This picture was the inspiration to a heated discussion over Iftar a couple of nights back. I was commenting about how I’d read or heard about groups like these surface across various cities in North America and was wondering what everyone thought. The issue according to old school granny was that these people were not Muslims. We all know about kawm loot “the people of loot” described as “ya2toona al regal shahwa doon nisa2” and how they were damned.
Cautious of plainly accepting such a statement, the family launched into a frenzy of arguments, rebuttals, questions and defenses. I find it a little tricky to discuss issues from a religious perspective because people grow easily agitated and all too often you get handed the “This is how it is in the Quran”. Unfortunately for me I’m not as knowledgeable as I’d like to be in that respect and it is difficult to logic and discuss from a religious perspective of you are not extremely well informed. The comment was received by someone claiming they grow intolerant of the alienation of fellow Muslims through grand sweeping statements like “that’s 7aram”. Ignorance fuels ignorance and people follow suite and soon enough everyone is in agreement without any proper validation. My sister proudly proclaimed she’d found a simple solution. The answer lies in the question “Can homosexuality be attributed to nature or nurture?” If it is nature then you face a problem when you try to justify God punishing a people for being what they are through no fault of their own. It sort of brings back the infamous question of “why does evil exist” in relation to the definition of A God who is all good. The opposite side of the coin is of course that homosexuality is a choice that is nurtured through culture and society. Homosexuality is not so easily looked upon even in north American cultures suggested my brother. “If I wanted to go against the flow I’d find an easier current to choose to swim upstream against” people definitely do not choose to be gay. What then of the person who feels the attraction to the same sex but suppresses the instinct or urge to act upon them? Does that then still classify you as gay? It’s the urge to want the same sex that makes you gay not the acting upon it.
Ok so the urge to steal something but not acting upon it makes you a thief?
And the urge to get inexplicably intoxicated makes you a drunk?
Of course not! You are judged by your actions. As long as you are not engaging in sexual activities exclusively with the same sex then you are not gay. So a group out on the streets claiming to be homosexual without providing grounds for active engagement in homosexual activity has not yet done anything condemned by Islam to be incorrect.
Take the argument up a notch and claim that they are actively engaged in sexual activity and the issue then becomes precisely that. It is that…. The activity… that is where the trouble lies. Last I checked sexual activity out of wedlock among heterosexuals was a no no in all religions not only islam. So what puts them in the “wrong”, if you will, is the activity and not the fact that they are homosexual.
Also, consider this simple fact. A kawm or a people is bound to have more than one descriptive characteristic. The lebaneese, for example, are known to be good looking and amazing mana2eesh bakers. To assume they will go to hell based solely on the fact that they were good looking and all the while setting aside that baking mana2eesh seems a little shaky to me. Their being damned does not necessarily imply that it was because they were gay. Just a thought really… I don’t know how valid my last argument is because I obviously have made no reference to the exact text but as a whole this discussion has me looking at things a little differently. If anyone has anything to say to all this by all means lets discuss…
I love a good brain bench press.
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