Image by lewishamdreamer via FlickrBy Peter Montgomery
Just as the Arab spring has upended conventional understanding of Arab and Muslim societies, so a new report on the issues faced by LGBT Muslims challenges the stereotype of Muslim communities in the U.S. and abroad as monolithically closed to conversations about sexuality.
The report, the “Muslim LGBT Inclusion Project,” was just published by Intersections International — New York-based nonprofit whose mandate, says founding director Rev. Robert Chase, is to bring together people who differ, honor those differences, and find ways to work together for reconciliation, justice, and peace.
The report builds on interviews with Muslim community leaders, several scholarly articles, as well as facilitated discussions among more than 50 people in six cities. Chase, who co-facilitated five of the six group discussions, says those conversations revealed a remarkable openness. “It was just fascinating,” he says:
I went in looking to do an assessment, and came out being inspired with real hope for our whole world. One part of our world that is so often demonized as being insensitive and rigid and uncompromising and out of touch with nuances of human history proved to be just the opposite: engaged, sensitive, curious, imaginative.He concluded, “if this is the demonized community, then our future is a lot brighter than what we’ve been led to believe.” Chase acknowledges that the group participants skewed progressive, but the prevalence of progressive-oriented Muslim community leaders may itself be news to many Americans.
Cultural Imperialism, or Human Right?
Most project participants agreed that conversations about LGBT issues within the Muslim community might better be pursued outside of mosques rather than within them. Those who did support direct religious engagement argued for starting with the notion of Allah as a God of mercy and compassion.
LGBT Muslims, the report notes, are dealing with many of the same kinds of questions that LGBT Christians have been dealing with for decades—such as the authority and interpretation of scripture. In addition, conversations within Islam in America are complicated by a virulent Islamophobia that has flourished in the decade since the 9/11 attacks. As scholar Hussein Rashid, an RD associate editor, observes: “The intersection of sexual, religious, racial, and immigrant identities entail multiple types of marginalization.”
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