Living Out Islam
eBook - ePub

Living Out Islam

Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims

Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle

Share book
  1. 275 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Living Out Islam

Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims

Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle

Book details
Book preview
Table of contents
Citations

About This Book

2015 Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award presented by the Stonewall Books Awards of the American Library Association

Muhsin is one of the organizers of Al-Fitra Foundation, a South African support group for lesbian, transgender, and gay Muslims. Islam and homosexuality are seen by many as deeply incompatible. This, according to Muhsin, is why he had to act. “I realized that I’m not alone—these people are going through the very same things that I’m going through. But I’ve managed, because of my in-depth relationship with God, to reconcile the two. I was completely comfortable saying to the world that I’m gay and I’m Muslim. I wanted to help other people to get there. So that’s how I became an activist.” Living Out Islam documents the rarely-heard voices of Muslims who live in secular democratic countries and who are gay, lesbian, and transgender. It weaves original interviews with Muslim activists into a compelling composite picture which showcases the importance of the solidarity of support groups in the effort to change social relationships and achieve justice. This nascent movement is not about being “out” as opposed to being “in the closet.” Rather, as the voices of these activists demonstrate, it is about finding ways to live out Islam with dignity and integrity, reconciling their sexuality and gender with their faith and reclaiming Islam as their own.

Frequently asked questions

How do I cancel my subscription?
Simply head over to the account section in settings and click on “Cancel Subscription” - it’s as simple as that. After you cancel, your membership will stay active for the remainder of the time you’ve paid for. Learn more here.
Can/how do I download books?
At the moment all of our mobile-responsive ePub books are available to download via the app. Most of our PDFs are also available to download and we're working on making the final remaining ones downloadable now. Learn more here.
What is the difference between the pricing plans?
Both plans give you full access to the library and all of Perlego’s features. The only differences are the price and subscription period: With the annual plan you’ll save around 30% compared to 12 months on the monthly plan.
What is Perlego?
We are an online textbook subscription service, where you can get access to an entire online library for less than the price of a single book per month. With over 1 million books across 1000+ topics, we’ve got you covered! Learn more here.
Do you support text-to-speech?
Look out for the read-aloud symbol on your next book to see if you can listen to it. The read-aloud tool reads text aloud for you, highlighting the text as it is being read. You can pause it, speed it up and slow it down. Learn more here.
Is Living Out Islam an online PDF/ePUB?
Yes, you can access Living Out Islam by Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Theologie & Religion & Religion. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
NYU Press
Year
2013
ISBN
9780814724279

1
Engaging Religious Tradition

Remember when you were few and oppressed to the ground
And feared that people would carry you off by force
But God gave you shelter, aiding and strengthening you
And provided for your welfare, that you might give thanks
~Qur’an 8:26
An integral aspect of being a Muslim is protecting the vulnerable and helping the downtrodden. This Islamic teaching is both a spiritual discipline and a political imperative. The Qur’an reminds Muslims to remember when you were few and oppressed.1 Muslims revere the prophets who are sent by God with the theological mission to persuade people to worship the one single God. But the prophets were sent with the political mission to remove oppression. Through the risks they took and the consolation they provided, the Qur’an says, God gave you shelter, aiding and strengthening you and provided for your welfare such that those who dwelt in sorrow are recompensed with joy and those who suffer in alienation are given integrity. All Muslims commemorate the early days of Islam when they were oppressed as a marginalized few, threatened, and vulnerable to persecution. Yet when they became a dominant group, Muslims forgot their former marginalization despite this reminder by the Qur’an. Many Muslims ignore vulnerable minorities within their community like the poor, the youth, and disadvantaged women . . . and also Muslims who are gay, transgender, and lesbian.
To remind their community members of this, lesbian, gay, and transgender Muslims turn to the Qur’an for a symbolic affirmation of their humanity and worth. This is an example of activism in a mode that can be called “engaging religious tradition.” The activists interviewed in this chapter demonstrate strategies to engage the Islamic tradition—especially the Qur’an. Two of them are from South Africa where volunteers have formed support groups in Cape Town and Johannesburg. The third activist comes from the United Kingdom, where several support groups coexist with different but overlapping missions. One activist interviewed is a gay male, another is a transgender male-to-female, and the third is a lesbian female.
In presenting their lives and struggles through intimate interviews, this chapter focuses on how Muslim activists who are lesbian, gay, and transgender confront their religious tradition, find consolation in it, and challenge some of the theological propositions that were deemed normative by many Muslims in the past. Let us listen to the voices of a few activists, from Cape Town and elsewhere, as they engage their Islamic tradition to encourage fresh interpretation around the issues of gender identity and sexual orientation.

Muhsin: The Original Nature of Truth

Muhsin is one of the organizers of the first support group in South Africa for lesbian, transgender, and gay Muslims. Founded in 1998, Al-Fitra Foundation organized monthly get-togethers, lectures on sexuality and spirituality, weekly group discussions, and dhikr circles. It also utilized the Internet, providing spiritual and social counseling that allowed unprecedented anonymity. Muhsin served not just as an organizer, but also as an informal spiritual advisor to those who joined the group or reached out for help. He took on this role due to his Islamic education and profound spiritual orientation. While in his twenties, he dedicated himself to Islamic study and endeavored to earn a degree in Arabic and Islamic Studies at the University of Karachi. He later reflected, “I thought if I threw myself into my religious studies then I would forget about [being gay] or that I would change. . . . So after six years, I realized it didn’t work. I thought more about being gay—what does it mean to be gay and are there more people like me around? I was shocked to find that, yes, in my very own community there are so many. I realized that I’m not alone—these people are going through the very same things that I’m going through. But I’ve managed, because of my in-depth relationship with God, to reconcile the two. I was completely comfortable saying to the world that I’m gay and I’m Muslim. I wanted to help other people to get there. So that’s how I became an activist.”2
Muhsin decided early on to become a religious leader in his community. In explaining his decision to pursue a calling as a religious leader, he reflects, “I think it was very personal and also [due to the fact that] I come from a very religious family.” He clarifies that his family was both religious in the social sense and also intensely spiritual in a more mystical sense. “My grandfather was the imam of the community where I stayed. My mother was the teacher in the madrasa. My father was a spiritual healer. . . . So I come from a fairly spiritual family.” His father passed away when he was twenty-one, before Muhsin could learn the details of his spiritual healing techniques that were granted to him by being in a Sufi order (tariqa). However, important spiritual lessons were passed along; when asked what was the most important thing his father taught him, Muhsin answers without a moment’s hesitation: “Love for mankind.” Muhsin counts his father as an inspiration for him. “My father never had any enemies. He never followed up his debtors. If people failed to pay him, he never worried. He said, ‘We’ll sort it out on the day of judgment.’”
Muhsin never had a chance to talk with his father about being gay but admits, “I think he suspected, because one day I wanted to go and work on the building site with my father—my father used to build houses. But then obviously I didn’t do a good job on the building site, so my father came home and said to my mother, ‘Halima, I think you must keep this one in the kitchen!’” Muhsin notes that homosexual orientation among children and adolescents is largely invisible and hard to articulate, so it is often displayed in gender behavior. Muhsin took up “feminine” activities and hobbies, which his father largely accepted; this Muhsin sees as his insight into a son’s latent homosexuality. “I used to sit and crochet with my mother. . . . A normal father would have discouraged his son from doing really feminine stuff. But he didn’t.” His uncles and aunts on his father’s side of the family were also supportive with an open and tolerant style of Islamic devotion that did not impose strictly gendered behaviors on Muhsin.
His mother was also a religious authority in the community, as a teacher of girls and women at the local madrasa, leading Muhsin to declare—“I was virtually born in a mosque. . . . My mother was teaching already at the mosque by the time I was born. My mother used to carry me to mosque in a basket. So I’ve heard Qur’an since the first day I could hear, and I could memorize Qur’an and hadith since the age of five.” Muhsin’s interest in religion conformed to his family environment steeped in scriptural devotion and spiritual healing, but it also challenged religious authority. He explains, “I grew up with the Qur’an. I think that is why I started, early on, challenging certain things about Islam because it just didn’t make sense to me. . . . Why do I have to play with boys when I like playing with girls? [We children were] not segregated exactly, but it was socially expected that boys only play with boys. So I was teased a lot as a child, called all sorts of names, because I was very effeminate as a child . . . our community was just like that. It didn’t have anything to do with Islam.” On the one hand, his effeminate nature meant staying close to women in the family and absorbing their religious devotion. But on the other hand, it meant risking the social stigma of not being a “normal boy” who would grow up into a “real man.”
Within this tension, Muhsin grew up empowered by Islamic learning to question the customs of his community. His comment that the norms of boys’ and girls’ behavior have nothing to do with Islam but rather reflect community custom shows his critical perspective fueled by studying Islam. His ambition was to become a religious scholar or ‘alim. He seized the opportunity when The Call of Islam, a branch of the Muslim Youth Movement that actively embraced the antiapartheid struggle, sponsored students to pursue madrasa training in Pakistan. The Call of Islam selected Muhsin as one of the six to be trained as imams.3
Intense devotion is a common pattern among transgender, gay, and lesbian Muslims, especially in the period before they acknowledge their inner difference. The devotion is fueled by expectation that prayer will be a “cure,” and out of desperate hope that ritual will keep one distracted from acts that are a “sin.” However, beneath either of these extremes is a spiritual depth in Islam that is real and authentic. As Muhsin expresses it, “Homosexuality is not just about sex. We have very spiritual people among us. I pray five times a day, read the Qur’an, fast, and attend mosque regularly.”4
The very name of the group he helped to establish, Al-Fitra, reveals an emerging theology of liberation among Muslims who are transgender, gay, or lesbian. Fitra is an Arabic term meaning one’s “essential nature.” It is used in the Qur’an to describe how God created all things, distinct in their individuality yet making up a harmonious whole. So set your face toward the moral obligation in a true way, according to the essential nature granted by God, upon which God fashioned people, for there is no changing the creation of God! That is the original and steadfast moral obligation, but most of the people do not understand (Q 30:30). Most Muslim theologians read such a verse dogmatically, to assert that Islam is the “original and steadfast” religion, al-din al-qayyim, which uniquely conforms to the requirements of human nature that is the same for all people. However, lesbian, gay, and transgender Muslims read it differently—though just as literally—to assert that God creates each being with an original nature that cannot be changed, and that the “original and steadfast” religion is to return to God in harmony with one’s own nature. They hear the Qur’an affirm this, even if living and worshiping in accord with their inner nature contradicts the surrounding society, for most of the people do not understand. Most Muslims from these minority groups assert that their sexual orientation and gender identity are essential components of their personality. It is an innate quality they were born with or an unalterable characteristic from childhood before rational cognition.5
Muhsin affirms that he was born with a same-sex sexual orientation and realized he was different from the age of five. “I was sixteen before I realized they called it gay, and came out of the closet years later, at twenty-nine.” His story confirms a common pattern of a disturbing feeling of difference that sets one apart in childhood long before it can be recognized in concepts, articulated in language, or accepted in one’s heart. “Because of my sexuality, I became withdrawn as a teenager. I spent a lot of time crying and resenting myself for who I am. I could have used that time constructively. I lost my teenage years because of that. There is a positive side to it, though. If I had not had that experience, I would not have had the desire to save other teenagers from the agony of resenting themselves for who they are.” For lesbian, gay, and transgender Muslims, then, spiritual growth is about stripping away the accumulated layers of “false self” (imposed by family, society, and religion but through which they survived childhood, adolescence, and often the first phases of adulthood) in order to free a “true self” that had long been buried but through which they can sincerely turn to God. The inner drive to recover this true self from under a family and social life that feels like constant lying is so important that some risk coming into open conflict with their surrounding society. While some keep this search for a true self hidden out of fear, others cannot accept dishonesty and face the difficulty of a bewildered family and hostile community. Muhsin explains that his intense engagement with Islam increased the pressure on him to marry; he relented to this pressure and fathered three children at a young age. But Muhsin relates that by age twenty-eight, “It was very hard, but the conflict within me was so great that I had to tell them the truth.” He tells that his mother fainted, while his wife was shocked.
That truth was very difficult to grasp while he was growing up, even though its existence as part of his character was so deeply rooted as to be unavoidable. In Cape Town’s “Coloured” communities, where most Muslims lived, there was a subculture of effeminate men called moffies who expressed a local variant of gayness. Moffies lived openly and were an accepted part of the community, especially in fashion design and wedding planning. Muhsin recalls their role as he was growing up: “It was an honor to know a moffie, actually, because they’re pretty entertaining. The sexual part of it they never questioned—I guess the community never wanted to know of it.” The element of homosexual orientation was not emphasized, but rather subsumed under the more overt display of gender-inverting behaviors. Moffies were common in preapartheid Cape Town, and persisted even after “Coloured” communities were broken up and resettled. In his local culture there was recognition of different roles focusing on gendered behavior, but there was no explicit acknowledgment that this involved same-sex acts.
However, for Muhsin growing up, same-sex acts were important and had a great impact upon his self-understanding. “I had sexual contact with boys since the age of five, but I thought that these are just playing. . . . ‘Let’s play house-house—you be the mommy and I’ll be the daddy, and we have to go to bed now.’ I didn’t think it was anything bad.” However, by the age of twelve, his childhood was ending and he began to feel attracted to another boy at school, attraction both sexual and psychological with romantic depth to it. When asked if he realized during this experience that he was “different,” Muhsin answered, “Yes, I did realize it then, at age twelve. [I thought], ‘Oh, this is something wrong because this is something that only girls do—girls fall in love and talk about boys.’”
This period of realization coincided with a deepening of Muhsin’s religiosity. When asked how he coped with the slowly dawning realization that he was attracted sexually to boys and drawn in friendship toward girls, he answered that he studied hard and became very religious. “I threw away all my jeans and sweaters and started to wear only kurtas. After age twelve, I became very religious. I was like a hermit. . . . My mother actually encouraged it. She thought I was going to become some great imam.” This withdrawal was actually a new kind of engagement. It allowed Muhsin to connect with his mother, the parent whom he felt was more distant and judging, with a new intensity. “That was the time when I opened up my own madrasa. Actually, my mother had her first heart attack when I was twelve. I was very close to my mother and thought, ‘Oh my God, my mother is going to die and she has so many responsibilities’ . . . she prepared people for the hajj and gave fiqh (Islamic law) classes to adults during the night and during the day she would teach the children. So I took over, and told her, ‘Don’t worry, I will teach the class for the children.’ I had about thirty students. Then after a year, it [grew to] fifty students. . . . [I was] helping children to read the Qur’an and memorize, and also fiqh—about how to pray, make wudu‘ (ablutions) and istinja’ (purification after using the toilet).” Deeper religiosity also allowed Muhsin to interact with other boys in a structured and safe environment.
His love of teaching and his immersion in religious learning deepened when Muhsin attended higher training at the University of Karachi’s program in shari‘a studies. Upon completion of the six-year course, one is named an ‘alim (religious scholar). Muhsin completed four years of the training before returning to South Africa. His time in Karachi was complicated by his relationship with his wife, who was unhappy far from home. It was also complicated because Muhsin fell in love with a man in Karachi, a relationship that was fulfilling but frustrating. Between his wife’s unhappiness and unsettling memories of his love affair, it became difficult to remain in Pakistan to complete his course.
Despite not completing the full course, his studies gave Muhsin high status and respect when he returned to Cape Town. He took up teaching positions at two madrasas, and was known there as mawlana (our master), a title of respect for one of learning and piety. But this increasing social status led to increasing inner tension around his sexual orientation. “They used to call me mawlana at school. I used to hate that title. . . . Then they called me imam (leader) when I was at the other madrasa, and I thought, ‘No, if you guys knew who I am, you would not want to call me imam.’” Despite this tension between how he saw himself and how others in the community saw him, Muhsin poured his heart into teaching, drawing up Arabic syllabi for the schools, organizing plays for children, even cooking for madrasa functions.
Muhsin was walking a delicate line between pursing his religious devotion and accepting his homosexual nature, his inner fitra. It took many years to reconcile his outer community status and his inner life. However, Muhsin eventually decided to divorce his wife and “came out of the closet” as a gay man. As he spoke out about being both a gay man and a pious Muslim, madrasas terminated his employment. He relied upon his own resources to make a living as a tailor and dress designer for weddings. With this independence, he intensified his activist commitments to create an alternative community for lesbian, gay, and transgender Muslims. “What was important for me [to address] is that people were getting sucked into this gay culture and subsequently losing their Islamic identity.”
To understand this concern, one must remember that this was 1996, soon after the fall of apartheid and the very year that South Africa formally adopted its new progressive constitution. Under that new dispensation, prior criminalization of homosexual acts was dramatically lifted. Protection against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation became a basic inalienable right. Mainstream lesbian and gay institutions flourished—in human rights fields and in nightlife venues—and Cape Town earned itself the reputation of being a cosmopolitan city and the “gay capital” of Africa. But beneath all the glitter, gay and lesbian life was predominantly for the “white and prosperous.” In contrast, Muslims (mainly from the “Coloured” and “Asian” communities—as they had been classified under apartheid) were only slowly emerging from the ghettoization imposed upon them. In general, Muslims were exploring cautiously how to participate in the now-open environment of democratic South Africa. Those with secular and professional education took positions in government, the universities, and civil society. Those with less education or more religious loyalty were hesitant, concerned that secular opportunities would destroy communal solidarity and Islamic piety. At the same time, issues like drug use, alcohol abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases like HIV were receiving increasing media attention and generating public fear. Muhsin, like many others, was fearful that in “coming out of the closet,” gay and lesbian Muslims would be swept into a secular and profligate lifestyle that was attractive but dangerous and that ultimately would not lead to a spiritually fulfilling life.
He and the others who first discussed instituting a support group for lesbian, transgender, and gay Muslims wanted to assert their independence and rights as gay and lesbian people, while keeping firm their communal loyalties as Muslims. They intended to foster the internal sense of well-being that can only come through spiritual growth. Muhsin had returned from Pakistan to find that apartheid had fallen, but now “[Muslims were] going to clubs, Muslims were starting to drink, taking drugs, the incidence of HIV among Muslims [was increasing], people [were] sleeping with one another without being moral about it. I just thought that these are not the qualities that the Prophet came with—these are not qualities that make you a Muslim. So I felt that my cause is to help people to understand that they can be Muslim and can be gay and can be moral as well.” He was equally concerned that ignorance and homophobia among Muslim communities was driving people away from their own religion. Gay and lesbian Muslims were turning to secular in...

Table of contents