Sharia & The Gays

Click here to add Abdullah Hakim Quick as an alert. Click here to remove the Abdullah Hakim Quick alert. Disable alert for Abdullah Hakim Quick. Click here to add southern poverty as an alert. Click here to remove the southern poverty alert. Disable alert for southern poverty. Click here to add anti-Islam as an alert.

• How the Middle East views the entire gender spectrum.
• .
• .

Click here to remove the anti-Islam alert. Disable alert for anti-Islam. Click here to add Florida as an alert.

Click here to remove the Florida alert. Disable alert for Florida.

Click here to add Tommy Robinson as an alert. Click here to remove the Tommy Robinson alert. Disable alert for Tommy Robinson. Click here to add ITV as an alert. Click here to remove the ITV alert. Disable alert for ITV. Click here to add Orlando as an alert. Click here to remove the Orlando alert. Disable alert for Orlando. Click here to add Facebook as an alert. Click here to remove the Facebook alert. Disable alert for Facebook. Click here to add Yahoo as an alert. Click here to remove the Yahoo alert.

Disable alert for Yahoo. Click here to add Twitter as an alert. Click here to remove the Twitter alert. Disable alert for Twitter. Click here to add Manchester as an alert. Click here to remove the Manchester alert. Disable alert for Manchester. Click here to add BBC as an alert. If the law of the land were to prohibit Muslims from carrying out a duty required by the Shariah, such as prayer, or require them to do something clearly forbidden in Islam, such as drinking alcohol, the standard opinion amongst classical Muslim scholars was that Muslims could no longer reside there a second opinion was that they should remain so that the religion of Islam would not vanish there.

Otherwise, Muslims must respect the law of the land.

Their decision to reside in those lands represents their agreement to a contract with the governments ruling them. How do Muslims reconcile the principle of the rule of law with the commands of their sacred scriptures? The Quran echoes the Bible in its tone regarding justice. This question was posed to the most famous scholar of thirteenth-century Cairo and Damascus, for that matter. The answer was no, ruled the scholar. This became the standard position of Muslim scholars regarding punishing people for the Hudud crimes as well as for handling crimes like murder.

In the Hanbali school my school , the position has been clear: But if a family member kills the murderer himself, without permission from the ruler or judge, he can be seriously punished. If someone kills the murderer when the judge has explicitly ordered they not be touched, then the vigilante will themselves be charged with murder. There can be no execution of a murderer, even one whose guilt is known, without permission from the ruling authority these are examples from the Hanafi and Shafi schools of law. Like a DEA agent watching a Keith Richards interview, the guardians of the Shariah judges, concerned scholars, market police, etc.

Thus, despite the endless production of poetry extolling the beauty of young boys, instances of people being punished for Liwat are exceedingly rare I have only come across a few examples in Islamic history.

Of course, Muslim jurists knew that homosexuality existed all around them. People were mortified by eating in public during Ramadan, he complained, but they saw no problem with ubiquitous sodomy. Why this dissonance between the rules of the Shariah and their application? Though some of these crimes were grave threats to public order e. For it is better for the authority to err in mercy than to err in punishment.

That does not mean that the thief would escape punishment.

His crime would simply drop from the Hudud-level theft sariqa to a lower level of theft, which was punishable by a duty of restitution and perhaps a punishment like a year in prison. Since the majority of Sunni schools of law considered Liwat to be an extension of the Hudud crime of Zina, the same procedural safeguards applied.

• The Jerk Magnet (Life at Kingston High Book #1).
• Everything you need to know about being gay in Muslim countries | World news | The Guardian.
• Islamic law and its punishments for homosexuality.
• Concrete Floor Slabs on Grade Subjected to Heavy Loads (Engineering SoundBites).
• The Shariah, Homosexuality & Safeguarding Each Other’s Rights in a Pluralist Society | ImanWire.
• Navigation menu?

If there was any ambiguity, the Hudud punishment would not be applied. But the punishment would be much less severe. Beyond the general caution with which Hudud crimes were punished, there was also a widespread cultural acceptance of same-sex attraction in Muslim societies. Muslim scholars and judges agreed that Liwat was a grievous sin, but it was too widespread not to treat it with humor.

And appreciating male beauty was not unknown to them. A thirteenth-century scholar visiting Cairo from Bukhara would play on his own name and the famously strict criteria that the great Hadith scholar al-Bukhari had for evaluating the soundness of Hadith. That question is very odd if you think about it. There are lots of features of life in America that Islam and Muslims, presumably disapproves of: Yet there is no appreciable evidence that Muslims seek to carry out the Hudud punishments for these acts in the US. In fact, Muslims live around such practices every day in the US without incident.

In classical Islamic civilization, Muslim authorities allowed Zoroastrians to engage in brother-sister marriage, Jews to charge interest, and Christians to cultivate wine and pigs. To the contrary, all evidence seems to be against this. And this assumption provides the basis for the position that any moral or religious disapproval of homosexuality is a dangerous impediment to the LGBTQ community receiving equal rights and enjoying security in a society. In a society filled with diverse, sometimes polar opposing views on religion, politics, lifestyle, etc.

Americans have lived and continue to live side by side with fellow citizens whose beliefs and lifestyles they deplore. Being a believing Muslim is core to my identity, but demanding that everyone else consider my views morally or metaphysically valid would be absurd. In pluralist societies like the US, people have dramatically different beliefs and worldviews. Given all the diversity of belief systems and worldviews held by Americans, it is totally unrealistic to propose eliminating all their aspects of disapproval or condemnation.

Blaming it on Islam? Not so fast

It is much more feasible to emphasize that moral disapproval or religious condemnation cannot be allowed to violate the rule of law that safeguards us all. It only does so if we assume the Rousseau rule to be true and then read the Pulse shooting as proof of that. How many other acts of violence towards gays have been carried out by Muslims in the US? As a Muslim American, I support the right of same-sex couples to have civil marriages according to US law.

Like Muslim judges adjudicating incestuous Zoroastrian marriages, acknowledging that we live in morally and religiously pluralist society does not mean condoning everything done in it. I believe that it is the right of every religious community to advocate for its own vision of sexual propriety. As the Supreme Court held in the historic Obergefell v.