evil that is religion doesn’t make it benign. And tolerance is a recent phenomenon in the Christian world, born of centuries of murderous strife. It is for us to explode the madness of all religion, the nonexistence of any god/dess whatsoever who authorizes murder in his or her name, and promote tolerance everywhere, in Israel and India as much as Iran, Afghanistan, and the Sudan. But it does no good to single out the loons of Islam, especially since WE are responsible for their appeal, in having inflicted upon the Moslem Heartland a Jewish state backed by hundreds of billions of dollars of outside money.

There were further anti-Moslem tirades, to which I responded.

I see now the source of your problem: you are listening to Jews for your information about Moslems. That is akin to asking Communists for a disinterested and fair evaluation of Nazism, or Orangemen for information about Catholicism. And do I really need to remind you that the key passages of Scripture that are used to oppose homosexuality in the West are from the OLD Testament book of Leviticus? Judaism!?! “If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.” (Leviticus 20:13)
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The assertion by Jack F. that Somalia’s problems were produced by the United States is pure nonsense of the no-bird-falls-to-Earth-but-the-United-States-shot-it-down variety. Somalia was a hellhole when the U.S. first sent humanitarian relief supplies in; that was not an “invasion”. Somalia continues to be a hellhole because the U.S. withdrew, leaving it to the barbarians who had ruined it long before we arrived. The U.S. has very little to do with the condition of most of the world, and especially Africa, with which we have almost no involvement. Jack F reveals his Comsymp bias in another preposterous phrase, “the Soviet regime which had come in to stop US meddling” in Afghanistan. Bullshit. The Soviets were doing what they’d been doing since the 1920s, working on worldwide Communist revolution. It had NOTHING to do with “U.S. meddling” but ONLY to do with their ’sacred’ obligation to ’spread the good news of our lords Marx and Lenin’, a political dogma very like the proselytizing drives of fervent Christianity and Islam.
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As for Nigeria’s ruling class being dominated by Christians, I suspect that is wrong but can’t find definitive information in the first Google results I tried.
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As for Iraqis fiting Americans, tho I agree the U.S. should never have gone into Iraq and should long ago have left, if Iraqis are fiting Americans, they are doing a damned poor job of it, because the cumulative death toll of Americans in Iraq has stayed at 4,373 for weeks, and only 3 have died so far this month. No, most of the violence is between Iraqis, which is the public rationale for keeping U.S. troops there, to keep the slauter to a minimum.
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“Afghans fighting Americans in Afghanistan…. again, who is the aggressor here?” I guess Jack F never heard about al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, nor the attacks of 9/11.
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Despite the blatant anti-U.S. bias of Mr. F’s remarks Jack F is a convert to Islam, I agree with him on the central issue of this discussion, that we must not tar the entire Moslem world with the brush of extremism.
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As regards religious control of the United States, I suggest you look at any coin or piece of paper money. There you will see the outrageous and blatantly false assertion “In God We Trust”. What “we”? I don’t trust in God; I don’t believe in God; and even if one were to believe in God, as in a theistic way, belief does not equate with “trust”, as in trust God to intervene in human affairs. Theists believe that God created the Universe and established the rules by which it operates, but thereafter God lets things go their own way, and does not interfere.
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Please stop using the self-despising term “queer”; “rich queers” is not one whit less offensive than “rich niggers”. Like “nigger”, “queer” cannot be made respectable. And no one should try.
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Don’t we have enuf enemies without insisting on counting ALL Moslems — all 1 billion plus, and growing — as our enemies? For someone of advanced years Billy G is about 75 years oldseem to have a very short memory. How long ago was it that a slender gay man, whose name I do not recall, was beaten to death in an alley by the LAPD under a vicious anti-gay police chief whose name I also do not recall? I remember the beatings and deaths, the entrapment, the bar raids and more; the names, however, are too numerous (and irrelevant) to recall. Perhaps six years ago I served on a grand jury in Essex County, NJ, in a solidly Democratic area (my city, Newark, is the county seat) of a Blue State (that inaugurated a Republican as Governor on Tuesday), and listened as an Essex County Sheriff’s Department cop recounted his ENTRAPPING gay men in the South Mountain Reservation (a park). I was indignant and called that entrapment “entrapment”, but the great majority of the grand jurors voted to indict these entrapped gay men anyway!
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So let us not look down our noses at Moslem societies, most of them traditional, even backward and largely uneducated, despite some relatively recent wealth in relatively few hands. American society did not change in the absence of education and pressure, and brave people letting themselves be known as gay. Even today, in advanced Western countries, including areas where men are allowed to marry each other(!), the bulk of young gay boys and men are NOT willing to be known as gay. It’s very easy to be bigoted against gay men when you “don’t know any”, but not nearly so easy when your uncle or cousin or best friend or captain of the football team is gay — and especially when ALL of those people are known to be gay.
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It took us 60 years to achieve what change we have achieved — and until every kid who realizes he is gay feels free to accept that and tell his parents and friends about it without angst, our work is far from done. The “Movement” hasn’t even begun in most Moslem countries. To suggest that Islam is somehow immovable but Christianity was movable is simple-minded and almost certainly wrong. All the sins of Islam are equally sins of other religions.
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You speak about Islam wanting to sweep the world. What do you think all those Christian missionaries sent out, over centuries, to Africa, Asia, Oceania, and to native peoples across the Americas wanted?
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Will we be able to change the minds of Wahhabis? Maybe not, any more than we have been able to change the minds of Mormons and other reactionary sects in Christianity. But might there be the equivalents of Episcopalians and Unitarians in Islam? People rarely try to accommodate their enemies; they do, however, listen to their friends. If you care about gay men in Moslem countries, you need to approach Moslems as you would approach any other potential audience: with good will and an open mind.

Jack F tried to deride my pointing out his Communist sympathies. I responded.

“Comsymp” is not a taunt but a statement of what turns out to be, in Mr. F’s case, absolutely factual, since he admits his Communist sympathies. Small-c "communist" or large makes NO difference. Communism killed some 110 million people in a reign of terror that is not yet over, and that 110M figure does NOT count people killed in wars to fite back against Communism. Communist sympathy is illegitimate and contemptible, and I won’t tolerate it or legitimate it by letting Cold War crap designed to promote worldwide Communist revolution, pass unchallenged. Even as regards gay rights, Communism was and remains a vile enemy. Castro incarcerated gay men on the Isle of Pines, later turned into an AIDS prison. No Communist country had or today has any significant gay-rights movement that I have ever heard of. To speak of “red-baiting” in rejecting the gigantic crimes of Communism is beyond contemptible; it is intellectual criminality.
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As for “anti-Semitic”, that is, as Mr. F should surely know, just a “schoolyard taunt” intended to shut down discussion of the crimes of Zionism. It is also exactly the opposite of reason, since “Semitic” properly refers to people who speak a Semitic language, and the overwhelming preponderance of Semites are ARABS. I am certainly not anti-Arab.
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People have an absolute right to point out the madness of religion, any religion, and the arrogance that allows people who claim to be “God’s Chosen” to assert the right to steal an entire country out from under the people who have lived there for centuries or millennia, or of various religious lunatics to assert that (nonexistent) “God is on our side”.

Jack F again tried to divert the discussion with irrelevancies, attacking my spelling for one thing. I replied.

I am an expert on spelling, and reject some of the more preposterous spellings.
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As for hatred of Jews / hatred of Zionism / hatred of Judaism, plainly the behavior of Zionists taints both Judaism and Jews generally, and otherwise decent Jews tend to permit themselves to be blackmailed into passing over or even defending the crimes of Zionism. That makes them contemptible. The longer Jews in general side with Israel over the Palestinians, the more that hatred for Zionism will convert to hatred of Jews. Some Jews don’t fall into that trap, and people like Jon Stewart and Mike Wallace distance themselves from Israeli atrocities — tho I don’t recall either of them, or any other prominent American Jew, calling for the dissolution of Israel and its merger into a nontheocratic, nondiscriminatory Unified Palestine where no one has special rights and no one is treated badly because of his religion or ethnicity.
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How many “gay pride” parades were there in the Soviet bloc? Communist China? How many gay publications? What is “significant” may be arguable; but a few people meeting furtively in a few locations in the Soviet Bloc era, even as the laws and culture remain rigidly and oppressively anti-gay does not constitute “significant” to much of anybody. As Billy G says, early U.S. activists met in secret, out of fear. The gay-rights movement did not become significant until the few became the proud, at least to the point of letting the existence of their organizations become widely known, and seeking ever more publicity in order to change public attitudes and then laws.
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Jack F falsifies reality by talking about “Capitalism” in a discussion of political and human rights under Communism. Capitalism is not a political, but economic form, and it doesn’t exist in the major countries of the West in undiluted and unregulated form. The U.S. Government BOUGHT major corporations or huge blocks of stock in the latest Great Recession; that is not Capitalism. Communism, by contrast, is indeed a political as well as economic form, because compulsion by government in ‘Socialism’ (euphemistic misuse by Communists for “Communism”) is substituted for compulsion by need in unmitigated capitalism. And dictatorship tends to be a self-enlarging phenomenon, which may start with economic imperatives but easily morphs into totalitarian insistence that there are no private political rights any more than there are private property rights. In capitalism, corporations are happy to sell to homosexuals, as much as to anyone else. But Communist regimes have been antihomosexual for no discernible economic reason.
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As for Nazism, which rounded up and killed homosexuals, it too had a totalitarian mindset that set upon nonconformists largely just because they would not conform. In the case of Germany, however, a relatively small part of Europe that wanted to grow larger, reproduction at a high rate was essential to man the armies and fill the conquered territories of Greater Germany. Thus, homosexual activity worked against that long-term purpose, so suppression of homosexuality could be justified on that basis. The modern world is not allowed to evaluate Nazism’s good points, because the things like efficiency, social cohesion, and giving people a sense of national and personal purpose were harnessed to monstrous misbehavior. So the autobahns and Volkswagens, and advances in fields like rocketry made under Nazi government sponsorship are to be ignored. Neither the Soviets nor the United States ignored them, however, and both tried to get as many German rocket scientists as they could after the War. And the U.S. Interstate Highway System, inaugurated by the President who was the Commander-in-Chief of Allied forces in WWII, Eisenhower, proceeded from appreciation of the virtues of Hitler’s superhighways.
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The problem for the intellectually honest is always to separate the wheat from the chaff, use what is useful, and learn what can be learned in a good way from a bad time. Five-year plans were given a bad name by the failures of Soviet central planning, but we have REGIONAL plans and set multi-year goals in regard to wetland preservation and restoration, etc. An idea stands on its own, regardless of who employed it. You CAN learn from your enemies. In fact, it is often IMPORTANT to learn from your enemies. But it is equally important not to EMULATE them.

I forgot to mention what I once heard as a Chinese proverb but cannot find thru Google right now, something to the effect that a good word can come from a bad mouth, or do not ignore a good word merely because it comes from a bad mouth.
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Another old-time gay activist and academic joined the discussion, and put what I regarded as an inappropriate and irrelevant historical spin on things. So I replied.

You speak of rituals from hundreds of years ago that are presumably NOT even current practice as tho they are the future. That’s akin to suggesting that if Puritans are allowed to preach their brand of intolerant Christianity, we will surely see a rise in people being put into stocks and pelted with rotting vegetables, and witch trials, and people being bound hand and foot and thrown into ponds to see if they are witches or not. Or if Catholicism is allowed to grow, we will see the Inquisition consigning heretics to the flames. Or — you get the picture.
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Most if not all religions are disgraceful in their treatment of unbelievers, and many nonbelievers are grateful that Christendom was rent by the Protestant Reformation, which weakened the stranglehold of a single church on society.
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Don’t you see that the appeal of Islam is precisely that the proud (infidels) will be brought low, and that the people who have suffered will rise over and oppress those who at best ignored their pains and at worst actively oppressed THEM? If that is so, then the way to fite Islamist extremism is to do justice to the downtrodden in Moslem countries.
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The main problem with Islam is that it has no Pope to pronounce upon what is and is not permitted. The Koran is apparently so poetic that it lends itself to myriad, mutually contradictory interpretations. There is nothing new in that either. Judaism, and Christian followers of Jewish myth, posit both that Adam and Eve were the only two people at the beginning of the world, AND that Cain found a wife among the people of Nod. WHAT people of Nod? Within 2 pages in the Old Testament, the Bible contradicts itself, but people claim to believe in the literal truth of a Bible that cannot be literally true because two statements are mutually contradictory, so it is not possible for a rational person to believe in both. Indeed, the Jews’ “jealous God”, their God of Wrath, is plainly NOT the Christians’ God of Love, but people pretend He is both. They also pretend that God knows all things in advance, yet went ahead to create the world, only later to drown it for its sins. But He won’t do that again, because, um, because he learned his lesson and admitted that drowning puppies and kittens for the crimes of man was the wrong thing to do, a mistake. But God doesn’t make mistakes. It’s like that classic Star Trek episode in which Captain Kirk gets a robot/satellite that believed itself to be perfect and that its duty was to eradicate imperfection, to admit that it had made a mistake even tho it was supposed to be incapable of mistake, and posed those two “truths” against each other. The robot/satellite starts to smoke from inside its artificial-intelligence brain and is so confounded and occupied in trying to figure out what to do, that the crew has time to beam it outside the Enterprise just before it destroys itself in keeping with its duty to destroy imperfection.
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Would that we could make the religious fanatics of the world accept that they do not have the right to pretend to believe in two diametrically opposed ideas, rather than letting them get away with lame excuses like, “I don’t pretend to know everything. That’s where faith comes in.”
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If a caliph or sultan or other Moslem Pope were to try to crack the whip on heretical misstatements of Islam, would he be able to do so? Not all Christians heed joint pronouncements of the Pope and Archbishop of Canterbury as binding even on Roman Catholic or Anglican/Episcopalian priests, much less ordinary members of the church The notion that each person has his or her own direct line to God so does not need other people telling him/her what to think or do, makes imposing any version of religion upon all supposed adherents nearly impossible.
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It is, alas, not realistic to disabuse people in general of superstitions and supernatural myths, because they serve deep needs of weak and weak-minded people. At end, then, we have to pursue a paired policy of dialog and encouraging a live-and-let-live ethos. Or match Islam’s missionary outreach with Christian missionary fervor. Or we have to fite the neocons’ permanent war. Or surrender. Or wage a war of extermination that kills scores of millions and fills the atmosphere with nuclear radiation.
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None of the alternatives that come readily to mind are happy ones, if we radicalize hundreds of millions of people across the Moslem world. Zionism has produced vast disruptions and radicalization. Calming down scores of millions of deeply indignant, materially impoverished people is hard to do, especially if they won’t take a drink. Obama can’t call them together to talk things out over a couple of beers at the White House.

Implicit in the last two sentences is that part of the problem with Islam is its prohibition of alcohol. I am quite serious about that. Alcohol serves hugely valuable purposes in relieving stress and easing social interactions by lowering inhibitions and defenses and opening people to new ideas. Some peoples have problems with alcohol. Perhaps Muhammed felt that Arabs were one of those peoples, like American Indians, who can’t handle alcohol; Arabs were his initial audience; and it didn’t occur to him that peoples who did not have a problem with alcohol might become part of the body of the faithful of his new religion, so prohibition of alcohol was intended only for people who have a problem with it, not for all people. But Islam is now stuck with that idiotic prohibition. Will modern Moslems be able to get rid of it as easily as the Catholic Church did away with its prohibition on eating meat on Fridays?
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The next round of replies came in, and I answered.

There is a simple solution to the problem of Moslem immigration to Europe: ban it, and make up the need for immigrants, if any (as to support pension benefits for an aging population), from Latin America, a Christian region. I imagine that impoverished Mexicans, Guatemalans, Brazilians, Haitians, etc., would be delited to be flown by employers to countries in Europe — well, at least the warmer countries — and especially if the receiving country speaks a Romance language that would be easier for them than English.
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I called the Western Hemisphere the fortunate Hemisphere because the overwhelming preponderance of its population is Christian, and even parts of Latin America are relatively progressive. Witness approval of gay marriage by Mexico City.
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I certainly concede, as everyone must, that Islam does seem much more violent today than Christianity — today. And there is plainly something wrong with the structures if not actual scriptures of Islam that Algerian Islamists can think it OK to slice open the belly of a pregnant woman and kill her baby after slashing the woman’s throat I saw reports of incidents like that actually happening some years back; I did not make it up — and think their God wants them to do that, and they will be rewarded in Paradise for doing so. But to say that ALL of Islam is barbarous and incapable of modernization and reform is ultimately defeatist, more than just irrational. It points to only one future: total war. And countries under siege rarely take that as a good time to liberalize.

http://mrgaypride.blogspot.com/2010/01/very-long-post-some-4000-words.html

The role of religion will be under the spotlight in the House of Lords today (Monday 25 January), as peers debate amendments to the Equality Bill.

Proposals which are attracting particular attention include an amendment to allow the use of religious elements in same-sex partnership ceremonies. Another amendment would exempt religious organisations from the requirement not to discriminate in employment on grounds of sexuality.

Both amendments have attracted vocal groups of supporters and critics.

The Labour peer, Waheed Alli, who is a gay Muslim, along with a group of peers from all the largest parties, has tabled the proposal to give legal recognition to same-sex partnerships involving religious language or religious premises. No religious element has been allowed in civil partnerships since they were introduced in 2005.

“It must be a matter for churches and religious organisations to decide for themselves but, having decided, the law should not stand in their way” said Alli.

If the proposal becomes law, it would allow same-sex couples to gain legal recognition for commitment ceremonies based on their own faith, a possibility currently denied to them.

His amendment is supported by the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM), the General Assembly of Unitarian and Free Christian Churches, the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and Liberal Judaism. They maintain that the measure is a matter of religious liberty.

Meanwhile, socially conservative Christian groups have been active in backing an amendment that would give them an opt-out from equality legislation when it comes to employment. The amendment, proposed by the Tory peer, Detta O’Cathain, would allow them to discriminate on grounds of sexuality.

Christian Concern For Our Nation (CCFON) say that they are supporting the amendment because the Equality Bill as it stands will not allow employers “to refuse employment to someone even if that person lives a lifestyle contrary to the Bible’s teaching on sexual ethics”.

However, a range of Christian, Jewish, Muslim and secular groups have united to form the Cutting Edge coalition, which is opposing religious opt-outs from equality law.

Members include the Christian thinktank Ekklesia, the Muslim Women’s Network, the British Humanist Association (BHA) and the Trades Union Congress (TUC).

The BHA’s Andrew Copson said that division on the issues was not between religious and non-religious people but between “people who believe in non-discrimination and equal treatment” and “people who don’t”.

The result of the debate on both amendments is expected by late afternoon today (Monday 25 January).

The Accord Coalition (http://www.accordcoalition.org.uk/), which campaigns for equality in schooling, is also supporting the series of amendments put by Baroness Turner of Camden that aim to redress the unfairness of the current law with regard to the employment of teachers in faith schools.

The coalition’s co-ordinator Alex Kennedy commented: “Although it will not be possible to entirely get rid of discrimination against teachers on grounds of their religion in this Bill, we believe that they should at least be able to expect the same safeguards as those working in other organisations with a religious ethos. We expect the amendments to be debated this week—probably on Wednesday, but perhaps as early as Monday. We hope that peers consider the issues seriously and give the amendments the wide support that they deserve.”

DUBAI // Two men who allegedly used the internet to offer sexual services appeared separately before the Dubai Criminal Court of First Instance yesterday.

The first man, MN, is charged with prostitution, consensual homosexual sex, producing pornographic material, cross-dressing and insulting religion.

The second, MF, an 18-year-old student, is charged with prostitution.

Homosexuality is illegal in the UAE. Both defendants face a minimum of three years imprisonment and a maximum sentence of 15 years if found guilty.

MN, 22, was arrested at the Dubai International Airport in July 20 in possession of homemade pornographic material, according to prosecution sources. He is also accused of uploading and promoting pornographic materials online. MN, who was flanked by two senior police officers in court, denied the charges.

He is being held in solitary confinement at Al Qusais police station to protect him from other prisoners, prosecution sources said.

MN was initially charged with homosexuality, indecency and encouraging prostitution. Prosecutors later elevated the charges.

He is also accused of insulting religion after prosecutors alleged that he circulated images on the internet of himself dressed up in women’s garb while reading the Quran.

“He has insulted the Islamic creed by wearing female make-up, accessories and a hijab-like veil while sitting in front of the Holy Quran and acting like he is praying,” the indictment said.

MN is due to appear in court again on January 20 to present his defence.

The other Emirati defendant is accused of enticing men through internet chat rooms to commit homosexual acts. MF denied the charge.

According to court documents, a cybercrimes investigator met the defendant last September in an online chat room.

The officer alleges that the defendant made arrangements for them to meet to have sex.

“When we arrested the defendant we confiscated his computer and he confessed to us that he has had illicit sex with many persons,” said Sgt Omar Ibrahim of the Dubai Police cybercrimes division.

Public schools in Germany must offer religion classes, and pilot courses in Islam are now being offered in addition to established programs in Judaism, Catholicism, and Protestantism.

When Lamya Kaddor started teaching at the Gluecklauf School in this mining town, where most children are of Turkish origin, she didn’t expect her “Islamic Studies in German” class to focus on everyday life.

But it has, says Ms. Kaddor, a Muslim whose parents are Syrian. Her students ask all sorts of questions: “Is it OK to have boyfriends? Can I wear nail polish? Will I go to hell if I’m gay?”

Germany’s Constitution stipulates that religion be part of school curriculum. The initiative was born out of the atrocities of the Nazi era, and aimed at giving young people an ethical foundation and a sense of identity. Roman Catholics and Protestants have conducted such classes (publicly funded) for decades, and Jews were given similar rights in 2003.

Muslims, however, have faced roadblocks. But some observers argue such classes could help Muslims, some 6 percent of the population, better integrate their religious and German identities. Now, pilot projects that are chipping away at the barriers represent the latest evidence of Germany’s changing attitude toward its booming Muslim minority.

“Muslim classes in public schools are a litmus test for integration,” says Michael Kiefer, author of a history of teaching Islam in German classrooms. “Muslims can see that they’re getting something other religions are getting. That has an enormously positive symbolic impact on them.”

Taught by church- or synagogue-appointed teachers with curricula certified by the state’s education ministries, religion classes are graded, but not mandatory.

One of the obstacles to including Islam in school-taught religions, some say, is that it lacks an accepted entity to offer guidance. Germany’s Muslims are mostly Sunnis; the rest are mainly Shiites, Alevis, or followers of the south Asian Ahmaddiyya sect. “There isn’t one Islam, and it’s not easy to reflect the different manifestations of Islam’s pluralism in a class on Islam,” says Jamal Malik, chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Erfurt.
Acceptance of immigrants grows

For decades, Germany did little to help its Muslim minority settle, classifying immigrants from countries such as Turkey as “guest workers.” But Germans are now more willing to view immigration as part of the country’s identity, and not long ago, then-Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble said that it was urgent for Germany’s 900,000 Muslim pupils to be granted state-funded religious teaching. “It can be an exemplary way for our society to acknowledge and overcome all the differences that confront us,” Mr. Schäuble said.

Orthodox Judaism finally begins to face gay rights.

Countless modern quandaries—from scientific inquiry to women’s rights—have failed to rock the Orthodox Jewish boat. But younger Orthodox Jews are pushing gay inclusion to the fore, and for the first time, the sect doesn’t have any reasonable answers for its internal liberal critics. If this advocacy for gay inclusion is to succeed, it will have to carve out a new niche that hasn’t really existed before: a group that is entirely Orthodox in all ways but one. And overwhelming response to a gay event at one of Orthodoxy’s largest institutions last month suggests change is on its way.

The nearest analogue to this battle is the ongoing fight for women’s inclusion in Orthodoxy. Not to diminish the meaning of that struggle for those engaged in it, but it seems a stretch to compare the suffering of someone whose religion is keeping them from the pulpit to someone whose religion is keeping them from having a partner.

On the doctrinal front, there has only ever been the need to revisit rabbinic attitudes—and not much halacha, or Jewish law—for women’s equality to gain a foothold. The main obstacles to advancing women’s issues are vague concerns about societal makeup. But there are no similar doctrinal loopholes for Orthodoxy on the issue of gay inclusion, guaranteeing that the battle for welcoming gays among the Orthodox is a zero-sum game: Either the gay-inclusive Orthodox lose their Orthodoxy in some fundamental way or queer Jews and their allies become lost to the Orthodox.

Liberals attacking conservative Christians’ stance on gays are fond of noting that the conservatives are perfectly comfortable eating shellfish, which Leviticus also calls “an abomination.” (See the Web site GodHatesShrimp.com.) But Orthodox Jews do follow all the laws of Leviticus (though some have noted that another “abomination”—unethical business dealings—is receiving less condemnation these days than it should). Where more liberal strains of Judaism can reinterpret biblical and Talmudic passages to make them more gay-friendly or ignore later rabbinical rulings, a very large part of what defines Orthodoxy is that it doesn’t allow these methods of interpretation. The classic rabbinic formulation that the current generation’s scholars are but dwarves on the shoulders of giants is taken quite literally in Orthodoxy; precedent is often wholly binding.

The only real avenue for those advocating a full life for gays in Orthodoxy is to take one step outside of it—and a separate trend suggests this could happen.

Hello everyone,

I am new at this site, however I read out how difficult it is to be a gay in Arab countries. Instaed of taking risks, many Arabs are coming to Istanbul for many reasons:

Istanbul/Turkey is not far away geographically
Turkish people have the same religion with Arabs and have a similar, guest friendly culture (they feel like at home)
Turkish men look like Arab men and they are very sexy
Being a gay and having sex man to man is not illegal in Turkey
Turkey is not expensive

I heard from a German friend (journalist writing in German gay magazine) that a local travel agency (sensationtours.com.tr) welcomes European and Arab gay men to Istanbul where they meet the roots of gay fun.

I myself being a gay man in Istanbul can admit that Istanbul is a gay paradise with its crazy gay night clubs, Hammams, and especially its handsome men. Istanbul with its location on two continents, its rich history is the European capital for culture in 2010 and soon will surely become the capital of gay fun in Europe and Middle East.

Lots of love and Happy New Year to you all.

Read the whole tread

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Official Name: All Middle East
Population: 230,000,000
Capital: 15 cities – Pop. 0
Area: 647,500 sq. km. / 402,338 sq. miles.
Language: Arabic, Hebrew, English
Religion: Muslim, Judaism, Christianity
Status of Homosexuality: Illegal (except Iraq, Israel, Jordan, West Bank)

Homosexuality in the Middle East is a scorned, denied and criminalized behavior. Secular and religious laws punish same-sex acts that range from imprisonment to whipping to execution. Islam is by far the most dominant religion and it influences secular laws to be harsh and sometimes fatal to gay people.

Gay Middle East News & Reports – Gay Travel, Life & Culture. Photo Galleries, Stories, Links, News & Reports.

This is my last night in Amman. I'm leaving tomorrow, going for a small journey before joining my sister in America. I plan to return to Lebanon after the war.

Before I leave Jordan, I'm going to visit the ancient lands of Sodom, the baneful inheritance of gay people worldwide, and the namesake of "لوطي" and "sodomite". I wonder if it will change me in some way, but I don't yet know the manner. Will the earth open like an awoken, bitter clam and swallow me? Will the lapping of the sea greet me like the friendly tongue of a lonely dog? My heart is swarming with quietly whispering bees.

I spent the night eating falafel and onions (quartered perfectly, with just a hint of brown skin to give texture), and I wrote this poem:

With the molten night still flowing slowly over the hillsides,
not yet hardened into its opaline shell,
the cafes crowd with starched white shirts
and immaculately pastel peasant skirts,
every eye turned to the burning hillside of Jebel Achrafieh.
The words "amber" and "ochre" and "cinnamon" quiver in the air,
clumsily weighted by their Germanic accents
and clattering like bits of copper on the tiles.

Every house on Jebel Achrafieh is the exact same color,
an indistinguishable sandstone that rises organically from the earth.
If you run quickly, civilization disappears in a whirling panorama:
smeared in the rushing drab of the dirt and the bright of the sky.

If I had a house on Jebel Achrafieh, I'd paint it blue
with chalk, just once a year, in a month without holidays,
like Shaban or Thu al-Kadah,
months that dim in the light of Ramadan and Thu al-Hijra.
On that day, the women washing clothes would shout
"Such beauty held in sapphire walls!"
The sun would stop high in the sky, resting and admiring,
and the blinded women would spill their buckets of frothing water.

Every day the lazy strollers on the steep avenues of Amman
absorb the muffled beauty of endlessly rolling ginger hills.
But for one sunset in the year, the glory of difference would shine,
and before the mullahs could run from their hilltops and shout their curses,
would be washed away in the swirling rivers of the washer-women,
left to nothing but azure streams by the cold morning light.

I've been thinking a lot about the wars in the Middle East, and all the burdens that come with it. What comes to mind are the intangible riches of the ancient world: the philosophy of Greece, the law of Rome, the magic of India, and the wisdom of Persia.

What did the lands of Arabia bring? Religion. The East boils in religion, heated by the boiling sands of the Arabian desert, while the West fidgets with cool, calculating legality. The U.S. and Europe fight over what is legal, what is agreed-upon, what is enforcable, while the East argues over right, wrong and God, infinitely more difficult conceptions. Arabs have never really put faith in the United Nations, and the Arab League is a porcelain vase that is endlessly dropeed and glued back together. Religion is both the glory and the curse of the Middle East: it brings it light and it brings it war.

I remember watching "The Neverending Story" on television as a child, with the hungry "Nothing". It gave me nightmares. More than any other figment that terrorized me - Chucky, the djinn, the man under the bed - the idea of the Nothing tortured me. Chucky would stab me, the djinn would eat me, and the man under the bed would do something horrible. But what would happen to me when the Nothing came?

The deserts of Arabia are expanding, eating away at the Arabian nations. I once heard an American compare the deserts to the American plains, an awful comparison. While they may be alike in stark beauty, the plains give life - corn, wheat, and cattle - the desert gives empty gifts wrapped in shimmering brown paper. I wonder if I'll start dreaming of the desert, as I used to of the Nothing.

I may not post for a while, because of my stay in Sodom, so I am going to leave with a good post: the review of Unspeakable Love that I promised to do a while ago. It'll be right under this one, when I finish it. I'll also leave with this excerpt of one of my favorite poems, "La colère de Samson". It's a fight of lovers, of men vs. women, but it means so much more than that:

Bientôt, se retirant dans un hideux royaume,
La Femme aura Gomorrhe et l'Homme aura Sodome,
Et, se jetant, de loin, un regard irrité,
Les deux sexes mourront chacun de son côté.

In a comment to my last post, a reader of this blog told me she liked it in a very flattering comment. I blushed. But she said something which didn't really sit right with me: "Overall, the common theme is that religion is the source of all evil."

I'm not sure whether she was referencing the current Israeli-Hizbullah war, or posts in my blog. I hope it's not the latter.

I don't agree that religion is the source of all evil, however, and I desperately hope that my postings in this blog don't indicate that I do. I am a very religious person, and believe strongly in the good of God. I think it's the misuse of God that is a great source of evil, for many people project their own prejudices onto God and then use God as justification for their evil deeds.

I am against misuse of religion, not religion itself.

In respect to gay people, for centuries, religious texts has been mistranslated, misinterpreted, fabricated, and deleted to support anti-gay rhetoric. It's like painting a white horse black - no matter how much paint you put on horse, it is still pure underneath.

I believe in the white horse and I believe in salvation, redemption, and the power of God against evil. That's why I'm al-Fil (it's from the Qur'an, sura 105 - maybe I'll explain my name someday, I'm sure it might be misinterpreted as well).

Most of the religious leaders have recently come from Turkey and have no German skills. Organisers said the measure was an important step on the path to better integration of Turkish Muslims and their mosques into German society. ... Yes germany is generally considered Christian country, but contrary to its Religion it does allow Gay marriage, Satanists, Neonacies and all sorts of ideological groups. When you find time and effort to write your islamophobic thougths, ...