OPINION

The Worst Threat to Gay Rights?

By MICHAEL LUCAS
Friday, May 25, 2007

WE IGNORE ISLAMIC contempt for gay rights at our own peril. What are known as the Hadith are tools for determining the Muslim way of life. The Hadith relate to the words and deeds of Muhammad. All traditional Islamic schools of jurisprudence incorporate the Hadith. One Hadith says that, in terms of male-on-male sexual activity, the “tops” are as bad as the “bottoms”: “Kill the one that is doing it and also kill the one that it is being done to.”

That very thing happens regularly in Muslim majority societies. Counting the number of gay murder victims in that context is impossible. In many Muslim societies, murdering a gay relative is perceived as redeeming the family from a supposed dishonor brought upon it by the gay person. 

So-called “honor killings” of gay people, as well as of women who supposedly offend their families’ honor, are now taking place in Europe.

In case you were not aware, Muslim leaders in France, Britain, Denmark and Belgium have declared certain Muslim neighborhoods to be under Islamic jurisdiction. For a detailed account of such matters, I can not recommend highly enough out gay author Bruce Bawer’s book “While Europe Slept: How Radical Islam Is Destroying the West From Within.” He also maintains an informative web site at brucebawer.com.

It is incorrect to think that anti-gay Islamic bigots can be equated with anti-gay bigots of other religions. As Bawer says: Evangelical leader “Pat Robertson just wanted to deny me marriage; the imams wanted to drop a wall on me.”

Here is another example of how anti-gay Muslims differ in their approach from anti-gay Christians and Jews. Muslims actually revere Jesus Christ as a prophet. So when Terrence McNally depicted Jesus as gay in his play “Corpus Christi,” a judge of the Shari’ah Court of the U.K. signed a death order against him. A death order! Signed by a Muslim from within Great Britain. I ask you, Have you recently heard of a Christian or Jewish clergyman calling for Terrence McNally to be killed because he portrayed Jesus as gay in a stage work?

The Secretary General of the Muslim Council of Britain is so accepted in society that he is known as Sir Iqbal Sacranie. The man has been knighted by Queen Elizabeth II! What irks me isn’t his knighthood; rather, it’s his failure to use his position of respectability to censure his fellow Muslims when they condemn Terrence McNally to death. Sir Iqbal, furthermore, in his capacity as leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, refuses all proposals to tackle homophobia within the Muslim community. That attitude is shared by Muslim leaders throughout Europe. What makes the attitude especially pernicious, of course, is that Hadith calling for gay people to be killed.

Meanwhile, who remembers the United Nation’s gay rights resolution? Presented by Brazil in 2003 and 2004, it was twice defeated by a Muslim alliance including many countries that make homosexuality a capital offence. The Muslim population of the world stands at about more than 1 billion people. Typically, 10 percent of a given population is gay. So rounding things off now, about 100 million gay people in the Muslim world must stay deeply closeted or face death.

I know in advance that my writing about this question will bring idiots crawling out of the woodwork. They’ll say things such as, “I visited Tunisia last year, had clandestine sex with a native man, and that proves that anti-gay Muslims are no worse than anti-gay Christians.” Such idiots, unfortunately, assist the Muslims in spreading their anti-gay poison by denying the severity of the threat they represent to us.

Still other idiots will accuse me of painting Islam with a single brush stroke. Given what that Hadith says about gays, you’ll admit that any practicing Muslim who doesn’t denounce it is complicit in the deaths of those gays murdered because of it. Yet I do acknowledge that Keith Ellison, a Muslim congressman from Minnesota, supports gay rights and wants to repeal the U.S.’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ban on gays in the military.

Yet there are Islamic centers in every state, including North and South Dakota. It is not difficult to find statements from their leaders in favor of Shariah and the Hadith being made the basis of American law. They’ll say they want it established by persuasion, not by violence. But consider what they hope to persuade people about—namely, that people who engage in gay sex should be killed. Should that opinion be forcefully denounced, or should it be allowed to go unremarked?

There is no philosophy more hostile to gay people in today’s world than that of Islam. The subject has many aspects to be considered. Yet to any who think I exaggerate the dangers, the scales should fall from your eyes. Dr. Muzammil Siddiqi heads the Islamic Society of North America. He has said that homosexuality is “a moral disease, a sin and a corruption.” Here is what Siddiqi has to say about Islam’s place in the U.S. and all currently non-Muslim countries: “By participating in a non-Islamic system, one cannot rule by that which Allah has commanded. But things do not change overnight. Changes come through patience, wisdom and hard work. I believe that as Muslims, we should participate in the system to safeguard our interests and try to bring gradual change for the right cause, the cause of truth and justice. We must not forget that Allah’s rules have to be established in all lands, and all our efforts should lead to that direction.”

One of what Siddiqi calls “Allah’s laws” is: “Kill the one that is doing it and also kill the one that it is being done to.” That’s something that we as gay people absolutely must not forget.

Michael Lucas is the president and CEO of LucasEntertainment.com. You can read more about his thoughts and his XXX movies at LucasBlog.com

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