The 2 Minute Muslim Feminist Revolution Last Night

Well… My little Islamic Feminist movement got off to a slow start. I feel like saying, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, but praising polytheists feels wrong.

Earlier in the day…
Anon: “I’m thirsty but I can’t go in the kitchen.”
Me: “Why not?”
Anon: “Because the brothers are chatting in there.”
Me: “So what?”
Anon: “There have been some complaints… That’s their problem… It’s too much hassle.”
Me: “But you’re dressed modestly and stuff. I don’t see what their problem is.”

Also, I had seen a post on Facebook during the afternoon regarding Sunnis denouncing Shias, a different issue but the author was one of few the sisters I know locally who isn’t afraid to make some noise when they see Muslims abusing other Muslims by restricting their freedom. They’ve written about Muslim women’s issues also in the past. Much respect.

Later in day…
There was lots of shuffling around, sisters trying to squeeze into the back rows of the lecture theatre, brothers filling from the middle backwards, leaving the front half empty.

Me (perhaps subconsciously frustrated from earlier): “Why don’t we sit at the front for a change?”
Anon 1: “Yeah, okay then.”
Anon 2: “You’re brave.”
Me: “Why’s it brave?”

Unfortunately, after a few minutes Anon 1 then deserted me to go off and tend to an official duty she was tasked with. But never mind, the movement isn’t dead yet. Perhaps Anon 2 will join me next time. Come on sisters, if you want to do something that you think is right then just do it! If anyone says anything then you can always blame on me. Say that were confused and blinded by my white liberal western decadence that distracted you from the “true” path of Islam. Sometimes people will tend to assume that I know nothing, which is useful because as a recent convert often I do know nothing and their advice is helpful. However, I also try my best to fact check everything (well, nearly everything) that people tell me, especially things that appear to go against one’s sense of natural justice. There are usually so many interesting and related things to know a about a subject that just one hadith or ayat (verse) is rarely enough, but it can often be inspiration for a learning journey.

Anyway, I talked to two men about their adventures travelling. Would you believe it, I, me, saw an actual man with an actual face with my own eyes. More than just a mysterious voice from behind a curtain à la Wizard of Ozy style. And the amazing thing was that I wasn’t at all tempted to ask either of them to get into bed with me and nor did they put such a proposal to me. It is possible to have a chat with a man and it not be a step towards sex or involve any flirting or anything untoward. Amazing! Who would have thought it!

And, it being a lecture and all, I didn’t have to do any ruku, yoga or athletics or any such similar things where a woman might feel that she prefers to be at the back or in her own women’s only space for sake of her own privacy, the sorts of things where a man might snatch a glimpse of an ankle or buttock or some other body part and risk himself having a hard-on and all sorts. Nor was I raped or molested during the lecture. Alhamdulillah (Praise The Lord)! Men can control their sexual urges when they want to, and they don’t require women to babysit by doing it for them.

I hope to speak to more men in the future. I don’t know much about their strange species because I only just met one for the first time today. But I’ve heard that they make up 50% of intelligent life on earth and have taken up more than 50% of the influence and power for themselves.

In case you can’t tell by now, flippancy is one of my biggest sins / stress relievers / cherished forms of humour / way of raising concerns in an environment where people are encouraged not to discuss things openly.

Also, being at the front, I got a prime view of the lecture and could hear everything the Mufti said very clearly. I’m not even going to mention the other thing, a little “tiff”, which I also saw clearly, but let us just say that I wasn’t the only woman to feel slightly frustrated. Nor did I broach the saying, “It’s 2016, the sisters are doing it for themselves”, but power to the sister who did. I promise we’ll make it a group chant next time, inshallah. :)

Here are some of the highlights from the lecture that I marked with an asterisk in my notes:

• “How can I use my action (e.g. gaining a degree) to benefit others”. Reward is gained for doing the degree even though it is for oneself, but because one is using the skills to help others then they are rewarded for the original effort of getting the degree too. Barakah — when Allah is part of your intention. It’s a way of life.
• There is a difference between knowing something and it becoming part of your being and practice.
• Time management: We should strive to account for every moment of our time so that use it usefully.
• Offering of 6 step advice plan for our university community. Here’s some of them:
  3. Read a bit of Qur’an every day.
  4. 5–10 minutes meditation every day, imagining your heart filled with Allah while reciting his name.
  5. Attend one gathering (either face-to-face or online) for at least 30 minutes per week.
  6. Have a long-term goal and a role model.
• To memorize the Qur’an, it helps to work on several bits simultaneously. For example, take one part (e.g. a page) that you’ve been working on for a while, and another you just started yesterday. Your memory of the first part while become good with some days practise but you memory of the second part will hopeless at first but will improve, and you can introduce a third part.

…and lots of other interesting stuff too. I guess I could write up all of my notes, but basically you get the idea that on the whole it wasn’t a bad lecture.

There were only a couple of low-lights. I prefer it when there are none, though in this particular case neither irked me too much because I was in a good mood and my self-esteem is holding up. I know that it’s rare for a woman to be permitted to not hate herself in our patriarchal society, but I’m doing okay today after a poor day on Thursday.

• Apparently the Mufti has tracked how many people lead a religious and wholesome good life in Egypt over the decades by observing how many women wear hijab. Because a woman could be be the most kind, caring, generous, hard-working person but if she doesn’t wear hijab then she’s not a proper believing Muslim but a kafir — apparently. I insert the Mufti’s proof by method of waving of hands. I’m sure it will make complete sense to all of the sisters.
• Apparently genderfluid people are the latest threat to the believers from the destructive “atheist liberal society that doesn’t value anything”. What qualifies the Mufti to know about transgender people is unclear. It also remains a mystery as to why genderfluid people would necessarily not be believing monotheists but logically must belong to the tribe of atheists. I also have no idea whether the Mufti always intended to mention this in his talk or if he thought he would throw it in because he saw me attending, but I will give him the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was not a direct attack aimed at me. By the way, the mukhannathun in the prophet’s time (pbuh) were genderfluid people and the society had few problems because of it.

Final score: Haram police 2, Me still standing 1, Overall lecture 9/10.

I had an interesting personal experience the other week. At a conference I attended a Malaysian woman introduced me to her husband. Unfortunately, as he went to shake my hand I simultaneously went to bow. I’m not saying that I know for sure that women shaking hands with men is okay Islamically because I am confused about it, but if the customs in British communities are more fundamentalist than the customs in some Muslim majority countries then that is food for thought.

I’m actually not trying to tear down the castle. I’ve had casual sexual encounters in the past, before I converted. Some of them pleasant, at least until the inevitable break-ups came, though also many sexual relationships that were abusive, some of them consensual and some not. When women are treated as disposable sex objects who men take for sexual gratification without wanting to know the person they’re f**king then it is a problem, the depersonification and the lack of commitment is painful more than any man can know. The experience can be a hellish place. People will know things if they have reason to know them. Brothers laugh whenever a Mufti or a Shaykh mentions pornography, but I bet there are some who sometimes take a peak. The brutal treatment of people in the sex industry, sometimes made to perform with strangers over and over until their genitals are torn and bleeding. I’ve only read about such things but I can imagine the hell. Is that categorically the same as a simple polite handshake or having a conversation about an innocent subject? Or do the two groups of things belong to different categories? Does one really lead to the other? Or can we just be sensible about it? Perhaps we can use our combined brain power to come up with some good ideas that better humankind.

In the Q&A session someone asked what could be done to make sure that gender segregation is “correctly” maintained for British Muslims. This idea that women have to be separated from men at all times because the men will be “distracted” and tempted towards the sin of fornication, this is a kind of rape culture I think. And this is why I became very angry, and triggered.

The Mufti explained the difference between arranged marriage and forced marriage (a distinction that I quite agree with). When he introduced the topic many brothers laughed. Even the Mufti objected to this reaction. I don’t see what is funny about taking a girl out of school before she has completed her studies and forcing her to live in a another country away from her closest family and where she has spent most of her life, to serve a man sexually and domestically who has no respect for her because he’s only ever known her as his pretty cousin who lives in England who’s going to be prize possession to f**k one day. It is a serious problem that does take place in some families. On the other hand, parents and friends who know two people well and introduce them to one another with the hope that they will get along well and make the decision for themselves to marry, I think that is a kind, most blessed idea. Who knows us best and the qualities of our characters and whether we would be a good lifetime match than our closest friends or family (apart from Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala)? Certainly I trust them more than primitive sexual instinct. I wish that I had a close friend who knew me well enough and was kind enough to act as such a matchmaker. But forced marriage, it is an abomination and a human rights crisis! Perhaps the fact that this is the cause of such jovial laughter and amusement is demonstration of a huge divide between male and female Muslims and the entitlement and control over the women that the men have been raised with. Or perhaps, with the exception of a few outsiders to the culture like myself, everyone simply has experiences of an aunty who’s a bit of an eccentric passionista when it comes to arranging marriages but she’d never do any harm. I actually don’t know. But I am worried. If young unmarried men really are so unfamiliar with the feelings and emotional needs of women then we have a big problem.

Where does all of this leave me now? I notice that sister Anon 2 didn’t say to me that it was haram, incorrect or inappropriate for me to sit at the front of the lecture, just “Brave”. Only those aligned with the cause of the good are brave, those in pursuit of harm are simply insolent or evil. You know what sister, what I suggest we both do? Firstly, let’s educate ourselves. Let’s start that halaqah (sisters’ study circle). Every time a man says that something has to be done a certain way that you find doubtful then take that as energy to go and research the topic and find out what the scholars said and what the other scholars who disagreed with those scholars said. Just refuse to take no as answer because it’s nearly always more nuanced than that. Publish articles about your research findings as best as you can, we are after all university students who have some experience of writing essays. The ultra-conservative Wahhabis, Deobandis or whatever they want to call themselves aren’t the only sources of Islam. I wasn’t entirely un-serious when I broached the possibility of setting up a whirling dervish group. It’s an example of the diversity of Muslim practices that the hard line shariah police who seem to dominate everything these days would rather eradicate from Islam, just as they would prefer that the women were confined to their homes. Not modern western decadence but 10th Century CE eastern Islamic decadence! Let’s take some courses. Let’s become recognized as real bona fide women Islamic scholars, heck there does seem to be a significant shortage of them. As the Mufti said, if your learning is in the cause of righteousness then Allah will reward you twice, one minor reward for seeking knowledge and a much bigger reward for benefiting others with that knowledge. Secondly, keep up the resistance, a little nudge here or there but be persistent. It’s 2016 and the sisters are doing it their way. Thirdly, as a long-term goal, let’s create space for it. Set up that progressive scholarly web site that’s written in a style that’s accessible to the common Muslim. Maybe we can even open a small mosque in a spare bedroom or something that focuses specifically on inclusivity and open mindedness. It’s been done in other places such as London (Inclusive Mosque Initiative), Amsterdam and Canada. Create those spaces where mothers can pray without getting a message coming over the tannoy from the brothers that parents need to control their children more. Kids will be kids and run around a bit so let’s not deny them their childhood and recognize that it doesn’t invalidate the prayer if a small person without the mature mental faculties runs across in front. Create places where non-binary gendered people feel comfortable praying. Create spaces where women can see and know who their Imam is as a person rather than as a figurehead hidden behind a curtain who you have to make a special appointment with to see (though granted a curtain is sometimes useful for privacy such as to allow taking niqab off while eating). Nominate your most knowledgeable sisters to become Imams. It’s rare but not unheard of.

A sister showed me an app that a brother sent her a link to. Thanks to him she can now see maps of all of his running activities. I’m not sure what the purpose is really. Perhaps the brother has good intentions and is concerned about protecting sister’s health and getting her into the good habit of doing exercise. A most noble cause, as Allah requires us to do our best to stay strong. If we become weak then we will not be able to attend to our duties properly and we will become too weak and sickly to fast, to concentrate on our work, and even suffer with bad joints and things and be unable to offer prayer in the full complete way later in life. But twenty odd maps with exact details, distances and times, is this amount of detail not perhaps a little excessive? And why did brother not choose to share this information with me also? Surely all of the sisters could benefit from his wise knowledge in getting people self-motivated with their exercise programmes? I’m sure I would be impressed if I studied his running maps (or maybe not, as I suck at running, though I do enjoy long walks). Could it perhaps even be regarded as prideful or flirting to share such personal information? Considering we are told that men are to be sectioned off in another space away from our view for our own protection from the fact that, “All men only want one thing, in general” (says the Mufti), then why are the same group of men who subscribe to this idea (though not necessarily the same person, I actually have no idea) sharing so much conversation electronically? Is it not a bit hypocritical to do one thing in front of the Mufti by asking, “What can we do to make sure that gender segregation is correctly maintained?” while doing exact opposite thing electronically? A case of keeping up appearances perhaps? Or perhaps some brothers agree with me, that complete and total gender segregation is unnecessary and men can successfully contribute to women’s conversations without secretly hoping for sex?

Oh, and I will be tracking my whirling on the running app. It’s going to be the best running map ever, hundreds of metres of movement focused around a circle 2ft wide.

Tell Shaykh Sodagar that We Don’t Comply with Terrorists’ Demands to Treat LGBT People Unjustly

Content note: homophobia, murder, religious motivated crime

When terrorists kill people we all rush to post on social media the verse from the Qur’an about how if a person kills another person then it is as if they have killed all of humankind and we write about how killing isn’t the real Islam. Isn’t it then appropriate that when Shaykh Hamza Sodagar jokes about the different ways of executing gay people then we should stand firm and say to him exactly the same as we say to terrorists? The American-Iranian shaykh is giving a series of lectures this week at the Ahlulbayt Islamic Mission at the Islamic Republic Of Iran School in London for Muharram. Shaykh Sodagar, you are very knowledgeable about many things and surely there is much that I could learn from you, but on the matter of gay people you are wrong, there is no Islamically sound way to kill a gay person. How could there be, for a religion whose main messages are all good solid moral fibre: give as much as you can to the needy, have mercy on others, fight for justice for those in need it, free slaves whenever you can, don’t consume anything to excess, seek knowledge wherever you can, don’t be afraid of what you don’t fully understand (e.g. the unseen, or death), strengthen your heart, and don’t invade people’s privacy? And you want to kill people because of their sex life? Please stop inciting terrorism towards LGBT people. Just stop.

I don’t normally discuss queer issues any longer except with niche groups of other LGBT Muslims who have bravely shared their stories with me. My initial burst of enthusiasm that somehow studying God’s Law would provide the answers to any moral question, superseding everything useful that I’d learned elsewhere is gone. Also gone is the belief that modern-day Islam functions correctly as the most logical of the religions and is founded in evidence. I still believe both of those things are true but only in theory / in my head. The problem is that the Islamic scholars know nothing about the lived experiences of LGBT people (or women, or many other contentious subjects) and those who know about LGBT people aren’t Islamic scholars. As a clear example, consider this. I once read an article where a questioner asked a scholar if they could take medicine under the tongue (known as sublingually) during Ramadan without invalidating their fasting. The scholar replied that since he could not see any way by which medicine could enter the body from underneath the tongue other than by passing through the stomach then it would invalidate the questioner’s fast. He also stated that something entering through the stomach is the relevant criterion and therefore taking injected medicines while fasting keeps a fast valid. It sounds really weird when you first learn about it, but it is actually possible for some medicines to enter directly into the bloodstream by diffusing through the soft tissue under the tongue and straight into the blood vessels that run close to the surface under there. Something that most of us will have taken this way is the polio vaccine. You could argue that perhaps some of the medicine is absorbed under the tongue and some fraction of it is also accidentally swallowed, but this scholar didn’t do that. Instead he just flat out denied the possibility of something entering in through the mouth but not passing through the stomach. It was his ignorance of basic knowledge of medicine that led to poor reasoning in his judgement as an Islamic scholar (though, as I mentioned, whether his conclusion remains correct by chance even though his reasoning doesn’t logically support it properly is another matter). But moreover, since nobody can be an expert on all things, it was his arrogance in presuming that the questioner was a simpleton who could be dispensed with quickly, rather than someone with a nuanced question and their own knowledge that they were bringing to the table, it was this which really scuppered the scholar in my estimation.

This same kind of kind problem but in connection to LGBT issues frequently means that I’m left feeling exhausted. The levels of violence involved and the sheer feeling of helplessness, it makes me feel ill by triggering my post-traumatic stress disorder and harms my productivity for days at a time. It’s difficult to know what to do about it, given that movements abroad are often underground for their proponents’ own safety, so it’s difficult even to send charity. And speaking out to the mainstream Muslim community in the UK or on the internet often feels like it’s falling on deaf ears. Every time this kind of “controversy” flares up I feel distanced from Allah; I temporarily stop practising Islam, stop praying, stop believing that humans have any divine knowledge of a good moral code. There are so many ex-Muslims who are LGBT and I think it’s kind of sad because they’ve had to suffer from the consequences of ruthless false interpretations. But if it wasn’t for me meeting LGBT Muslims then I probably would never have become Muslim at all. These challenges aside, my friend Zahra asked when is the silence on defending LGBT rights is going to stop, so today I will try to break the silence.

Yes Mr Sodagar, I know that you have some hadiths you can quote, a handful off hadiths against the many thousands of other hadiths that are far more positive about life. I won’t write much about my personal thoughts as to how, in my opinion, most of them could actually well be true in a sense but have been grossly misinterpreted by people with closed minds like Mr Sodagar. I will leave that for another occasion. Today I want to focus on the more emotional aspects. Do you know what the first thing that a novice like me notices, flicking through a few pages of hadiths? That in many cases, the prophet, peace be upon him, asked a person why the were doing the things that they were doing, and only after careful consideration of all of the facts did he advise them to do things differently. Observing, seeking knowledge from others, listening to others, and weighing up the evidence before making a judgement, surely these are the key features of a good hadith? Nobody was beneath the prophet (peace be upon him) when it came to seeking knowledge. He even asked a blind mind to tell him when the dawn came, even though in the most obvious sense the prophet’s own eyes were obviously superior, but instead he sought a complimentary perspective, from someone who could perceive the dawn in a different way (e.g. by hearing the sounds of the animals).

Isn’t it about time that the modern Islamic scholars listened to LGBT people and studied the truth about what a same sex relationship can mean in the 21st Century (Roman calendar, 15th Muslim calendar) as compared to what it meant in ancient times? In ancient times most same sex intercourse wasn’t about how a small minority experienced sexual attraction differently. It was about the much larger numbers of men who raped their slaves, to exert power over them. And it was about the Greco-Roman practice of teachers sexually exploiting their young students. This law was about the Jews and the Muslims standing up to oppressors like the Romans who practised injustice and it was about punishing rape severely, the true sin of Sodom, and punishing these arrangements (sexual exploitation of teenagers) where men dishonoured their wives by having extra-marital sex with their students. What does this have to do with those LGBT people in the modern world who simply want to make a life-long commitment to their same-sex partner, same as heterosexual people do, and perhaps to raise children together (probably not all LGBT people want these things, but then neither are all LGBT people Muslim)? Isn’t it about time that we looked at the evidence? Isn’t it about time that scholars engaged with LGBT Muslims who want to be pious? Evidence such as the dramatic shifts in society and what same-sex relationships historically meant as compared to now, evidence of the planet becoming overpopulated, that “conversion therapies” don’t generally work and result in high suicide rates, unhappy marriages and extramarital affairs (exactly what outlawing anal sex was supposed to prevent), evidence that gay couples do just as good a job at parenting as straight couples, and that not all same sex couples practice anal sex anyway.

Funnily enough (or at least it would be ironic if we weren’t talking about murder), the different branches of Islam can’t even agree on on which books of hadith are the legitimate ones. There is no such thing as a unanimous religious law. Should I be consulting the six canonical books or the four Muhammad’s? Is the sixth book Ibn Majah or Malik? So long as they don’t involve killing, harming another person’s well-being or imposing unfair discrimination on them, then of course the majority of the hadiths are enriching and supportive of the good causes that the Qur’an champions (not that I’ve read more than a tiny, tiny fraction of them) but if we’re going to advocate killing people then we’d better be pretty sure that we’ve got it 100% right! Which is probably an impossible task, to be completely sure beyond doubt, because 200 years+ of time elapsed between canonizing the Qur’an and collecting the hadith, which is plenty of time for people to invent and circulate fake hadith according to whatever the politics of the medieval times found useful, and it isn’t a completely bulletproof method of guaranteeing historical accuracy by any objective secular historical measure (as compared to committing things into ink or stone at the time they occurred, which is less easily modified), the valuable science of hadith and the fantastic oral memory of the Arabs notwithstanding. As it happens, according to the science of hadith, “No hadith report about homosexuality or transgender behaviour is mutawatir in its wording”,¹ where mutawatir is defined as, “A report that has so many narrators that it is conventionally impossible for them to have agreed upon its fabrication”,¹ for example, because the narrators lived in places geographically far apart. (Mutawatir is an even higher requirement than sahih.)

Sunnis and Shias can’t even agree on whether the prayer timetable should have three columns or five, whether or not you can pray on carpet, how many religious holidays there are in a year, which day the religion was perfected on, or whether you can pray next to a grave. But I personally don’t see plurality as a problem. Having multiple traditions and multiple sources provides fascinating insights into how people maintain traditions, gives us contrasting narratives of important events in Muslim history, information about the people involved in early Islam, and shows the thought processes behind how people arrive at different interpretations of scripture. Having multiple traditions challenges us to think with our minds and to feel with our hearts and to find our own path, or least it would if certain extremist factions within the two parties weren’t engaged in a sometimes violent political power struggle both against each other and against the West. By the same reasoning, not only are the Sunni and the Shia perspectives useful (further subdivided into four Sunni madhhabs and Twelvers, Ismali and Zaidi) but also those of the Ibadi, the Ahmadiyya, the Islamic Feminists, the self-titled “Muslims for Progressive Values”, Salafi Modernists, researchers in the emerging science of “Qur’anic hermeneutics”, and analyses of specific issues by queer Muslims, Muslim bloggers, secular historians, linguists, archaeologists, scientists and so on. It is impossible for all of those groups to hold the truth on every issue because their perspectives inherently conflict, and nor does the average person start out as an expert, but we must work hard life-long to become our own experts and every person does have a head and a heart and is capable of reading and applying logic, analogy, etc. (the same methods as traditional fiqh) and will be drawn towards one tradition or another. The scholar who makes the most convincing argument with sound logic and the best evidences (and probably these days also needs to publish in an open access format on the internet in bilingual Arabic and English) will win the most followers, the same as for any other academic discipline (and in Muslim countries Islamic studies is a serious academic discipline, not just a faith). That’s a very Westernized view, but I am a Westerner and I’m sticking to it. Besides, since I wasn’t born into any Muslim denomination then what else can I do? Oddly enough, though they disagree on many things Saudi Arabia and Iran broadly agree with each other when it comes to persecuting gay people, though I understand that Iran (and Shi’ism) is somewhat more positive with regards to (binary) transgender people. All of which goes to show that LGBT people are a vulnerable minority under any tradition and in any part of the world, including in The West. The brief I was given from Zahra was, “If it’s in the book [killing gay people] then we need to change the book!” presumably suggested in jestful frustration. I don’t think we can change scripture but at least I’ve painted a picture where there is already a great deal of existing scriptures and different scholarly interpretations of the scriptures to choose from. The Qur’an itself doesn’t stipulate any specific punishment for homosexuality to be carried out by humans.

Someone asked me recently if any Muslims gave me any problems for being transgender and Muslim. Somewhat taken aback by someone who I’d only just met asking such a complicated question and not wanting to betray either those who I share the same faith with or those who I share the transgender struggle with by ignoring the fact that there are sometimes some challenges, I said, “It depends which Muslim you ask.” I think the questioner thought I was being flippant because she then requested to know “the official answer”. In the heat of the moment I concocted what might be considered an official answer based on Khomeini’s fatwa. But what I really wanted to explain was that she should listen to Muslims and not make assumptions that there would be a “problem” or that there would exist a command structure to provide a single “official answer” sufficient for the spiritual needs of all Muslims. She isn’t the first person to ask me a similar question. I try to tell people not to believe the newspaper headlines but instead go to their local mosque and see for themselves the kindness, generosity and friendship that is typical, and reassure them that there won’t be shariah police on the door quizzing them about their sexuality or if their gender is different to the one they were presumed to be at birth. I think I may have successfully influenced a few people for the better. If only I could find a way to reach out to the small number of internet shaykhs who seem to make an industry out of preaching hatred towards LGBT people. In a society with such widespread Islamophobia, such a violent transgression away from having universal respect for all fellow human beings is something we Muslims can ill afford. Her question brought to the fore several important things that I try to remind myself of in times of difficulty. The difference between what happens locally in any one particular place and the “official” ideology. That the love of companionship and sisterhood conquers all. That face-to-face interactions with people are important. And that listening to others is important.

Although the talk given by Shaykh Sodagar about homosexuality was in 2010, his visit to London comes at a time of increasing Islamisation across the globe and increasing violence and prejudice towards LGBT people in Muslim majority countries that have traditionally been tolerant towards minority groups. In Turkey the Pride annual parade has been cancelled and violently shut down by state police since 2015, and there is widespread discrimination against transgender people when seeking housing and employment, forcing many into sex work (which is actually legal in Turkey and the state runs its own brothels(!) which offer relatively safer working conditions but only for cisgender heterosexual sex workers), and the recent murder of trans woman Hande Kader which was widely reported in the English press, though she won’t be only trans person to die this year (three in Turkey last year, seven in Pakistan, twenty-seven in USA, one in UK, an absence of accurate data for Arab countries: statistics, news story). Strangely enough, the same place (in its previous form as the Ottoman empire) decriminalized homosexuality in 1858, long before the rise of liberal movements in Europe, and they used arguments from shariah law presented by their own jurists, based around the idea of weighing up the harms and the goods of keeping it criminalized. In Indonesia, the country with the highest number of resident Muslims in a single country anywhere in the world and no laws against homosexuality, unfortunately a mosque set up there specifically to help educate transgender people and support them in their battle against discrimination was forced to close because of pressure exerted on the government by Islamist extremists. In Malaysia trans people have been declared “enemies of Islam” by the government, despite the fact that the country is a multicultural and multi-religious nation, but apparently if you’re Muslim or ethnic Malay then an increasingly restrictive form of Shafi’i Islamic law is enforced by the state and Shi’ism, liberal Islam or personal interpretation of shariah are not tolerated. In Egypt people set up LGBT “support” groups specifically so they can arrest or murder LGBT people, despite the Grand Mufti’s pleas for tolerance.

Though, despite the gravity and urgency of the challenge of caring for LGBT Muslims and LGBT people in Muslim majority countries, and the many other human rights abuses in Muslim countries around the world, I would like to end on a positive note. Here are two countries who I never hear a bad word about. Firstly Jordan. It has responsibility for key parts of Jerusalem, including giving both Muslims and Jews access to the temple mount under very difficult (and sometimes violent) political conditions, a sacred place for followers of both religions and where the Dome of the Rock is located. In 2004 King Abdullah II delivered a speech called the Amman Message, which led to conferences and agreement among scholars from many Muslim countries that both Sunni Islam and Shia Islam are valid forms of Islam and also that practitioners of sufism should not be declared as apostates. His wife, Queen Rania, is a popular celebrity and important public figure in her own right, often seen promoting inclusivity and the importance of roles of filled by women in society, with a great many international followers of her Facebook page. Another country is Lebanon, a place that has taken in 500,000 child refugees from the Syrian crisis into a country that is similar in size to the county of Cornwall in South-West England, while meanwhile the English moan that England is “full up” and that 5,000 refugees is apparently too many. Lebanon also has a political constitution that requires the members of the government to be a mixture of Christians, Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims that is representative of beliefs of the people, which is a rather interesting solution given the political tensions and oppression of minorities which dominates so many other countries in the Middle East.

¹ Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims