MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog

Speaking of Faith Features Lesbian Muslim

Nine Muslims, in their own words, reveal a creative convergence of Islamic spirituality and American identity that is unfolding, largely unnoticed, in the United States. A lawyer turned playwright, a teacher who's a lesbian, a retired federal prosecutor — all giving shape to the nature and meaning of Muslim identity, and sharing how tricky it can be to unravel Islamic religious tradition from the many cultural traditions.

Feruze Faison, the lesbian featured in the story, says, "Being Muslim and a lesbian has not been a challenge for me, as most people would have assumed. My faith in Allah as an all-encompassing being keeps me strong, knowing that I am not a separate entity but a wave in his creation gives me peace and joy.

"My family has disowned me for the sole reason that I am a lesbian and therefore a sinner. I forgive them for sinning by judging me and deciding where I belong in the afterlife, considering me as separate from the One. I pray for them even though they said they didn't want my prayers and didn't believe my prayers will be answered. I pray that they can see the beauty in the creation and the perfection of it all."

LISTEN:  http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/muslim-voices/

GET TO KNOW "SPEAKING OF FAITH" FROM AMERICAN PUBLIC MEDIA

Winner of a Peabody Award, Speaking of Faith with Krista Tippett is public radio's weekly program about "religion, meaning, ethics, and ideas." We are produced and distributed by American Public Media and currently heard on over 200 public radio stations across the U.S. and globally via the Web and podcast.

Krista takes a narrative, or first-person, approach to religious and philosophical conversation. She draws out the intersection of theology and human experience, of grand religious ideas and real life. A weekly national program since July 2001, Speaking of Faith is not so much about religion per se, but about drawing out compelling and challenging voices of wisdom on the most important subjects of 21st-century life; thereby creating a different kind of in-depth, revealing, illuminating dialogue than can be elicited by traditional journalistic treatments and debates. Topics range from "Einstein and the Mind of God" to "The Spirituality of Parenting" to "Diplomacy and Religion in the 21st Century."

We take the art and craft of radio seriously; and we see radio as an exceptional medium for probing the intellectual and spiritual depths of religious ideas and experience.

We see our online platforms as central to what we do, and are constantly pursuing ways we can expand our content, offer resources, and interact with listeners in new ways via journalism's fastest-growing medium. Our guests include theologians and scientists, poets and parents, educators and physicians — both religious and non-religious — and our program listener demographic is correspondingly diverse.

We're proud that the Columbia Journalism Review has credited the show with modeling a new paradigm of journalism about religion. And New York's Jewish Week has called Speaking of Faith "the most intelligent and inquisitive program on religion anywhere on the air." Most importantly, we take delight in the ideas, reactions, and correspondence we receive every day from listeners across the spectrum of belief and around the world.

Gay Muslim Film Banned

The highly controversial and high profile documentary A Jihad for Love - the world's first feature-length film about Islam and homosexuality – has been banned by the censors from being shown at 21st Singapore International Film Festival where some 200 films will be screened.

The festival organizer told the Straits Times on Saturday that he was informed of the ban on Thursday over the phone by the Media Development Authority which oversees the censorship board.

A Jihad for Love was filmed over five years and in nine languages by India-born and raised director Parvez Sharma who traveled the world from India to Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Egypt, South Africa and France to interview devout Muslims who are lesbian, gay or transgender to speak about their faith and their sexuality. In the film, a gay South African imam argues that homosexuality is not banned while another imam rebuts his view.

The paper quoted the chairperson of the board of Film Censors Amy Chua as saying that the film was “disallowed in view of the sensitive nature of the subject that features Muslim homosexuals in various countries and their struggle to reconcile religion and their lifestyle.”

About 14 percent of Singapore's 4.4 million population is Muslim.

According to traditional interpretations of the Quran, homosexuality is strictly forbidden and officially carries the death penalty in some Muslim or Muslim dominant countries including Iran, Saudi-Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Mauritania, Sudan and Nigeria.

Gay Mohammad art censored

Gay Mohammad images on video and in photos were censored recently from a Dutch art exhibit. The artist was forced into hiding by death threats from Muslim extremists.

Iranian-born artist Sooreh Hera says that her images are an artistic expose of Islamic hypocrisy on homosexuality.

She photographed gay men in masks of Mohammad and his son-in-law Ali. Her video mixes photos of gay men and Muslim clerics, Islamic chants and the hard rock of “Gay Bar” by Electric Six. 

The municipal museum in the Hague backed out of its plan to exhibit the photos from Hera’s “Adam and Ewald” series and a related video, according to recent news reports. Wim van Krimpen, director of the Gemeentemuseum, announced that the images were removed because “certain people in our society might perceive it as offensive.”

Hera, 34, accused the museum of caving in to pressure from Islamists, who also sent her death threats. Hera withdrew the rest of her photos from the show in protest, and another Dutch museum in Gouda has agreed to exhibit them in the future.

Her video “Allah ho Gaybar” was on YouTube for a few hours before it was removed for its provocative content. It is now available at a Dutch site.

A gallery of gay Mohammad photos can be viewed on Hera’s website. “Religion always wants to control human sexuality, most prominently with a compelling taboo on homosexuality,” she says in a statement on her site. “I have tried to show a recognisable beauty of homosexuals, but also an alienating beauty that to many may be unimagined, or dishonorable.”

In media interviews, Hera repeatedly criticizes countries such as Iran for imposing the death penalty for homosexual conduct.

The gay Mohammad controversy is especially interesting to me as a lesbian Christian art historian. I get many negative comments from Christian conservatives who are offended by the gay Jesus images in my websites and book Art That Dares. They often say that nobody would dare make a picture of a gay Mohammad because Islamic fundamentalists fight blasphemy with violence. Sometimes the Christian right sounds almost envious, as if they wished they could use violence instead of Christ’s command to “love your enemy.”

Well, the Christian right was wrong. Artists ARE making gay Mohammad images. As long as there is religious hypocrisy over homosexuality, artists will be making queer religious images that expose the truth. Society is enriched by the brave, powerful artistry of truth tellers like Sooreh Hera.

News reports about Hera and other artists addressing religion and homosexuality are included in the monthly Jesus in Love Newsletter on queer spirituality and the arts. I edit the newsletter and blog at the Jesus in Love Blog. Visit JesusInLove.org for more progressive spiritual resources.

(Photo above is from Adam and Ewald by Sooreh Hera)

Gay Muslims Reveal Different Evolutionary Stages of Faith Development

An article from the New York Times called "Gay Muslims Find Freedom, of a Sort, in the U.S." describes the various attitudes towards homosexuality in Islam. Cataloged are a variety of perspectives that demonstrate various stages of increasing acceptance of homosexuality and unfolding truth. In terms of evolutionary holistic theory such as Spiral Dynamics, a variety of value memes are demonstrated ranging from red to blue to orange to green and turquoise.

At the bottom of the scale (red): tribalistic egocentrism - homosexuality is seen as an assault on the honor of the tribe

[Ayman] is convinced that a 22-year-old gay friend who died after a fall from an apartment building was the victim of an “honor” killing meant to clean the family’s reputation. “I still feel like I’m a Muslim; I don’t accept that anyone insults the faith,” said Ayman, who avoids attending mosque. “When I read what it says in the Koran, then I fear Judgment Day.”

In the middle of the scale (blue): mythic-membership traditionalism - homosexuality is regarded as behavior, behavior judged according to the dictates of a centuries-old tradition

The consultant, trying to reconcile being gay and Muslim, divides his sins into the redeemable and those warranting hellfire. “Anal sex for either a man or woman is wrong, so when I really think about it, I tell myself not to have sex,” he said, describing a failed four-year experiment with celibacy.

Higher on the evolutionary ladder (orange): myths scrubbed by rational reassessments, cleansing traditional prohibitions in the purifying fire of worldcentric reason

In traditional seats of Islamic learning, like Egypt and Iran, punishment against blatant homosexual activity, not to mention against trying to establish a gay rights movement, can be severe. These governments are prone to label homosexuality a Western phenomenon, as happened in September when Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, spoke at Columbia University. But far more leeway to dissect the topic exists in places where gay rights are more protected.

As a rule, gay Muslim activists lacked the scholarly grounding needed to scrutinize time-honored teachings. But that is changing, activists say, partly because no rigid clerical hierarchy exists in the West to bar such research.

Even higher (green): a pluralistic embrace of a variety of sexual orientations as perfectly valid ways of loving

About 15 people marched alongside the Muslim float in this city’s notoriously fleshy Gay Pride Parade earlier this year, with various men carrying the flags of Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine and Turkey and even Iran’s old imperial banner.

While other floats featured men dancing in leather Speedos or women with scant duct tape over their nipples, many Muslims were disguised behind big sunglasses, fezzes or kaffiyehs wrapped around their heads.

Even as they reveled in newfound freedom compared with the Muslim world, they remained closeted, worried about being ostracized at the mosque or at their local falafel stand.

Not described explicitly, but suggested: an even higher (turquoise) mystical vision of God's love that denies the validity of distinctions between gay and straight, and embraces same-sex desire and love as one of the fundamental ways that God's love is embodied...

Renowned poets wrote odes glorifying handsome boys. Some were interpreted as metaphors about loving God, but some were paeans to gay sex. Rafique and others argue that homosexuality became criminalized only under European colonialism.

“From the 10th to the 14th century, Muslim society used to be a far richer mix of the legal, the rational and the mystic,” said Rafique, an anthropologist. “They looked at sexuality as one aspect of life’s many possibilities, and they saw in it the hope for spiritual insight. I came across this stuff, and it helped me reconcile the two.”

Some mosques with a Sufi orientation extend a rare welcome to gay Muslims.

A Muslim defends his support of gay rights

By Joe Perez

In "My Road to Wisconsin Was Paved With Good Intentions: A Muslim-American Reflection on the Civil-Union Ban," Ambreen Tariq offers a Muslim perspective on attempts to ban gay civil unions.

Writing in The American Muslim, Tariq comments on a proposed amendment to the Wisconsin constitution that would have denied marriage rights to non-heterosexual couples:

Although I believe that homosexual acts are not permissible in Islam, I do not want the government to espouse or express these religious views. Such entanglement with religion is dangerous. After all, marriage is culturally sacred, and for many, it is a recognition of a monogamous commitment between two people in the eyes of God. The state should not dictate the nature of this process. It is that simple.

In Russia, courage prevails over fear

In "Police and protesters break up Moscow gay pride," Reuters describes the first Gay Pride in Russia. Protesters were blocked by police, besieged by rival groups of protesters, and attacked by various religious groups of all faiths. The parade never quite got underway. It was a rocky start to say the least.

Russian gays need support, but will US organizations remain silent?

In this story reported at 5 pm EST yesterday, Malcolmn Thornberry, 365Gay.com European Bureau Chief, reports that "the leader of Russian's Muslims," and the "Chief Mufti," has told Russian Muslims to bash gays if they dare to hold a gay pride celebration in Moscow.

U.S. Cedes Ground to Iraq Islamists

It would almost be funny if it wasn't so...well...not funny. It seems that, U.S. diplomats have thrown up their hands and conceded ground to Islamists in in the ongoing struggle to come up with an Iraqi constitution.

U.S. diplomats have conceded ground to Islamists on the role of religion in Iraq, negotiators said on Saturday as they raced to meet a 48-hour deadline to draft a constitution under intense U.S. pressure.

    

U.S. diplomats, who have insisted the constitution must  enshrine ideals of equal rights and democracy, declined  comment.

    

Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish negotiators all said there was  accord on a bigger role for Islamic law than Iraq had before.

    

But a secular Kurdish politician said Kurds opposed making Islam "the," not "a," main source of law -- changing current wording -- and subjecting all legislation to a religious test.

    

"We understand the Americans have sided with the Shi'ites," he said. "It's shocking. It doesn't fit American values. They have spent so much blood and money here, only to back the creation of an Islamist state ... I can't believe that's what the Americans really want or what the American people want."

 

Woman Leads Muslim Prayers!

Another small step on the road to equality for women:

In rare act, woman leads Muslim prayers in N.Y.
Middle East critics accuse her of 'tarnishing' the faith

New on the sidebar: Irshad Manji

I've just added a link on this blog's sidebar to the website of Irshad Manji, the lesbian author of The Trouble With Islam. Andrew Sullivan recently received an e-mail from Manji, who wrote in part:

Now that the Arabic language edition of The Trouble with Islam is posted on my site, my inbox is teeming with messages of gratitude from Muslims in the Middle East (and, I might add, Europe). I'm hearing increasingly from Muslims in Turkey, Russia, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and South Africa.

This week, the Urdu edition is being published in Pakistan. Some self-described "progressive" Muslims have already warned me and my translator that we're on their "killing list." They're also contacting Pakistan's clergy and government officials to stop the book's distribution. But they can't stop me from posting the Urdu version on my site.

Meanwhile, I take strength from the many Muslims who have written to ask where they can acquire the Urdu edition. As one young Pakistani put it, "My dad wants a copy sooo bad he's read to pee in his pants!!" (Insert your own punch line here.)

Read the whole e-mail from Manji here.