In his New York Times "Opinionator" blog of today's date entitled "Islamophobia and Homophobia" (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/26/islamophobia-and-homophobia/?hp#preview), Robert Wright compares these two phenomena.
Query for Mr. Wright: Is Islamophobia justifiable within the gay community?
Consider that In Saudi Arabia homosexuality is punishable by public execution.
In Iran homosexuals are publicly hanged, and since 1979 the Islamic Republic of Iran has executed some 4,000 gay men.
Homosexuality is also punishable by death in Mauritania, northern Nigeria, Sudan, Yemen and Gaza. Regarding Gaza, there is currently a legal proceeding in the Israeli courts involving a gay man from Gaza living in Israel, who is fighting deportation back to Gaza, where he faces execution (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2826963.stm).
In Bahrain, Qatar, Algeria and the Maldives, homosexuality is "only" punishable by imprisonment or corporal punishment.
Your answer, Mr. Wright?
[Those readers from Ankara, who were infuriated by my prior blog entry, can indeed be proud that homosexuality is not a crime in Turkey.]
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Actually if you were intellectually honest you would say that homosexuals can be phobic of nearly every organized religion. Whereever homosexuality is not a crime, its mostly because of the secular nature of government rather than religion.
ReplyDeleteThe Christian right sponsored a bill in Uganda that made homosexuality a death. These did involve US based churches. Evangelical and most churches till see homosexuality as abhorrent
In the western world homosexuality was a crime until very recently.
Afterall Turing committed sucide when he was outed.
In Israel itself, the orthodox community would never accept homosexuality.
Its less about Islam and more about attitudes.