Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender and Pluralism (40 page)

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With this background of basic Qur’anic principles about diversity and modern concepts of sexuality, what can we say about homosexuality? We can make some statements that may seem radical, but actually come from an insistence on respecting the literal specificity of the Qur’an as revelation. The Qur’an contains no word that means “homosexuality” (as an abstract idea denoting a sexuality of men who desire pleasure with other men or a sexuality of women who desire pleasure with other women). The Qur’an contains no word that means “homosexual” as a man or woman who is characterized by this type of sexuality as forming a core part of his or her identity. The terms that became popular in Arabic in later times (
Liwat
for acts associated with same-sex relations, and
Luti
for persons associated with these acts) are not found in the Qur’an at all. The Qur’an does not explicitly specify any punishment for sexual acts between two men or two women. Most modern commentators and demagogues insist that the Qur’an does do all these things, but their insistence is not rooted in a close reading of the Qur’anic verses with attention to specific terms and their narrative context.

Let us address each of the above points one at a time, since they may strike many Muslim readers as not just controversial but beyond serious consideration. The Qur’an contains no word that means “homosexuality.” Nor does it contain a word that means “heterosexuality.” The very concept of “sexuality” as an abstract idea is a characteristic of modern societies. This is why sociologists who write in Arabic have had to invent new words to describe homosexuality in the later part of the twentieth century, and have come up with
al-shudhudh al-jinsi
(which means literally “sexually rare or unusual”). Had there been a Qur’anic term for this idea, it would have entered the Arabic language through common usage and modern scholars would not have had to invent a new one. The Qur’an does contain terms that describe desire (
raghba
) and lustful appetite (
shahwa
) which are certainly components of sexuality in the abstract. But without the idea of sexuality, the Qur’an does not have specific terms for either homosexuals or heterosexuals.

That said, it is admitted that the Qur’an assumes a heterosexual norm among its listeners. This does not automatically mean that the Qur’an forbids homosexuality or condemns homosexuals – it means only that the Qur’an assumes that sexual desire between men and women is the norm and that addressing and regulating this desire is the basis for establishing a moral society.

Heterosexuality is certainly a numerical norm. In any society, homosexuals are a numerical minority and are discursively located at the margins of ethical regulations: whether they are condemned or admired, they are always unusual. This is exactly what the modern Arabic term
al-shudhudh al-jinsi
means: a sexuality that is uncommon, outside the general norm, and rare. However, despite being a numerical minority, homosexual women and men are also present in society and numerically persistent. In every historically documented society there is evidence of homosexual desire and activity and there are persons characterized by such desire and activities.

The closest the Qur’an comes to directly addressing homosexual people is the phrase “men who are not in need of women (or have no sexual guile before women).” The Qur’an presents this phrase descriptively in neutral tone, not linked to denunciation or legal proscription. To such people, the Qur’an does not explicitly address its discourse. Commentators and jurists have drawn analogies and presented arguments to conclude that the Qur’an does address such sexually unusual people, despite the Qur’an’s lack of a term for them or the actions that characterize them. Those are, however, arguments of jurists and commentators; they are not the words of the Qur’an itself.

The Qur’an does not contain abstract analytical terms like homosexuality or homosexual, yet it does have words for certain acts. Its verses contain terms that designate actions that transgress ethical norms, like
fahisha
: some acts deemed
fahisha
could be sexual in nature. The most explicit term for sexual transgression is adultery,
zina
, but that is clearly applied to sexual penetration between a woman and man outside the bounds of a contractual relationship. As we will see later, many jurists sought to draw equivalence between “adultery” (
zina
) between a man and woman and other sexual acts between two men or between two women. However, this equivalence is based on analogy (
qiyas
) utilizing a legal fiction and is not based on the explicit wording of the Qur’an. Such analogies were the subject of intense debate and little agreement in classical Islamic law.

The Qur’an does specify an abstraction for the underlying moral attitude that gives rise to behaviors and actions that are deemed
fahisha
or transgression; it calls this attitude
fisq
or
fusuq
, which is usually translated as “corruption.” As an action,
fusuq
means to break out of the bounds of moral restraint. As an attitude or spiritual condition that causes such action,
fusuq
means not being bound by obedience to the ethical demands of God and is synonymous with the worship of idols. Often in sermons or moral advice, well-meaning preachers will use the word
fusuq
to denounce sexual acts or sexual minorities, in utter disregard of the Qur’anic use of the term. In the Qur’an, the term is both general and deep, specifying a person’s or community’s inward spiritual state that either accepts God’s presence through the Prophets’ teachings or conversely rejects them.
Fusuq
is deeply linked to
kufr
, or denying that God is One who sends Prophets who are many. In the view of this writer, those who claim that
fusuq
is a

term referring mainly to sex, specific sexual acts, or types of sexuality grossly disregard the ethical and spiritual specificity of the Qur’anic message.

Since the Qur’an does not provide explicit terms for homosexuality or homosexuals, why have Muslims traditionally felt so confident in declaring that the Qur’an forbids homosexuality and condemns homosexuals? This is a very complicated subject, demanding that we assess the ways in which Muslims have read the Qur’an in the past. Nobody simply “reads” a text, especially when it is a scripture or sacred text. We have “ways” of reading. These “ways” refer to practices through which we come to the text, engage the text, and apply the text to people, situations, and events that are not the text. We do not come to the text na¨ıvely. We come as human beings with our pre-conceptions, prejudices, experiences, and “pre-understandings.” Our minds and hearts are already full of concepts and ideas (hard-wired, we could say in this computerized age) that we bring to the text before we ever open its pages and pronounce its words.

Every interpreter enters the process of interpretation with some pre- understanding of the questions addressed by the text – even of its silences

– and brings with him or her certain conceptions as presuppositions of his or her exegesis . . . One can proceed to examine and discuss the legitimacy, usefulness and justice of particular pre-understandings in contrast to others. Pre-understanding is a condition of living in history

. . . the ethics or absence of them, are located in an acknowledgement or denial of its [pre-understanding’s] presence.
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These pre-conceptions both enable us to read and also limit our reading. It is unethical to ignore their presence even in the most respected of classical interpreters. Feminist scholars have shown how traditional readings of the Qur’an have been “male” readings of the Qur’an, entirely shaped by assumptions of masculine prerogative, privilege, and patriarchal power. Feminists have accused male readers of distorting the sacred text by importing into it patriarchal assumptions that may not be present in the Qur’an itself. Contemporary scholars attentive to injustices against gay and lesbian Muslims approach the question with the same moral agenda as feminist scholars. They use the same critical techniques of rereading the scriptural texts through new lenses in order to free the text from its former patriarchal confinement.

This is a very weighty undertaking. It is a project in process. This study can only sketch the preliminary scope and method for such a project. Let it be admitted at the outset that gay and lesbian Muslims are not certain what will be found after a thoroughly critical reassessment of scriptural and juridical texts of their religious tradition. They are only certain that no reassessment has yet been made that takes into account differences in sexuality as well as gender. This article hopes to contribute, in a small way, to this project. It cannot address all the details, but it can highlight the crucial importance of this project and some of the preliminary insights that might be gained from it. It asserts that there is

reason to doubt the reasoning behind the traditional condemnation of homosexuality. More urgently, there is reason to doubt the justification of capital punishment for homosexual acts. This article will address texts and traditions in their order of importance to Islamic jurisprudence: the Qur’an, the
hadith
reports attributed to the Prophet Muhammad (
Sunnah
), legal reasoning by analogy (
qiyas
), and the consensus of jurists (
ijma
‘).
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There is, at present, no complete interpretation of the Qur’an from a non- patriarchal perspective. Islamic feminists have boldly begun this project, but it is hardly complete. Scholars like Amina Wadud, Riffat Hassan, and Fatima Mernissi have asserted that the Qur’an does not picture women as devoid of reason, biologically inferior, or inherently subject to men’s control, despite the interpretations given to the Qur’an by traditionalists, jurists, and commentators. Gay and lesbian readers of the Qur’an have much to contribute to a non- patriarchal reading of the sacred text, but have only recently become empowered to join this project in the footsteps of their feminist heroines. As they do, they will use the same interpretive tools that feminists have developed (and these are the same tools that modernist, even politically radical, interpreters have used for liberationist purposes). Let us call this kind of interpretation “sexuality-sensitive” interpretation, as short-hand to compare its results to feminist interpretation and liberationist interpretation.

Sexuality-sensitive interpretation is attentive to the fact that sexualities are always multiple in society. It is attentive to the fact that variation is always arranged in hierarchical orders of power, leading to marginalization and disempowerment of the non-normative groups, such as gays, lesbians, or those whose gender is not easy to categorize as male or female. An elite is always empowered by silencing and oppressing the marginal few; the elite claims to speak for the norms of society, while subtly or explicitly supporting the oppression of other groups, like women or political dissidents. “Sexuality- sensitive” as a descriptive term for this kind of interpretation is a direct translation of the Arabic term
hassas
, meaning literally “a sensitive person” but used colloquially to denote “a homosexual person.”
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Two basic interpretive strategies are important for sexuality-sensitive readings of the Qur’an: semantic analysis and thematic analysis of the Qur’an. These strategies are designed to move beyond “traditional” Qur’anic interpretation with its verse-by-verse analysis that decontextualizes moments of revelation, freezes their meaning, and specifies their interpretation according to a word-for-word replacement. It will become clear that word-for-word replacement, as practiced by classical Qur’anic commentators, has led to very narrow interpretations of the Lut story in the Qur’an. The Lut story in the

Qur’an is the same as the Lot story in the Bible, yet it is told in a very different way, with contrasting emphases and contradictory details. The stories are comparable but not collapsible. This study insists on naming the Prophet Lut (with Arabic spelling) in order to draw this distinction from the story of Lot, which may be more familiar to many readers. The Lut story is the constant reference for Muslims’ understanding of same-sex relationships. Word-for-word replacement in classical commentaries has given rise to the dubious equation of the Divine punishment of Lut’s people with a condemnation of homosexuality and juridically enforceable punishment for same-sex acts. This is a conclusion that looks less inevitable (and less intelligible) when we pursue different techniques of interpretation, like semantic or thematic interpretation.

First, let us review how classical commentators have interpreted the Qur’an. I do not say “traditional” commentators, for in their time they were pioneers not traditionalists. Only in retrospect have their works come to represent immutable tradition, as later readers of the Qur’an were too modest or were disempowered from giving alternative readings. Let’s look at the example of al-Tabari, whose commentary on the Qur’an is accepted as one of the foundational texts of this genre. In his commentary on the verse in which Lut admonishes his people for “approaching the transgression” (Surat al-A‘raf 7:80–81), al-Tabari writes,

The transgression [
fahisha
] that they approach, for which they were punished by Allah, is “penetrating males sexually” [
ityan dhukur
]. The meaning is this: it is as if Lut were saying “You are, all of you, you nation of people, coming to men in their rears, out of lust, rather than coming to those that Allah has approved for you and made permissible to you from the women. You are a people that approach what Allah has prohibited for you. Therefore you rebel against Allah by that act.” That is what the Qur’an means by going beyond the bounds [
israf
] when Lut said
, You are a people who go beyond all bounds.
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