After decades in power, a brutal dictator in a Muslim country is dramatically deposed by a massive popular uprising. Sound familiar? Of course: that's what happened in Egypt and Libya this year, as part of what's known as the Arab Spring. But it's also what happened in Iran in 1979 -- and that should make us pause for a moment.
It's easy to cheer for democratic change and celebrate the downfall of tyrants like Egypt's Hosni Mubarak and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. But what if the end of one kind of oppression brings about the rise of another? As history has shown us time and again, revolutions are often turns for the worse.
Gay people should be especially wary when the forces of religious fundamentalism are involved. And nowhere are those forces stronger today than in the Muslim world. The power behind the Arab Spring came in large part from the coiled energy of Islamic groups that had been suppressed by secular dictatorships; as the old regimes crumble, hard-core Islamists are eager to take their place.
If the past is any guide, that's bad news for gays in the Muslim world. Consider Iran. Under the Shah, Tehran had room for gay nightclubs and artists. That tolerance ended when the ayatollahs took over in the Islamic revolution of 1979 and instituted a fundamentalist form of Quranic law, or Shariah, under which gay sex is punishable by death. (Three Iranian men were hanged for sodomy in September, and hundreds of others have reportedly been executed for gay-related offenses.)
Or consider the explosion of anti-gay violence that followed the end of Saddam Hussein's secular regime in Iraq. The powerful cleric Ali al-Sistani, who had been kept in check by Saddam, issued a 2005 fatwa calling for gay men and lesbians to be killed "in the worst, most severe way of killing." In recent years, according to human-rights groups, scores of Iraqi gays have been abducted and murdered -- often through gruesome torture and mutilation -- by sectarian death squads and even by members of their own families (in so-called "honor killings").
Iraqi authorities have mostly turned a blind eye to this "sexual cleansing." Should we be surprised? After all, Shariah is now officially the law of the land. The 2005 Iraqi constitution includes talk about equal rights for all citizens, but its Article 2 calls Islam "the official religion of the State" and says that "no law that contradicts the established provisions of Islam may be established."
Whether by law (in Iran) or by acceptance of lawlessness (in Iraq), the increased power of Islam in daily life has been a disaster for Muslim gays. Will things be different in the Arab Spring countries?
We have reason to worry. Egypt's constitution also has an Article 2, which says the same thing as Iraq's, that "Islam is the religion of the state," and that "the principal source of legislation is Shariah." Egyptian voters had the chance to change that language in a March referendum, but they chose to keep it.
Mubarak was no friend to gay Egyptians, and in the past decade his government stepped up its persecution. But as the Egyptian-born LGBT scholar Hassan El Menyawi has pointed out, this policy was largely motivated by Mubarek's desire to "shore up [his] Islamic credentials" with a radicalized Egyptian population that was happy to see gays targeted.
A Pew Research Center poll last year found that 82 percent of Egyptian Muslims support stoning people who commit adultery, and 84 percent support the death penalty for Muslims who leave the religion. It's not hard to imagine the same group's attitudes toward homosexuality. Any government that results from Egypt's planned 2012 elections is sure to reflect the country's widespread religious conservatism.
In Libya, as well, the future will almost certainly be less rosy than we'd like. Last month, the world's jubilation at the death of Gaddafi turned sour when graphic evidence emerged of the mob's savagery toward the captured leader. (One video shows Gaddafi being sodomized with a stick.) Libyan liberals, and Western ones, were further disturbed a week later when the head of the transitional government suggested that polygamy should be legalized, in line with Shariah.
Optimists say that the practical concerns of democracy -- getting elected, building coalitions -- will keep radical Islam in check. I think they're being deeply naïve. The expectations raised by the Arab Spring will be hard to live up to; soon, the new governments will start looking for scapegoats and distractions. Gays have always played those roles too well.
By supporting the revolutions in Egypt and Libya, the West has meddled where it didn't belong and unleashed the beast of fundamentalism in those countries, just as it did in Iraq. It's only a matter of time until that beast starts to bite. And when the tyranny of the religious majority starts trampling on sexual minorities -- not to mention women and non-Muslims -- the world's pride in the Arab Spring will turn out to have gone before a very long, very hard fall.
Robert Koehler: Sanity in Exile
Kamran Bokhari and Farid Senzai: The Many Shades of Islamists
Michael Luongo: Gay Crackdowns in Syria
Joe Mirabella: Elton John's Egypt Concert Canceled After He Calls Jesus 'Gay'
By privileging the "Islam" of the extremist homophobes, we are ignoring the millions of LGBT Muslims who proudly identify as both Muslim and LGBT, and we are also ignoring the global Islamic movement for LGBT equality - a movement that, similar to Islamic feminism, is reading the Islamic holy texts without a patriarchal and heteronormative lens and not reading it literally, and instead interpreting it in a "contextualist" manner that appreciates the socio-historical context in which the Qur'an was revealed to humanity.
Let's not forget those progressive Muslims and LGBT Muslims who are deeply religious but also affirming of LGBT equality, just as there are pro-LGBT and also religious Christians and Jews. They deserve our efforts in understanding and supporting them, particularly in their quest for equality amidst the Arab people's current struggle for democracy, social and economic justice, and freedom.
Back in the 1950s to around the 1970s, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, and Afghanistan had been making many important advances in women's rights and democracy. But the US government overthrew Iran's democracy in 1953, supported Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in the 80s (then turned against him in the 90s), supported Mubarak's dictatorship in Egypt up until its demise in 2011, and supported the extremist Mujahideen movement of Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan which spawned al-Qaeda and the Taliban. The West's colonialist and imperialist activities in Muslim countries, its support for brutal dictatorships, and the United States' horrific wars in the Middle East, have all strongly contributed to the rise of fundamentalism in the Muslim world. [end of comment above]
European Christian fundamentalists and imperialists brought many of their homophobic and heteronormative beliefs to the brown and black people they colonized (not to mention racism, imperialist economic exploitation, genocide, etc.).
The only religious texts on Earth that have verses that have been used by modern homophobes as an excuse to discriminate against and persecute homosexuals are the Bible and the Qur'an. The three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have textual and legal traditions that have been used against homosexuals. But again, homosexual relationships were tolerated or accepted and even celebrated historically in many Muslim societies - despite the existence of certain homophobic laws (which were often ignored). The first region on Earth where homophobia became strongly rooted was the West; it then took root in other societies once the West began engaging in its colonial and imperial expansionism in Asia, Africa, the Americas, and the Pacific Islands 500 years ago. [comment continued above]
No longer.
The UN shoud Assure women the vote and the ability to fully participate in Arab Society for a change. Look what it did for The United States - women have had the right to vote for less than a hundred years in America and sice that tim things have gotten progressivey better for ALL minorities more rapidly than in the previous 150.
The biggest problem with Arab Culture is that MEN run everything.
Dear Mr. Lucas, perhaps you are not very familiar with your adopted country's history, but it was a "revolution" the action that gave birth to this nation. Moreover, in the 19th Century, it was a "revolution" - of sorts - the one that kept the country together in the midst of the slavery controversy. In the 20th Century, it was a "revolution" the one that opened the doors for millions of Americans to actively participate in the political process and social transformation of the country. I understand your concerns for the safety of your nation of Israel, and I share those too. But do not be too quick to dismiss the truth of people's revolutions in bringing changes that actually open the doors for more participation in the political processes of the nations.
You're absolutely right. If elections in other arab, muslim and ME countries have shown us anything (see palestine), it's that once any group gains power, they will never hold elections again, for fear that they might lose that power. Eelctions in palestine are nearly 2 years overdue - don't count on seeing them again any time soon. In the mean time, gay and lesbian palestinians continue to flee into israel, risking their lives in the process, because it's safer for them there, than in the palestinian territories where their own families try to kill them with governmental permission.
If you want to know what is really naive, it is thinking that the problem of radical Islam can be solved indefinitely by keeping dictators in power in the middle east.
And turkey, though it is not reported on HP, has an atrocious human rights record - including persecution of minorities, including the gay and lesbian community, more journalists in prison than even communist china, etc. Turkey is only a model for the muslim world in that it is the best of a very bad lot.
What does it mean if under the Shah and Saddam, well-connected gays could dance in nightclubs while dissidents were being tortured? Neither the Iranian revolution nor the Iraqi occupation has ever been held up in the Arab Spring as an example to follow. The countries they want to emulate are Turkey, Lebanon...
And of course democracy sometimes means the majority will crush the minority - it was that way in America, too, from a native Indian point of view, so let's not pretend this is an Arab exception. Democracy, alas, does not guarantee tolerance - although with time it can help to build it. But anyone who thinks that dictatorship does a better job, at least in the short term, should visit a Saudi Arabian jail. Homosexuality carries the death sentence there. While in democratic Turkey it is not only tolerated but legal.
When what they call democracy is anything but, Yes. True democracy includes protections for minorities. What muslim or arab democracy has and enforces laws protecting minorities? Turkey has these laws and it ignores them all the time, imprisoning minorities, assaulting them, banning non-profits that work with them and help them. This is not democracy, just tyranny pretending to be democracy. In lebanon, it is too dangerous for christians to travel to or through muslim areas of the country, even in beirut. Most christian lebanese, when they want to visit Tyre, have to travel there by plane or boat, because traveling there by car or bus is too dangerous for them.
To assume that Egyptians are JUST LIKE Iranians is certainly racist.
The calls were that "oh these revolutions may not necessarily lead to free, secular, stable democracy." And they were immediately shouted down.
It sure is. I suppose its harder to cheer for the downfall of the Iranian Tyrant, the Shah, since we put him there. Remind me why "we" HATE Iran again? Oh yeah - GUILTY CONSCIENCE
Here is a link about life of GLBT people who live in the Middle East. http://gaymiddleeast.com/
Don't worry, Conservative Israelis certainly have their eyes on solving the gay rights problem.
How about we NOT consider Iran?
Why is Iran the only possible example that can be "a guide"? Because it's the easiest?
Does the writer think that Egyptians are idiots, that they cannot see what a mess Iran is? Does he presume that only Westerners from the other side of the planet can see Iran, while people much closer cannot?
Why presume these situations are alike at all? Iran and Egypt have
- different religions (Sunni, not Shia)
- different languages
- different ethnicities
- different histories going back thousands of years
I mean, it's like saying "Well look how badly democracy works in Italy, it cannot possible work in England". Somebody ought to tell him that merely sharing the trappings of religion doesn't make two cultures identical. Really, very simple minded thinking.
Only a few years ago you could be jailed in the USA for being gay or having gay sex, and most Americans supported laws against gays. Why does he think that countries trying to form governments under the threat of a renewed military dictatorship MUST put GAY RIGHTS at the top of their agenda? The "enlightened West" has only recently embraced gay rights, it's not like we have been good towards gays (or women, or blacks, or Jews) for hundreds of years!
And certainly a world more than there is in any Muslim country, including relatively secular Turkey.