Sexual perversion such as LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) or LGBTIQA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex) are on an alarming rise in almost every country in the world, despite the fact that no religion allows such acts. But in the United States and the European nations, the trend of homosexuality or lesbianism is not only increasing, it is even getting social approval from a very large segment of the people.
According to PEW Research Center, religious belief continues to be an important factor in opposition to societal acceptance of homosexuality and same-sex marriage.
Overall, the share of Americans who say that homosexuality should be accepted by society has increased from 47 percent to 60 percent over the past decade, while the percentage saying it should be discouraged has fallen from 45 percent to 31 percent.
Yet among those who attend religious services weekly or more, there continues to be slightly more opposition than support for societal acceptance of homosexuality. And when the nearly one-third of Americans who say homosexuality should be discouraged are asked in an open-ended question why they feel this way, by far the most common reason –given by 52 percent – is that homosexuality conflicts with their religious or moral beliefs.
A 62-year-old man said: “My religious background taught me that this was something that was taboo and not accepted.” A 32-year-old woman described her reasons for why homosexuality should be discouraged this way: “It clearly states in the Bible that it goes against God’s teachings”.
Much smaller percentages cite other reasons, such as concerns that homosexuality is bad for the family or bad for children (mentioned by 13 percent), that a man and woman are needed to create life, that it’s not natural, or “just wrong” (10 percent each).
On May 17, 2022 Canada’s International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, a poster, promoted under the auspices of a Canadian university, depicted two Muslim women in headscarves on the verge of kissing. A number of other Canadian universities and high schools allowed the poster to circulate as a way of promoting “diversity in love.” The poster also featured a biracial homosexual couple, a black heterosexual couple, and a couple consisting of a fully-abled and a disabled person, alongside the two Muslim women, with each couple engaging in a romantic act. Many Canadian Muslims were enraged after the release of this poster, and rightfully so considering the appropriation of a patent Muslim symbol (i.e., the hijab) for a cause that is explicitly prohibited in Islam. The Muslim community organized collectively and submitted a petition signed by thousands of individuals, from young students in high school to leaders of Muslim organizations, demanding that the university take down the poster. One Muslim wrote to the university, “Shame on you […] for such an insulting mockery post to my religion”.
Soon after, LGBTQ Nation published an article titled “University pulls image of women in hijabs kissing after Muslim community protests”. The university initially pushed back against the petition, conceding that the topic was “complex and intersectional” but insisting that the poster would remain. The LGBTQ Nation article ended with the following statement: “Muslim culture isn’t inherently anti-gay: the Qur’an says nothing about homosexuality (unlike the Bible); Islamic history is filled with texts openly depicting homosexuality as a beautiful, matter-of-fact thing; and more American Muslims support same-sex marriage than do Christian Evangelicals, Protestants, and Mormons, according to a Pew Research Study”.
The framing of the article as a whole, from its title to its final paragraph, portrays Muslims who objected to the poster as unnecessarily “homophobic”: they were protesting a beautiful thing that their own religious scripture supposedly does not condemn and that their own history has allegedly celebrated for centuries.
First of all, portraying two hijab-wearing females kissing each-other was a direct attack on Islam, while secondly the notorious claim of the LGBTQ Nation saying Qur’an does not prohibit homosexuality is totally wrong. It was an evil attempt of maligning Islam and Muslims.
According to scholars, “Islam’s prohibition of homosexual acts is categorical, and its teachings on gender relations and sexual norms are foundational and inseparable from belief in Allah and His revelation. There is no room in Islam for the new direction in which the liberal culture appears to be dragging the West and, through its coercive ideological apparatus, the world as a whole. It is a culture that denies the natural and divinely ordained norms of union between men and women, erasing sexual differences in favor of a utopian, ideological, anti-religious, and anti-scientific androgyny. One would have to reject Islamic guidance root and branch in order to incorporate this radical gender egalitarianism. This agenda requires, and has already mobilized, rigorous social engineering domestically, as well as neocolonial wars and anti-religious propaganda in the Muslim world in particular and the Global South generally. Muslims must, therefore, establish and advocate for the Islamic paradigm of gender and sexuality over and against modern and postmodern perversions, while also supporting those Muslims who acknowledge orthodox Islamic teachings, but who struggle with same-sex attractions and/or gender dysphoria, in their struggle to live lives of virtue in conformity with the will of Allah and the teachings of Islam”.
They said, “We cannot explore the Islamic paradigm of sexual morality without first understanding where morality itself comes from. A theocentric worldview, such as that of Islam, takes God as the ultimate source of morality. Our very purpose for existence is to uphold God’s command to the best of our ability: “I have not created jinn and humankind but to worship Me.”5 We maintain that God and His Messenger alone are the legislators of what is right and wrong, permitted and prohibited. Allah states in the Qur’an, “It is not for a believer, man or woman, when Allah and His Messenger have decreed a matter that they should have any option in their affair. And whoever disobeys Allah and His Messenger has indeed strayed into a plain error”.
With my limited understanding of the holy Qur’an, I can firmly say, Qur’an strictly prohibits homosexuality. In the holy Qur’an there is detailed description of Prophet Lot (PBUH), where the people of the twin cities transgressed against the bounds of God. According to the Quran, their sins included inhospitality and robbery they hated strangers and robbed travelers, apart from other abuses and rape. It was their sin of sexual misconduct as well which was seen as particularly egregious, with Lot strongly chiding them for approaching men with sexual desire instead of women. Lot told and tried to help them to abandon their sinful ways, but they ridiculed him and threatened to evict him from the cities. Lot prayed to God and begged to be saved from the consequences of their sinful acts.
Then three angels, disguised as handsome males, came to Lot as guests. He grieved the men, as he felt powerlessness to protect them from the people of the cities. The cities’ residents becoming aware of the visitors demanded that Lot surrender his guests to them. Distressed and fearful that they would incur the wrath of God, suggested rather lawful marriage to his daughters as pious and purer alternatives to their unlawful wishes, and perhaps as a source of guidance. But they were unrelenting and replied “thou knowest we have no need of thy daughters: indeed thou knowest quite well what we desire!”, referring to his male guests.
The exegetes Ibn Kathir, Qurtubi and Tabari do not read ‘daughters’ to mean Lot’s literal daughters. They argue that since a prophet is like a father to his nation, Lot was directing the evildoers to turn away from their sins and engage in healthy and pious relationships with the daughters of the nation, i.e. women in general.
The angels then revealed their true identities to Lot and said to him, “We are (here) to deliver thee and thy following, except thy wife: she is of those who lag behind”. They advised Lot to leave the cities during the night, telling him not to look back. Keeping his faith in God, Lot left the cities in the darkness of night, bringing with him his followers and believing family members.
Finally, morning came, and the Decree of God passed whereupon the Quran reads, “We turned (the cities) upside down, and rained down on them brimstones hard as baked clay, spread, layer on layer, – And thus was sealed the fate of the twin cities, falling into destruction and despair and marking the end of the civilizations of Sodom and Gomorrah”.
All schools of Islamic jurisprudence state that homosexual sex is a sin, based in part on the story of Lot. Because the Quran states that Lot berated his people for sexually pursuing men, in addition to attempting to assault strangers, the incident is traditionally seen as demonstrating Islam’s disapproval of both rape and homosexuality. Lot’s struggle with the people of the twin cities is seen as either concerning homosexuality in general or specifically homosexual anal sex. These interpretations have sometimes widened to condemn homosexuality beyond the physical act, including psychological and social dispositions.
May Allah the Almighty protect everyone from such sinful acts of homosexuality.
