Reddit reviews Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims

Concurred.




Even though the entirety of my extended family doesn't fully acknowledge it as valid, I am glad that the law, my mosque and my husband's church DO acknowledge our inter-faith, inter-racial same-sex marriage as valid and I would love if the law keeps acknowledging it as valid forever and centres my family values and that of the church he goes to and the mosque I go to over that of Conservatives' or right-wing Christians.



Not all Christians are homophobes. In fact I've found more support in my husband's church than anywhere else IMHO.




But religion should not govern the validity of marriage IMHO especially bad misrepresentations of the Bible text that are based off of inaccurate translations of malakoi and arsenkoitai (for further information read: “The Bible does not condemn ‘homosexuality.’ Seriously, it doesn’t.” by adam nicholas phillips https://link.medium.com/pu6zfl8LhZ ) or manipulation of the Quran to condemn homosexuality when it's actually condemning the practice of having a beard-wife (this is from Siraj Al-Haqq Kugle's seminal work available on Amazon here: "Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims" https://www.amazon.ca/dp/1851687017/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_YbUwDbGMTXC73 ).





Regardless I believe that my family values that "Love is love and it should not matter who someone loves as love is a God-given gift and not controllable by humans and that every consenting adult should be allowed to marry any other consenting adult, regardless of gender (or lack thereof), sexuality (or lack thereof), ability to procreate (or lack thereof), race/ethnicity/culture/nationality" should trump those of social conservatives that couch and hide their desire to manipulate other people's lives in nefarious and sadistic ways in the terms "family values/pro-life/religious basis for country" etc.

Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle is the most prominent. There have been a couple of other academic works along similar lines. Influence is relative, of course, as these don't hold much credibility in orthodox/conservative circles.

Have you read Homosexuality in Islam by Scott Kugle?

I really recommend the book Homosexuality in Islam. Or here's a shorter article that touches upon mostly the same stuff.

There are clobber Hadith, considering there are countless Hadith about everything, but there's only one verse in the Quran (which is just the Sodom and Gomorrah story).

>to reduce...

Unemployment is a significant indicator of the health of an economy, and it represents the number one concern among folks such as yourself regarding refugees. And Germany's economy is currently the fastest growing of the G7, with a GDP growth rate of 1.9%, its fastest rate in 5 years.

Sweden is also "growing strongly", according to an OECD report from last month.

>wage devaluation

I should have anticipated that you'd bring that up. The Economist (open in incognito, there's a soft paywall) gives a nuanced view on this issue and on the larger scale economic impact of refugees, but lays down the view that the fear over wages is largely baseless, as the effect is small and can even have positive side effects as it pushes natives into less manually intensive and even higher paying jobs.

In fact, the article also tackles an issue you bring up multiple times in your reply-- their drain on public finances. The article again provides a nuanced view:

>The influx will not be bank-breaking, however. In the very short run, the IMF estimates that refugees will add around 0.19% of GDP to public expenditure in the European Union (0.35% in Germany) in 2016. This will add to public debt, and given higher joblessness among refugees, unemployment will rise. But looking only at their fiscal impact is too narrow a focus. Later on, as the new arrivals integrate into the workforce, they are expected to boost annual output by 0.1% for the EU as a whole, and 0.3% in Germany. They should also help (a little bit) to reverse the upward creep of the cost of state pensions as a share of GDP, given their relative youth.

This is basically the gist of my message to you from before. I'm not claiming that refugees are going to be wowing Europe with an immediate and drastic improvement to the economy, just that it hasn't been stopping growth and that in the long run refugees may benefit their host countries.

>jews

The relationship between the Jews and Muslim society has historically generally been one of relative tolerance and intellectual and cultural exchange. In the 15th century, with the persecution and expulsion of Spanish Jews, many took refuge in Muslim lands, Aleppian Sephardim in particular had a unique tradition of lighting a thirteenth candle for Hanukkah as a symbol of gratitude towards their new community. Animosity between Jews and Muslims is more a product of the 20th century, with the Zionist movement and the establishment of Israel.

>gays

I recommend you read scholar Jonathan Brown's article on Islamic views on homosexuality. He writes that while mainstream Islam does uncontroversially see the act of liwat (sodomy) as a sin that may be punished if a person is accused of it in a court of law and views marriage as being between men and women, there are a multiplicity of views within mainstream Islam and not all of them prescribe death as a punishment for the act of liwat. Additionally, he provides historical evidence that Islamic society historically has been relatively accepting of homosexuality as a human phenomenon and that there were only rare cases of liwat being punished at all, as Shariah generally turns a blind eye to things that happen privately that are not perceived as harming people or the social order.

Of course, while all that certainly acts as a strong counter to your view that "Islam" (as if it's all one entity) believes in "killing gays" (as if extrajudicial or vigilante killing isn't something that Shariah historically has been very strict against), it does not do much to assuage fears that Islam is inherently homophobic in that it does not treat the homosexual identity as being equal to the heterosexual identity. Unfortunately, you'd be right to say that mainstream Islam does not view homosexuality the way it does view heterosexuality.

Beyond the mainstream of Islam, there are scholars and groups that are trying to argue that there is room for full gay-acceptance in the religion.

The take home message here is that it is not accurate to say that "Islam", as a unified entity, either condones the killing of gays or even discourages full equality of gays and straights.


>Islam doesn't tolerate...

If a Muslim is in a foreign land, the traditional view of the Shariah is that he/she is to respect the laws of the land. Meaning, you seem to ascribe to Islam a kind of inherent intolerance and hostility towards those not of the religion, but this view is inaccurate.

If you are referring to the dhimmi system, that system prescribes permanent protection, and that feature of the dhimmi system is part of the reason why Jews fared better under Muslims than under Christians. It's not just protection "for a time". Even then, however, moderate Muslims reject the dhimmi system as being unfit for modern states.

(refer to section III., A. and note 36 of the linked pdf)

Additionally, the same kind of argument I laid out in the last paragraph on Islam and homosexuality can be used to counter almost any absolute claim you make on Islam. The take home message here is that there is no reason to hold any particular hatred for "Islam", because there is no one thing called Islam and there is a lot of room for negotiation and mutual tolerance. In a similar way Salafism came to be the fastest growing Islamic ideology in the 21st century (though, note that it is still a minority view among Sunnis), shifts and trends can happen the other way. Another core component of my arguments is to recognize the reasons why Islamist ideology has taken such a hold after a period of liberalization-- especially the role the West, ironically, had in this change.

>They core belief system says to kill, enslave or convert everyone who isn't a Muslim, you are cherry picking instances where Islam wasn't as horrible as it could of been and equating that to all of Islam.

Where does it say that killing, enslaving, and converting non-Muslims is part of the core belief system? What I know is that the core of Islam is captured in the the Five Pillars and the Six Pillars of Iman. None of which even deal with non-believers.

And no, I'm not "cherry picking" here. Am I giving you specific examples, such as with Afghanistan? Yes, but if you did read the articles I link to, you would see that the examples are part of larger historical trends and realities.

>And if they had the means they would of enslaved or killed us all, what's your point, Islam has always been at odds with free countries I really don't care that we are at odds with them, they had just as much time to develop as the west did if not more, the middle east has been a shithole for a long time.

What is your evidence for this? I've given you my argument against this view and offered to send you a more in-depth scholarly article on the history of Islam and the West, and I don't see a lot of evidence that you've engaged with that argument all that much.

>what's your point

My point in here is to argue that there is no need for hostility towards the Middle East, Islam or Muslims, because even though current waves of extremist ideology seem to make reconciliation and coexistence impossible, there are grounds for mutual tolerance. The larger point in all of this is that your reasons for believing that this refugee's issues aren't "our problem" or for rejecting our moral responsibility towards refugees aren't sound.

>With or without the west the middle east would be a shithole today,

That is on about the same moral level as saying "That person would have been killed by person x anyway, so it's totally moral for me to have killed them". Regardless of whether or not you are right in your assessment, that does not translate to the moral permissibility of what the West did in the Middle East and does not absolve Western powers of the moral responsibility for the aftermath.

>personally I think

...

Dude, you can do better than to just sound off your own opinions. Did you do any research? If you don't like or care very much about the conversation we're having, we can just end it, I wouldn't see it as you being rude to me or something.

>Making it so your enemies wouldn't unite and attack you, oh the horror.

Part one of my whole argument last comment was to question your assumptions that the West and the Middle East even really have to be seen as enemies at all, and I don't see that you've engaged with that argument much.

Additionally, if this is what you consider the West's strategy to protect itself, then it's one big failure of a strategy. The turmoil in the Middle East caused in large part by Western intervention is not helping the West. Islamic terrorism is a household word now, that wasn't the case until after Western intervention in the Middle East. And this isn't even to get started on the refugee crisis in Europe.

Read some books. Many scholars have written extensively about it.

There is a book called Homosexuality in Islam that argues that homosexual acts are not a sin. It is a very unpopular opinion among Muslims, and I'm not sure I agree with it, but it makes a decent argument in my opinion if you are interested.

Just remember that everyone will be judged accordingly. Your effort and sincerity are what matters most. God knows best.