Gay and Muslim
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Yes, religion is totally made up, obviously.
Not all religions are theistic, depend on a belief in the supernatural or require any beliefs at all (for example Zen Buddhism) so you can be religious and be an atheist.
Religion is essentially psychotherapy. Religious beliefs are psychotherapeutically useful fictions (useful bullshit). Their usefulness does not depend on them being logical, consistent or "true". Meditation, drugs or counselling by a psychologist are more effective.
Most of the literature, art, plays, movies ever made are depict something that is "made up" i.e. fictional. Many people are inspired by the story of Luke Skywalker and the concept of The Force but very few of them think that the story is non-fiction. Something doesn't have to be true to be useful. Not everything made up is bullshit.
The theories of science are similarly useful fictions. They are made up by scientists and mathematicians and tested against facts. If they explain existing facts then they are useful. If they predict future facts they are even more useful. If they are falsified by facts they are modified or discarded. They are never true.
I don't believe there is a god or there is a supernatural because those beliefs are useless to me. I have no problem if someone else finds those beliefs useful to them as long as they don't think the beliefs that they chose authorise them to affect the lives of people who haven't made the same choice. Historically there is only one religion that assumes that authorisation, and it isn't Islam.
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Today I went with some friends to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival Fair Day. In the section were religious groups have their stalls, I noticed the Sydney Queer Muslims stall.
I wasn't surprised that there was no long queue of Gay Christians and Atheists waiting to explain to them how they don't understand their own religion and that Gay Christians and Atheists know more about Islam that Gay Muslims do, because such people only exist in social media echo chambers, not in the real world.
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I know it is out of fashion in the new world of reactionary populist conservatives, but facts outweigh opinions. The social media mantra is "everyone has a right to their own opinions", but not all opinions have the same weight. Some opinions are supported by facts and some are falsified by them. Some opinions are wrong. People do not have a right to hold an opinion that is falsified by the facts.
The opinion that it is raining outside now does not have the same weight as the opinion that it isn't. Depending on the facts, one of these is wrong. The other is right. So let's weight the apparently majority opinion on this thread against some facts:
OPINION
“You can’t be gay and be a Muslim”.
FACTS
1. There are thousands, probably millions of gay Muslims. I know a few of them personally.
2. There are gay friendly mosques in France, Canada, USA, Australia etc..
3. Recently gay couples have been married in mosques.
4. Sydney has a “Queer Muslims” group. I saw their stall at the Mardi Gras fair day last weekend. I know many other countries have similar groups.
5. Until very recently (late 1970s), in Muslim countries that do not have a legacy of European colonial laws, homosexuality was not criminalised. Homosexuality was explicitly legalised in the Ottoman Empire (including most of the Middle East) in the 19th century, long before many Western countries. In Iran it was never illegal until 1979. In Indonesia, the most populous Muslim nation, homosexuality has never been illegal until very recently where it was outlawed in two provinces for Muslim residents of those provinces only.
6. European gay men used to migrate to North Africa (mainly Morocco) and the Middle East or the Greek Islands under Ottoman rule to escape persecution and stigma. e.g. https://www.gaytor.rent/details.php?returnto=%2Fmytorrents.php&id=1d2499d5cba28cbab9f5b89e8d356c2c02d21710dd948dad
7. There are very many examples of explicit homoeroticism in Islamic Art and literature.
8. There are many examples of Islamic rulers who were homosexual. One of the rulers of Cordoba had a male harem. Another (maybe the same one) had his wife cut her hair and dress as a man to be more pleasing to him. The first Mughal emperor Babur wrote in his memoir of his infatuation with a young man in his youth and his refusal to sleep with the wives that had been arranged for him because of his love for the young man.
9. In the majority of countries (including Muslim countries) where homosexuality is still illegal, the laws derive from inherited colonial European criminal codes that conservative societies have in many cases failed to reform, not from Islamic law. e.g. Bangladesh, Malaysia, Singapore, India (until recently), and many African countries inherited anti-sodomy laws from the British criminal code.So clearly, the opinion “You can’t be gay and be a Muslim” is falsified by the facts. The opinion is wrong.
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"You can't be gay and Muslim" is a belief or an opinion.
"There are thousands of gay Muslims" is a fact.
Facts falsify opinions in the real world.
I wonder how many Americans when they hear Fox News weather forecast that it is not going to rain walk around outside soaked to the skin in the rain saying "It can't be raining! It can't be raining!".
Sane people when faced with facts that contradict their opinions realise that there is something wrong with their opinion.
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You can't be muslim if you ignore the absolute perfect word of god.
I guess I can claim to be a buddhist, despite the fact that I don't follow it's teaching.
I can claim to be the King of Siam, but it doesn't make it true.
If that now nearly 60yo man, can be a 6yo girl and Shaun "Talcum X" King can be black, then I guess there can be gay muslims.
When mt nephew said he was a doctor last weekend, I guess he really was, despite not having started 1st grade yet. He was a fireman a few days before that.
A century ago most people in MENA were illiterate, were there no Muslims if religiosity was based on hearsay?
To your point about the literal word of god, that is true if you look at the belief system in its entirety but ultimately what matters is how millions of people perceive themselves and project that on to the world.
It is most definitely harder to reconcile who you are and who your belief system wants you to be when the texts are supposed to be the literal word of god and there is an emphasis on being a perfect being. But it is not impossible.
The original question was "Gay and Muslim" and not "Gay and Islam". Followers of other Abrahamic religions reconcile the two things, so why can't individual Muslims? Sure others aren't usually as rigid but does that matter for the individual who is contravening a core portion of their belief system and whose religiosity is questioned by the other followers of said religion? An LGBT-affirming evangelical is still an evangelical even if most of their peers think they're an unbeliever.
This is a valid point:
Religion is a social phenomenon learned within social groups.
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I will say it again.
There are thousands of gay Muslims. There are gay friendly mosques. There are queer Muslim support and activist groups. Islam has a long history of tolerance of homosexuality before political changes in the late 20th century. These are undeniable facts.
That you can't be gay and Muslim is an opinion made clearly false by these facts.
Continuing to hold an opinion that is contradicted by facts is insanity, but all too common among conservatives. After all, many still believe things like Obama is a Muslim and that Japan applies a "bowling ball" test to American car imports.
After all, isn't everyone entitled to their own opinion? Aren't people entitled to their opinions that 1 + 1 = 346, the best place to grown pineapples is Antarctica and the moon is made of margarine?
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Nope enough.
You are claiming to be an expert on Islam, Islamic exogesis, and Quran. There are standards.
You have said that the Quran states that Allah forbids homosexuality. Here is a site with various English translations of the Quran. Tell all of us which verse(s) state some version of 'man shall not have sex with other man'. Having read and taught the Quran I say that it's interpretation but you insist that it's explicit - put your money where your mouth is.
You've stated that Muslims believe that the word of Allah as being put forth in the Quran is the authority. Please identify the Islamic jurists who state this in each of the four main Sunni madhabs as well as the main Shia groups. I think that they use Ahadith, analogy, and cultural norms as sources for religious laws and as the basis for the interpretation of those (very) few laws put forward in the Quran.
I'm neither a Liberal (the political party Justin Trudeau heads) nor a liberal. I'm just tired of conservatives making up their own facts, lying their heads off, and not shutting up when it's pointed out that: Coronavirus exists, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was created by the Russian secret police, the Earth is more than 6,000 years old, vaccines don't cause Autism….
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I recommend that you ask a gay Muslim why your opinion about Islam is so wrong.
You could of course just Google what gay Muslims and gay Imams say.
Though I happened to mentioned something about this weird phenomenon of atheists and christians claiming to know more about Islam than Muslims do to a good friend who is both Muslim and gay. To summarise the answer, the Quran says God is merciful and God is compassionate a huge number of times, I think he said 150 or something. He said that overrides anything else and that there is nothing that clearly condemns homosexuality anyway.
And PS, I notice you've fallen for your own propaganda about the two 15 year old "gay" men supposedly hanged in Iran for being gay. They were actually convicted or raping a 10 year old boy and it was never established that they were gay.
https://76crimes.com/2019/06/13/iran-defends-harsh-laws-but-does-it-execute-men-for-homosexuality/
Also, giving the example of ISIS (an organisation who's highly heterodox interpretations of that Quran were condemned by nearly every Islamic scholar and leader in the world and is responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Muslims), executing gay MUSLIMS, doesn't really help your argument does it.
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I'm From Brazil and i'm not undestanding all this discussions.
Yeah, muslins in general are homophobes and there are extremist muslin groups that kill queer people in the name of religion.
But
I live in a christian country and Brazil alone kills more queer people than all Middle East countries together.
So what? Where's all the lecture about christians being radical bloody assassins of queer people too?
I don't see any difference of muslins from protestants (evangélicos pentecostais e neopentecostais no Brasil).
Remember they are 1/3 of the world population, if they were all terrorists like it sounds in this discussion the world would have already ended.We don't need fingers pointed to each others face, but a social culture that stimulates respect and sufocates any prejudice that comes with religion.
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(Agnosthic here)
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This discussion is about "gay and muslim" so that is why it is the focus.
I still think the way the discussion developed it's a bad way.
Instead of stimulates people to change the strutures of their religion I have only seen finger pointed and posts that can be resumed to "muslins are evil and vile, gay muslins either" in a website with a big arabic forum right there, indicating that are way more gay muslins then we can see.I undestand that you dislikes religious stuff, but I don't think this way it's a good way to talk about these subjects.
(And i feel some prejudice in your speech, I say it as a outside viewer, that is non-european, non-british, non-muslin, non-religious at all, a way different context with no terrorist attacks and no middle east immigrants).
I don't know if my post will contribute here, but I felt someone should post it.
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Islam is the only religion that beheads gays and throws them off buildings, whilst being completely true to the spirit and letter of its sacred text.
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I couldnt undertsand. I am a muslim. But i believe that what is the Allah's reason to created us be like that? Some muslims say like that "this world is testing zone who is praying allah and being good person, who will be go to heaven. And some person came to world with some problem like blind or cripple. That is the real test for him or her. And if they handle it thoose problem they will go to heaven" Being gay is test for people who is gay. But i am gay and also i will be gay in the future. I cant do anything about it.
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@matie I saw this topic and came here to express my experience with a ''straight muslim POC'' (black/brown - half african/half arab from what i understand).
this dude added me on snapchat, from the map.
he had few snap points and clearly an islamic name
i asked ''hi why u add me?''
he said ''u gay?''
i said ''maybe wtf? who are you?''
he said ''fuck u gay bitch and some arabic text i dont know what that was''
i unfriended and blocked him.
(i uploaded a snap story with a rupaul's iconic moments)
.......
for this to happen in 2021 in europe...what have you done shitlibs
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@di3di3di3 As a gay Muslim and a POC, I'm sorry to hear that
The Quran 104:1 said, "Woe to every scorner and mocker." And even if you're right and they're wrong, it is still a sin to mock people, because it is arrogance. -
True! Islam is a violent religion towards gays, women and infidels
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