The offending leaflet with content censored by the media
Today’s Guardian newspaper reports:
Three men have been jailed after becoming the first to be convicted of stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation for handing out a leaflet calling for gay people to be executed.
Ihjaz Ali, Kabir Ahmed and Razwan Javed gave out the pamphlet, entitled The Death Penalty? which showed an image of a mannequin hanging from a noose and quoted Islamic texts that said capital punishment was the only way to rid society of homosexuality.
So what is one to make of this news? I have conflicting emotions. On the one hand I dislike any attempt to stir up hatred against any section of the community. Islam is a religion par excellence of community cohesion and social tranquility. But Islam does not recognize the concept of ‘gay people’ as if they were a separate race of humans. Shariah is concerned with our behaviour, our public actions, not with what it done in private away from the public gaze. However, any public manifestation of fornication, homosexuality or adultery, if observed by four reliable witnesses, can in certain circumstances, merit very harsh punishments including the death penalty. According to the Quran, God may choose to forgive all aberrations except for the association of other ‘deities’, other powers and other agents, with Him.
By advocating these harsh punishments Islam is in agreement with Christianity and Judaism, at least as originally conceived. God’s law given to Moses on Mount Sinai required the death penalty for those who committed such acts:
‘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 KJV)
Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament, absolutely agreed with this requirement:
‘Then Jesus said to the crowds and to his disciples: “The teachers of the law and the Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat. So you must be careful to do everything they tell you. But do not do what they do, for they do not practice what they preach.’(Matthew 23:1-3 NIV)
A similar attitude to the Law is found later in the same chapter:
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.” (Matthew 23:23-24 NIV)
This is not to say that I agree with the crude way these leaflets were written. Perhaps it was inevitably going to rouse the gay lobby and the law to suppress these views. And the three Muslims have been sent to prison and have had their freedom of speech crushed. I think the sentence handed down by the court was unfair. I have no doubt that the churches, if they say anything at all, will mutter platitudes about the Almighty loving ‘gay people‘, as if this quasi race of humans presented a different set of moral issues than ‘adulterous people’ or ‘fornicating people’.
Comments on: "Islam, Gay Rights and The Death Penalty, A Muslim View" (1)
I feel that IF TRUE, these guys have borrowed from the Straussian/Neo – Conservative handbook of ‘inventing an enemy to unite the people’. Focusing on gay people is manifest dumbness in the first place.
Further, the parts of the Muslim religious establishment in the U.K are one of the LEADING CAUSES of homosexuality in the PRACTISING Muslim community in my experience. Allow me to explain: as far as pious Muslims who are tempted by homosexuality are concerned, they know it is morally wrong, but there is such a thing as SITUATIONAL homosexuality, described by some Muslim and non – Muslim writers alike, particularly in reference to single sex boarding situations such as prisons and schools or situations where people have extreme segregation from the opposite sex, especially during puberty and/or when finding a partner.
Now having gone to a boys school myself, I don’t ‘GET IT’ personally, but I have to admit that the anecdotal and academic accounts on situational homosexuality are somewhat numerous and merit reasoned and academic consideration.
I don’t know about overseas, but the religious establishment in the U.K (mainly split between Deobandi and Salafist elements, with a disturbingly large overlap) are much like these idiots who leafleted about homosexuality: forget Tawheed, forget Sunnah, their main concerns seem to be:
1) Promotion and enforcement of extreme sexual segregation. And I mean extreme, like there is no ‘upper limit’. For example, almost all U.K ‘scholars’ on the speaking circuit in mosques promote the face veil as WAJIB or FARD.
2) Promotion of seminary – style boarding schools for young men and women (an innovation based on Christian ’seminaries’ as far as I can tell) for (often but not always) young men and ALL girls who they don’t want to go to university due to their sexual paranoia regarding them, a sexual paranoia which is alien to Islam and purely cultural.
3) Making marriage difficult or impossible by the above and other bizzare practices too numerous to mention. So much so that the ‘Muslim marriage problem’ has now been noticed by the non – Muslim media and they have made documentaries about this (one was aired just last night on the BBC).
Now IF there is such a thing as ‘Situational Homosexuality’, this would be expected to arise in SOME susceptible individuals under the above circumstances, which are not created by Western Liberalism, but by the Muslim ‘orthodoxy’ themselves.
Stephen Schwartz describes something very similar in Saudi Arabia where he says homosexuality is widespread (though his book is rather biased and not academic) as does Colin Thoubron regarding Iran in his book ‘Shadows of the Silk Road’.
I would dare to say that the only thing that protects the Muslim community in the U.K is the clarity of Allah’s guidance and help in this situation and His disapproval of the act. I think the Muslims own actions (at least in the U.K) may actually PREDISPOSE them to homosexual thought and action.
So rather than sort out heir OWN community, why not just blame the gays! Same logic as the far – right.