Posted by Huma in Featured Articles, Pakistan on 08 7th, 2009
Earlier this week, I attended a talk about Islam and homosexuality at a medical school in Karachi. The very fact that medical practitioners, particularly psychiatrists, were gathering to discuss the subject piqued my interest. After all, a variety of psychological and physical ailments have been documented in patients who suppress or conceal their sexual identities in conservative societies.
But I was disappointed to learn that the lecturer was taking a historical perspective and simply tracing the history of homosexuality in Muslim societies. It would have been far more interesting to hear a debate about the prevalence of homosexuality in contemporary Muslim societies and consider ways in which psychiatrists and GPs respond to patients who are gay, and whether approaches differ if patients embrace their sexual identity or consider it an affliction.
Still, it was encouraging to see some acknowledgement within our local medical community that homosexuality is a phenomenon worth keeping in mind when dealing with patients (and what better place to start than at the very beginning). For readers who are now expecting a grand theological debate about whether homosexuality is permitted in Islam, feel free to click elsewhere on this website. That question is still up for debate, with some Muslim groups condemning homosexual acts as a sin and others arguing that it is natural, and therefore created and condoned by the Almighty. This post simply considers how Muslim societies deal with homosexuality in practice.
The fact that Muslim societies are struggling to figure out how to respond to homosexuals in their midst is perfectly illustrated by Iran. A few years ago, the country enraged human rights groups and made headlines when it publicly hung two young men – one 18, the other a minor – for being gay. Soon after, President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad further irked the global community by flat-out denying that there were any homosexuals in Iran. How then, the world asked, can you hang young men for something doesn’t exist and thus couldn’t have happened? Ahmedinejad’s – and Iran’s – confusion about what to do with homosexuals is widespread in the ummah – should Muslim societies seek out and punish homosexuals? Ignore their very existence? Or acknowledge that they live and – gasp! – worship in Muslim societies and therefore protect their human and constitutional rights?
To help address some of these questions, the lecturer went back in time to the Ottoman and Abbasid empires, during which homosexuality was commonly practiced and socially tolerated, though not explicitly legally protected. Back then, the lecturer explained, there were various reasons for homosexual behaviour (including lesbianism) being widespread.
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