Hey new followers! There’s a lot of you and if you know me as that orc bibliography person you should also know I’m queer and Muslim. And I’m proudly both, despite any stereotypes some people might have. And if you’re curious how that works well...

#AmrsRamadan

So a few months before I came out to myself I started browsing articles on JSTOR (and other academic repositories) about the history of Queerness on Islam whenever I rode the train to my internship... you know, the light reading everyone does at 6am on a train.

What I discovered pretty quick was an interesting exploration of how homophobia developed in Islamic cultures (Spoiler Alert: A lot of it was imported by Britain).

That’s right, colonialism (and so called Christian values which aren’t very jesus) is in big part to blame.

But let’s scroll back. In Islam there is no reference to homosexuality explicitly in the Quran. The main citation is a surah that hits the famous story of Sodom that is pretty much the same as Christianity. A city that was burned in punishment for commuting a grave sin to god.

The sin in question is often taken to be homosexuality (sodomy, hence the name) in both religions. But in Islam at least it’s pretty clearly the desecration of the angel that is the sin for which punishment was deemed.
We’ll get to what changed?

The other source of cannon in Islam is “Hadith,” which would be similar to the books in the bible which aren’t direct quotes of god. These are stories of the prophet (PbuH) and those closest to him. There are a couple unconfirmed ones people use as proof but they’re unverified.

So what about historically? Well actually there’s a lot of gay poetry during the Middle Ages/ Islamic golden ages (it is, unfortunately, mostly guys, and a discussion of the power structure of empires and why men were allowed to do that is worth examining but...)

Beyond that, a lot of emperors from the ottomans specifically kept harems with multiple genders. And armies were often encouraged to have homosexual sex while on the march (to keep urges in control while away from partners, which again, a lot to unpack for a different time).

Anyway cut to the modern era when European colonialism came along and they said “hey... you can keep your religion, but quit it with the homosexuality acceptance.”
And unfortunately those in power said:
“Oh yeah we hate gays and have always hated them here’s religious proof.”

And so since that’s happened there’s been a transformation in cultural standards about the view of homosexuality, even if it lacks historical or religious basis. I wish I had articles and stuff on hand buts it’s been almost two years, but that’s the gist of it.

Islam as it was preached originally was very tolerant and hella progressive for the time, but the evolution of Islam and how my recognition of that bolstered my faith is a thread for another time.

End

Also PS on the Christian values notes:
When I say it’s not very jesus I mean the man had some issues with ableism but for the most part he was radical enough for the state to kill him and tolerant af he wouldn’t support queerphobia in his name... also he’s probably brown.