Islam and Homosexuality: confrontation or paradox?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.6092/1827-9198/1990Keywords:
Homosexuality, Islamic societies, Koran, human rightsAbstract
Is Islam "homophobic"? Or is it the "western" point of view that describes Islam as a homophobic religion and Islamic societies as a monolithic reality? Exploring these questions, the author reveals the complexity that exists in the contemporary debate on Islam and homosexuality. While noting that in general Muslim countries defer to the Sharia and the Koran, the essay uses the authoritative voices of historians, commentators and writers - including Tariq Ramadan, Abdelwahab Boudiba, Anna Vanzan Jolanda Guardi, Al-Aswani and Serena Tolino - who invite us to reflect on the different interpretations that fuel the contemporary debate. It’s a debate strongly influenced by the versatility of the Muslim world, seeing that different countries have developed different strategies, both on the legal and social fronts. Starting with the religious sphere, the essay analyzes verses from the Koran to reveal that the Muslim world has not been sheltered from an awareness of homosexuality as a psychological category. The evolution of the issue is then seen in the Islamic literary and poetic tradition with this work addressing multiple narratives from various perspectives according to the historical context. This debate, in contemporary times, is at the heart of respect for human rights. In fact homosexuality, along with other matters, and the relationship between the Muslim world and the modern human rights paradigm remains an open question, despite the activism of the transnational LGBTQI movement and individuals in the Islam diaspora.
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La camera blu is an open access, online publication, with licence CCPL Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported