I’m guessing it’s like Christianity where there are leftist Christians who follow Jesus’ more progressive messages such as giving to the less fortunate and healing the sick, and then there are the scary Christian evangelicals that want A Handmaids Tale and conversion therapy. Logically, Islam probably isn’t a monolith in a similar way other religions aren’t.
However, I have never heard about what those of the Islamic faith actually believe outside of the hysterical post 9/11 Islamophobia I’ve been indoctrinated with as a child.
I want to know what the truth is and hear the other sides story. To me it’s obvious that Islamophobia is wrong, however when Islamophobes make wild claims about it, I can’t really refute them confidently because I’m simply ignorant of the facts. Please educate my dumb, white ass.
Fuck the people disparaging the religious, but it should be noted that atheism IS an extreme religious minority and a large percent of western socialists are LGBT+ people that have been abused by organized religion. So a little respect from both sides should be given, and maybe don’t say lol fairy tales or lol fedora (cus again atheism is a minority everywhere, you probably wouldn’t speak about any other religious minority that way).
And no Islam isn’t inherently more sexist than any other abrahamic religion, afaik it’s actually better (but this varies wildly like any religion)
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Disclaimer: you’re going to get wildly differing answers because Islam is not a monolith.
Edit: also thank you for asking this respectfully
At least in my experience with the Muslim side if my family, no. There’s maybe a little “oh that’s different and a little weird, but if someone’s queer that’s just Allah’s plan for them and it’s not our place to judge”, but there isn’t the hatred and condemnation you see in conservative christian cults. It can break more along political lines.
It also gets weird with regional variation, like where my family is from trans people are kind of normal. I was even taught that transness is generally accepted religiously as long as the trans person is straight (so since I’m lesbian that doesn’t work as well for me, but whatever).
Generally I consider the “Islam is violently queerphobic” shit essentially a form of colonialist blood-libel to paint Muslim cultures as backwards and oppressive in order to justify committing horrible colonialist and imperialist violence against them, and it’s victim-blaming too. Queerness is very culturally dependent – what is feminine in one culture may be masculine in another. Colonizers exported their queer-bashing ideas during conquest, cracked down on queer communities as removed, reshaped mores in the places they conquered, and now these “enlightened” colonizers have the audacity to condemn the people they colonized for bearing those scars. Of course we’re “behind the times” – you fuckers made us be!
There is certainly room for and indeed a need for conversation and struggle around queer acceptance and liberation in different Islamic cultures, but that’s going to vary greatly by region and is less of a theological question and more a cultural question (of course there’s a give and take between theology and culture). Islam in Iran is wildly different from Islam in Pakistan is wildly different from Islam in Saudi Arabia is wildly different from Islam in Algeria, and even within those places there is a great amount of variation
said i would comment and here we are. seeing some pretty reductive and dangerous rhetoric and i fear that the majority of this site that has little to no experience in the topic will regurgitate something they heard here without crit.
i grew up muslim and queer, used to go to quran and sunday school and the masjid every friday. i myself have a complicated relationship with islam but though i have left the faith many times and no longer practice in a mass, i still consider myself muslim but also mix other faiths and my personal practices in.
of course there IS misogyny and homophobia. just like when i go to school or work in a christian majority area, and hear the most insane out of pocket misogyny and homophobia and transphobia with the most casual of energy.
to single out muslims as morbidly and uniquely intense or cruel compared to christians, jews, and even atheists is reductive thinking and heavily prejudiced. to not even mention the passing, casual, but incredibly charged and hateful crimes of the real majority reveals indoctrination of anglo supremacy.
did you know islam has a long history of LGBT playing important and positive roles in society before colonial interference in my home country? what about sufiism? did you know the muslim world has had women leader!s! before the christian/atheist dominated west? there are also many progressive muslim scholars, just like there are progressive jewish or christian or atheist scholars.
wahhabiism, the extreme and most bigoted/hateful school of islam that we often associate with extremism and hate, was only made popular in the last 100 years, still a minority of the overarching religion, and guess who funded and encouraged these groups to the platform they have now?
i’m not dismissing anyone’s lived experience. i have suffered at the hands of bigoted muslims of course. and i have suffered at the hands of bigoted everything else with no religious motivation even more. that bigotry and hate comes from a personal or cultural level and it gets wrapped and disguised in islam by those with an agenda. i have also been the most radically and deeply accepted by some muslim peers. the cultural habits of a group of people doesn’t reflect on a religion. even the experience of arabs =/= the experience of all muslims. when i see arabs borderline enslaving people from my homeland and branding them with second class citizenship and taking away their ability to leave, people that look like me, would it be fair of me to claim for all others that have never experienced it that arabs specifically promote slavery and a tiered society?
we just cannot make sweeping generalizations where we apply what we’ve experience behind closed doors in one household to entire populations of people and shove those bigoted harmful actions under the brand of islam, and not even consider the closed-door practices of nonmuslims.
this entire thread has made me deeply deeply uncomfortable to engage on this site. i’m not fully stepping away but i will proceed with extreme caution moving forward
Salaam.
to single out muslims as morbidly and uniquely intense or cruel compared to christians, jews, and even atheists is reductive thinking and heavily prejudiced. to not even mention the passing, casual, but incredibly charged and hateful crimes of the real majority reveals indoctrination of anglo supremacy.
This is always my main take away as well. Just a reminder the number one ad trump is running is “I hate Trans people. Vote for me.”
Good post
Thank you for honestly answering, and yes some of the comments have been disappointing. I don’t think it represents the majority of Hexbear users though (I hope). I will say that some of the responses are very uncharacteristic, and Islamophobia is not usually tolerated here.
oh! oh! I know this one
so as someone who was actually brought up Muslim and is queer, I will say that my personal experience has been nothing but intense homophobia & transphobia, yeah. I’ve essentially been disowned by my family + anyone I knew from that culture and I have to LARP as a white person because Islam has such a stranglehold on the arab culture
I don’t really know (or care) if this is inherent to Islam, the homophobia comes from the story of lot and the transphobia tends to come mostly from the Hadith though. it is probably possible to have an Islam that is not like this but it is NOT the Islam that exists today, or will anytime soon
there is a subset of queer friendly Muslims but they almost exclusively exist in the west. OBVIOUSLY queer people exist in e.g. west Asia but it is NOT a thing you can be that public about, especially depending on the country. in the west I see the queer friendly Muslims often get treated as one of the biggest internal threats to Islam.
you’ve got the whole perception some people have, that queerness is like western degen bullshit invading the based East or whatever, to wrestle with as well - this DEFINITELY makes the queerphobia like 100x worse, people who are being attacked by a pinkwashing state like the Zionist entity are obviously going to be more anti-lgbt as a result, especially when the seeds in the religion/culture are already there. anti-imperialism remains the best way a westerner can improve this situation!
maybe trauma dumping idk
so yeah shit sucks fam! it is incredibly alienating to be a queer Arab ex-muslim commie. your culture rejects you and it is hard to voice any particularly anti-islam opinions sometimes because of my experiences the way westerners can be anti-christianity because of their religious trauma.
I kind of get why, in the west (especially in Europe) being anti-Islam mostly comes from islamaphobic fascists. but the nuance of ‘the west should not bomb west Asia’ & ‘islam is bad, actually’ is too difficult to communicate ime (or requires me to give a LOT of personal information like I have done here so people know I’m not just a white westerner fascist)
There is Islam and there are muslims. Muslims can be homophobic and sexist. Islam is their belief, religion being used to justify ones bigotry is nothing new.
A lot of the times westerners have this view of Islam as if it’s a dogma like calvinism. But it’s a whole religion, it’s a lot more cultural, it’s very unique to the individual and what they make of it. There are very dogmatic views of Islam for sure, but if people are talking about “Is Islam X” or “Does Islam teach Y” there’s a fundamental misunderstanding of what religion is. Look at how different orthodox christianity, catholicism and protestants are. If you try to pin-point “what does christianity teach?” you will end up with a set of very broad universally-agreed truths “Love thy neighbour etc.” and the bare-minimum of christian lore “Jesus was the messiah and died on a cross for our sins and rose again 3 days later from the grave”. Other than that everything open. Was Mary a virgin her whole life? Is it ok to pray to idols? Is the bible sent by god? What books should be in the bible?
Pretty much the same for Islam. There as many perspectives to Islam as to Christianity. A historical, an individual, a theological (which depends on the school), a cultural and probably a couple more I’m currently not thinking of. If someone is talking about Islam as if it was a tangible thing there are deeper brainworms at play.
Islam teaches nothing. Mohammed has taught. Allah teaches. A hoca, imam, your mom and dad might teach you what it is to be a muslim. And what they teach you might be completely different from what another muslim is taught.
One difference about Islam is that it appeared all at once, instead of emerging out of a cultural milieu over multiple centuries like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Buddhism did. You have the Quran and you have Muhammad recognized as its author and the final prophet and the founder of the religion, there’s not a whole lot of room for debate about what the Quran says.
Not sure I understand your point, the Bible is as central to Christianity as the Quran to Islam. There is a definitive and large intersection of books that every christian bible contains, so you can point to a lot things in the bible that almost every christian will agree is in the bible. And the rest is as wide and varied as which Hadiths are accepted and which aren’t.
My point was that Islam, as Christianity, is more than the book. A lot of muslims dont read the Quran. A lot of muslims that read the Quran don’t understand arabic. A lot of muslims live Islam by picking and choosing what “sounds right” from what the people around them are saying, fitting it into their worldview, molding it into something unique to them. My experience of Islam was that it was a lot more oral tradition and open to superstitions than my experience of christianity. Muslim friends would trade religious views by saying their mom said this and then the other couldn’t really go against what his mom said, because she’s his mom and if it’s that important to him, fine. Whereas in my experience of christianity people would immediately whip out the bible and start throwing verses back and forth sometimes even breaking out some ancient greek dictionary. So people might say that according to Islam whoever does not accept the prophet goes to hell, then point to this verse or that hadith, but a lot of muslims I met said that it doesn’t matter as long as we all believe in the same God. And that’s what these people of “Islamic faith”, to quote OP, believe.
I had a teacher who said pork wasn’t haram, Allah just said it was because back in the Prophets time people didn’t know about proper food hygiene but they do now. There was a huge trend in my school with a very specific ritual involving bread that fell on the floor because wasting bread was seen as a sin. Some kids were uneasy with my infidel ass going to the mosque to drink water. There was a lot of superstition and tradition inextricably linked to Islam depending on the local culture which invariable affects how the Quran is interpreted or whether people just choose to live with certain contradictions in their belief system. And saying that “Islam is X” is almost always wrong as it would have to describe something common to every muslim there is.
There is no objectively true Islam, it’s nothing material. Islam is not something that exists but it describes a wide and varied collection of different beliefs, rituals, expressions and so on. Even if you point at something in the Quran and say “See Islam teaches this, it’s in the Quran” there will be so many different interpretations of that thing that you will not be able to find a intersection contained in all.
In 610 there is no Quran, no Islam, no Muslims. Muhammad dictates the Quran later in his life, and by 640 there is the Quran in the form we know it today, and Islam, and Muslims, all at once. It emerged very discretely and with relative unity.
For Christianity, there is a historical record of Christians as early as Nero’s reign, but the earliest books in what is now the New Testament don’t get written until the end of the 1st century AD, and as far as we can tell are not written by anyone who witnessed the life of Jesus on Earth. And then the canon isn’t formalized until almost 3 centuries after the Crucifixion; meanwhile, there have been lots of parallel and related religious movements going on that get sorted out by councils of elders/bishops long after the fact. The Old Testament/Tanakh was written by dozens or even hundreds of authors, over a period of at least 700 years.
There might be historical and cultural revisionism going on, as you’d see anywhere, but Islam emerges clearly in a moment, as opposed to Christianity which is the product of much longer and more blurry processes. This makes for much less ambiguity over what Islam does or does not look like.
My experience of Islam largely comes from roommates who had the Quran very thoroughly taught in schools. I got the impression that there’s a lot less picking and choosing; it’s a package deal that you either wholly embrace or don’t.
I live in majority muslim nation and yeah theres plenty of conservative muslim, just like how nearly every nation has many conservatives. However racists westerners pretend homophobia and sexism is uniquely exotic to muslim and use it to deflect that the west still has prevalent sexism and homophobia attitudes.
Edward Said best describes this phenomenonen in his book about Orientalism.
not qualified to comment on the particulars but i think it’s worth remembering
and its vassals have propped up the worst most reactionary franchises of islam because of cold war shitif liberals are trying to say shit about internal social repression in palestine recently, iirc hamas rose to prominence because of external influence and because there’s just something about islamists that the settlers and imperialists prefer over more cosmopolitan/secular/socialist groups, they can shut up. islam could be exactly what they accuse it of and it wouldn’t justify genocide.
I was debating whether to respond to this or not and how to respond to this.
Mandatory general reading:
Orientalism, Edward Said and Eurocentrism, Samir Amin
I will link this article again, titled: Gay universalism, homoracialism and « marriage for all » by Houria Bouteldja.
I can also list various writers and works across the Islamic world, from Islamic feminism, Islamic liberation theology, decolonial marxists, to Islamic socialists. But I think that may not be helpful because again we are stuck in this false dichotomy of “liberal” and “conservatism”. Of a rigid notion of “progress” and “reaction”, which I might add spits in the face of dialectics.
I can’t fault those that believe in a linear progress of history. Early Marxism itself was tainted with such notions until the 20th century.
So instead I will posit this question:
If we are to believe that gender and sexuality are socially situated within a specific cultural and time dependent context, then why do we assume that terms derived from such contexts like “homophobia” and “misogyny” are universally applicable and can be compared across different regions and areas of the globe?
This is not to discredit the admirable goal of internationalism, of universalising the struggle, but we then have to ask ourselves if this “internationalism” is based on actual applicability of it’s critique to the entire world or merely a projection based on false conceptions, with aid from the cultural and political hegemony of US-led Capital?
Also I’d like to note: if the Communists and “Progressives” were correct and listened to the masses in the Islamic World, they would have won. But they did not. So who is at fault here?
If we are to believe that gender and sexuality are socially situated within a specific cultural and time dependent context, then why do we assume that terms derived from such contexts like “homophobia” and “misogyny” are universally applicable and can be compared across different regions and areas of the globe?
because eurochristians exported that bullshit and imposed it upon most of the world?
implying muslim cultures aren’t predominantly heteropatriarchal is probably some kind of orientalism
One of them Muslim cultures:
(WARNING: heteropatriarchal)
got a long way to go before we invalidate my “predominantly” qualifier. there are feminists who don’t reject christianity for whatever reason too, it doesn’t change my baseline expectations of reactionary or “moderate” christians.
I don’t see how there’s anything necessarily bad inherent in Christianity. That Jesus guy seems like a pretty cool dude. kind of a revolutionary figure.
He was big on pacifism, and the guys that killed him co-opted his name and went on killing in his name. Kinda messed up to conclude that his ideas are responsible for the killing.
This has happened with countless groups over the centuries. Those truly following the teachings of Christ won’t murder at the behest of empire? Exterminate those heretics and replace them with ones that will follow orders and pay lip service.
In modern times, any Muslim state that tries to do anything remotely good will be decimated by the US, who will then support the most violent reactionaries in the region.
Are all the oppressive reactionary Muslim states to be blamed on the nature of Islam?
Personally, I see religion as a versatile tool. People get so many different things out of it.
you are not the authority of “true” christianity. worshiping a genocidal entity is bad, full stop.
you are not the authority of “true” christianity.
I’m not the authority of Christianity, that would be Christ. Christianity is the teachings of Christ, yes?
I don’t think any of the above is controversial, so I hope we can agree on this basic definition.
And yes, the teachings of Christ include what one could argue is the “worship of a genocidal entity”.
But do you not feel utterly ridiculous?
Like your immediate response to the sermon on the mount is “fuck you you worship a genocidal entity”?
Your immediate response to John Brown is “bro you worship a genocidal entity”?
Your immediate response to Malcolm X is “you worship a genocidal entity (and in the worst way bc Islam)”?
Can you so casually dismiss every religious person who has fought, struggled and died for a just cause? Because they believed in the Abrahamic god, while you’re here smugly patting yourself on the back for having the correct opinions?
implying muslim cultures aren’t predominantly heteropatriarchal is probably some kind of orientalism
what the fuck am I reading
Something something Muslims are the real racists.
It’s actually racist to deny that Muslim cultures are inherently misogynistic.
I will never stop Hoxha-posting.
Americans (and their simps) will literally devastate a Muslim country, install the most psychotic fundamentalists in power, and then have the audacity to say shit like
“I’m a leftist but why is it that despite being 20% of the population, Muslims commit 90% of the misogyny and homophobia? Must just be characteristic of the Islamic brainpan.”
Fun fact: The word “Hoxha” means
Noun
hoxhë m (plural hoxhë, definite hoxha, definite plural hoxhët) imam
The man from a family of Islamic teachers led the majority Muslim country through the most extensive improvement of women’s rights in history. Women went from being essentially chattel property and rarely getting rudimentary schooling, to being almost half the government, scientists, doctors, engineers in a few decades.
The sheer audacity of westerners to make such presumptions about “Muslim cultures” is mind-boggling. A Muslim country hit the communism button and completely rebuilt the social order, uplifting women to a position better than that of any in the west, and how does the west respond?
By trying, tooth and nail, to destroy it. And after they’ve destroyed it, western so-called leftists will opine that Muslim cultures just be misogynistic like that.
I’m glad you responded because that is a damn good comment
https://lemmy.ml/post/20955835/14091348
https://lemmy.ml/post/20955835/14091503
Main thing is: remember there are a billion Muslims and have been for ~1400 years. There’s been a lot of diversity within that.
Thank you
New band name just dropped: Egyptian Vice.
As others have said, Islam is not a monolith, there are many interpretations of Islam across the world. Some are more progressive, some less. The culture I am from has a creative interpretation of what homosexuality is, at least partially stemming from the relatively high degree of misogyny there.
So from my experience with a less mainstream Islamic culture, it’s less homophobic but about as misogynistDamn, guys. Please debate the validity of religion as a whole in a different post, would you? It’s getting way too off topic. I’m not religious, but I’m also aware that in hell world we need our opiates or we’ll go crazy.
It is too late comrade you have opened the religion debate floodgates by mentioning the existence of religion lmao
We’re still a long way from someone pressing the no religion button
As others have pointed out, there are many “sub genres” of Islam. I am not an expert and am not Muslim or religious myself, but from what I gather the extreme ones like Wahhabism in Saudi is of course exceedingly socially conservative, but there are of course others. From what I understand, despite what the z!onists say, The form of Islam that Hamas represents is way more moderate especially regarding things such as the veil (I can’t recall ever seeing Bisan wearing one) and I’ve read anecdotal stories of openly gay tourists visiting Gaza (before the holocaust obviously) and having zero problems.
Any Muslim comrades with more knowledge please feel free to correct me where I am wrong here or expand.
Also fuck new atheists and big ups to all my Muslim comrades, free Palestine inshallah 🇵🇸
Ex-muslim here!
While there are obviously a lot of different interpretations and sects of Islam that have different feelings on these matters, the short and most correct answer would be basically, yes, Islam is one of the most homophobic and misogynistic religions out there.
Most Muslims are extremely conservative in their beliefs when it comes to these topics. I’d say it’s honestly safe to assume that most every Muslim you come across is likely going to be a raging homophobe and/or misogynist.
All religions are pretty shitty in my opinion but Islam has been the worst offender and is the most cultish in my experience. There’s a site I linked below that goes in depth on things like this, so you might wanna check it out.
Edit: Firstly, this should go without saying, but I don’t support the genocide of the Palestinian territories by the IDF. I don’t necessarily support the religion but I sure as hell do not support a genocide against innocent people. I don’t think my comment suggested I do, but clearing this up just in case before more of yall come into my inbox being all butthurt. Secondly, after reading more responses on this thread, I’m going to leave this here: I’m not and will never be an islamophobe, and I respect all Muslims (even the ones who are queer and muslim, I will never understand how you could do that though) but, I am extremely critical of the religion, and I think it’s not a very healthy one. It isn’t up for debate on whether or not Islam is homophobic and misogynistic based on my personal experience growing up as a queer male Muslim who had to hear how even my normally-very-accepting-of-other-people family wanted to “kill all the homos”. And I mean, they even say shit like women are intellectually deficient and that you should stone Queer people for… existing. It isn’t “IsLAmoPHobic” to be critical of these aspects of the religion, it’s ‘Islamophobic’ to demonize all Muslims for the actions of a few (a.k.a Al-Qaeda, ISIS, or Hamas) or make those weird 9/11 ‘jokes’, but alas, I suppose Lemmy isn’t really ready to have this discussion.
Ex muslim too and there was a period where I saw islam as being uniquely homophobic/mysogynist/etc, but these days I feel like that’s just due to the damage imperialism/colonialism has done / is doing to muslim countries, not giving them the opportunity to start making social progress.
And as other comments have pointed out, the imperial core tends to prop up and fund the most reactionary islamic groups.
Calling islam uniquely bad can lead to some pretty fascist shit, like this popular ex-muslim youtuber whose content has now just devolved into zionist propaganda
I don’t agree with this view. Islam is not uniquely more homophobic or misogynistic than the other abrahamic religions
I’m falling asleep as I type this but I feel the need to write a bigger response in the morning
Huh. Personally, I’ve witnessed Islam really be on a whole other level with the misogyny and homophobia, but maybe that’s just me.
I forgot to mention the intense misogyny in my comment, good call. My experiences are very similar to yours.
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So the material conditions of being a palestinian just happen to exist here but Islam is the more probable cause for that situation?
Sure, so the question presented here is one about “Islam.”
I’m not a religious person, and I imagine you are not either (considering you use this website, I imagine you are a materialist). So, as nonreligious people, I think we should have no issue saying that there is no fundamental “truth” as to what “Islam” is out there in the world. Rather, what the concept/religion of Islam is just what its followers generally believe it to be. Like most concepts, there probably aren’t many super hard-and-fast necessary and sufficient conditions, but rather there is a family resemblance of concepts that exist in the minds of its followers, with some ideas being more core (i.e. believed to be part of the concept by more people) and some more fringe.
So, answering the question of whether Islam is homophobic (rather than was or has been historically) is just a matter of determining what beliefs/values with respect to homosexuality its followers attribute to it. I imagine Mahmoud would attribute his homophobia to the religion.
As you suggest, it could very well be the case that the Muslims who are homophobic have come to those beliefs due to their material conditions of their place of birth rather than the prevailing religion in the region. But then, insofar as such homophobic people consider themselves Muslims, and attribute such beliefs to being a value of such Islam, then Islam becomes/is homophobic.
Your response to me seems more interested in the question of whether Islam “causes” people to be homophobic. But that’s a distinct question from whether Islam is homophobic.
Separately, if you want to argue that Islam is only homophobic if it “causes” people to be homophobic, then I don’t see why it has to be “the more probable cause” for a person’s homophobia in order to be homophobic. Surely there can be many different causes for why some particular person might be homophobic? If the material conditions of their place of birth is the driving cause for their homophobia, but a religion came in with the assist, (that is, it is not the “most probable cause”) I see no reason to say that such religion is not homophobic.
There’s a few religious people on the website, I don’t know why you would imagine anything specific.
There are still fundamental truths about dogmas that can be found. If we are going to imagine here, as a non-muslim baby leftist, I can’t imagine peaceful fascist ideologies, while I can imagine non homophobic Islam.
The question of what something is, unless specified otherwise, always includes was and will be. Even if you could demonstrate that Islam is currently homophobic, (and I don’t think you were that specific in your original statement) as a whole it seems to be an unjust representation. Doubly so because it’s a faith, and voluntarily or not ends up being a proxy for the individuals that hold it.
Well the reason why I imagine you to be non-religious is because thats a prerequisite for the argument I intended to (and did) give. A (Christian or Muslim) religious person would disagree with my starting premise that there is no truth about a religion out there in the world. And indeed, for a religious person, the question of whether some religion X is Y may very well be a theological question, where sufficient study or faith or practice reveals the truth. This is not the sort of discussion I was interested in having.
I can certainly agree that there may be some core components to a dogma concept such that we would cease to call it that concept without it. And I certainly don’t believe homophobia to be a core concept of the Islamic dogma. (Core concepts would be fairly limited here, like that there is only one God, and Mohammad is the prophet of that God).
The question of what something is, unless specified otherwise, always includes was and will be.
Hmm, I’m not sure that’s correct. But in any event, the way I read the OP’s question, with its reference to post 9/11 Islamophobic claims and the veracity of them seems to be very much a question of how Islam is currently and has been for the past 20 years. Questions of historical Islam and some hypothetical future Islam don’t seem to me to be what’s targeted here.
