Voices of Islam (260 page)

Does the Qur’an contain indications about sexual orientation? Its lan- guage specifi addresses heterosexual persons. This is no surprise, since

Sexual Diversity in Islam
141

they constitute the vast majority in any society, including the Prophet Muhammad’s immediate environment in Arabia. In one sense, heterosexual relationships are most important for society at large, especially a small one under threat, as was the early Muslim community, since procreation, child-rearing, and family lineage are consequences of heterosexual relation- ships. For this reason, the Qur’an directly addressed adultery along with legitimacy and inheritance. In contrast, the Qur’an does not clearly and unambiguously address homosexuals in the Muslim community, as there is no term in the Qur’an for ‘‘homosexual.’’ This is true despite the fact that many classical Muslim jurists identify the Qur’anic narrative of Lot’s struggle with his tribe (
qawm Lut
) as addressing homosexual sex. The Prophet Lot’s tribe means the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, as described in the Torah. All Muslim interpreters condemn how the men of Lot’s tribe rejected Lot’s authority over them by trying to deprive him of the right to extend hospital- ity and protection to strangers, to the extent of demanding to use the male strangers in a coercive same-sex act. However, some classical interpreters who were jurists ‘‘read into’’ the scriptural text the conclusion that Lot was sent primarily to forbid anal sex between men, which was the principle act of Lot’s tribe which constituted their infi elity; there is no opportunity here to give details of their interpretive logic, which I have written about elsewhere.
15
The classical interpreters always discussed sex acts (with almost exclusive attention to anal sex between man and man, sometimes extended to anal sex between man and woman). However, they never discussed sexual orientation as an integral aspect of personality.

If they had, they would not have read the narrative of Lot and his tribe as addressing homosexual acts in general, but rather as addressing male rape of men in particular. Their acts would appear analogous to soldiers using rape as a weapon, as happened in the Balkan wars against men and also women, or analogous to interrogators using sexual acts as tools of domination, as happened in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and elsewhere. Read with a psychological theory of sexual orientation, it appears that the men of Lot’s tribe were actually heterosexual men attempting to aggressively assert their power over other vulnerable men. These ‘‘men’’ were the angels who appeared in their city as strangers and wayfarers, to whom Lot offered hospi- tality and protection in an assertion of his Prophetic authority. The mob attempted to rape the men motivated by rejecting the Prophetic authority of Lot and asserting their own egoistic status and power rather than by sexual desire and bodily pleasure.

Following this line of interpretation actually makes more sense of the many verses that comprise the story of Lot than does the classical interpretation. The verses should be read in context, as inter-referential, in order to interpret the meaning of any particular word or phrase. ‘‘And Lot when he said to his people, ‘Do you commit the indecency that nobody in the wide world has done before? You do men in lust (
shahwa
) besides women, indeed you are a

142
Voices of Change

people who transgress!’ His people answered him with nothing but, ‘Drive them out of your town, for they are people who make themselves to be purer!’ So we delivered him and his followers, except for his wife—she was one of the goners’’ (Qur’an 7:80–83. The other versus that tell Lot’s story are Qur’an 6:86; 11:77–81; 15:61–72; 21:71–75, 26:161–174; 27:54–57;

37:133–134). If the indecency were sex acts by men with men, then why was Lot’s wife also destroyed by God’s punishment? Clearly, she was involved in ‘‘the indecency,’’ the network of idolatry and exploitation that character- ized the city’s population, including its women and children who were not involved in the sex acts. The fact that the attacking men had wives and children warns us that their crime, as they
do men in lust besides women,
was not homosexuality or even sex acts
per se,
but rather infidelity and rejection of their Prophet. This is what they have in common with the other destroyed peoples, who are always mentioned before and after them: the people of Noah, Salih, Hud, and Shu‘ayb who found innovative ways to drive their Prophets from their midst and undermine their authority. In fact, the chronologically earliest revelation that mentions Lot simply tells us that ‘‘the people of Lot treated the warning as a lie
...
they accosted his guests but we blinded them’’ (Qur’an 54:33–37), with no mention of sex acts.

In another verse, Lot challenges his attackers: ‘‘Do you do males from the wide world and leave what mates God has created for you? Indeed you are people exceeding in aggression!’’ (Qur’an 26:165–166). Here Lot specifies that these men already have mates (
azwaj
), wives whom God has created for them, and yet they aggressively exceed the bounds of propriety by demanding Lot’s guests in disregard for the rights that their spouses have other them. The issue here is the men’s disregarding their spouses to attack strangers. But could not one argue that the gender of their victims is actually the problem, while the men’s leaving their spouses is just a necessary condi- tion? Another verse addresses the question of gender directly, as Lot con- fronts his assailants: ‘‘His tribe came to him rushing at him and before this they had been practicing bad deeds. Lot said, ‘O my people, these are my daughters—they are purer for you so be mindful of God and do not humili- ate me over my guests!’’ (Qur’an 11:78). Some readers might rush to judge that Lot is saying women are purer for the men who are rushing at him, meaning that women are more suitable for sex and are legal as spouses for men. However, to read this verse as an assertion that heterosexual desire is normative takes it totally out of context.

Would anyone believe that a Prophet would offer his daughters to assail- ants intent on rape, as if their raping women would make the act legitimate and ‘‘pure’’? Rather, Lot makes a sarcastic comparison to show his assailants how wrong it is to rape guests over whom he has extended protective hospitality. Both he and his tribe know that it is far from pure to take his daughters, whose dignity he protects; Lot argues that assaulting his guests is even worse in his sight than fornicating with his daughters! Far from giving

Sexual Diversity in Islam
143

them license to rape his women, he is expressing to them, with sarcasm born of despair, that vulnerable strangers are as valuable to him as his own children. On the surface, he may appear to talk about the correct gender for men’s sexual orientation, while in reality he argues that both men and women deserve protection from rape and humiliation, as a consequence of the ethic of care which fuels his Prophetic mission. The comparison by gender is only to drive home to his audience that strangers of either gender deserve the same protection one gives to daughters. This ethical message comes through clearly in another verse’s narration of these events: ‘‘Lot said, ‘Surely these are my guests, so do not dishonor me—stay mindful of God and do not humiliate me.’ They said, ‘Have we not forbidden you [granting others protection] from the wide world?’ Lot said, ‘These are my daughters, if you are intent on doing it’’’ (Qur’an 15:68–71).

In conclusion, one can argue that the story of Lot is not about homo- sexuality at all. Rather, Lot criticizes the practice of sex-as-weapon—using sex acts in coercion, as with rape. This is a critique of male sexuality driven by aggression and the urge to subjugate others under their power by force, not male homosexuality in particular. It is incidental to the story that Lot’s guests, who are the targets, are men. We can imagine the same story with guests who are women, if the Islamic imagination would allow angels to appear as women. Jurists who have interpreted the story to be about homo- sexual acts have missed the point. This confirms a persistent pattern in Islamic law, that verses in the Qur’an which critique and limit patriarchy are system- atically ignored or distorted to allow men’s exertion of power: they allowed polygamy when the Qur’an warns against it, legalized concubines when the Qur’an urges believers to free slaves, and enforced seclusion upon women alone when the Qur’an enjoins both men and women with upholding modesty and fidelity.

Of course, homosexuality does not just involve men whom we call ‘‘gay’’ but also women whom we call ‘‘lesbian.’’ Lesbian women face a dual challenge, fi as women in Muslim communities and second as women who are sexually attracted to other women. For many lesbian Muslims, the first challenge is the most difficult, since before one can even discuss sexual orientation, one must address whether women are treated as rational and fully human beings, as legally autonomous agents, as morally equal to men, and as subjects with sexual drives that deserve satisfaction beyond their role in procreation. Muslim jurists and interpreters in the classical period pro- duced some amazingly female-affirmative decisions. They acknowledged that women enjoy sex and are entitled to satisfaction from their partner, affirming the existence and potency of female orgasm and ejaculate. They emphasized equal participation of male and female liquids in conception, imagining the donors of egg and sperm to be equal and autonomous agents who come together to draw up a contract of mutual obligation, in radical contrast to earlier Hellenic, Jewish, and Christian theories of sex and fertility in which

144
Voices of Change

only the man and his sperm were active agents.
16
Most jurists not only asserted the legality of nonreproductive sexual intercourse but also affirmed its positive role in cultivating pleasure and generating tenderness between partners—they even lauded foreplay, caressing and sexual activity for pleasure (not restricted to procreative intent) as following the
Sunna
of the Prophet Muhammad).

Despite this elite discourse that gives a positive role to women’s sexuality and sexual pleasure, actual practice did not often live up to its ideals. Local communities and individual families often stressed the ‘‘uncleanliness’’ of women’s sexual organs due to the issue of menstruation and often spun this into a theory of women’s inherent moral brokenness. Though Muslims generally accept that women feel and desire sexual satisfaction, patriarchal men often exaggerated this into an uncontrollable force that overwhelms women and corrupts their rational faculties, justifying male control over their movement and social interactions. Too often, discussion of female sexuality was reduced to urging women to satisfy the male prerogative of penetration and preventing any social, spiritual, or intellectual activity of women that might threaten this prerogative. In general, Muslim jurists did not even address sexual acts between two women, because they defined sexual inter- course as penile penetration. They hardly addressed the obvious question of whether penetration, whether with a male penis or anything else, is the epitome and extent of female sexual satisfaction.

The story of Lot does not address sexual acts between women in any way. There are no other verses in the Qur’an clearly addressing lesbians or same- sex acts between women, though some interpreters have searched for one in Qur’an 4:15: ‘‘As for those of your women who perpetrate immorality (
al-fahisha
), have four from among yourselves bear witness against them. If they do witness, then confine them [the women] to their rooms until death causes them to perish or until God makes for them a way [of release].’’ A tenth-century Mu‘tazili interpreter, Isfahani, seems to be the first to argue that this verse concerns ‘‘immorality’’ identified as same-sex acts between women (
sihaq
), a suggestion repeated by later interpreters like Zamakhshari and Baydawi in medieval times and Rashid Rida in modern times.
17
This was apparently due to the insistence on four eye witnesses, which is the same requirement for punishing heterosexual acts of fornication; however, the punishment required here is not similar at all to that for fornication (lashing) or adultery (stoning). Why should the immorality discussed in the verse be assumed to be sexual, especially when the grammatical plural ‘‘your women’’ clearly refers to a group of three or more? The immorality it refers to is ambiguous, as the term
fahisha
could refer to a wide range of immoral deeds that are not sexual at all.
18
In fact, the context of these verses (the many preceding it and following it) is about the inheritance of wealth and its just distribution, not about sex or sexual orientation. Fraud in division of inherit- ance wealth, which could be perpetrated by a group of women, is probably

Sexual Diversity in Islam
145

what the Qur’an warns against and punishes. The assertion that this verse condemns lesbianism and specifies punishment for homosexual acts is quite flimsy. Because of this, some Shiite scholars assert that ‘‘the Companions of Rass,’’ mentioned obliquely twice in the Qur’an, were a people destroyed because of widespread lesbianism, though there is not a word in the Qur’an to substantiate such a position.
19

Conventional interpretations often bypass ethical teachings on distributing wealth to prevent hoarding, misallocation of funds, and exploitation of the vulnerable by creating sexual diversions. Although Qur’anic verse 4:3 does say to men, ‘‘marry those of the women that appear good for you—two, three or four,’’ it says this in the context of protecting orphans and warning the men who act as their guardians not to consume unjustly the wealth entrusted to them as the orphans’ inheritance. The whole verse reads, ‘‘Give to the orphans their wealth without exchanging what is good for what is spoiled. Do not consume their wealth as part of your own wealth, for that is a profound outrage. If you fear that you cannot deal justly with the orphans, then marry those of the women that are good for you—two, three or four. But if you fear that you cannot act justly, then just one
...
’’ The ethical context is clearly one of treating orphans justly and managing their wealth without fraud, and the license to marry the women among them (as a way of insuring them logistical and financial support) is given as a last resort if one cannot live up to the expectation of fi ncial care. It was not meant to be taken out of context to justify plural marriages as a social norm for the wealthy elite, though the male jurists did just this. Similarly, the verses allegedly forbidding lesbian sex actually address financial honesty and fraud, which male jurists and interpreters either misrecognized or obscured.