Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Big_Bird]

Imams and Homosexuality: A Post-gay Debate in the Netherlands
by Gert Hekma
The online version of this article can be found at: http://sexualities.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/5/2/237

[Big_Bird]

Might be of interest to FMS:

Between Religion and Desire: Being Muslim and Gay in Indonesia
TOM BOELLSTORFF

http://www.anthro.uci.edu/faculty_bios/boellstorff/Boellstorff-AA.pdf

[Kimbop]

[Interested]

[Interested]

I thought I'd add this to the sample of literature here:

[Big_Bird]

[Big_Bird]

...so interested that, I decided to chat to a muslim about it. I know several Libyans and am quite fluent in Liblish, so I had coffee with a Libyan friend earlier and decided to ask him about the topic.

Yes, I do realise that my taking coffee with muslims implicitly condones the wholesale slaughter of gays in the Middle East, and some poor gay is probably being strung up right now thanks to my too tolerant behaviour. But nonetheless, ignoring all good decency I did such a thing, and now here is the conversation to the best of my memory. Nothing embellished, but probably things omitted due to lack of total recall. I find myself paying close attention to someone's individual grammar (having studied foreign languages, applied linguistics, and having been an ESL/EFL teacher) and so I've tried to remain as faithful to his syntax as possible. The conversation was intermittant as he kept getting calls, and I jotted down some notes inbetween.

Me: Are there many gay guys in Libya?
Him: There are many. I see them walk around the city every day, and I know many who come to my shop and some is my friend.

Me: What do they think of gays in Libya?
Him: [Shrugs] There is some that feel uncomfortable to talk to them, so they don't talk. {Sounds rather like the West to me} Some people is very sorry for them, because they is man but like girl. Most people don't care. If the gay do his thing in his house and not in the road, nobody care. Some gay is good man and don't hurt nobody.

Me: A lot of people are saying that Muslims believe homosexuals should be killed.
Him: I never hear this. [Laughing] I never kill a gay!

Me: Did you know they killed gays in Iran?
Him: No. But they has a crazy mind. No Libyan want to go there. And no Libyan ever said to me he should kill the gay.

Me: Does the Koran say that gays should be killed?
Him: I been Muslim all my life and read Koran many times. I never read that you must kill a gay. Sure, the gay is wrong thing [goes on to talk about Lot]. Gay not Islam, but killing is not Islam. Maybe he go to hell for being gay, but if I kill him, God gonna kick my arse and send me straight to the hell.

Me: So aren't you suppose to punish gays?
Him: Look, his arse for him and my arse for me. What I'm gonna do? {Translation: Look, what someone does with his arse is his own business. What am I supposed to do?} He give his arse as he like. If God want to punish him when he die, that's for him. I am not his God to kill him! {Translation: punishing gays is up to God, and he has no right to decide in God's place what should be done to a homosexual}.
Him: Look, [talking gently as if to a child] killing a human being is not easy. A human being is not a rat. You can't just kill a human because he do wrong thing. This for him and God. I just live my life as try to be good man, that's all.

Me: Well, did you know that there are 5 major schools of Islam, and 4 out of 5 say that homosexuals should be killed.
Him: [Clearly surprised]. You say one school does not say this? Then that is the right school. The others are wrong.
Him: Look, since Muhammad, there is many who try to understand the Koran. Some understands right, some understand wrong. Only the very scientific mind who study for many years can understand this {the Koran}. That is why I never spend my time to worry about this. Islam is very simple. Pray and be a good person. Don't lie. Don't steal. Don't kill. Always be kind to any human being. And don't kill nobody. Even if he gay. [Laughs]. Even if he Jewish! [Laughs again]. {A reference to a previous conversation I'd had with him about Jews and Islam} Treat all people good and don't hurt nobody. Then, if you do this, you will go to heaven. You don't need to know anything else. Just be good person.

So, what did I get from this? Well, some Muslims clearly have a live and let live attitude. Homosexuals in Tripoli don't sound particularly oppressed, and walk around openly without fear, even if it's not quite the life of a gay man in San Francisco. Although some Islamic scholars may be advocating death to gays, this message hasn't always percolated down to the man in the street, who apparantly doesn't always have that great a respect for all Islamic clerics anyway.

And last of all, being a Muslim doesn't necessarily equate with being 'hate-filled' and preaching death to homosexuals.

[Leslie Cheswyck]

So do you think Islamic extremism will peter out eventually?

[Frankly Mr Shankly]

[Big_Bird]

[mises]

[Frankly Mr Shankly]

Here, in Indonesia, we've just had a general election in which the religious parties have not fared well, but then again, neither have the other nationalist parties, save for SBY's Partai Demokrat. The Muslim Brotherhood-inspired PKS did the best of all Islamic Parties, garnering a mere 8% of the overall vote. Interestingly enough, though, when it looked like the PKS might do better, some sources in Australia were talking up the possibility of fostering working relationships with them as they saw their tough anti-corruption stand as a positive. From the ground here, though, I still abhor the buggers since their main targets seem to be Jaipong and Dangdut dancing and enforcing the kind of moral codes in places they control like West Java and Tangerang that will make the place more like Kuwait or the east coast of Malaysia.

Other Islamist parties, milder incarnations like the PKB, PPP and PAN, have not done so well and political scientists posit this is because they all roughly offer the same moderate Islamist agenda. Most splits are along personal lines.

What is crudely called 'Jihadist' behaviour, violence in the name of Islam has been in retreat, I believe, due to the well-coordinated efforts of Indonesian and Australian law enforcement to take down the major players of Jemaah Islamiyah. Groups such as Laskar Jihad, who were more of a political creation of the armed forces, are nowhere to be seen. The only group that remains a concern, and who again are more of a criminal gang than an Islamist grouping, are the FPI, who have been banned, but continue to defy this.

The one factor I am unsure of is the rise of a fairly strict, but at the same time, apolitical, form of Wahabism. According to the International Crisis Group, communities of like-minded people are choosing the hijra option and opting out, forming their own communities. These could still provide the impetus for political violence, but how widespread they are, I do not know.

The big thing is that Islam here tends to strengthen in times of political and economic uncertainty. That has particularly been the case in the last decade or so, but now with SBY certain to control the house and win the presidency, and with the economy ticking over at around 4% growth rates, the place is looking to be one of the more stable countries in SE Asia.

[Big_Bird]

[mises]

1

[Big_Bird]