It is a Thursday night in April 2013, and I am in the Friendly Society, a gay nightclub in London. Waqqas and Ebrahim have ordered alcoholic cocktails, but Salleh is drinking something soft.1 I know that some of the gay Muslims I have come across strictly observe halal (Islamically permissible) dietary requirements, while others are more relaxed. However, I also recall seeing Salleh drinking alcohol before. I must look a bit perplexed, because he explains, unprompted, that an angel recently appeared to him in a dream and ordered him to give up cigarettes, drugs and alcohol. âSo youâre not doing any of those things now?â I ask, perhaps more incredulously than I should. He says, âWell I havenât given up sexâIâm still gay!â I raise one eyebrow and say, âYou sure it was an angel?â He laughs and insists it was.
Salleh, a British Arab, Waqqas, a British Pakistani, and Ebrahim, a British Indian, are gay Muslim men in their early to late 20s. I have come to know them through Imaan (âfaithâ in Arabic), a lesbian, gay, bisexual , transgender, queer and intersex (LGBTQI) Muslim organisation. Waqqas and Salleh have known each other for years, and we all met Ebrahim for the first time when he attended an Imaan conference in 2012.
Their offbeat and playful exchanges were not at all rare during my research into the experiences of gay Muslims in Malaysia and Britain. Yet, given the widespread public perceptions, religious teachings and laws (in many Muslim-majority countries) upholding the notion that Islam condemns homosexuality, many people might ask: How couldâand why wouldâanyone identify as gay and Muslim? This question is indeed asked increasinglyâin 2016, there was especially intense discussion in the wake of the massacre at Pulse , an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida. This violent incidentâthe deadliest mass shooting by a single shooter in US historyâwas carried out by Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old Muslim American who had pledged support for the Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) or the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The incidentâs aftermath saw an outpouring of grief for the victims, soul-searching amongst many Muslim public figures and vehemently anti-Muslim rhetoric from several right-wing ideologues (5Pillars 2016; Al Arabiya 2016; BBC 2016; H. Brown 2016; Burke 2016; D. Murray 2016; Yiannopoulos 2016).
But the general thrust of discussions about Islam and homosexuality has not altered significantly, whether in Muslim or non-Muslim contexts. Gay Muslims are still often stereotyped either as victims of a barbaric religion or as deviants who sully the sanctity of Islam. These stereotypes share the underlying assumption that Islam is monolithic and inherently condemns gender pluralism and sexual diversity. And in debates that recycle these stereotypes, rarely do we hear the voices of gay Muslims themselves. Nor are we offered meaningful insights into how they negotiate their lived realities of Islam and sexuality.
In this book, I compare the experiences of gay Muslims in two different national environmentsâMalaysia, where Islam is the majority and official religion, and Britain, where Muslims form a minority of the population. I offer a framework for understanding how the gay Muslims I met navigate Islam and sexuality in their everyday livesâoften in circumstances where both are highly politicised but in different ways. I pay special attention to their âlived religionâ , which is âever-changing, multifaceted, often messyâeven contradictoryâ (McGuire 2008, p. 4). My focus on âlivedâ or âeveryday religionâ does not ignore or dismiss the viewpoints of religious institutions and authorities, but it does mean I âprivilege the experience of [religious] nonexpertsâ (Ammerman 2007, p. 5)âin this case, gay Muslims.
I make their experiences visible but I do not romanticise them. Rather, I contextualise and highlight how they fluctuate over time. For example, a couple of months later, on a Saturday night in June, I met Salleh, Waqqas and Ebrahim again in the Friendly Society. We were invited by a lesbian Muslim acquaintance who was celebrating her birthday there. Salleh, a social worker with a local council, confided in me about his awful dayâhe had to put six children into care. He said they were part of a Muslim family and had been subjected to exorcism rituals that involved getting physically abused. He said, âAs a Muslim who loves Islam, Shanon, I feel like I want to turn to Buddhism or something now.â That was also why, he explained, he had started drinking booze againâlots of it. Before long, Salleh, Ebrahim and Waqqas were drunk, and so were our host and her other friends. After the Friendly Society closed, we made our way to Heaven, another well-known gay nightclub, and Salleh and Ebrahim sang and danced in the streets along the way. At some point, Salleh even wandered into a corner shop, gyrating his hips and warbling for the bemused workers behind the till.
Stories like these are windows into the lives of the gay Muslims I met, which might offer unexpected and unique insights for many readers. But these stories also help to build a larger analysis of how religion and sexuality intersect and inform the creation of âinsidersâ and âoutsidersâ in society. Whom do we decide to accept or reject on the basis of religion and sexuality? And how do gay Muslims experience and adapt Islam to forge a sense of meaning and belonging in the world?
Of course, such concerns are not confined to Islam or Muslims. They concern gay followers of other religions , too. For example, Christian leaders and groups make the headlines in different parts of the world, voicing often vehement opposition to what they see as sexual deviance. Several Anglican, Roman Catholic, Evangelical Christian and Orthodox Jewish leaders and movements staunchly continue to oppose liberalising tendencies on same-sex marriage in the West, especially within their own congregations (e.g., see Kampeas 2015; Luxmoore 2013; Ring 2016; Williams 2015; Zmirak 2015). There are therefore trends across different religious traditions in which influential religious actors condemn sexual outsiders . These condemnations have doctrinal and historical roots in many religions, which some religious actors continue drawing upon to justify the marginalisation, punishment or violent persecution of sexual difference.
Having recognised that Islam does not hold a monopoly on this phenomenon, the question remainsâwhat about the experiences of the gay Muslims who are marginalised by these religious interpretations? How do they conceive of their circumstances? Do they accept their status or try to challenge it in the hopes of making society more inclusive? These questions further suggest that marginalised groups are not preordained or permanent but are formed through social processes involving the manipulation of power by specific actors. Examining these questions from the perspective of the marginalised allows us to see how they respond to these power dynamics under specific conditions. After all, gay Muslims, like many other Muslims, are shaped by and respond to expressions of âIslamâ that are products of complex social dynamics. These expressions of Islam are often individual and collective, and inform varying understandings of gender and sexuality. But I am not merely interested in how religion can be used to justify marginalisationâhow might marginalised groups use religion to adapt to or perhaps challenge their circumstances?
A powerful way of addressing some of these questions is by appreciating peopleâs everyday lives through first-hand experience. This book is therefore based on ethnographic research âI observed and participated in many of the activities that my participants engaged in. I also conducted in-depth interviews with 29 people who identified as gay and Muslimâmen and womenâin both countries and analysed relevant mass media coverage between October 2012 and September 2013. Before and during my research, I met, interacted with and often befriended several gay Muslims who were willing to participate or help. Importantly, I drew upon my own experiences and insights as a gay Muslim, often reflecting upon and grappling with the same questions that I posed to all my participants.
Thisâand my background as a Malaysian who completed undergraduate study in Australia and pursued postgraduate study in Britainâgave me a particular vantage point throughout my research. Mainly, I could empathise with my participants by drawing upon our shared Muslim backgrounds, experiences as sexual minorities and cultural frames of reference in Malaysia and Britain. This does not mean that I have become their mouthpiece or vice versa. In fact, I encountered great diversity among the gay Muslims I interacted with, which indicates the variety of individual expressions of identity in Malaysia and Britain. In both contexts, some participants saw themselves as more strictly âIslamicâ than others, while some expressed themselves as more explicitly âgayâ than others. Their diverse opinions, questions and experiences resonated with me sometimes and challenged me at other timesâall have shaped this book profoundly.
As someone writing about lived experiences of Islam, I do not argue for or against particular interpretations of the religion as âtrueâ or âauthoritativeâ. The question of religious authenticity is beyond the scope of this book. However, I do argue that there are conditions now which increasingly enable individuals to use religion and sexuality as âcultural resourcesâ (Beckford 2000, p. 178, 2001, p. 232) to build personal identity and actively shape religious change. This does not occur in a social or cultural vacuumâagencies and institutions with the power to regulate religious and sexual expressions also influence our trajectories of identity-making and religious change. Shifting social conditions therefore create new opportunities and constraints for us to construct our self-identities. Thus, while this book does not advocate a particular interpretation of Islam, I do devote significant attention (in Ch...