As a muslim, I practice my faith out of love and conviction with the steadfast affirmation that my God is a loving one. I can’t imagine that God created LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) individuals just so we can be made to suffer a life of celibacy/ denial or apostasy. Telling me or my community that this is God’s test of our faith just doesn’t cut it either. Sweeping the issue under the rug or comparing homosexuality with criminal acts serves no purpose other than perpetuate and exhibit ignorance. Rape, pedophilia, bestiality or elitist genocidal dictatorship (ala Hilter) are acts that involve perpetrators and victims. Contrary to popular belief, homosexuality typically involves consenting adults (aka opposite of criminal + victim) and most of us have no desire to morally corrupting you or your family (maybe just that bigoted, closeted homophobe next door).
If anything, we are often the victims of hate crime as well as of judicial and spiritual neglect. For example, as per my article on Transsexualism in Malaysia, transgendered Malaysians with the exception of hermaphrodites have no judicial rights to official change their gender even post-surgery. Another example is that the five countries that punish homosexuality by death are officially Islamic: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, Sudan and Yemen. Judicial neglect isn’t limited to Islamic countries, gay marriages are not recognized federally in the US. Texas even has state laws punishing sodomy. And don’t even get me started on the hate crimes!
In an example of spiritual neglect, most Islamic schools(Hanafi, Maliki, Ja’afari, Shafi’i) considers people engaging in same-sex intercourse are adulterers if they are married and fornicators if they are not. For the latter, we won’t be fornicators if the religious or judicial laws allow us to get married to our partners now, would we? For the former, if society and religious believers are more open to homosexuals, perhaps one need not resort having fake heterosexual lives. This issue holds true for many religions not just Islam.
I believe it is important to elevate awareness of and for LGBT religious believers. Religion needs to evolve with its believers. For illustration purposes, I did some quick rudimentary math (because I am geeky that way):
Let’s assume that currently Moslems are about 22% of the world population. Now, let’s assume that 5% of the world population do indeed identify themselves as a part of the LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgendered) community . Accordingly, there are potentially 73 million LGBT Moslems around the world based on 1.1% of 6.7 billion world population. The numbers are highly theoretical but the point is that there is potentially a large number LGBT Moslems. Arguing that all 73 million LGBT Moslems should be stoned to death, locked up till death, become atheists or celibate is not a scalable solution, very economical or convivial to a sizable chunk of the world population. Again, this problem holds true for any other religious believers not just Islam.
I propose we re-evaluate religious points of views we were brought up with. An example of reassessment is in the contextual lessons one can draw from Lot passages (source: Quran 7:80-82, 11: 70-85, 15: 66–74, 26:165-175, 27:55-58, 29:28-29). Along with rudely trying to bugger Lot’s angelic guests without of their consent (i.e. rape) and the will of their host, Lot’s people were guilty of many other things such as committing financial & political injustice (pg 993-995), infidelity, and moral transgression in the form of rampant intercourse, greed and unchecked lust according to Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s interpretation of the Quran (pg 366-367, 630-631, 927). Isn’t the better lesson to learn is to practice monogamous relationships and conduct responsible reasonable respectful actions as opposed to wholesale condemnation of homosexuality?
Sects of Christianity such as Anglican church, Episcopalian churches and Buddhism are some examples of religious bodies that already moved towards integrating the LGBT believers into their community. When is our turn?
Bonus reads:
