Muslim Issues
Muslim homosexuality
- 16 December 2010
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Firstly, let’s wake up and smell the ataar., There are Muslims that practice the homosexual life style, whether in private or public. The worse thing to do would be to deny this. How can we help such misguided Muslims individuals when we don't even believe they exist? If the Muslims don't have a dedicated support network to facilitate this matter to help those overcome difficulties and tests of faith, such as this, then we will definitely lose Muslims with this disposition to other 'alternative' lifestyles.
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “Allah Almighty says (in a qudsi hadith), ‘Whenever My bondsman intends to do good but does not do it, it is written as one good act for him; but if he puts it into practice, it is written from ten to seven hundred good deeds in favour of him. When he intends to commit a bad deed but does not actually do it, it is not recorded against him. But if he does it, it is written as only one bad deed”
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Allah has forgiven my Ummah of the whisperings of their souls so long as they do not talk about it or act accordingly.”
If you think that the homosexual lifestyle is practiced and indulged in by only by so-called liberal Muslims, cultural Muslims as they sometimes refer to themselves, you’re absolutely wrong. There are organisations like ‘Imaan’ and ‘Al Fatiha’ in the USA, who believe in living a Muslims life, but also practicing homosexuality. They claim either that the Islamic doctrine does not have any injunctions on homosexual activity or that the commands aren’t valid for today. Before we can address if homosexuality is right or wrong, we have to ask how we actually establish if there is such a thing as ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. As Muslims we believe that God is the most perfect conceivable being entity, and that most conceivable being by definition, He (generic) is perfectly good. Now in His perfection, God’s perfectly good nature issues humans/ humanity with guidelines, otherwise known as commandments to us, which become our moral duties, e.g. you should not steal, you should not eat pork, you should not harm another. What makes these commands morally right is that they are considered based on Gods commands and can be traceable to a direct source emanating from Him and God’s commands are not capricious but flow necessarily out of his perfect nature.
"A Muslim’ is one who submits to the will of God"
This understanding is at the very core of the Islamic belief. The etymology of the word ‘Muslim’ is one who submits to the will of God, the very definition of a Muslim is the one who submits their will, their deeds, their faith and mind into God. The real God, conceived of us real and not hypothetical, has given us real commands to deal with for every real matter of right and wrong.
Qur’an 4:65 “But no, by the Lord, they can have no Faith until they make you (Muhammad) judge in all disputes, and find in their souls no resistance against Your decisions, and accept them with complete submission.”
Qur’an 33:36 “It is not fitting for a Muslim man or woman to have any choice in their affairs when a matter has been decided for them by Allah and His Messenger. They have no option. If anyone disobeys Allah and His Messenger, he is indeed on a wrong Path.”
Qur’an 5:4 “This day those who reject faith give up all hope of your religion. Yet fear them not, fear Me. This day I have perfected your religion and have chosen for you Submission as your religion.”
Qur’an 5:92 “Obey Allah and obey the Messenger, and beware!”
Qur’an 64:12 “So obey Allah, and obey His Messenger (Muhammad).”
Qur’an 24:51 “The only response of the (true) Believers when summoned to Allah and His Messenger in order to judge between them, is no other than this: they say, ‘We hear and we obey.’ Such are successful. Those who obey Allah and His Messenger, fear Allah and do right, such are the victorious. Whoever obeys Allah and His Messenger fears Allah and keeps his duty.”
Qur’an 4:64 “We sent not a messenger but to be obeyed, in accordance with the will of Allah.”
Qur’an 4:115 “If anyone contradicts or opposes the Messenger [not Allah] after guidance has been conveyed to him, and follows a path other than the way, We shall burn him in Hell!”
It’s quite evident from the quranic references that Muslims must obey and submit to Allah’s will and this is how to live a virtuous life. Many Muslims have been infected by this notion that an act is ok if it feels ok. People refer to right and wrong not as a matter of fact, but a matter of taste, there are no objective values as regards of matters of taste, but rather like the claim that ice-cream tastes nice assertion that: , “pistachio ice-cream taste nice to you but not to me”, this type of relativist attitude is extended to moral issues, “ it’s right for you but not right for me”. From the outset, I believe it vital we distinguish our moral obligations from our feelings, or reaction to them. What we need to understand is that our moral obligations to God are independent to our state of feelings of guilt (or not lack thereof) towards them. When we fail to meet his commands, we are morally guilty. If every person in the world was de-sensitised to the extent that they felt that indiscriminate killing of people was morally right, God’s commandment relative to the act for indiscriminate killing would still be the determining factor for its moral value and the act would still have a negative moral value, regardless of people’s feelings on the matter.
“Without God, everything is permitted”
Now it would also follow that if God did not exist then right and wrong would be relative to our own opinions. As the Russian novelist Dostoyevsky said “without God, everything is permitted”. Morals become a by-product of socio-biological evolution that varies from society to society. Then nothing actually has a moral value, including homosexuality. If Muslims want to argue a case for homosexuality, then the best way to do so is from an Atheistic stance. But the problem is that homosexuals don’t want to become atheists and appeal to moral judgments like “it is wrong to discriminate”, inferring then that it is wrong to discriminate against homosexuals. So then there thus seems to be a conceptual problem causing this tension. What I have found, is that many Muslims have submitted their spiritual side to God, but not their minds (not to be misunderstood to suggest there is no freedom of thought within Islam).They just don’t think like a Muslims, someone has submitted their entire being to Islam, including their moral outlook. . How secular/liberal Muslims approach issues of morality is by having a primordial philosophy (that typically be a liberal one) that shapes and subsumes the Islamic framework. No longer is right and wrong determined by God, but by an arbitrary founded principle that sculpts Islam’s morale framework and proceeding from its own understanding of right and wrong. However, what we mentioned before is that morals only make sense if we have God to trace them back too, so to answer if homosexuality is right or wrong we have to appeal to what God has said about the matter. If we solely appeal to relative frameworks without God then the persecutor of homosexuals and advocator of homosexuals would effectively have the same moral value as there are no actual rights and wrongs. With that in mind, if we look at the Quran and Sunnah we find that homosexuality is forbidden, therefore rendering that act morally wrong.
(1) As Muslims we are obligated to do God’s will
(2) We have access to God’s will from Revelation (Quran and Sunnah)
(3) The revelation forbids Homosexual behaviour
(4) Therefore Homosexual behaviour is against his will i.e. wrong.
