Our collaborator Nicolamaria Coppola wrote a book and we want to talk about it for two reasons:
1) we believe it has so much in common with the themes of Bossy
2) in the following months, on this website you can read excerpts!
“Homosexuality in the Middle East. Gay identity across religion, culture and politics” is a journey: it guides us into the fascinating islamic lands, through a careful reflection on gender identity in relation to the dynamics of politics and religion. The narration starts with a critical discussion on the topic, considering the Middle Eastern perspectives that, most of the times, are conflicting with the Western ones.
The enquiry begins with a detailed and critical analysis of the Q’ran and its ahadith, the ones that are supposedly responsible for the condemnation of homosexuality and homosexuals. An analysis of the Penal Codes of the Islamic countries follows. Every islamic schools (hanafita, hanbalita, malikita, shafita and jafar’s) considers homosexuality to be a “perverted and sinful deviation from human nature”,“a secretion of western culture, that invaded the East and infected it” and each school considers homosexuality illegal. The punishments imposed by these schools of islamic jurisprudence, tough, are the result of different processes of deduction and vary a lot from one another.
According to ILGA, the International Lesbian and Gay Association, the offense of lawat, of sodomy, is illegal in 78 countries, the majority of them being muslims, and it’s punished with death penalty in 7 islamic nations: Saudi Arabia, Iran, Mauritania, Somalia, Yemen, Sudan and Somaliland (a state in Eastern Africa that’s internationally not recognized as independent by the international community). In all of the other Middle Eastern States sodomy is punished with incarceration, a period of detention varying from country to country: 10 years in Bahrein, 7 in Kuwait and Qatar, 5 in Lybia, 3 in Oman, Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia, 1 year in Lebanon and Syria. The only exception is Jordan, where homosexuality has been legal since the ‘70s. In some nations where the majority of people is muslim, like Turkey, Egypt or Mali, homosexual relationships are not specifically forbidden by the law. However, Egypt provides for laws against prostitution, public immorality and instigation to promiscuity, and manages to persecute gays through these.
The book is based on a wide research encompassing all the countries that best represents the attitude of authorities towards LGBT people and the general perception of homosexuality.
Saudi Arabia: death penalty is still effective but paradoxically gays can meet undisturbed and manage to lead a “normal” life. Iraq: homosexuality has become to be publicly condemned again after the “laic” period of the former Rais, Saddam Hussein. Egypt: the country is leading a real crusade against LGBT people despite the non existence of laws that forbid consensual homosexual relationships. Maghreb, Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria: these countries are very popular for homosexual tourism that’s been widespread and entrenched for decades in the whole region. Lebanon: the only true oasis of hope for Middle Eastern homosexuals. Iran: in spite of it not being a Middle Eastern country nor Arabic, it is a stronghold of Islam and a clear example of hostility towards homosexuals.
The book also appoints a range of direct testimonies of muslim homosexuals, met in loco or through gay communities, counting thousands of gays and lesbians users from the Middle East. The inner dynamics of arabic and islamic society have been reconstructed thanks to these depositions; the picture that came out of it is a vivid and exhaustive fresco of the Middle Eastern LGBT reality.
