Posted by: Chris

Washington Blade, April 22, 2002

More acceptance for gay Muslims since 9/11

Activists call for dialogue on the definition of Islam

By RHONDA SMITH

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks have helped mobilize Muslims who hold more liberal views than their fundamentalist counterparts about social issues that range from racism to feminism to gay civil rights.

At its core, this decentralized movement among Muslims across the U.S. involves publicly and privately sharing beliefs about Islam that go beyond the ideas espoused by Osama bin Laden and others who hold staunchly conservative, and often oppressive, religious views.

“Sept. 11 was a wakeup call for a lot of what I would call progressive or moderately minded Muslims who I frankly think are the majority of Muslims, particularly in the United States, if not the world,” said Amber Khan, a heterosexual Muslim and feminist in Washington, D.C.

Khan, who recently discussed the development on FaithMattersRadio.org, an interfaith talk radio program, said that after Sept. 11, Muslims like her “stood up and recognized the fact that we have to find our voice.”

There have been an unprecedented number of Muslims who are “speaking out, reaching out, and digging in,” she said. This means reading the Koran, questioning what is there, and engaging other people in thoughtful discussions.

Gay writer and activist Ifti Nasim, co-founder of SANGAT/Chicago, a gay organization and support group for men and women from South Asian countries, agreed. The Pakistani native describes himself as a staunch Muslim.

“A lot of conservative Muslim leaders are reaching out to mainstream gay organizations now,” Nasim said. “I am very happy about this and shocked because I never knew they would be like this. It’s all due to Sept. 11.”

Nasim, the author of “Myrmecophile,” a book of poems, said more “very hardcore” heterosexual Muslims attend SANGAT/Chicago meetings now.

“They have started parading gays around,” he said, “and seem to be saying, ‘OK, as long as they own their own [businesses] and are not bothering anybody, we should not say bad things about them.’”

When Muslims and South Asians in Chicago held protests after Sept. 11 to speak out against the backlash Arab Americans and Muslims have faced in the U.S., Nasim said that Andy Hayer, an openly gay activist, led it.

When Muslims in Chicago held a protest to focus attention on the recent deadly clashes in India between Hindus and Muslims, Nasim said, “Andy spoke, and I was leading the parade.”

Although a growing number of Muslims in the U.S. are beginning to accept gays more than they did before Sept. 11, Nasim noted that  “hardcore Muslims” are keeping their distance from the gay community.

“Among religious leaders, [homosexuality] is still a no-no,” he said. “The average Muslim might reach out to us, but hardcore religious leaders won’t reach out.”

Nasim said he is warmly received when he goes to the mosque where he worships. He believes this is because he is a writer and activist, operates a newspaper and hosts a radio show.

“They just think I’m pretending to be gay,” he said. “It’s like ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’”

Jennifer Rycenga, an openly lesbian associate professor of Comparative Religious Studies at San Jose State University in California, said this push among moderate and socially progressive Muslims to share other perspectives on Islam might have a favorable impact on discussions about homosexuality.

“What is happening in the Muslim world right now is a struggle for how Islam is going to be defined and who will get to do the defining,” she said. “If gay and lesbian Muslims propel themselves into being a part of that discussion, things will improve. If they are not included in that discussion, we could foresee disastrous results.”

Khan said that in the United States, there have been more discussions in recent years about the role of gay and lesbian Muslims in the Muslim world.

“There is a struggle," she said, "a question of, ‘How do we fit in theologically? Is there a way for us to retain our dignity as human beings, and are we also children of God?’”

On San Jose State’s multicultural campus, Rycenga said a new alliance emerged after Sept. 11 between the Muslim Student Association, Chicano and Filipino students, and “some of our most radical queer students” who belong to a group known as Queer Revolution. Rycenga is an advisor for Queer Revolution.

“We found that we were the ones showing up at all the rallies and speaking up about what was happening in the drive to war,” she said.

Nasim said many straight Muslims view gays as politically active and vocal about various civil rights issues. “They somehow found [gay activists] to be very sympathetic,” he said. “It is like they believe that if you are an underdog in society, you understand the plight of the other underdog.”

Rycenga said the multicultural student coalition began discussing issues related to “the loss of civil rights among certain populations and the demonization of various groups.”

“There were problems sometimes,” she said. “I think my Muslim students knew I was not about to convert to Islam, and about my concerns being an out lesbian.”

This semester Rycenga said coalition members plan to sponsor an event that would bring gay and lesbian Muslims to the campus.  “We’re working on that but it’s a very, very careful operation,” she said. “We don’t want to hurt anybody or have anyone endanger themselves at this time.”

One gay Muslim who has agreed to meet with students is Faris Malik, a white man who converted to Islam in 1998. The 36-year-old translator belongs to Al-Fatiha, a Washington, D.C.-based organization for gay Muslims.

Malik said Islam is “actually very positive toward homosexuality.”

“The current state of this situation now — where homosexuality is tolerated in the West and can get you beheaded in the East — is the opposite of the way it was 150 years ago,” he said.

Mona Eltahawy, a Muslim feminist and freelance journalist born in Egypt, shared a similar view when she appeared with Khan on FaithMattersRadio.org. She said in some ways, Islam is not being interpreted today like it was in previous centuries.

“During [Mohammed’s] time, women engaged in battle, literary criticism, and in conveying his sayings to the community,” she said. Muslims believe there is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his prophet. “I think Muslim male interpreters [of the Koran] these days have really narrowed down [the roles of women] to just a few,” Eltahawy said.

Khan said the same is true of homosexuality.

“I don’t know of any imam … or reform-minded scholar who has written anything that would create a theological understanding of a safety place for gays and lesbians,” she said.

Eltahawy has said, in the Washington Post and in other media outlets, that Muslims must take “a long hard look at where we are today with modern eyes.”

They must analyze the state of Muslim "umma," or community, she said, “and ask ourselves how did we reach the state of affairs that allowed someone like Osama bin Laden, out there in his cave in Afghanistan [with] a group of bandits, to claim to be speaking for us.

“It’s a sad state of affairs,” she said. “They do not represent me, and I’m sure they do not represent millions of Muslims out there. But we’ve been silent for too long. We must speak out now and reclaim that position.”

Nasim in Chicago agreed. “Osama bin Laden’s Islam is not the Islam we all practice,” he said. “I grew up [in Pakistan] with four sisters who went to school and college. I had never seen the kinds of things like in Afghanistan.

“A lot of Muslims are looking deeply into their hearts and thinking we should take back from Osama the damage he did to Islam,” he said. “Feminists are talking about this. [Muslims] are accepting me as gay a lot more since Sept. 11.”

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