Voices of Islam (258 page)

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Scott Sirajul Haqq Kugle

In the name of God, the compassionate One, the One who cares. Praise be to the singular One by whose will diversity was created and to whose unique Oneness all bewildering multiplicity points in signs, for that One promises, ‘‘We will show them [human beings] our signs, upon the horizons and within themselves’’ (Qur’an 41:53).

I became a Muslim in response to the moral challenge of the Qur’an. Over years of study and refl , I was drawn to its vision of human responsibility in the cosmos whose diversity and multiplicity testifi to the unity of the One who creates and sustains. The ethical challenge to form a just community that respects and encourages diversity is a key component of its message. One of the most pressing ethical challenges for adherents of all religions in contemporary times is how to respond to diversity in sexuality and gender identity, that is how they respond to lesbian, gay, and transgendered members of their religion. Muslims are not exempt from this challenge, though many flee it. However, when Muslims face the issues squarely, they fi that the Qur’an offers many resources to creatively, compassionately and caringly address sexuality and gender diversity.

Diversity in the world is a fact. Pluralism is a political response to that fact, asserting that the moral order should promote respect and dignity for all, despite diversity, difference and division. We often associate pluralism with ‘‘secularism,’’ but it is not in principle antagonistic to religion, for Muslims in Indonesia and India have developed a definition of secularism as pluralistic religious devotion. From an Islamic orientation, one can advocate ‘‘tawhidic pluralism,’’ a religious response to diversity that embraces pluralism as a positive moral state, acknowledging that a single God purposefully creates and nurtures a cosmos and humanity characterized by deep diversity. My approach in this chapter is that promoting dignifying respect, mutual responsibility, and reciprocal care for all despite their diversity is the way to witness the oneness of God (
tawhid
).

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ISLAM AND MUSLIMS

Who am I to write this essay? To better help my readers understand what I write, it is important to specify from what position I speak. I am an American Muslim who grew up in a largely Christian environment but has lived and worked many years in Islamic environments (from Muslim majority contexts like Morocco and Pakistan to Muslim minority contexts like Canada and India). I am a scholar of Islamic religion and culture, with a Ph.D. in Religious Studies, basic training in Islamic disciplines of knowledge (
usul al-din
including the Qur’an, Hadith, and
fiqh
), and the ability to read and translate Islamic texts in Arabic, Persian and Urdu. I belong to the often-oppressed and silenced minority of homosexuals who, along with transgendered people, exist in all cultures though in different roles. I myself identify as a gay man who was ‘‘out’’ before I became a Muslim and am still a gay man after having become a Muslim—some things do not change. In my experience, being gay is a deeply embedded element of one’s personal- ity. I find strength in knowing that I am not alone; as more people who are raised as Muslims find the courage to accept their homosexuality and build support and advocacy groups, they are joined by increasing numbers of homosexual women and men who have converted to the faith.
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How I can be both a Muslim and a gay, people often ask—this is both a na¨ıve question and a profound one. Speaking frankly, sexual orientation was simply not an issue in my conversion, which was inspired by the Qur’anic vision of the universal message of all religions. But I tell those who ask that it all depends on what kind of Islam one adopts, for it is no longer a simple matter to be a Muslim, if it ever was. What kind of Muslim am I? The violent and crisis-ridden times we are living in demand that we give a complex answer to that question. I am a non-sectarian Sunni with a progressive approach to religion. I value the Shari‘a for how its ritual worship offers a means to live an ethically engaged life based upon intellectual principles guided toward humane goals. I approach law (
fiqh
) as a follower of Abu Hanifa (d. 767
CE
) and I am a reformist within the Hanafi legal method (
madhhab
) that values rational assessment of traditional sources like hadith reports as essential to the growth and internal renewal of Shari‘a. I approach theology (
kalam
) as an admirer of Maturidi (d. 944
CE
), who forged a middle way between extreme rationalists (like the Mu‘tazila) and dogmatic literalists (like the Hashawis of the past and the Hanbalis and Salafis of the present), for Maturidi never abandoned dialectic between reason and revelation to achieve human justice, as the Sunnis mainly did. I uphold the rational observation of philosophy/science as a student of Ibn Rushd (d. 1198
CE
), who affi

that the natural world is in harmony with revelation and that revelation should be interpreted in ways guided by reason and scientific discovery, not just tradition. I approach ethics (
akhlaq
) as an adherent of Nizam al-Din Awliya (d. 1325
CE
), a Sufi exemplar who taught a delicate balance of love

Sexual Diversity in Islam
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and justice, in which the sincerest way to worship the One who creates all is to care for the vulnerable with selfless humility.

This is who I am, as shaped by my teachers, religious exemplars, and spiritual ancestors in Islam. Because I was not born into a Muslim family, I have had greater need to find ancestors and specify who they are and why I follow them. If any Muslim tries, she or he can clarify ancestors who have shaped her or his personality, religious sensibility, and practical method of Islam. I think this is an ethical necessity, to clearly state who we follow and why, so as not to abdicate responsibility and blindly imitate our parents, friends, or local leaders (
taqlid
). Both reason and sincerity urge us to critically examine our beliefs so that we will not repeat what the Qur’an condemns: ‘‘Surely we found our parents of that persuasion, and only by their footsteps do we guide ourselves!’’ (Qur’an 43:23).

Most people cling to presumptions when it comes to issues of sexuality and gender, and feel that they already know ‘‘what Islam says’’ without refl on whether they based their opinion on patriarchal culture or knowledge of religion. Maturidi eloquently specifies how we know about religion: ‘‘The principle of what we know as religion—for it is necessary that people have a religion upon which they come together and a principle to which they take recourse—has two dimensions, namely transmitted tradition (
sam‘
) and discerning reason (
‘aql
).’’
2
We come to know the real- ity of anything, including religion, through three means: what we sense directly (
‘ayan
), what we learn from others (
akhbar
), and what we deduce by reasoned research (
nazar
). We know of religion mainly through learning from others, for we know the Qur’an by continuous and multiple transmis- sion to us (
tawatur
), vouchsafed by the Prophet Muhammad’s honesty about what he sensed directly; similarly we know of the Prophet’s behavior through hadith reports transmitted by people who witnessed his words and actions, some of which may have reliable transmission but many of which do not. However, we can never reduce religion down to transmitted

tradition, as comforting as that would be to many who seek security in the world from the world. In accepting tradition and especially acting upon it, we need to rely on reason. As Maturidi teaches us, ‘‘The human being is specially endowed with the moral responsibility to manage the affairs of the created world, to meet people’s needs through labor, to seek the most ben- eficial circumstances for their powers of reason and choose what is best for them and while protecting them from what is contrary to this—there is no way to achieve this except by using discernment through reasoned researched into the nature of things.... For reason gives us evidence of the reality of things and leads us to grasp their meaning in the same way we rely upon sight to recognize color, hearing to understand sound, and each sense to perceive the reality we experience. We rely on reason for understanding just like we rely on our senses for perception, and there is

no power but with God.’’
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Voices of Change

Many values we Muslims commonly attribute to Islam do not come from the most highly revered sources of the religion (foremost the Qur’an) but rather from patriarchal culture. Patriarchy is the ideology instituting dominance of elder straight males over all others, specifi lly women of all ages, younger men, and minority males who do not accept patriarchal roles that reinforce masculine power. As observed by Islamic feminists, patriarchy existed before the advent of the Qur’an and the Prophet Muhammad’s exam- ple, which deeply challenged it. In later generations after the Prophet’s death, Muslims built the Shari‘a in ways that inscribed patriarchal values deep into Islamic culture, compromising the Qur’an’s ethical voice. Because of this, Muslims for many centuries did not seriously consider either the issue of women’s equality with men, did not allow dignified roles for homosexual persons or countenance transgendered persons in Muslim communities. Rapid changes in society under the impact of modernity, along with advances in scientifi knowledge in the fields of psychology, sociology, and genetic biology, make reassessing the classical Shari‘a a vital necessity. In addition, the voices of previously marginalized minorities, like women, lesbian, gay, and transgendered Muslims, insist on justice after such a long imposed silence. Previously marginalized groups offer important ethical insights into non-patriarchal interpretations of Islamic scripture, insights not available to those who have not suffered similar experiences of existential exclusion.

The goal of this chapter is to show that homosexual and transgendered Muslims exist, that they speak in a voice which offers a constructive and reformist critique of classical Islamic thought, and that Islamic theology has previously untapped resources to comprehend them and give them a dignified role in contemporary Islamic communities.
4
As Maturidi reminds us above, our sincere practice of Islam depends upon constant application of ‘‘discernment through reasoned research into the nature of things.’’ Such research may change our view of religion depending on new developments in politics, social organization, and scientifi understanding. All these things impact our view of sexuality and homosexuality, and demand that we apply reason to scripture and traditional custom.

DIVERSITY AND SEXUALITY

The Qur’an assesses diversity as a positive reality in the created nature of things. Diversity and multiplicity in the cosmos, in humanity, and between social groups is an integral part of God’s creative will. It is an indispensable challenge to moral systems. Islamic feminists have explored the Qur’anic description of gender, such as ‘‘O people, stay aware of your Lord who cre- ated you all from a single self and created from it its mate and spread from those two many men and women’’ (Qur’an 4:1). The creation of women was not a mistake, a lessening of the moral standard, or a faulty copying of

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the perfect male, all of which were suggested by later patriarchal interpreta- tions of Islam encoded in the Shari‘a.
5
Diversity in gender is intimately related to diversity in human communities between tribes, sects, nations, and civilizations: ‘‘O people, We created you all from a male and female and made you into different communities and different tribes, so that you should come to know one another, acknowledging that the most noble among you is the one most aware of Allah’’ (Qur’an 49:13). There is a moral purpose behind the single God’s creation of confl cting human types: it challenges us to restrain our egoistic aggrandizement, practice ethical compassion toward others, protect the vulnerable in their socially-defi difference, and through this stay conscious of God’s presence. ‘‘If God had willed, God would have made you one single community, but rather God brings whomever God wills within divine compassion—yet the unjust oppressors have no guardian and no helper’’ (Qur’an 42:8).

Our human diversity that is so often a cause for exclusion and violence, is actually God’s way of challenging us to rise up to the demands of justice beyond the limitation of our individual egoism and communal chauvinism. Deep diversity confronts us with a bewildering pattern of differentiation. Yet difference too often leads us to exclude others in hopes of building a firm community or with ambition to create a hierarchy of power to assert some moral order. However, the Qur’an warns us against going to extremes to exclude others, reminding us that not a single life is dispensable: ‘‘Whoever kills an innocent life, it is as if he had killed all of humanity. And whoever gives life to one, it is as if he had revived all of humanity. We have sent them our prophets with clear teaching, but subsequently many of them have gone willfully astray’’ (Qur’an 5:32). All people, despite their apparent and real differences, are part of a greater whole; safeguarding the dignity of each is essential to achieving one’s own dignity and upholding the rights of each is integral to securing justice for oneself.

The diversity of human communities comes not just from appearance, which our society’s racial ideology commonly associates with skin color (for Muslim societies are not immune from racism or the institution of slavery), but also from the subtler hues of language and shades of belief. The Qur’an says, ‘‘One of God’s signs is the creation of the heavens and the earth and the diversity of your tongues and your colors, in which there are signs for those who know’’ (Qur’an 30:22). The Qur’anic term for ‘‘color,’’ in the richness of Arabic metaphors, could refer not just to visible hues, but also to other different sensations like the ‘‘taste’’ of different dishes of food or aromas.
6
Our diversity as human beings goes much deeper than the color of the skin or surface appearance but rather extends into the inner core of our personalities where language, concepts, beliefs and experiences lie. With such a radically positive assessment of human diversity on the episte- mological and ethical levels, one can justifiably wonder whether the Qur’an addresses diversity in sexuality as well.