I imagine a great deal of the anger coming from many homosexuals is based on what we see of Islam on TV and read of it on the Internet.
Indeed, one of the most common comparisons of the legal status and treatment of homosexuals by fundamentalist Christians in the US is to the Islamic world – it being otherwise very difficult to find any other culture which tortures, murders and actively, aggressively discriminates against us outside of these two groups.
I live and teach in Europe. Of my students from Islamic countries, most are young gay men and independent minded women who see their schooling in the West as the first step to escaping the horror of their original homelands. A few (without exception these are Arabian) begin the semester by being truly nasty to me, expecting me to cower. Boy do they get a shock! I’ve spent my life dealing with the hatred and brutal, physical violence of my brother and his fundamentalist Christian family, these kids aren’t even armed.
A very small percentage are neither looking to stay in the West nor do they have any investment in the hatred which we here associate with Islam.
This is a good thing, it takes away my “right” to throw all adherents of Islam into the same pot and righteously hate them for hating me.
Are there differences of degree within Islam? Is there anything resembling the non-hate-filled-Christians one finds in the West? I may not even travel to Iran, for instance, and from what I have seen of North Africa, it hardly seems a very welcoming religion for women, homosexuals and dogs.
Sorry if this seems so terribly hostile, I will soon be leaving my country, where I am a human with full-civil rights and a partner and spending Christmas in a country, the US, where my partner is not even considered a relation, nor I a full-human entitled to civil rights. Tends to jaundice my views.

I understand how people conflate and become hostile towards Islam in a reflexive fashion.
Now, within some predominantly Muslim countries homosexuality is strenuously repressed. Iran is the obvious star candidate here, with the pictures of teenage boys being hanged for being gay. With these types of images and the psychotic-politics of Iran, it is not surprising to see gays associating Islam with extreme homophobia.
See http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2005/10/shocking_new_ph.html

Or course, Iran doesn’t have any homosexuals – they execute them.
At least in America, they only fire them, beat them, deny them equal rights, lie about them Only occasionally are they murdered, but not by the State. (Unless we count spiritual violence – a practice usually confined to self-described “Christians” – but then again, “the State” does favor anti-gay religions and their tenets – in law!)

Let me just respond to your comment about Mormons being upset at the backlash. First let me say that Mormons are not upset at the backlash but rather how the gay and lesbian community seems to pick and choose who to pick on. I mean who has more power and influence than Barack Obama who is publicly against gay marriage. Don’t hear a lot of outrage there??? Or the fact that the voting population of California is only 2% Mormon. Or the fact that the black and latino population voted overwhelmingly for prop 8. Or that the money donated to prop 8 was paid for by tax paying citizens. Or that a church would be targeted for drawing a moral standard. It’s the irony that upsetting. The obvious bigotry against Mormons by a group that calls us bigots. That’s upsetting.

First let me say that Mormons are not upset at the backlash but rather how the gay and lesbian community seems to pick and choose who to pick on.
Funny you should mention that. The LDS church has a great many moral standards; why have you chosen LGBT citizens as the victims of your hate, rather than coffee or wine drinkers, or people who divorce and remarry? Where’s your support for a statewide ban on remarriage? Why does enshrining the so-called “sanctity of marriage” into law only matter when LGBT citizens want equal rights, and not when Britney Spears can marry a guy for 55 hours in Vegas? It’s not LGBT citizens who are doing the “picking and choosing” here.
I mean who has more power and influence than Barack Obama who is publicly against gay marriage.
He also publicly spoke out against Proposition 8. LGBT activists aren’t mad at him (though there is some disappointment that he couldn’t do more) because he’s on the right side on Prop 8 – though people who believe in equality and civil rights wish he would be pro-marriage as well as pro-civil-unions.
Or the fact that the voting population of California is only 2% Mormon.
Yet a much larger percentage of the money used to prop up the Hate Amendment came from LDS members and organization. So the LDS church was trying to exert influence significantly in excess of their proportion of the population.
Or the fact that the black and latino population voted overwhelmingly for prop 8.
But the level of coordination and activism in favor of Prop 8 was much higher from the LDS church than from the African-American and Latino/a communities.
Or that the money donated to prop 8 was paid for by tax paying citizens.
I’d qualify that. Much of the money in favor of the Hate Amendment came from out of state, from “Christian” Right groups in the South and of course from LDS members in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, etc. They weren’t “taxpaying citizens” in the state where the hate law was being passed.
Or that a church would be targeted for drawing a moral standard.
Nobody’s targeting the LDS church simply for their hate and bigotry toward LGBT citizens. We’re attacking the LDS church – and all other hateful organizations that propped up the Bigotry Amendment – for their desire to enforce their “moral standard” on everyone else. They have a right to their moral standard, misbegotten though it is; they don’t have the right to impose their standards on the population at large.
The obvious bigotry against Mormons by a group that calls us bigots.
When you attack LGBT citizens’ rights, they probably won’t like you much. The proper response would be to repent of your hatred, bigotry, and anti-American advocacy and start working to right the wrong of Proposition 8. Instead, the LDS church is trying to play the victim in a pathetic attempt to hang on to their hate and bigotry, and enlisting demagogues and charlatans from the “Christian” Right (who would gladly call them heretics, and who invariably will say that Mormons are not Christians) in doing so.

Its not clear to me which direction you are aiming your sarcasm.

It wasn’t sarcasm, Aziz; it was facts.
And if you can’t figure out the direction, maybe you shouldn’t be blogging on the topic.

Thanks Aziz,
Great quotes and observations. But is there any record of Muhammad himself saying something about homosexuality? Is it anywhere in the Quran? Are there “red letter” Muslims who prioritize what Muhammad said over other voices, and how do they feel about the issue?

The only piece of Islamic holy scripture that deals explicitly with homosexual practices is the Qur’an, which mentions the story of Sodom and Gomorrah (even there it just says “indecency” without mentioning homosexual actions directly), but unfortunately scholars in three of the four Sunni madhhabs have interpreted this to mean that homosexuality should be punished by death. Of course, this “official line” hasn’t always been toed in Islamic societies, where homosexual love has a prominent place in traditional literature. So I would say that there is a profound tension between the acceptance and absolute condemnation of homosexuality in Islamic societies historically. However, with the advent of modernity and especially since the rise of the gay rights movement in the West, Islamic societies have reacted in an extremely defensive way, often staging witch-hunts against homosexuals as well as, in some cases, public executions. I know from my time in Egypt that the notion of gay marriage was openly ridiculed in the public discourse as well as in film. Including same-sex couples in the institution of marriage will mean changing very deeply ingrained traditions all over the world – and as always, these traditions will be given strong religious justifications.

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