In the Spirit of the Gracious and Compassionate
Creator of the Heavens and the Earth
What follows is a response to a request for a comment on an article. It was over nine years ago, and I do not remember what the article was. I just recently came across these comments in my computer files and decided that however imperfect they are, I should share them.
Wa-alaikum as-Salaam.
Dear Brother:
I appreciate your asking, but “no” you cannot get “a comment” from me on the article. When I attempt to discuss this issue, I am either shut up abruptly or accused of “Ph.D.-ing” someone “to death” or of “specious logic”. As best I can tell, I need to write a book. Even if no one reads it, at least I have put my thoughts in order.
I am a servant of Allah, and doing my best to serve Allah, and Allah alone is my judge. Life is a struggle for all of us. If my Muslim “Brothers” are not sensitive to the fact that my life is a struggle (just as their lives are), then so be it. If I cannot talk with them and be heard, then so be it. We will all be judged by Allah on a day when a man will flee from his mother, his father, his wife and his children. People will be astonished to find themselves in hellfire and not see the people that they had considered the worst. Allah is merciful and loves to forgive. Allah has forbidden oppression.
What is homosexuality?
The common usage of that word has no relation to my life, especially as used by Muslims. I feel like someone buried alive, desperately trying to claw my way to the surface, only to have Muslims piling on more dirt (or something worse). On the day of judgment, the one who is buried alive will be asked for what crime they were killed. What was my crime?
In 1978, I read an article in the Chicago Daily News. I believe the article was entitled “Incest”. It was about children being sexually abused within their own families. (According to my understanding, over 90% of children who are sexually abused are sexually abused within their own families.) The article said that when women sexually abuse children, that abuse is almost never openly sexual. It also said that when a boy is sexually abused by a female relative, this is known (the phrase “it is known” was, I believe used in the article) to cause the boy to become sexually attracted to other males. If this is true, the common attitudes and behavior toward homosexuals constitutes oppression. If a boy is raised by his mentally ill mother, who sexually abuses him, how is it appropriate to greet that young man with hostility for manifesting the effects of having been sexually abused by his mother? As best I can tell, most people who have been sexually abused within their own families are in denial, as I was until I read that article.
Does any of us know how we came to have the sexual feelings that we have?
I have always believed that it is wrong for people to have sex outside of sex between a man and a woman who are married to each other.
When I discovered (two months before my 16th birthday) that the feelings I have towards other men (and the dreams I was having) meant that I was a homosexual, I was extremely upset. I had never had sex with anyone. I was so upset that, a week after my 17th birthday, I swallowed what the doctor said was “enough aspirin to kill a horse”. I had never had sex with anyone.
As best I can tell, the people of Lot were destroyed by Allah. Not by Lot. Are Muslims afraid that someone will “get away with something”? We will all answer to Allah.
Why would someone choose to be homosexual? (“Why do people do what they do?”) Why would someone who could choose to not be homosexual not choose to not be homosexual? (I’m sorry for that sentence, but I don’t know how else to phrase it.) Sometimes I wonder if married non-homosexual Muslim men feel that they are enduring some obligatory unpleasantness that they feel homosexual men are dodging. Like paying taxes.
At any rate, these are a few of my thoughts. More than a comment. Much less than a book.
I am (to some extent) working on a book to be entitled “Heterosexualism, Homosexuality, and Islam”. Some of what I mean by “heterosexualism” is manifested in the effort to prove that Allah is saying that sodomy is worse than fornication. To what purpose? I believe that almost all of the African American Muslim men I know are unrepentant fornicators. Like a thief who comes into some money and stops stealing. While he has money. He hasn’t repented of stealing. He is still a thief. A man has a wife, so he stops fornicating. While he has a wife. He hasn’t repented of fornication. He is still a fornicator. The test is when the former thief doesn’t have money. What will he do? The test is when the former fornicator loses his wife. What will he do?
The intensity of emotion — the deluge of self-righteous effluvia — concerning the issue of homosexuality suggests that someone doesn’t have his own house in order.
The first command — and the sunnah of Prophet Muhammad — is iqra’ (read and recite the Arabic Qur’an that Allah has given us). Have we done that yet?
Thanks for asking.
Lester
14 Jumaadal-Aakhirah 1434
April 24, 2013
Which Way Is Up? 