Gay Whispers in the Islamic World
NEW YORK — This weekend’s Gay Pride festivities will climax withSunday’s 36th annual parade down Fifth Avenue. As usual, the raucousaffair will thrill some and rattle others, but everyone expects to walkaway intact.One would have to fantasize about such an occasion, however, in mostMuslim nations where homosexuality remains as concealed as a bridebeneath a burqa. When it peeks through, it isn’t pretty. Whileprogressives (and President Bush) call Islam a religion of peace,"celebrating diversity" is hardly on the agenda. Consider these recentexamples of the Islamic world’s institutional homophobia:
*In Saudi Arabia, 105 men were sentenced in April for acts of "deviantsexual behavior" following their March arrests. Al-Wifaq, agovernment-affiliated newspaper, claimed they illegally danced togetherand were "behaving like women" at a gay wedding."Calling the event a ‘gay wedding’ has become a lightning rod todiscrimination against gay people," Widney Brown of Human Rights Watchtold Patrick Letellier of gay.com.Seventy men received one-year prison sentences while 31 got six monthsto one year, plus 200 lashes each. Four others face two years behindbars plus 2,000 lashes. If these four receive their lashes at once,Brown fears they will die.*"Anyone caught committing sodomy – kill both the sodomizer and thesodomized," Islamic cleric Tareq Sweidan demanded on Qatar TV lastApril22. As the Middle East Media Research Institute (memri.org) reports,Sweidan continued: "The clerics determined how the homosexual should bekilled. They said he should be stoned to death. Some clerics said heshould be thrown off a mountain."
*Ogudu Emmanuel and Odjegba Tevin admitted that they were male loversafter their neighbors reported them to Nigerian cops. They werearrestedJanuary 15 and charged with "crimes against nature." The pairapparentlyescaped from jail while awaiting trial and potential 14-year prisonsentences. Gay rights activists worried that cops or other inmates mayhave killed them in custody.Last November, an Islamic court in Keffi, issued an arrest warrant forMichael Ifediora Nwokoma after neighbors accused him of having sex witha man named Mallam Abdullahi Ibrahim. Nwokoma quickly fled. Ibrahim wascharged with the "unholy" act of "homosexualism." The court delayedIbrahim’s trial and decided to incarcerate him until Nwokomasurfaces.In northern Nigeria, where Sharia law governs 12 Muslim states,homosexuality requires capital punishment by stoning."
*Ansar-al-Sunnah, the Iraqi terrorist group, issued a statement lastDecember 30 urging Iraqis not to vote in last January’s elections,lestdemocracy spawn un-Islamic laws such as "homosexual marriage." To besure, many Americans oppose gay marriage, but they at least have thegood manners not to detonate same-sex marriage advocates.
*Egyptian cops have met gay men on-line and through personal ads, thenarrested them, according to a March 1, 2004 Human Rights Watch report.Since 2001, HRW says at least 179 men have been charged with"debauchery," prompting five-year prison sentences for at least 23. Asthe Associated Press’ Nadia Abou El-Magd wrote, HRW "interviewed 63menwho had been arrested for homosexual conduct. It said they spoke ofbeing whipped, bound and suspended in painful positions, splashed withcold water, burned with cigarettes, shocked with electricity to thelimbs, genital or tongue. They also said guards encouraged otherprisoners to rape them" — thus using coercive gay sex to penalize consensual gay sex.
While he notes that secular nations such as Jordan, Indonesia,Malaysia,and Syria are more relaxed about homosexuality, Robert Spencer,Directorof JihadWatch.org and editor of The Myth of Islamic Tolerance, warnsagainst equating the homophobia of strict Muslim states with, say,American social conservatives’ hostility to gay rights."Jerry Falwell and others like him do not call for the deaths ofhomosexuals, while these people do," Spencer observes.
"This demonstrates the bankruptcy and, ultimately, the danger of such moralequivalence arguments, which are nonetheless ubiquitous today indiscussions of Islamic terrorism."May Sunday’s marchers remember those who literally risk their livesandlimbs by merely peering out of the Islamic closet.
New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a syndicated columnist with theScripps Howard News Service.----- End forwarded message
*In Saudi Arabia, 105 men were sentenced in April for acts of "deviantsexual behavior" following their March arrests. Al-Wifaq, agovernment-affiliated newspaper, claimed they illegally danced togetherand were "behaving like women" at a gay wedding."Calling the event a ‘gay wedding’ has become a lightning rod todiscrimination against gay people," Widney Brown of Human Rights Watchtold Patrick Letellier of gay.com.Seventy men received one-year prison sentences while 31 got six monthsto one year, plus 200 lashes each. Four others face two years behindbars plus 2,000 lashes. If these four receive their lashes at once,Brown fears they will die.*"Anyone caught committing sodomy – kill both the sodomizer and thesodomized," Islamic cleric Tareq Sweidan demanded on Qatar TV lastApril22. As the Middle East Media Research Institute (memri.org) reports,Sweidan continued: "The clerics determined how the homosexual should bekilled. They said he should be stoned to death. Some clerics said heshould be thrown off a mountain."
*Ogudu Emmanuel and Odjegba Tevin admitted that they were male loversafter their neighbors reported them to Nigerian cops. They werearrestedJanuary 15 and charged with "crimes against nature." The pairapparentlyescaped from jail while awaiting trial and potential 14-year prisonsentences. Gay rights activists worried that cops or other inmates mayhave killed them in custody.Last November, an Islamic court in Keffi, issued an arrest warrant forMichael Ifediora Nwokoma after neighbors accused him of having sex witha man named Mallam Abdullahi Ibrahim. Nwokoma quickly fled. Ibrahim wascharged with the "unholy" act of "homosexualism." The court delayedIbrahim’s trial and decided to incarcerate him until Nwokomasurfaces.In northern Nigeria, where Sharia law governs 12 Muslim states,homosexuality requires capital punishment by stoning."
*Ansar-al-Sunnah, the Iraqi terrorist group, issued a statement lastDecember 30 urging Iraqis not to vote in last January’s elections,lestdemocracy spawn un-Islamic laws such as "homosexual marriage." To besure, many Americans oppose gay marriage, but they at least have thegood manners not to detonate same-sex marriage advocates.
*Egyptian cops have met gay men on-line and through personal ads, thenarrested them, according to a March 1, 2004 Human Rights Watch report.Since 2001, HRW says at least 179 men have been charged with"debauchery," prompting five-year prison sentences for at least 23. Asthe Associated Press’ Nadia Abou El-Magd wrote, HRW "interviewed 63menwho had been arrested for homosexual conduct. It said they spoke ofbeing whipped, bound and suspended in painful positions, splashed withcold water, burned with cigarettes, shocked with electricity to thelimbs, genital or tongue. They also said guards encouraged otherprisoners to rape them" — thus using coercive gay sex to penalize consensual gay sex.
While he notes that secular nations such as Jordan, Indonesia,Malaysia,and Syria are more relaxed about homosexuality, Robert Spencer,Directorof JihadWatch.org and editor of The Myth of Islamic Tolerance, warnsagainst equating the homophobia of strict Muslim states with, say,American social conservatives’ hostility to gay rights."Jerry Falwell and others like him do not call for the deaths ofhomosexuals, while these people do," Spencer observes.
"This demonstrates the bankruptcy and, ultimately, the danger of such moralequivalence arguments, which are nonetheless ubiquitous today indiscussions of Islamic terrorism."May Sunday’s marchers remember those who literally risk their livesandlimbs by merely peering out of the Islamic closet.
New York commentator Deroy Murdock is a syndicated columnist with theScripps Howard News Service.----- End forwarded message
posted by Tamer at
1:54 PM
1 Comments:
http://tamer.nomadlife.org/2005/03/brazilian-resolution-on-lgbt-rights.html
Near the bottom, there is a link to Human Rights Watch report mentioned in the forwarded column. If you are interested, read it and know more about how things happen in this part of the world.
According to some people I know...Gay Egyptians made May 11th their day of pride because it was on May 11th 2001 that the 52 men were arrested in the Queen Boat down in Zamalek. This was the start of a whole series of incidents. Since Egyptian gay men can not go on the streets expressing their pride of their sexuality, they stuck to wearing red on that day.
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