That’s the most fascinating piece of information about homosexuality in the Muslim world I have ever hear, no exaggeration.  Thanks Justin.  I was always confused why there was so much homophobia in the Muslim world, accompanied at the same time by widespread sodomy.

Enlightening, Justin.

Not too long ago we had some exchanges with those who
said that “at least in the Muslim world you do not
have the sexual degeneracy you find here”. It is good
to enlighten them as to how widespread buggery is, and
usually involving a minor boy.

I also remember a little while ago how some members of the left wing of the War Party in the mainstream media were making this big fuss about two gay Iranian teenagers who were hung allegedly for engaging in homosexual acts.  The thing the MSM didn’t report was that the teenagers were hung for rape, not for sodomy.  Now, admittedly, this could have been a trumped up charge.  But MSM didn’t even mention this fact.  Amnesty International, widely cited as opposing the execution, opposed the execution because of both its long standing opposition to the death penalty in all cases and the alleged irregularities in the case.  AI decided NOT to play up the gay angle.  But these little nuances don’t matter much to conservative and liberal Islamophobes.  Anything that bashes Islam, for whatever reason, and gets us geared up for another invasion and occupation of another Muslim country is a-OK in their eyes.

Is there some sanction in the Koran or other sources of Moslem theology for these views or are they just culturally Persian and/or Arab? Do Indonesian or Nigerian Moslems, for example, think this way?

I read some of the comments that were posted online in response to
Ahmedinejad’s comments.  A couple of Farsi speakers said that he was misinterpreted
as saying that they have no homosexuals in Iran when he actually said that
they have no homosexual problem in Iran. The former makes him sound like
a raving lunatic, but then that’s really the point isn’t it? 

@Matt,

The actual fact is that there are some misguided people in the west who think
it is the duty of the U.S., evidently as God’s proxy to right the wrongs
of the rest of the world.  If a gay or woman is mistreated in Iran then
by all means we should be gearing up to nuke them all for their sins. 

Maybe the mainstream media should watch it’s own programing where they
show how many people in this country have been sitting in prison and even on
death row who have been proved innocent and where the police have even
helped to trump up false charges against individuals.  I hope this doesn’t mean
that we have to nuke ourselves. 

What struck me most about the whole Ahmedinejad scene was the pathetic
performance of the president of Columbia University acting as a neo-con
mouthpiece to a guy they invited to talk.  So much for the value of an
Ivy League education.

Just asking: Does Islam firmly oppose homosexual and lesbian relations?  Is Islam the Scourge of God upon a decadent civilization?

his remarks about gays reaffirm that he is clueless.  the purpose of the speaking engagement was not so we could learn his awesome iranian wayof life.  iran is a largely unproductive country that were it not for the microscope trained on it, would be the most non descript country on earth. and he is not interested in the american rat race, for all it’s rewards, and importing liberalism to his country.  the purpose of the appearence was to stop the drive to war.  we have a very isolated, powerful president who is selling us and being sold a line of goods on “iran” that is false.  They are different and in most important ways inferior to us (I believe).  it is in both our interests to not have more war.  president bush is not going to invite ahmedenjad to speak to him personally, much less in oppublic.  so the people had to go aruond the government and have this comical, not to enlightening but necassary event

@Sid

Islam supports the most extreme sexual purity,
for women, that is.

For men, anything goes. They put the onus of virtue
on their women, and as long as they are, no shame can
attach to them.

They are vicariously virtuous, while they make sexual
use of women and boys as the fancy takes them.

You won’t find less homosexuality in the Muslim world,
but more.

Do Iranian politicians get arrested for soliciting
sex with other men at the Tehran International
Airport bathrooms?

andrew- hat doesn’t happen there.  they don’t have that phenonomn like we do in the United States :)

Mr.Raimondo, sexuality in “Shia” Persian speaking Iran is certainly a complex can of worms to open. You are doing a very good job of trying to understand it. This is especially true for an outsider looking in.

You nailed it on the sodomy part, and certainly the rather orthodox Shia view of homosexuality in relation to the male gender(Many of those Mullah’s enjoy it the most, sort of like our Catholic Priests). Of course, this is much stronger in Iran’s “over thirty” crowd than the younger generation, from my own observations.

I might add, not all elements of the “Islamic World” may fall across these lines, either. After all, everyone’s favorite “Sufi Master”, the Rumi himself, was said to have had another man as the love of his life.

The Ayatollah Khomeini was said to be a practitioner of a form of Sufism.

It really makes one wonder…

Interesting side note: There was no homosexuality in the western world until the 1800’s either.  There was certainly sodomy, which was frowned upon, but the homosexual identity was created largely as a result of the media coverage of the Oscar Wilde trials.

Much as in the muslim world right now, in Western Europe for the longest time there was a very big separation between an act and an identity.

@Tudor

The same way everyone had been breathing, but not until
Lavoisier was oxygen identified and named?

@Adriana

False analogy.  Oxygen is a scientifically observable substance.  “Homosexuality” is not an objective, scientific category.  It is a socially-constructed lable, as Justin’s post so clearly indicates.

pat robertson...i mean matt. you are so clueless.
homosexuality is a scientific category. it has been
proven that there is a basis for it in genes. and
there are gay animals. you are a dolt. stop spreading
ignorance. dont just believe what others tell you to
believe.

@matt

Homosexuality is a behavior, and as all behaviors,
observable with scientific criterion. It is a behavior
that occurs in certain circumsntaces, and not in
others, and it may or not be linked to other behaviors.

The point about oxygen, is that it is somehting that
hasa been here a long time, but only now it has been
given a name, and being identified is the first step
to learning about it.

Homosexuality is not just a kind of sex act; it’s also who you get crushes on, fall in love with, etc.  Of course, it’s complex and like all human categories can be difficult to pin down.

Matt: the reason the left didn’t cover the story of the two gay teenagers properly was that that they didn’t know all the details.  A lot of people saw the initial story, and very few saw the caveat that the teenagers weren’t technically being executed for homosexuality.

Seriously, what’s with the public discourse these days? Everyone assumes that the other side is deliberately malevolent, when the reality is that the sides are just living in different media universes.

Still doesn’t stop him from executing them though, does it?

Homosexuality is behavior which is habitual and then may become the basis for self-identification or identification by others.  In the US, it is PC to consider it to be a rigid and unchangeable category.  Among Brazilians, for example, of whom I know a large number, this is not at all the case.  People label themselves and are labelled by others according to this month’s, this week’s or even this day’s choice of sex partners.

there is another reason, a huge gap between what you say in public, and what you do in private..... far greater than the west, where we generally blurt out most everything… in india, no one will say publicly that there is homosexulaity, or divorce… everybody knows that there is, but it is simply NOT talked about, that would be extremely bad manners… Ahmadinejad was simply being polite, being from west asia .... now, anybody care to do an analysis on frequency of sodomy and child abuse, and its correlation with countries where men wear moustaches??

I think that the above previous post by Gregory is a very accurate way to look at such matters, especially in the context of non-western Asiatic cultures. I agree with his viewpoint, exactly. Such matters simply are not discussed in public in Iran, for example, even during the time of the reign of the Shah. As they say in Persian, “one’s dirty laundry is not put out for all to see”. Correlating 19th century observations of the Near East, Central and South Asia with modern day attitudes of human sexuality in something as vast as the “Islamic World” is not going to yield a very accurate conclusion. There is simply too much nuance involved, and generalizations break down rather quickly..

Well, a study of the matter could be mind-broadening.

Or broadening of anotehr kind…

It just shows how cultural differences and language can lead to misunderstandings on both sides.  I had a Japanese student tell me (when he was drunk) that when he was in university he loved a man, but he (the student telling me the story) was (the) “woman”.  I couldn’t understand what he meant for a minute then I fished it out of him that he meant that he “took it”, rather than “gave it”.  And to him it wasn’t unusual or shameful.  Actually, there is a lot of homosexuality in Japanese history and the samurai class.  But most Japanese think that it doesn’t really exist here in Japan like in the West.  However, there ARE gay clubs/districts and the current young boys’ fashion is a kind of gay cowboy style.

I am a convert to Islam and live in Iran since 1982.
The contention that homosexuals in Islam are regarded as women trapped in a man’s body is just simply not true. Free operations are offered to transsexuals, e.g. men who express the wish to become women, after they have been properly diagnosed by a psychiatrist. Homosexuality is haram in Islam, I am sorry, but we cannot accommodate Western liberals by changing Allah’s word. As for the level of surgery, it is very high in Iran and all kinds of complicated treatments are performed. I do not know enough about surgery to change one’s gender, but rest assuted, if women can be surgically converted into men in other countries, Iranian surgeons can handle that too.

Well, it seems that homosexuality in certain countries
is dealt with through argumentation by bizarre
definition, as says Scott Adams

“It is not that he is a criminal, it is that he does
things that are against the law...”

I am a man who engages in homosexuality only.

Homosexuality is a natural ocurring thing. What a socieity does with it is its business. I have no rights in dictating to the Egyptians how they interpret homoeroticism. Let me add that There is alot more sexual exchanges between men in Muslim societies than in America.

Men in Muslim societies do not really lable themselves as homosexuals or heterosexuals. They simply act on their desires.  All men are expected to marry and lead a “normal” life, but that does not prevent men from having sex with men on the side. I am almost sure that Ahmadinejad has had sex with many men. He of course does not think of that as making him a homosexual. The idea that having sex with another man makes you a homoexesual is an American cultural artifact.

When a man like me visits Iran, he is shocked at how easy it is for two men to meet in the street, or in a cafe and then have sex.

I was involved with a Muslem man for the past 9 years. We
had sex frequently, and we admitted to being in love with eachother. My friend saw nothing wrong with that. One day he met a woman and decided to marry. We are still friends. The thought of him doing something unatural, or being gay never crossed his mind. In fact, my friend considers Gays in America to be weird. He finds thir way silly. I dont agree with him however.

In Muslem societies there are sometimes men that like to become women. In Iran such men are provided by the government with the means to have sex change operations, and then they are allowed to lead a normal lives.

In some other countries like Oman, many prostitutes are men. These prostitutes may eventually marry women and lead normal lives also. Most of those prostitute do not consider themselves as homosexuals. They are just men working.

A friend of mine who was stationed in Saudi Arabia was shocked to find out that when he walked the beach at night he would find hundrids of men out looking for sex with other men; in fact he would be propositioned quite often, something shocking to him since he didnt think of himself as a sexually desirable person. He told me once that in Saudi Arabia men ruoutinelly have sex with other men, and that many of them actually form lasting lover relations on the side. They ofcourse do not consider that as meaning that they are homosexuals. For them it something completely natural that takes place along with their marriage to women.

History tells us that In 9th century Egypt many doctors would advise patients to date men instead of women, I dont exactly know the reason. You can do the research on your own.

The honest truth is that when Westerners talk about gay or homosexuality, they mean something entirely different from what Muslims know. If I may add, homosexual behaviour is far more accepted in Islamic societies that in western ones, as long as you do not flaunt it. Also not accepted is the idea that two men can live together as husbands, or that a man would choose only men as the subject of sexual interest.

Some quotes from: Faucault and the Iranian Revolution, by Janet Afary, Kevin.

Page 160:

“Despite the commonly held view of Muslim societies as puritanical, they can be more tolerant of homosexuality, provided the relationship is not flaunted. But such tolerance is not the same a recognition of civil rights and legal equality...Once a boy is labeled passive, he is fair game for others and is regarded as a “prostitute”. If he activities are kept private, he is expected to outgrow his status, to marry and to produce children. If as an adult he enters a same-sex relation, he is assumed to be the active partner in the affair. Homosexual behaviour is socially tolerated if the man maintains a family and does not flaunt his activity...Demanding respect for being gay, or lesbian is completely unacceptable in any Islamic society. Rape of a man, if it becomes public knowledge can destroy the victim’s reputation...The prevalence of certain forms of same-sex relations in the region, therefore, should not be equated with recognition for a gay lifestyle...”

“Since the late nineteenth century, when a new women’s rights discourse gained grounds in the region, supporters of women’s rights have been amongst the vocal opponents of traditional homosexuality in Iran. One of the first modern criticisms of male homosexuality appears in the late nineteenth-century treatise of an Iranian feminist, Bibi Khanom Astarababi. She complained bitterly about the lives of women trapped in loveless marriages with men whose objects of passion were other men...”

Page 116:

“Execuation of homosexuals [in Iran] were not for homosexuality as such, but for homosexual pimping and sexual violence against minors.”

Page 156:
Classical Persian literature, the poems of Attar (d. 1220), Rumi (d. 1273), Sa’di (d. 1291)...are replete with homoerotic allusions, as well as explicit refereences to beautiful young boys...One of the best sources of homoerotic relations is the study by Cyrus Shamisa, who writes that “Persian literature is essentially a homosexual literature”.

Poster’s Comment: Indeed, it appears as if most Iranian men participate in homosexuality. In few places is the dictum: “Dont ask dont tell” more applicable than to the situation surrounding homosexuality in Islamic socieities.

So yes, Ahmadinejad was right. Homosexuality as it exists in America does not exist in Iran. In Iran you can fuck with men all you want; that does not make you a homosexual. If you want to become a woman, well the govenrment will pay for it and it is perfectly legal. Then however you lose your penis, and most men, including myself, who like to play with men will tell you that is a terrible idea.

Concerning the Harh punishment for homosexuality in Iran:

Though punishment for homosexual acts is theoretically harsh, Islam has largely ignored homosexual relations. Comparable to the “Dont ask dont tell” policiy in the U.S. military, there is a “will not to know” among Muslims. This is in part because homosexuality is an alternative outlet for sexual gratification when lawful conjugal sex is not possible. Then, too, practical complications inhibit implementation of the law. According to the rules of penal procedures, four trustworthy Muslim men must testify that they have seen the arraigned engage in sodomy, or the culprit must confess four times. Since there is severe punishment for unproven accusation, individuals rarely risk reporting suspected same-sex conduct. In practice, it is only public transgression of Islamic morals that is condemned, and therefore Islamic law stresses the role of eyewitness to an offense.

Detecting a homosexual couple in public is rather difficult since public shows of affection, for instance, holding hands and kissing on the cheeks, is customary amongst friends in Islamic society, in particular Iran.

So, yes, there are not Homosexuals in Iran. Only men that marry and have sex with men on the side.

A most illuminating discussion. Learned much more here than I have ever or would ever learn in what passes these days for our “mainstream” and gatekept news media. One correction to the Raimondo story above, though: He says Iranians couldn’t handle sex-change operations that convert women to men (don’t know if he means Iranian surgeons and Iranian medical technology cannot handle the technicalities of the procedure, or if he means Iranian culture and the Iranian government / body-politick can’t handle the results), but in the newspaper story he links us to on that subject, it is clearly stated that the female-to-male surgeries are indeed done in Iran—although less often. My own observation is that in a society where men have so much more power, freedom (sexual and otherwise), wealth, and legal standing than do women, obviously the vast majority of men who love and / or lust for other men (even to the exclusion of women) would never get the operation and lose their rights in that society by becoming a woman. If I was a woman in such an incredibly gender-imbalanced, repressive (to women) world—and the taxpayers are footing the bill—I would seriously consider getting the operation and becoming a man even if I was not attracted to other women. To me, life as a woman in such a country would just suck so bad… (Then again, this might only be because of my Western values, which I likely would not have were I raised as a girl in a country such as Iran).

Hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is everwhere.

I m a homosexual and i had the time of my life
in muslim countries

alas, that was not the case in US where homosexuals
have become clowns of all kinds

“alas, that was not the case in US where homosexuals have become clowns of all kinds.”

Response:

The Gay movement in America was largely begun by drag queens and very effeminate men who liked sex with men.  Because of this, the social artifact called “Gay Culture” is dominated by the concerns of effeminate men, and their desires to blur the lines between the sexes.

The reality of the matter is that most men who practice sex with men exclusively are not effeminate, and most effeminate men are actually men who prefer sex almost exclusively with women.

Exclusive homosexuality, is a practice dominated by admiration of that that has been defined as masculine by a given society. Most men drawn only to homosexuality engage in admiration of the cult of masculinity, not effeminacy, and thus appear more masculine.

Having said the above, it is important to understand that “Gay Culture” in the USA, having been begun largely by very effeminate men, calls on the cultivation of effeminacy on its adherents. No where is this more apparent than when one observes the transformation in mannerisms and behavior that most men once they embrace “Gay culture” undergo. In fact, I am very often shocked when I hear Gay body builders open their mouths, and very often, out comes the intonations and speech pattern stereotypically associated with women. It is important to keep in mind that what once is witnessing there is a culture, and not a condition arising intrinsically
from the exclusive practice of homosexuality.

Also, it is important to keep in mind that the concept of masculinity and femininity are culturally based dual concepts, and not a constant of the human specie.

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