Talk:LGBTQ people and Islam

Wiki Education assignment: Cross-Cultural Psychology

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2022 and 29 April 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Aalle176 (article contribs).

Transgender history

We have a section dedicated to the history of homosexuality. LGBT is also about trans people who are not necessarily gay (even if we consider people by their gender assigend at birth). I feel like there is some undue weight. Maybe we can add a transgender history section, if sufficient material is available, or trim the homosexuality section? Especially since other sections also treat the issue of homosexuality and anal intercourse in much detail. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 18:44, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Doesn't that rather depend on the transgender history that's available? Iskandar323 (talk) 20:27, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Completely unprofessional bias

I'm not even sure where to begin with this trainwreck of an article, carefully written to prioritize modern, progressive analyses of sexuality in Islam that very few Muslims or Muslim authorities actually accept. The main device it uses is looking at things with a purely sociological lense in which the actions of certain Muslims throughout history are divorced from what Islamic law actually says.

The introduction implies that Muslims accepted the LGBT throughout history until the West enforced prejudice on Muslim-majority countries in the 19th century. Yet the article itself goes into detail about how literally all the normal positions of Islamic law forbid gender fluidity and homosexuality to such an extent that all schools unanimously uphold capital punishment for sodomy based on the Hadith. How can this be reconciled with the ludicrous claim that the Prophet "never forbade homosexual relationships outright?" The prevalence of homosexuality in pre-modern Islamic polities, most of which was in the form of pederasty, doesn't mean that Islam inherently condoned it. Pederasty is NOT synonymous with the LGBT as we understand it today, that is an anachronistic interpretation and certainly not something that most people today would support. Plenty of claims in this article are not sourced at all, such as how normal medieval Muslims "usually apprehended the idea (homosexuality) with indifference, if not admiration."

If there are viewpoints of Islam's relationship with the LGBT that are minority positions, then you have to acknowledge that they are considered fringe, unpopular and irrelevant in Islamic legal circles. Instead, this article priorities these arguments while obscuring the Islamic stance. Numerous paragraphs are devoted to progressive interpretations of Islamic texts from academics who are not even proper Islamic authorities such as Scott Kugle, yet erudite refutations of their work from Muslim scholars are only passingly mentioned in single lines. This is an encyclopedia of established information, yes? Then why are random American academics who support the LGBT given multiple subsections discussing their work while the traditional Islamic positions are framed as "Wahhabist," informed by 19th century "Christian law," etc? The editors dance around these issues by claiming that they only accept rigorous academic citations and that primary Islamic texts are not "reliable sources for Islam." That's a very amusing response. It's obvious to anyone who reads this article that mostly one particular kind of historical study is referenced, and those are secular studies that support the LGBT movement and claim that Muslims tolerated it until the big bad colonizers showed up in the 19th century.

If you want to be honest about how Islam views the LGBT then perhaps focus on citing actual Muslims instead of white academics from Western countries and removing claims with no citations. You can't dance around the Islamic basis for why modern Muslims generally oppose the LGBT by citing books talking about how pederasty was common in the Middle Ages or ignoring that modern Muslims cite their reservations about LGBT behaviors from their holy texts, not 19th century Christian influence from colonial law. This is not a professional, balanced article in the slightest. HVAC84 (talk) 08:36, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

"based on the Hadith. How can this be reconciled with the ludicrous claim that the Prophet "never forbade homosexual relationships outright?" " Very easy to reconcile. The Hadith were not written by Muhammad, and there are various different opinions on their historicity. Dimadick (talk) 13:15, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

This is not the time and place to speculate on the veracity of the Hadith. What matters is that Muslims accept them as reliable words of the Prophet, and as an encyclopedia documenting the beliefs of Muslims that are informed by those Hadiths, it is necessary to represent their views on the matter and how it shapes Islam as a worldly force that affects everyone. Your opinion here does not matter in the slightest. HVAC84 (talk) 03:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, Dimadick's opinion does not matter, and neither does mine, nor yours. Roscoe and Murray's opinion does. Uness232 (talk) 04:01, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

I do see a point somewhere here. In the modern interpretations section; there does seem to be an attempt to equate the influence of very influential Muslim scholars with academics who are more well known in their own academic community than among Muslims. The result of that might indeed be a misrepresentation of current opinion. I am willing to have a discussion on what is WP:DUE or otherwise.

The history section, on the other hand, is about historical frameworks and realities; not anyone's legal opinion today. Therefore, the Quran (and by extension contemporary exegesis and jurisprudence) are, beyond being dis-preferred due to their WP:PRIMARY nature, not even appropriate sources for the section. If you have secondary historical sources that disagree, you can link to them, and we can discuss.

Beyond that, however, the history section doesn't even claim what you say it claims, even the first paragraph introduces a more nuanced reality:

Societies in the Islamic world have recognized "both erotic attraction and sexual behavior between members of the same sex". Attitudes varied; legal scholars condemned and often formulated punishments for homosexual acts, yet lenient (or often non-existent) enforcement allowed for toleration, and sometimes "celebration" of such acts.

This points to a diverse set of opinions in terms of homo-eroticism and homosexuality, not that everyone was fine with all homosexual acts. Uness232 (talk) 15:07, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

@Uness232: Which "modern interpretations". I tried to locate it, but could not find it. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 10:10, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

@VenusFeuerFalle: This is a potential issue they brought up in a much less acceptable way, and that I've tried to be charitable in my interpretation of. If we are to look in the very beginning of this section, Kecia Ali writes that "contemporary scholars disagree sharply about the Qur'anic perspective on same-sex intimacy." I can see how this could be thought of as an unbalanced summary of our other sources; in the vast majority of contemporary devotional (i.e. non-academic) scholarly circles of Islam, there seems to be a very strong agreement that Islam and LGBT-rights are fundamentally incompatible, as incorrect as that may be. [1]

Kecia Ali's statement is definitely true in some countries, such as the United States, where recent liberalization has also affected Muslims to a large extent, as demonstrated in the article text and sources: In a July 2017 poll, Muslims who say homosexuality should be accepted by society clearly outnumber those who say it should be discouraged (52% versus 33%), a level of acceptance similar to American Protestants (52% in 2016). But as pointed out elsewhere in the article, in many parts of the Muslim world, this "sharp disagreement" does not seem to exist. In Muslim fundamentalist regimes, such as Iran, for example, the discourse on the issue is argued to be "settled"; with virtually no high-ranking cleric taking a "gay-friendly" stance (though admittedly, transgender identities are generally thought of as permissible), and the sources on the modern part of the history section concur. Even in secular Muslim-majority countries, such as Turkey, almost all LGBT-friendly discourse takes place in the secular sphere, with the Diyanet, which arguably represents mainstream Muslim opinion and generally stays out of controversy, stating that gay people cause sicknesses during the COVID-19 pandemic. There does not seem to be this near-equal split in legalistic communities (unlike what Kecia Ali implies) on acceptance, and legal penalties seem to agree with this conclusion.

Dror Ze'evi's explanation here may be pertinent: that an old, pre-modern, largely pro-sexual diversity discourse, that competed with, influenced and sometimes superseded legal discourse in the Muslim world, slowly disappeared in the 19th cenutry (partly due to the Western influence), and nothing (except secularism, a supposedly "foreign" concept according to many modern Muslim discourses) replaced it. This change was, if we are to buy Ze'evi's (and some other scholars') arguments, very powerful and complete, and modern legal discourse followed unopposed; which seems to be why new LGBT-friendly discourses are not commonplace at all in the Muslim spaces of the Muslim-majority world, being seen as only an outgrowth of secularism. It could be argued that the section needs to give appropriate weight to this context and its results.

Therefore, it might not be wise to give equal weight to American scholars, especially those who are academic scholars and not faqihs (see this situation here) as representing modern Muslim legal/religious perspective. They are more well known in academia and in LGBT communities, not in the mainstream Muslim community, and especially not in Muslim-majority countries.

I want to finish by saying that everything I've said here is of the nature of a preliminary comment, that this could be discussed thoroughly and the the resulting text should be a result of careful reexamination based on WP:DUE. I just wanted to raise a point; I am aware that not all of my points in this little blurb can be inserted into the text. Uness232 (talk) 17:31, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

This is true. I have not seen the section, because I did not expected to find it under "Scripture and Islamic jurisprudence". Optimism is clearly a misrepresentation. Within the Islamic world, LGBTQIA is alrgely seen as a foreign Western liberal movement (as partly reflected in this discussion here). Even when issues such as Transgender are tolerated, for example, in Iran, it is treatened from an Transmedical perceptive, not an LGBTQIA issue. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 13:42, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

I wonder why research scholars are part of the jurisprudence section in the first place. A researcher on Islam is not, as you said, a faqih, thus not qualified to make a jurisprudental claim. There can give an opinion on the Quran from a historical perspective but not on a juristical one. Secular researchers should not be part of the Muslim Jurisprudence section in the first place, except when Islamic jurispruedence itself is their study subject. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 13:45, 29 January 2024 (UTC)

You say:

The prevalence of homosexuality in pre-modern Islamic polities, most of which was in the form of pederasty, doesn't mean that Islam inherently condoned it. Pederasty is NOT synonymous with the LGBT as we understand it today, that is an anachronistic interpretation and certainly not something that most people today would support.

The article points this out multiple times:

The conceptions of homosexuality found in classical Islamic texts resemble the traditions of classical Greece and those of ancient Rome, rather than the modern understanding of sexual orientation. It was expected that many mature men would be sexually attracted to both women and adolescent boys (with different views about the appropriate age range for the latter), and such men were expected to wish to play only an active role in homosexual intercourse once they reached adulthood.

The medieval Islamic concept of homoerotic relationships was distinct from modern concept of homosexuality, and related to the pederasty of Ancient Greece. During the early period, growth of a beard was considered to be the conventional age when an adolescent lost his homoerotic appeal, as evidenced by poetic protestations that the author still found his lover beautiful despite the growing beard. During later periods, the age of the stereotypical beloved became more ambiguous, and this prototype was often represented in Persian poetry by Turkic slave-soldiers.

This is also why the lede notes "some homosexual behavior", not "LGBT people", as being accepted, or at least tolerated. Uness232 (talk) 15:15, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

"I'm not even sure where to begin with this trainwreck of an article"

Maybe by sticking with the talkpage guidlines. When the issues are explained in an factual matter, other Users can follow the objection.VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 09:58, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

That's a very amusing response. It's obvious to anyone who reads this article that mostly one particular kind of historical study is referenced, and those are secular studies that support the LGBT movement and claim that Muslims tolerated it until the big bad colonizers showed up in the 19th century. If you want to be honest about how Islam views the LGBT then perhaps focus on citing actual Muslims instead of white academics from Western countries and removing claims with no citations.

I would love to engage to counter such delusional non-sense, since there are strong assusations and hatred towards, not only academics, but also people of color who stick with an objective meassurement instead of blindly following ideologies. However, WP:FORUM permitts it. Instead, I would suggest to remove any further incivilized expression of thought and providing misinformation, instead of engaging with it. If this person wants to rant about its own views being in odds with facts, they are free to find social media spaces in which they are free to live out whatever they want to believe in without any regards for reality and facts. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 10:07, 28 January 2024 (UTC)

I am not interested in arguing about the inherent perspectives we may share or differ on, as much as I chastised the editors. I only want to bring to attention that the perspectives of this article are indeed unbalanced. Many "facts" on this page are incorrect. It does not make sense to say "the Prophet of Islam never explicitly forbade homosexual relations" when a myriad of Hadith cited in the same article show that he did. Not enough is done to distinguish pederasty from our modern notions of LGBT and homosexual acceptance, because even though pederasty is discussed in detail, it is not emphasized that pre-modern acceptance of homosexuality was usually synonymous with pederasty. It gives casual readers the impression that all kinds of homosexuality are ostensibly "LGBT" throughout history and that Islam's history with homosexuality is separate from its history with pederasty, such as how it says there was "de facto tolerance of homosexuality" without describing what that homosexuality entailed compared to our modern notions. The article is clearly framed to say that anti-LGBT attitudes among Muslims are informed by Western colonialism without acknowledging the role that Islamic law and primary texts themselves play in forming those beliefs and providing maintenance to those Western legal codes. And the emphasis given towards liberal academics in America is too overwhelming throughout the article and sometimes not even relevant to the section they are in.

The article is written in a way that would only satisfy those few American academics themselves who subscribe to these minority views on Islam and the LGBT. It doesn't reasonably represent the standard positions of Islamic jurisprudence both from a religious and a secular perspective. Muslims and non-Muslims alike are likely to be equally confused reading the article and wondering why it details how Islamic jurisprudence unanimously and violently condemns sodomy but then also says that homophobia among Muslims is a modern phenomenon. There is more nuance needed to be clarified. HVAC84 (talk) 03:35, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

@HVAC84: I can see some truth in a few of the things that you are saying (though admittedly not many of them). What I don't see any of on your end, however, is any attempt to bring academic sources that disagree with this article, or for the framing issues, any suggestions of improved wording. I personally think that the article makes clear on multiple occasions how pre-modern homoerotic relationships were distinct from modern homosexuality, that there was a wide gap between legal scholars' opinions and popular realities when it came to pre-modern homosexuality etc., but you are free to suggest improvements. Otherwise this is WP:NOTFORUM; please take your rants somewhere else if you are not here to suggest improvements that we can evaluate and take action on, if consensus is established.

You also seem pretty unresponsive to @Dimadick's comments explaining why academic scholars might take the position you think is impossible. Perhaps it could be better explained in the article, but again, the solution is not to endlessly rant. I see you just responded to it; thank you, though the main point still stands.Uness232 (talk) 03:50, 30 January 2024 (UTC)

Easy. Islamic juriprudence's opinion might be a modern phenomena, not reflecting an actual traditional opinion. They adopted European values in the 19th Century. This was mostly when Muslim scholars studied in the West and became the paragons of education for the Muslim World. This happened mostly because the Muslim world felt in need to keep up with the West, who had the upperhand at that time. So they started to "reform" Islam in accordance with whatever they perceived as advanced and proggessive at the time. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 17:15, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Yet another article about Islam and Sexuality?

I think this is now the third article about this subject. We have Zina which is discussing legal matters on sexuality, we have this article, and we have Sexuality in Islam and often, they discuss the very same things. My suggestion is: Would it help to focus in this article on modern to post-modern only? LGBT(QIA) is a movement of the second half of the 20th century. Projecting such issues into pre-Modern times is anachronistic. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 17:11, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

These types of conceptual overlaps are inevitable I suppose. However, LGBT people are obviously not coextensive with sexuality, and Zina should only be talking about legalistic tradition/fiqh (unlike Sexuality in Islam, which you know the problematic state of). I would therefore prefer separate articles.

Limiting this article to modern and post-modern periods would be problematic, in my opinion, as most LGBT-related articles are not limited to this scope (Homosexuality, LGBT history and such), and limiting this article's scope alone would cause problems in terms of contextualizing the current state of things. Beyond that, some pre-modern cultural items have survived to our day (tropes in gay culture, or something like Lubunca), and that means that a certain amount of continuity has held. Uness232 (talk) 22:34, 3 February 2024 (UTC)

Fair points. I for my part get confused over the articles and I am always surprised to find similar new ones I probably forgot about already. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 00:42, 4 February 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 March 2024

Requesting to add this part in modern interpretation section: Zakir Naik claimed in a public lecture's question-answer that, the cause of homosexuality is not genetic, because research of gay gene (Xq28) was later proved as false and the man (Dean Hamer) who claimed to discover it, later himself identified as a homosexual, thus he falsely claimed the discovery of this gene as genetic; The actual cause of it is satisfying sexual desire outside the law of Allah, which is lawful marriage in Islam; when someone meets sexual desire outside marriage such as premarital and extramarital sex, gradually he or she gets bored and doesn't get pleasure, then he or she tends to find new experience and tries new ways to have pleasure, by this way, at a level of this line up, people tends to homosexual activities, which has happened in present western world; thus, it is not genetic, rather than a psychological choice. 202.134.13.134 (talk) 23:09, 25 March 2024 (UTC)

Zakir Naik? Is this the doctor of medicine who stated that there is no sufficient proof that the heart pumps blood? When one of his theories are properly published by an independent peer review article, we might consider him as a reliable source. VenusFeuerFalle (talk) 01:59, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

While Zakir Naik is poorly educated on the scientific method, and therefore should not be trusted when it comes to claims about the natural world, he is a popular Muslim figure. Thus, his opinions should be included in this article. Zoozoor (talk) 20:07, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

@Zoozoor: Osama bin Laden is a popular Muslim figure as well, but he is neither a scholar of Islamic studies nor a natural scientist; the same applies to Naik, which currently is a wanted fugitive from the Indian authorities on charges of terror financing, hate speech, inciting communal hatred, and money laundering in India. Is there any particular reason to fill this article with non-scholarly opinions and anti-scientific claims made by every failed Muslim televangelist, apologist, anti-LGBTQ+ activist, homophobe, transphobe on planet Earth, while nobody asked for their unqualified personal opinions in the first place? It looks like a complete waste of time. GenoV84 (talk) 09:37, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Zakir Naik is not a "failed" evangelist, he's quite popular as compared to Osama Bin Ladin. That comparison is absurd. The entire article is going to have bigoted content - it's an article about LGBTQ people and Islam. What we should do is clarify to readers that Dr. Naik's opinions are scientifically unfounded. Zoozoor (talk) 19:17, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

I have just edited the section to clarify that Naik's views are scientifically unfounded, and I've added a reliable source on the biology of sexual orientation. Have a good day. Zoozoor (talk) 19:31, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

References

 Done but reworded: I've simply paraphrased the requested edit. I've also redone some of your sources due to what appears to be improper formatting. Let me know if there are any other changes you'd like made.

P.S. Please use {{Reflist-talk}} on talk pages for listing references.
— Urro^{[talk][edits]} ⋮ 11:56, 27 March 2024 (UTC)