The Koran and homosexuality: the beliefs of a gay imam

Interview by Marc Bonomelli with Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed published on the website of the newspaper Le Monde (France) on 7 April 2015, freely translated by Giacomo Tessaro

Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed, 37, founded the association HM2F (Muslim Homosexuals of France) which fights to reconcile Islam and homosexuality. His is the initiative of the first inclusive mosque in France (open to all), near Paris, which welcomes LGBT believers and women without veils.

But, beyond his singular progressive activism which delights the media, this young man is able, with historical, anthropological and theological references in hand, to demonstrate the compatibility between the religion of the Prophet and homosexuality practiced without complexes . He recently abandoned his association activity to devote himself full time to his research.

A few weeks after the thesis that he will defend at the Higher School of Social Sciences, we have submitted some passages from the Koran and the Sunna that seem homophobic to us for the evaluation of this killjoy.

Is Islam homophobic?

To begin with, let's remember that in France until 1750 people were burned alive “sodomites” on the Town Hall Square, while in the same period the caliphs of the Ottoman Empire entertained regular homoerotic and homosexual relationships in the open: for centuries this habit did not pose any problems. But, as far as today's religious institutions are concerned, I would say that we can do better. The French Council of Islamic Faith (CFCM) represents only the most dogmatic of believers living in France. There is no institutional progressive movement. Certainly there are associations, individuals, intellectuals, but the Jewish Consistory, the CFCM or the Catholic Church, even if they have undergone an evolution, still preach in a homophobic way: they do not punish the sinner (that is, the individual attracted to the people of same sex) but continue to condemn what they present as a sin (the practice of homosexuality). This is and remains homophobia. Muslims fit very well into the current mentality of the Catholic Church and perpetuate fear of human sexuality. The principle “punish the sin but not the sinner” it did not exist in the Ottoman Empire and yet the latter is considered the last of the Islamic caliphates.

How to explain this sudden change?

The collapse of Arab-Muslim civilization (which corresponds to the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire and the colonization of the 19th century) led to the rise of nationalisms and Islamisms, which translate an identity crisis that we see regularly exploding within Arab-Muslim companies As the recent example of the Arab springs, a series of more or less aborted revolutions shows, more or less democratic. In this regard, we remember that in France, after cutting the head to the king, it took one hundred years to find a reliable political system. What I mean is: more than a problem of Arabic or Islam culture, it is a problem of fascist and totalitarian policy: fascistoid in the sense that it requires a unique, and totalitarian identity as applied in the totality of the public space and even in space private. All this is accompanied by the folding on very male -lined, homophobic and misogynist values ​​that were not majority before the end of the Ottoman Empire.

The Koran does not seem to condemn the homosexual attraction as such (the word "homosexuality" it is not written anywhere) but condemns the "Practice of Lot's men", i.e. the people of the cities of Sodoma and Gomorrah, guilty guilty of sodomy.

Not even the word "sodomy" It is used. Sodom's sin was not sodomy, but the ritual rape. The historian Herodotus (484-420 BC) describes the practices-considered barbaric to his era-of the tribes of the Mesopotamian plain. In Sodoma and Gomorra, to be a son or a daughter of a good family, we had to give a gift of one's virginity to the temple: to offer one's seed if man, his virginity if woman. This sadomasochistic representation of sexuality is condemned by the Koran and the Bible. This has nothing to do with LGBT people asking that their marriage, and possibly their children, are recognized by the Republic.

Despite all this, still today Saudi Arabia exports the whole world of the specimens of the Koran translated into all the languages ​​in which, after the quotation of Sodoma and Gomorrah, it is written in brackets "The city of homosexuals". They do exactly what the Koran prohibits, that is to say to disguise the words of the Koran itself.

The Sura 27 of the Koran, Versetto 55, says: “Will you approach men rather than females, to appease your desire? You are really an ignorant people ".

Once again, it's a matter of translation. We run into the same problem with the Bible, which could allow us to justify slavery or marriage to pre-adolescent girls! There is no need to read the text literally, even when the translation poses no problem, and the social context of the time must always be kept in mind. We must place a double distance: contextual and etymological. The term used here from the Quran is shahwa: bestial desire, concupiscence, and this is what is forbidden, which clearly relates to ritual rape. Another verse of the Koran specifies: “No people before you had abandoned themselves to such turpitude”. God is not stupid enough to believe that Sodom and Gomorrah invented homosexuality! Some Muslims say, looking you straight in the eyes: “Homosexuality didn't exist before Sodom and Gomorrah invented it”; instead, it exists in more than 400 animal species: it is therefore part of nature. The Quran cannot contradict this, otherwise it would not be an interesting text to consider.

But you are an imam: I presume you do not deny the sanctity of the Koran.

The Koran is holy precisely because it offers us a truth that can be continually contextualized. As God says to Moses: “This truth is not in heaven, this truth is among you”. It is up to you to appropriate it, sanctify it but also understand it, integrate it into your lives, and therefore make it evolve.

The Sunna, that is to say the set of ahadith (The speeches attributed to the prophet) constitutes the second source of Islam after the Koran. One of these Ahadith says: "If you find someone who practices the act of the people of Lot, then kill the one who practices the act and the one on which it is practiced".

Now you know that the people of Lot was not homosexual but rapist, because the inhabitants of Sodoma and Gomorra wanted to rape young people. Lot's wife was killed while the two cities were destroyed because she also practiced crimes, but she was not homosexual because she was married to Lot. This does not square with the story.

Another Hadith, reported by Ibn Abbas, a companion of the prophet, leaves little room for interpretation: "Allah does not look at a man who has a relationship with a man or a woman for the back".

This Hadith speaks of the sodomy between heterosexual couples; It is very interesting to know that this form of sexuality was refused by the Medini but practiced by the Meccans at the time of the prophet. A verse of the Koran clearly contradicts this Hadith, that the prophet probably never pronounced: “Your brides are like a field for you. Come to your field as you want ". According to some exegetes of the time (the first to have interpreted the Koran) this verse would refer to this practice, which was not seen in the same way from one tribe to another. Some Arabs believed that it was not allowed, not even in the context of a heterosexual couple. And therefore the Koran is pronounced by stating that there is nothing wrong.

Also, different ahadith report how the Prophet protected i Mukhannathun, the actual men in front of which women did not veil because they had no desire for the opposite sex. Also according to the same sources Aisha, the prophet's favorite bride, reports after the death of Muhammad as the latter welcomed the Mukhannathun, forbidden to kill them.

The ahadith were reported by Sahabah, the companions of the prophet, the first to have joined the new religion. I am an authoritative source in Islam. Can we doubt their good faith on the question of homosexuality?

One of the Sahabi, Abu Hurayra, was himself a Mukhannath; However, he denounced one of his fellow men, asking that he was executed. But the prophet refused to kill him because he prayed like all Muslims. Moreover, knowing that Islam does not admit monacal life and that all men have to get married, Abu Hurayra himself went to the prophet and asked him: “I can't get married to a woman. What should I do? "; the Prophet, most likely aware that Abu Hurayra repressed his feminine side and his homosexuality, replied to him: “Well, don't get married”. Abu Hurayra reported nearly seven thousand ahadith, far more than any other Companion or wife of the Prophet. This would mean that he reported two per day over a period of twenty years, which is humanly impossible.
When Aisha, the Prophet's wife, asked him “How do you manage to report so many ahadith?” he replied: “The Prophet put his cloak on the ground and recited a magical incantation: that's why I have a good memory”. But Aisha replied: “This is why you are a liar: the Prophet does not practice magic or witchcraft”. Despite this, the most dogmatic Muslims spend their time reporting the ahadith of someone who was probably homosexual, who rejected his homosexuality and was an internalized homophobe!
Abu Hurayra did not accept his gender, nor his sexuality, but ended up marrying and having children in order to benefit from the associated political advantages and, undoubtedly, to try to "heal" from his homosexuality…

Original text: Koran and homosexuality: the convictions of a gay imam