Lesbian sexuality in Arab literature discussed on Arab TV channel

Source: bekhsoos.com

Earlier last month, Washington DC-based  Al Hurra channel discussed the issue of lesbian sexuality in Arab literature on its program “Qareeb Jeddan.”

The show hosted Elham Mansour from Lebanon, author of possibly the most famous Arabic-language novel with a lesbian plot “Ana Hiya Anti” (tr. I Am You) and Samar Yazbeck from Syria who wrote “Ra’ihat Al Qorfa” (tr. The Smell of Cinnamon) which Bekhsoos reviewed back in June 2008. The topic of lesbianism was tackled with respect and professionalism, moving between discussing homosexuality and homophobia in the Arab region to discussing LGBT literary characters specifically.

At one point, the host asks Elham Mansour if any of the lesbian characters in “Ana Hiya Anti” was based on her personal experience. To this, and without hesitating, she answers: “yes” and recounts her personal story meeting a lesbian woman who fell in love with her in college and understanding sexuality through that experience. Perhaps there was a lot more the program needed to highlight, but we’re not going to be picky! It was refreshing to see an Arabic program that addressed female homosexuality openly without hiding behind clichés, stereotypes, and the sensationalism we got used to with other channels… *cough* LBC *cough.*

Kudos to Al Hurra! Please leave them a comment on their episode on YouTube or write them on qareebjeddan@alhurra.com to encourage lesbian-positive Arabic programs.

'I'm a pariah' says Muslim scholar who is gay

Source: Edmonton Journal

By Elise Stolte

Muslim Junaid Bin Jahangir realized he was gay while a student at the University of Alberta. He decided to throw his energies into researching the topic, and educating the Islamic community.

Muslim Junaid Bin Jahangir realized he was gay while a student at the University of Alberta. He decided to throw his energies into researching the topic, and educating the Islamic community.
Photograph by: Greg Southam, The Journal, Edmonton Journal

Junaid Bin Jahangir was such a devout Muslim that when he arrived in Canada he ate only yogurt for two days until he was sure which food followed halal dietary rules.

The university student prayed five times a day, and joined a local mosque.

Then one day, at age 27, he started to wonder why he had never been with a girl. "Why don't I like women that way?" he asked, and it led him to a counselling office, where he sat, sobbing, with the realization that he was gay -- a pariah to his community.

Mainstream Islamic leaders say gay men should be shunned and some around the world are killed each year.

Jahangir's world imploded; work on his PhD ground to a halt.

But out of that despair, Jahangir began to work on another project: Understanding the teachings of Islam on homosexuality. From his office at the University of Alberta, he contacted experts, read everything he could on the subject and studied the scriptures intensely for two years, rebuilding his own identity in the process. His work is starting to be recognized internationally.

Now he argues Muslims misinterpret the Qur'an if they consider the ban on homosexuality to be as firm as bans on alcohol or pork. The common story from which most Muslims draw their teaching is about violent homosexual rape, he says, and it's time to rethink the possibility of consensual, supportive relationships.

Although his PhD in economics is still incomplete, Jahangir was asked to contribute a chapter to a new anthology on homosexuality compiled by a noted Australian academic. The book Islam and Homosexuality, edited by Samar Habib and published by Praeger Publishers, appeared recently in bookstores.

But he remains fearful of talking about the subject. He doesn't want his face shown in photographs, and when he agreed to do a presentation at the U of A in the run-up to the book launch, organizers asked campus security and a local newspaper to attend in case someone wanted to cause trouble.

The meeting went well, and it appeared that some Muslim students attended, judging by the half-dozen head scarves among the crowd. But he still complains no Imams or professors with the university Islamic Studies department will speak with him or about the topic. The silence is so deep it's frustrating, he says.

"The apathy is unbelievable. How many more marriages do we want to fail as we pretend this doesn't exist?

"Gay youth are committing suicide," he says. "The 13-or 14-year-old girls, they are the ones who need this. (If they believe they are lesbian), what do they do? Get married and follow through the motions? What joy do they have in their lives?

"Let's at least talk about the issue because it affects us all."

Jahangir wrote his views in an opinion piece published in the Gateway, the U of A student newspaper. But the local Muslim student association simply sent an e-mail to its members recommending they avoid him. Now he avoids the Muslim community, and any local mosque, too, he says. "I'm a pariah."

Jahangir grew up in Dubai and studied to earn a bachelor's degree in Pakistan. He came to the U of A for his master's and PhD. He was goal-oriented, and totally focused on his studies until about four years ago, when he finished the field exams for his commerce degree.

He still had a thesis to write, but that's when he first seriously asked himself the question: "Why don't I like women that way?"

"Does this mean I'm gay?" he asked the student counsellor.

"'That's for you to decide,'" the counsellor answered. Jahangir broke down crying.

From then on, he couldn't focus on his thesis.

He went to see a local Imam and told him his fears. " 'You're effeminate,' " the Imam told him. " 'I want you to go to the gym and keep a diary.' "

Jahangir discarded the advice. "I said this is no solution."

He sought help from an Islamic counsellor on the Internet. "All she said was, 'You seem like a good person. I'll pray for you.' "

He went to a doctor to get hormonal tests, but they came back normal.

Finally, he went to a professional local counsellor, who turned out to be Jewish, and she taught him that holy scriptures have been interpreted by people differently over the years. The common interpretation is not always the truest, he says. He kept visiting her regularly for five months.

"They are as conservative as we are," he says. "I really learned a lot from her. That boosted my confidence to study on my own."

It has now been four years since he first took on the motto -- "knowledge is your shield" -- and started searching for books and articles on the subject. He's still working on his economics degree, but being included in the anthology for his work on homosexuality feels like having published a second thesis.

In the book, Jahangir examines the story of Lut, or Lot, a nephew of Ibrahim (or Abraham), who is often remembered from Christian Sunday school lessons as the man whose wife turned into a pillar of salt when she looked back at Sodom and Gomorrah burning in fire and brimstone.

In the Qur'an, Lut was a prophet sent to warn the people of the city to turn away from evil practices. Angels in the form of young male travellers came to warn him to flee because the city was about to be destroyed.

Lut persuaded the strangers to stay at his house for protection, and during the night, the men of the city threaten to break into his house demanding the strangers be given to them for sex.

Lut and his family fled during the night.

Mainstream Islamic thought interprets the sin of Lut's people primarily as homosexuality. But Jahangir argues the sin discussed here should be recognized as rape, not loving same-sex unions. "This is rape as a violent tool. That's how you humiliate your enemies," says Jahangir.

Most major sins in the Qur'an are spelled out, says Jahangir, such as the prohibition against incest, "forbidden to you are your mothers and daughters, your sisters."

But why draw such a firm prohibition against homosexuality from a story, he asks. "A story can be interpreted in so many different ways. Why does it have to be this?"

"Even sympathetic people will say it's a test for you from God," he says. "Where does that leave you? You can't expect them to be robots. If it is a test, the majority will fail."

Instead, Jahangir argues, Muslims should apply the principle from the Qur'an that states anything not expressly forbidden is permissible.

Marriage is a basic need for a healthy life and Islamic law is mindful of genuine private and public need, he says. Since science has demonstrated homosexuality is not a choice, he argues, Islamic principles should support loving same-sex unions.

"It's not about sex. It's about being alone in old age," he says. "It's about living the full civil life of responsibility."

The community has ostracized Jahangir because of his views, he says. But he's not worried for himself anymore; he has the support of his family back in Pakistan.

He spends his time teaching and in advocacy work, and has a new circle of supportive friends, many found through Edmonton's Pride centre.

Loneliness comes when he sees couples walking together and friends with children. "But I have an amazing group of close friends here. (Being alone) doesn't bother me that much," he says. "This is where my adopted family is."

Jahangir says he knows girls who have run away from homes in Edmonton rather than get married and who are still hiding from their parents. A young male relative was suicidal, but seems to have found a measure of peace through reading his work, he says.

Mainstream Canadian culture is much more supportive of homosexual youth than it once was, he says. "It's really the task of the day to work in the Islamic context as well. These books, hopefully, will ignite the conversation."

~~~~~~~

Image by solomonsmfield via Flickr

Hope exists for LGBT Muslims

Source: The Gateway

April 1, 2008

By Junaid Jahanagir

Edmonton, despite Alberta’s redneck fame, is home to both the oldest North American mosque and the first North American Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT)youth camp. Both the Pride Centre and Muslim Community act to support their respective members; however, it’s nearly impossible to bring elements of both together owing to intransigence on the Muslim side, the limited resources of the LGBT, and the unwillingness of Muslim LGBT to reconcile the diametrically opposed facets of their existence.

It’s not news to say that both sides are subject to discrimination and sterotypes. The American Muslim community has, at times, been wrongfully portrayed as potentially abetting heinous acts of terrorism, and on other occasions, you’ll find messages that paint all queers as disease-infected child molesters.

Naturally, queer practicing Muslims weave a cocoon of restrictive pretence. Whereas the hijab or a beard expose them to the scrutiny of the general public, their refusal to marry unleashes the wrath of forbidding cultural traditions. But despite the barriers they face, there’s still hope.

Western LGBTs have made great strides toward the integration and cementing of their rights in the post-2005 era of same-sex marriage. Affirming United Churches wed same sex couples, libraries have sections on queer literature, support groups provide resources to LGBT parents, and academia works on cutting-edge queer theory. However, such achievements aren’t shared by their Muslim peers, in whose lives words like “sodomy” overpower those like “heteronormativity.”

Though the LGBT community has accomplished much, these successes mean little to practicing Muslim LGBT. The language of a tradition based on civic rights can’t simply be used to address other cultural norms that employ the language of Classical Islamic jurisprudence.

Fortunately, an alternative, yet mainstream, Muslim discourse exists that can be summoned to address the status quo in a firm yet respectful manner so that future generations of Muslim LGBTs won’t face freezing silence from their faith-based family.

Indeed, a whole school of Muslim scientists deemed homosexuality as an inherited trait hundreds of years before the revolutionary American Psychological Association statements. Moreover, the strong opinions of revered scholars like Ibn Hazm and Abu Hanifa on the Qur’anic verses on the people of Lot (Sodom) who oppose the use of these verses for injunctions on homosexual conduct. Their opinions lend support to the alternate belief that the divine addressed violent rape as wrong, not loving same-sex unions.

Furthermore, in Islamic scriptures, there’s an absence of any express directives in regard to same-sex unions. And if you begin to consider rules of Classical Islamic jurisprudence—such as “necessity trumps prohibitions” and “general rules always allow for exceptions”—they can be seen to form a strong counterweight against the rigid traditions, which scholarly work has estimated to be weak and concocted.

Given the above, one wonders if it would be too much to ask the mainstream clergy to address the plight of Muslim LGBTs. Perhaps this is why some mainstream Imams like the late Zaki Badawi have gone so far as to encourage gay Muslims to form chaste civil unions with their same-sex partners under British law. However, no North American Muslim scholar has as yet effectively addressed the subject—perhaps due to the more pressing concerns of a community that finds itself under duress from the Islamophobic generalizations within society at large.

Hope lies in the efforts of fringe queer Muslim groups like Salaam Canada, openly gay Imams like Daayiee Abdullah, and alternative groups like the Muslim Canadian Congress. Paradoxically, hope also lies in statements coming from religious discussions in Muslim countries like Indonesia. Recently, some moderate Muslim scholars have boldly stated that homosexuals and homosexuality are natural and created by God, and thus permissible within Islam.

Classical Muslim thought has within it the capacity for a discourse that is tolerant and respectful of queerness. And with more work, more voices, and above all the determination of Muslim LGBTs, it will only be a matter of time before mainstream Islam will support same-sex unions.

Malaysia: Outwrite

Source: Time

By John Krich

Despite its modern veneer, Muslim-majority Malaysia is a country where it is still illegal — as opposed to merely irreligious — for men of any faith to engage in consensual sex with one another. (Lesbianism is not criminalized but the subject of a religious prohibition, or fatwa.) Kuala Lumpur may boast its share of gay and lesbian bars, and casual visitors can spot scores of transsexuals staffing cafés and department stores. But any open discussion of homosexuality, especially in writing, remains the domain of an enlightened, often foreign-educated few.

Body 2 Body is out, in both senses of the word, to change all that. This self-labeled "queer anthology" claims to be the first of its kind in the country. Edited by two prominent arts activists, it grew from stories and essays posted on an Internet discussion group meant to counter a 2003 government attempt to reform "soft" (effeminate) male undergraduates. But documentary filmmaker Amir Muhammad, whose adventurous sideline Matahari Books publishes the title alongside a number of outspoken political satires, says that submissions soared during the wave of social optimism that followed opposition gains in the 2008 elections

The 23 contributions eventually selected for publication run the usual gamut of topics, from coming out to first love to poking fun at social strictures ("What Do Gay People Eat?" by Brian Gomez is an effective evocation of parental anxieties). The editors might have employed a firmer hand in weeding out the overly chatty and amateurish fare that obscures some surprisingly well-crafted tales. Yet literary heft is not the issue here so much as bolstering the presence of Malaysia's gay and lesbian community, for whom the publication of Body 2 Body represents a courageous advance.

According to Amir, sales have been robust despite none of the country's review outlets, mainstream or alternative, acknowledging the thin, suggestively packaged volume's existence. That is sad, since there's not much here that reflects badly on the nation. In fact, there are plenty of intriguingly universal themes. Intended or not, Body 2 Body will leave readers feeling that the quest for identity is what unites and bedevils all Malaysians, straight or gay.

Interview with Abdellah Taia

The Moroccan writer Abdellah Taia talks about his book, Salvation Army.

Interviewed by Brian Whitaker in Paris, January 2009.

Your book, L’Armée du Salut (“Salvation Army”), is shortly going to be published in English in the United States. How did that come about?

I think it started in June 2007. Hédi El-Kholti, from the American publisher Semiotext(e), was in Morocco when Tel Quel (it’s like Time or Newsweek) put me on the cover of their magazine with the title: “Homosexuel envers et contre tous”. When he went back to America he contacted my French publisher, Le Seuil, and bought the rights to translate the book into English.

Salvation Army received the 2009 French Voices prize in America. In order to attract more attention for the book we asked the American writer Edmund White to write a preface. He said yes. And I am very happy for that because I like him and admire his work.

L’Armée du Salut is officially my first novel. In France one is considered to be a writer only when one publishes a novel. To write short stories or a book of short texts is like a hobby – it’s not really serious.

When Le Seuil became my publisher – before that I was published by Séguier – they told me to write a novel. So I said OK and I chose three moments from my life and I wrote a novel, not in a classical way, because I don’t think my books are classical in the French sense, or even in an Anglo-Saxon style – until now everything I have written and published is fragments of my life …

But there is a story there too …

Of course. There’s a link between the three fragments, which is transformation: my own transformation. The transformation of my body, but also of me as a person, discovering myself and becoming aware of who I am and the sexual contradictions I have inside me. And, at the same time, to talk about me – to speak, to say something coming from inside myself.

The first part of the novel is about my early life, with my family in the small house – three rooms - where I lived in Morocco in the town of Salé. One room for my six sisters, my mother, my little brother and me. The other room was for my big brother and the last one for my father. What I try to show is what it’s like being in the middle of this group and being influenced by the bodies of these people that I was so close to. I was attracted to some of them but of course there were barriers which I couldn’t cross.

I am still aware of those barriers but every day I try exploring/exploding them. The barriers are of course mostly sexual. The first part of the novel is about the origin, not only of my sexuality, but the sexuality of my entire family. The way my parents used to have sex influenced my whole family because my mother used to sleep with us in the children’s room and, once a week, went to have sex with my father or my father used to join us in our room and tried to seduce her. So I witnessed all these sexual strategies at work and, as children, we knew everything. They knew we knew and they behaved as if we didn’t know. So there was a kind of primal atmosphere inside the house. It was as if tradition, religion, Islam – all these things so important in the Arab world – didn't exist.

We were in the kingdom of bodies. It was only bodies because we were so close that there was no other space. No privacy. I didn't think of it at the time, but that is how it was. You don't think you need some room for yourself. I never thought of that either at the time. A body is something alive which reveals many signals and one relates to those. And it's very sexual. It's not sexual in the sense of “having sex” but the whole atmosphere, the vibes … Next to my brothers and sisters I saw and experienced many things, exciting and frightening things.

And you developed these feelings towards your big brother.

This is the second part of the book. My older brother was the king of the family, not my father. My father was a fallen king. My big brother was the king, a silent king, because he hardly spoke. He was the first child and after him there were six girls and then I was born. I was the other boy my parents were waiting for. But I definitely was not the sort of boy they were hoping for.

You say this kind of thing was taboo but in the book I don't find any sense of guilt about your feelings.

No. Even today I feel no guilt. I had some periods of guilt but deep down there was always this feeling of "c'est naturel" – yes, I was aware that these feelings were forbidden but at the same time I just did nothing to avoid them.

My brother, Abdelkébir, was always bigger than me. I have no image of him as a child or adolescent. He had a moustache and a room filled with books. Beautiful books and recordings of music – David Bowie, Oum Kalthoum and Woodstock. He loved Woodstock. Later he got a TV and a video player, he bought us the fridge and gave us money to make the house bigger …

What was his job?

He was a good student and after that he became haut fonctionnaire – an important government official. He became mayor of a small town and later he worked with the minister of information. He became more important year after year.

But at first he was still poor like us, he was for us. We were all proud of him. I was fascinated by him. His room was big but there was only a small bed and he used to put me with him in bed – and sometimes my little brother as well. Not in a sexual way at all – just this closeness. Being so close to the body of your big brother, it makes you feel something – well, at least it did for me. It made me proud to be his little brother. So he quickly became a sort of role model for me. I wanted to be like him, I wanted to read like him, to read his books, to see the movies he loved. He also used to give me his clothes, his shirts, his underwear, when they were old. I wore them happily even though they were too big for me.

Besides the intellectual thing, I wanted to be with him, in his presence – the smell of him, the way he was, the way he walked, and how he ate. He used to eat more meat than the rest of family. We were all OK with that. I think I wasn’t the only one in the family to be sort of in love with him. Of course I knew he was my brother but what could I do? Maybe the fact that he was my brother makes it more ... more exciting. The idea of transgression – I think I learned that from being with him: you are attracted to someone you can't have and at the same time you don't care about other people’s reactions or religion or traditions. I understood somehow that all those rules were invented by humans, but not by me. I'm not obliged to respect them – traditions, religion…

Your feelings towards your brother started with admiration but became over time more sexual, I think ...

I don't know. This started so early on that it's confused in my mind. The admiration came with the movies because he was the one who took me to see films and he was the one who had movie magazines. This element is very important. He showed me the direction to follow: cinema.

But at some point a sexual element came into the attraction as well?

Yes. For instance, I wrote in the book that twice a week I used to help him to wash his hair. Just a little boy putting water on his big brother’s head and forgetting that that man is his brother. I wanted to do so many things with him, to touch his neck, to play with his hair, to dry him, to kiss the clean skin of his hands . . .

Has he read L’Armée du Salut?

Yes, I think so. In my second book, Le Rouge du Tarbouche, there is a story about “l'unique miroir” – we had only one small mirror in the house, so everyone used it. Me, my father to shave, my big brother… And when I became adolescent I used to take this mirror into my brother’s room and look at myself and masturbate surrounded by his things and thinking of him. I even imagined I was him

So he read Le Rouge du Tarbouche and he told my mother to tell me to stop writing this ... this nonsense. He's not the kind of person you can have a real conversation with.

So, when I think of it, of course he is not OK with what I write in my books. It’s not a problem for me. I understood several years ago that I should not ask permission from anyone about my writing or my projects or my plans, because in Morocco no one would understand … They all know better than you – your life, what you should do…

Even now, here in Paris, I don't tell anyone what I do. I don't ask anyone's advice, because even among groups of friends here in Paris it's always the same question of power and control.

The second transformation in the book comes when your big brother takes you and your little brother on a trip to Tangiers. But your feelings towards him are suddenly jolted when you discover the real purpose of the trip: that he’s planning to get married.

It was my first and only holiday in Morocco. We were all staying in the same cheap hotel room so I was able to see what he was like 24 hours a day, for an entire week. The beginning of this vacation was like a dream. But when it became clear that he was attracted to this girl and that he was going to abandon us to see her, I was overcome by violent jealousy and even became cruel! Of course, I'm aware of the craziness of the situation but what could I do? I still remember clearly how he came and told us about her and his plans to marry her ... I still remember how angry I was with him, I even invented a plan to ruin his project.

So this second part of the novel is also about paradise (to have my big brother only for me) and hell, which is represented by the moment when you lose someone … This vacation in Tangiers was the end of an era, a revolution. I lost my big brother and my role model whom I was in love with. This loss was overwhelming … He had the books, he had David Bowie. Years after that I understood who David Bowie was and I said “Wow!” If my brother used to like David Bowie – especially at that time in the seventies – it meant that somehow he was open-minded. Of course, I adore David Bowie.

And the third big moment is when you travel to Switzerland to continue your studies and the man who you think is your friend, who has promised to meet you at the airport and provide somewhere to stay, is not there to meet you and is not answering his phone.

This is the last transformation, when I leave this Moroccan world at the age of 25 for western civilisation in Geneva, and experience this first deception, this disappointment. I had dreamed for years and years about western civilisation – and from the very beginning there was betrayal. I discovered that the books and films were only part of the reality of this European dream which wasn’t at all welcoming at first.

From the moment of my arrival in Geneva, it was as if I had to start all over again – another transformation was necessary. I had left the Moroccan world where the group mentality was dominating and crushing me to come to Geneva where suddenly I felt completely alone and sensed that life would be like this from now on.

It's a very big contrast from the collective society of Morocco – all these people packed into small houses – and your isolation. It's a very bleak scene.

Yes, because the friend of this man I met in Morocco who was supposed to meet me at the airport was not there and suddenly I found myself on the streets. I had no money and I had to find some place to stay. So after wandering around for awhile, I talked to a taxi driver who told me there was a Salvation Army refuge not far from the train station. This last part of the book is about the passage from dream to reality. Even though I didn’t understand it at the time, this betrayal was a new beginning.

How do you think this book fits in with other – shall we say – gay literature? In the way it presents homosexuality, for example?

It's a melancholic book, it doesn't give an optimistic or positive view of homosexuality. But it was never my idea to give a positive view. I never think of it in terms of positive or negative. In Morocco, when I discovered that I was homosexual, men always expected me to behave like an effeminate boy, doing the female role. So I stopped seeing them immediately. I was 13 at the time and living the tumultuous feelings of adolescence. I stopped seeing those people and entered another period of my life. All was completely silent and filled only with studying and movies because as a homosexual I knew that Moroccan society would only destroy me.

I knew for sure that I was homosexual and would never be able to do what they wanted me to do – to marry a woman for instance. So my only choice was to avoid those boys who knew about me and with whom I had played sexual games as a child. Even though I still lived at home, I couldn’t speak to anyone about myself and for years and years I had no sex, from the ages of 13 to 22. I had to make all my own decisions.

Those years of silence were very difficult but at the same time it was the beginning of my big dream: to become a film-maker. The homosexual in me, and this desire to be creative or to write something – they both go together. But neither were accepted.

So in a way it was not positive at all …I have to confess though, that this isolation gave me the possibility of developing a certain way of viewing society – seeing how it works, what to say, what not to say, and allowed me to analyse things. I also remember a lot of suffering and crying all the time, but somehow I was not traumatised by the experience. Maybe it's my nature and psychology ... I can easily analyse how Moroccan society functions, how it deals with sexuality, but I still have … I don't know, I don't reject this Moroccan society.

I'm thinking also about the portrayals of homosexuality in Switzerland, which seems to me realistic without trying to be positive or negative. The scene in the public toilet for example …

… with the orange ...

It’s curious because it's fairly positive in some ways ...

I think this passage also comes from the French writer Jean Genet (I adore him) because he talks a lot about casual sex in his books, and somehow Genet influenced me on that. I am very fascinated by public toilets – they always seem to be full of desire...

It's not a shocking scene in the way it’s described.

I hope not.

No it's not, which in a way is quite surprising, particularly coming from an Arab writer.

I am an Arab but for many things I'm not like an Arab at all. I'm not only coming from Islam, not only from Arabic society, there is this homme primaire – a primal man – inside of me who is still alive.

The incident in the toilet shows this part of myself. It also shows my own idea of homosexuality, this possibility of meeting strangers and the possibility of poetry. For most people a public toilet is just dirty, but still ... there is this possibility of poetry between two people who don't know each other at all, just for a moment of pleasure. But it's not only about pleasure or sex, it's always more than that – at least for me.

When people think about homosexuals they tend to see only two people of the same sex. But, for me, to be homosexual is also the way you relate to someone whose body is like yours. You belong to the same sex and there are no rules – you invent rules. It's because homosexuality is forbidden, not seen in a positive way by many people. It doesn't mean these rules will always be the same when you meet someone. This is what I like, this inversion: condemnation and prison become freedom. For me there is no specific sexual role, top or bottom – there is invention.

A lot of people do see it in terms of male/female roles.

Yes, but it's not for me. Maybe that's why I’m always disappointed! The scene in the public toilet is about that inversion, especially when the man gave me an orange. The orange represents Morocco. That's what I mean about inversion. Even in dirty places something beautiful and poetic can happen.

As far as I’m aware, you’re the only Moroccan to have come out publicly and talked about your homosexuality in the media. How did that happen?

My second book, Le Rouge du Tarbouche, became successful in Morocco in 2005 and I was invited to appear on TV etc, etc. One of the journalists from Tel Quel had read the book thoroughly and saw that one of the themes was homosexuality. She saw that I was talking freely about homosexuality.

Subsequently she interviewed me in the Café de France in Casablanca. She asked me: “Why did you choose this cafe for the interview?” I told her that four or five months previously I had been here with a friend of mine – a French photographer – and we had been working on an article for Paris Match. A boy came in and introduced himself to my friend and they instantly fell in love. I had witnessed something incredibly beautiful. His name was Said, he was from Tangiers and he was spending the weekend in Casablanca. After I finished the anecdote, she asked: "So you don't mind if we talk only about homosexuality in the paper?"

Well, of course I was a little bit afraid, afraid for two or three seconds, because I knew what I was about to do. But I told myself I had already talked about this in my books. I didn’t want to keep up the hypocrisy and schizophrenia like other Moroccans and Arabs. I had to go along with my own truth.

So I said yes and we talked about homosexuality. We analysed how Moroccan society tries to make us shameful about ourselves in general by forcing people into submission all the time. She wrote an article about that, and it was published while I was in Morocco. I was doing a promotional tour for the book, Le Rouge du Tarbouche, at the time. I was in Tangiers. But I was still afraid when I read the article. I was staying in a hotel and I was really scared. I told myself: “This is Morocco, there are secret police and they are one of the best in the world, they say, after the Mossad in Israel and if they want to get to me it's easy.” In the middle of the night I put chairs and a table against the door of my hotel room, just in case…

I don’t think that would have stopped them.

Of course not, but it's more about the fear inside.

After the article was published, another magazine asked me for an interview in Arabic, and that's where the problems started with my family. My sister discovered the magazine on her desk at work. Somebody had put it there anonymously – which is how Moroccan society functions. Even if you want to be yourself all the time there is always someone to stop you. So they put the magazine – open, with my interview, on her desk where she works in administration. Of course, she was upset. She told my mother and my mother called me. It was in May 2006 and she said: "What did you say? We are not like this ... we are good people."

I didn't have an answer except to say that it's not only about me, it's also about Moroccan society. This was the only defence I could find.

What was more interesting in her reaction was that she never condemned me on the phone. She never said "You're not my son any more." No.

My sister had read the whole interview for her because my mother is illiterate, and one of the questions was: "What do you think of gay marriage?" I answered that I don't like marriage at all, hetero or gay, and I explained why, that the whole image I have of marriage in Morocco is disastrous. For me marriage just destroys individuals – you have one family, then when you marry, you have two families controlling you. I said I would never get married. Everyone is free to do what they want. But personally, I am against marriage.

My mother was more shocked by this than the gay thing, I think because homosexuality doesn't represent very much in her mind, but not to be married does represent something. Knowing that I'm not going to be married – it was unbelievable for her, it was inconceivable.

So, in the end, and this is really what I like about some people in Morocco, before she hung up she said she was praying for me, she said: “I only want a good life for you.” After that call, I think I cried for two weeks because it was the point of no return. I was completely naked.

How do you feel about that?

In the beginning I felt guilt, maybe for two or three days, because the consequences of my lifestyle are not only for me but for my family. But after a few days I realised that no one called me to ask me how I was, how I had managed to live all these years with the fact that I am homosexual ... No one cared. I realised that, again, it was about them, about their names and reputations, not about me. It was about what my sister’s colleagues would say, what the neighbours would say.

And, I remembered Douglas Sirk’s masterpiece film, All Heaven Allows, and how he shows that society tries to destroy the love between the characters played by Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. So, during those two weeks of feeling completely naked, I bought the DVD of this film and watched it several times, maybe ten times. And it helped me a lot to become strong again. To be free without tears. Again: cinema saved me as it did when I was a child and had no place to go and cry, except the cheap movie theatres in my poor town, Salé.

Of course, I understand that my family in Morocco can't speak about homosexuality but I thought, still, I am their son and they know that I'm not someone bad. Until now, no one [in my family] has spoken about it. And I realise that I may have caused a scandal for them but there are always scandals in Morocco. In two weeks’ time they had forgotten. I wasn’t doing this for my family, it was much bigger than that.

These articles started a buzz and it changed my status from “the new hip Moroccan writer” to the “new hip gay Moroccan writer”. At first people were talking only about the books and after that they were talking the books and homosexuality. One year later the magazine Tel Quel put me on the cover with the word “homosexual” in big letters and the recounted the whole story. They came and interviewed me. I knew that they were going to put me on the cover. I did it because it was necessary to speak out. Just to name things, for some people, is dangerous – it's revolutionary.

But I can't be explaining this all the time because it gets tiring. I just have to move along – to go in the way I choose. If some people are OK with that, fine. And if they’re not, that’s fine too. But it's not only about me. That is what is important.

So if it’s not only about you, what is it really about?

Other people. You understand this very quickly when you publish books, because you get some response. It's not only about homosexuality – it's about individual freedom. The feelings you are expressing, the words you are putting in your books. A lot of people relate to that and it becomes like a mission for you.

Morocco is changing. A lot of taboos are being broken one after another, and that's why I'm saying it's not only my revolution, it's also a revolution in Morocco and the Arab world. That’s why I continue to write. To be part of this revolution with literary arms.

Iran's Hidden History

By Doug Ireland

When Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his infamous claim at a September 2007 Columbia University appearance that ""In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country," the world laughed at the absurdity of this pretense.

Now, a forthcoming book by a leading Iranian scholar in exile, which details both the long history of homosexuality in that nation and the origins of the campaign to erase its traces, not only provides a superlative reply to Ahmadinejad, but demonstrates forcefully that political homophobia was a Western import to a culture in which same-sex relations were widely tolerated and frequently celebrated for well over a thousand years.

"Sexual Politics in Modern Iran," to be published at the end of next month by Cambridge University Press, is a stunningly researched history and analysis of the evolution of gender and sexuality that will provide a transcendent tool both to the vibrant Iranian women's movement today fighting the repression of the ayatollahs and to Iranian same-sexers hoping for liberation from a theocracy that condemns them to torture and death.

Its author, Janet Afary, president of the International Society of Iranian Scholars, is a professor of history and women's studies at Purdue University who has already published several authoritative works on Iranian sexual politics, notably the revealing and award-winning "Foucault and the Iranian Revolution: Gender and the Seductions of Islam" (2005), in which she already demonstrated a remarkable sympathy for gay and lesbian people.

In her new book, Afary's extensive section on pre-modern Iran, documented by a close reading of ancient texts, portrays the dominant form of same-sex relations as a highly-codified "status-defined homosexuality," in which an older man - presumably the active partner in sex - acquired a younger partner, or amrad.

Afary demonstrates how, in this period, "male homoerotic relations in Iran were bound by rules of courtship such as the bestowal of presents, the teaching of literary texts, bodybuilding and military training, mentorship, and the development of social contacts that would help the junior partner's career. Sometimes men exchanged vows, known as brotherhood sigehs [a form of contractual temporary marriage, lasting from a few hours to 99 years, common among heterosexuals] with homosocial or homosexual overtones.

"These relationships were not only about sex, but also about cultivating affection between the partners, placing certain responsibilities on the man with regard to the future of the boy. Sisterhood sigehs involving lesbian practices were also common in Iran. A long courtship was important in these relations. The couple traded gifts, traveled together to shrines, and occasionally spent the night together. Sigeh sisters might exchange vows on the last few days of the year, a time when the world 'turned upside down,' and women were granted certain powers over men."

Examples of the codes governing same-sex relations were to be found in the "Mirror for Princes genre of literature (andarz nameh) [which] refers to both homosexual and heterosexual relations. Often written by fathers for sons, or viziers for sultans, these books contained separate chapter headings on the treatment of male companions and of wives."

One such was the Qabus Nameh (1082-1083), in which a father advises a son: "As between women and youths, do not confine your inclinations to either sex; thus you may find enjoyment from both kinds without either of the two becoming inimical to you... During the summer let your desires incline toward youths, and during the winter towards women."

Afary dissects how "classical Persian literature (twelfth to fifteenth centuries)...overflowed with same-sex themes (such as passionate homoerotic allusions, symbolism, and even explicit references to beautiful young boys.)" This was true not only of the Sufi masters of this classical period but of "the poems of the great twentieth-century poet Iraj Mirza (1874-1926)... Classical poets also celebrated homosexual relationships between kings and their pages."

Afary also writes that "homosexuality and homoerotic expressions were embraced in numerous other public spaces beyond the royal court, from monasteries and seminaries to taverns, military camps, gymnasiums, bathhouses, and coffeehouses... Until the mid-seventeenth century, male houses of prostitution (amrad khaneh) were recognized, tax-paying establishments."

While Afary explores the important role of class in same-sex relations, she also illuminates how "Persian Sufi poetry, which is consciously erotic as well as mystical, also celebrated courtship rituals between [men] of more or less equal status... The bond between lover and beloved was... based on a form of chivalry (javan mardi). Love led one to higher ethical ideals, but love also constituted a contract, wherein the lover and the beloved had specific obligations and responsibilities to one another, and the love that bound them both... Sufi men were encouraged to use homoerotic relations as a pathway to spiritual love."

Unmistakably lesbian sigeh courtship rituals, which continued from the classical period into the twentieth century, were also codified: "Tradition dictated that one [woman] who sought another as 'sister' approached a love broker to negotiate the matter. The broker took a tray of sweets to the prospective beloved. In the middle of the tray was a carefully placed dildo or doll made of wax or leather. If the beloved agreed to the proposal, she threw a sequined white scarf (akin to a wedding veil) over the tray... If she was not interested, she threw a black scarf on the tray before sending it back."

As late as the last half of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th, "Iranian society remained accepting of many male and female homoerotic practices... Consensual and semi-open pederastic relations between adult men and amrads were common within various sectors of society." What Afary terms a "romantic bisexuality" born in the classical period remained prevalent at court and among elite men and women, and "a form of serial love ('eshq-e mosalsal) was commonly practiced [in which] their love could shift back and forth from girl to boy and back to girl."

In the court of Naser al-Din Shah, who ruled Persia from 1848 to 1896, keeping boy concubines was still an acceptable practice, and the shah himself (in addition to his wives and harem) had a young male lover, Malijak, whom he "loved more than anyone else." In his memoirs, Malijak recalled proudly, "the king's love for me reached the point where it is impossible for me to write about it... [He] held me in his arms and kissed me as if he were kissing one of his great beloveds."

In a lengthy section of her book entitled "Toward a Westernized Modernity," Afary demonstrates how the trend toward modernization which emerged during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and which gave the Persian monarchy its first parliament was heavily influenced by concepts harvested from the West.

One of her most stunning revelations is how an Azeri-language newspaper edited and published in the Russian Caucuses, Molla Nasreddin (or MN, which appeared from 1906 to 1931) influenced this Iranian Revolution with a "significant new discourse on gender and sexuality," sharing Marx's well-documented contempt for homosexuals. With an editorial board that embraced Russian social democratic concepts, including women's rights, MN was also "the first paper in the Shi'i Muslim world to endorse normative heterosexuality," echoing Marx's well-documented contempt for homosexuality. Afary writes that "this illustrated satirical paper, which circulated among Iranian intellectuals and ordinary people alike, was enormously popular in the region because of its graphic cartoons."

MN conflated homosexuality and pedophilia, and attacked clerical teachers and leaders for "molesting young boys," played upon feelings of "contempt" for passive homosexuals, suggested that elite men who kept amrad concubines "had a vested interested in maintaining the (male) homosocial public spaces where semi-covert pederasty was tolerated," and "mocked the rites of exchanging brotherhood vows before a mollah and compared it to a wedding ceremony." It was in this way that a discourse of political homophobia developed in Europe, which insisted that only heterosexuality could be the norm, was introduced into Iran.

MN's attacks on homosexuality "would shape Iranian debates on sexuality for the next century," and it "became a model for several Iranian newspapers of the era," which echoed its attacks on the conservative clergy and leadership for homosexual practices. In the years that followed, "Iranian revolutionaries commonly berated major political figures for their sexual transgressions," and "revolutionary leaflets accused adult men of having homosexual sex with other adult men, 'of thirty-year-olds propositioning fifty-year-olds and twenty-year-olds propositioning forty-year-olds, right in front of the Shah.' Some leaflets repeated the old allegation that major political figures had been amrads in their youth."

Subsequently, "leading constitutionalists enthusiastically joined the campaign against homosexuality," writes Afary, noting that "the influential journal Kaveh (1916-1921), published in exile in Berlin and edited by the famous constitutionalist Hasan Taqizadeh, had led the movement of opinion against homosexuality... Their notion of modernization now included the normalization of heterosexual eros and the abandonment of all homosexual practices and even inclinations."

When Reza Kahn overthrew the monarchy's Qajar dynasty and made himself shah in 1925, he ushered in a new wave of reforms and modernization that included attempts to outlaw homosexuality entirely and a ferocious - ultimately successful - assault on classical Persian poetry. Iraj Mirza, previously known for his homoerotic poems, "joined other leading political figures of this period in encouraging compulsory heterosexuality." These politicians and intellectuals insisted that "true patriotism required switching one's sexual orientation from boys to women... Other intellectuals and educators pressed for the elimination of poems with homosexual themes from school textbooks."

Leading this crusade was a famous historian and prolific journalist, Ahmad Kasravi, "who helped shape many cultural and educational policies during the 1930s and 1940s." Kasravi founded a nationalist movement, Pak Dini (Purity of Religion), which developed a broad following. An admirer of MN, Kasravi preached that "homosexuality was a measure of cultural backwardness," that Sufi poets of homoeroticism led "parasitic" lives, and that their queer poetry "was dangerous and had to be eliminated."

Kasravi's Pak Dini movement "went so far as to institute a festival of book burning, held on winter solstice. Books deemed harmful and amoral were thrown into a bonfire in an event that seemed to echo the Nazi and Soviet-style notions of eliminating 'degenerate' art." Eventually, Prime Minister Mahmoud Jam, who held office from 1935 to 1939, acceded to Kasravi's demand that homoerotic poems be banned entirely from daily newspapers.

Kasravi "based his opposition to the homoeroticism of classical poetry on several assumptions. He expected the young generation to study Western sciences in order to rebuild the nation, and he regarded Sufi poetry as a dangerous diversion. As preposterous as it might sound, Kasravi also argued that the revival of Persian poetry was a grand conspiracy concocted by British and German Orientalists to divert the nation's youth from the revolutionary legacy of the Constitutional Revolution and to encourage... immoral pursuits."

Afary adds sorrowfully that "most supporters of women's rights sympathized with Kasravi's project because he encouraged the cultivation of monogamous, heterosexual love in marriage... In this period, neither Kasravi nor feminists distinguished between rape or molestation of boys and consensual same-sex relations between adults."

The expansion of radio, television, and print media in the 1940s - including a widely read daily, Parcham, published from 1941 by Kasravi's Pak Dini movement - resulted in a nationwide discussion about the evils of pederasty and, ultimately, in significant official censorship of literature. References to same-sex love and the love of boys were eliminated in textbooks and even in new editions of classical poetry. "Classical poems were now illustrated by miniature paintings celebrating heterosexual, rather than homosexual, love and students were led to believe that the love object was always a woman, even when the text directly contradicted that assumption," Arafy writes.

In the context of a triumphant censorship that erased from the popular collective memory the enormous literary and cultural heritage of what Afary terms "the ethics of male love" in the classical Persian period, it is hardly surprising as Afary earlier noted in "Foucault and the Iranian Revolution" that the virulence of the current Iranian regime's anti-homosexual repression stems in part from the role homosexuality played in the 1979 revolution that brought the Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers to power.

In that earlier work, she and her co-author, Kevin B. Anderson, wrote: "There is... a long tradition in nationalist movements of consolidating power through narratives that affirm patriarchy and compulsory heterosexuality, attributing sexual abnormality and immorality to a corrupt ruling elite that is about to be overthrown and/or is complicit with foreign imperialism. Not all the accusations leveled against the [the deposed shah of Iran, and his] Pahlevi family and their wealthy supporters stemmed from political and economic grievances. A significant portion of the public anger was aimed at their 'immoral' lifestyle. There were rumors that a gay lifestyle was rampant at the court. The shah's prime minister, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, was said to have been a homosexual. The satirical press routinely lampooned him for his meticulous attire, the purple orchid in his lapel, and his supposed marriage of convenience. The shah himself was rumored to be bisexual. There were reports that a close male friend of the shah from Switzerland, a man who knew him from their student days in that country, routinely visited him.

"But the greatest public outrage was aimed at two young, elite men with ties to the court who held a mock wedding ceremony. Especially to the highly religious, this was public confirmation that the Pahlevi house was corrupted with the worst kinds of sexual transgressions, that the shah was no longer master of his own house. These rumors contributed to public anger, to a sense of shame and outrage, and ultimately were used by the Islamists in their calls for a revolution."

Soon after coming to power in 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini established the death penalty for homosexuality.

In "Sexual Politics in Modern Iran," Afary sums up the situation for homosexuals under the Ahmadinejad regime in this way: "While the shari'a [Islamic law] requires either the actual confession of the accused or four witnesses who observed them in flagrante delicto, today's authorities look only for medical evidence of penetration in homosexual relationships. Upon finding such evidence, they pronounce the death sentence. Because execution of men on charges of homosexuality has prompted international outrage, the state has tended to compound these charges with others, such as rape and pedophilia. Continual use of these tactics has undermined the status of Iran's gay community and attenuated public sympathy for them. Meanwhile, many Iranians believe that pedophilia is rampant in the religious cities of Qum and Mashad, including in the seminaries, where temporary marriage and prostitution are also pervasive practices." (Full disclosure: in her section on gays in today's Iran, Afary cites my reporting several times and thanks me in the book's acknowledgements for sharing materials and insights with her.)

In this necessarily truncated summary of some of Afary's most significant and nuanced findings and revelations with respect to homosexuality, it is impossible to do justice to the full sweep and scope of "Sexual Politics in Iran," the larger part of which is devoted to the role of Iranian women, and to their struggles for freedom which began in the 19th century. But as Afary herself writes, "[F]or a very long time even talking about the pervasive homoeroticism of the region's premodern culture had been labeled 'Orientalism'... [but] increasingly I found that one could not simply talk about gender and women's rights, particularly rights within marriage, without addressing the subject of same-sex relations."

This she has done with uncommon sensitivity, intellectual rigor, engagement, subtlety, and skill.

And for that, both Iranian lesbians and gays and feminists in that nation owe Afary an enormous debt of gratitude, as do all of us concerned with sexual liberation for everyone worldwide.

Ugandan asylum seeker wins Sappho prize

Source: PinkNews.co.uk

The editor of a website that documents the violence and intimidation suffered by the gay community in Uganda has won a prestigious prize.

The Sappho in Paradise Book Prize is conferred annually by the International Lesbian and Gay Cultural Network (ILGCN), a worldwide voluntary association of lesbian and gay cultural workers.

Kizza Musinguzi, editor of gayrightsuganda.org, and an asylum seeker in the UK, is the winner this year.

Gayrightsuganda.org “documents the organised campaign of violent religious and state-sponsored homophobia sweeping the strategic African nation,” saidILGCN.

The Book Prize handover ceremony will take place during a public demonstration tomorrow sponsored by the National Union of Students outside Uganda House in Trafalgar Square, London.

“It is deeply moving to see our 2008 book prize awarded to Kizza Musinguzi and gayrightsuganda.org,” said ILGCN Literature Secretary Ian Stewart.

“The worsening situation for lesbians and gay men in Uganda at the hands of the Anglican Church and BAe reveals the violent homophobia with which the UK Establishment is happy to be associated, in callously exploiting some of the world’s most vulnerable people.”

The International Lesbian & Gay Cultural Network was founded in 1992.

Last month two human rights advocates in Uganda were held for a week without charges after police accused them of “recruiting homosexuals.”

New York-based Human Rights Watch said the illegal detention of George “Georgina” Oundo and “Brenda” Kiiza was part of “a pattern of police harassment of LGBT people in Uganda.”

They were held seven days without being brought before a judge or having charges laid against them.

President of Uganda Kaguta Yoweri Museveni and other officials have spoken out against homosexuals on numerous occasions.

In June this year, Ugandan Bishop Luzinda said:

“I have been hearing that gays are demanding that the government should legalise their activities.

“This is absurd because God created a man and woman so that they can produce and fill this world.

“The government should not be tempted to legalise this backward culture which is bound to destroy this country.

“Not all that comes from Europe is superior and must be taken up by us,” Bishop Luzinda said.

Mr Museveni spoke of his country’s “rejection” of homosexuality during a speech he gave at the wedding of a former MP’s daughter earlier this year.

He said the purpose of life was to create children and that homosexuality was a “negative foreign culture.”

During his time in office LGBT Ugandans have been repeatedly threatened, harassed or attacked. Many have fled the country.