Reaching out - gays and Islam
While the governments of the world agreed that Aids is the biggest threat to their future economic and political livelihood, few of them had the will to apply more pressure on multinational corporations and the drugs and pharmaceutical cartels to lower the price of medicines used to combat the spread of HIV or to retard the development of Aids.
Even fewer of them had the guts to address the root cause of the spread of the disease itself - the obvious lack of knowledge of ourselves, our bodies and our sexuality.
But what made matters even worse was the fact that some governments went out of their way to demonise and isolate certain quarters and groups that have every right to participate in the conference itself.
It was particularly disheartening to hear that representatives of Malaysia and Pakistan in particular, (CNN, June 26) were adamant not to allow representatives of gay and lesbian organisations to attend the talks and to voice their opinions.
Homosexuality alien?
Although it cannot be denied that the CNN report was biased in its own way and was clearly trying to push its own anti-Muslim agenda (1), it does not alter the fact that Malaysia did play a role in trying to stop gay rights activists from taking part in the discussions.
(Interestingly, the Health Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran was far more pragmatic when he spoke of the need to control the spread of HIV among drug users through harm reduction programmes like needle exchange projects and methadone replacement therapy.)
One does not have to go very far to see the irony and idiocy behind this situation. Neither Pakistan nor Malaysia have proven to be immune to the spread of Aids in any way.
Nor can we claim that homosexuality is an alien practice in our societies when there is ample historical evidence to the contrary. (Anyone who doubts this should just walk to the bookshop and read the Hikayat Panji Semerang (2)).
Yet, in both countries, we see the rise of conservative religious leaders and movements who claim that Aids is not their problem for the simple reason that their own religious solution should suffice.
For those of the Pharisees camp, all talk of sexuality and sexual lifestyles is tantamount to 'encouraging free sex'. Talk of preventative measures to curb the spread of Aids - such as using condoms and engaging is safe sex - is regarded as a license to indulge in decadence and debauchery. (3)
Straight Muslims, gay Muslims
To utter such essentialist claims does not, and cannot, alter the fact that Muslim society is not different from any other society in the world today. And like any other society, Muslim society has its own share of those who have been relegated to the margins.
Muslim society is a complex, multifarious and internally-differentiated phenomenon with plastic and porous boundaries. There are straight Muslims and there happen to be gay Muslims as well.
Muslim society includes certain gender minorities as it does certain economically and politically marginalised groupings. They are, in a sense, the 'Other' of Islam - but they remain the internal other nonetheless, trapped in an oppositional dialectic that confines them to the status as the outsider within.
Here it is important to distinguish between Islam per se and the lived experience of Islam as a culture and civilisation.
Islam, as the Islamists are wont to claim, may well be founded on a theological discourse of absolutes, but the daily experience of living Islam is always less static, more confused and hybrid. What is more, much of what passes as 'Islamic' may in fact be un-Islamic in a very fundamental way.(4)
PAS and the pondans
Now, the point of this article is not to discuss the complexities of Aids prevention. That is too complex a question to be addressed in so short a space of time. Nor do I want to raise the thorny question of the status of gays and lesbians in context of theological discourse. That would get us into a bout with the Ulama and I am already in enough trouble as it is.
Rather, what I would like to do is ask a number of simple questions. Firstly, how alien are these 'aliens' in Islam? Despite the sustained polemics against gays and lesbians who have, for centuries, been depicted as marginal outsiders to the Muslim community, their presence remains.
(Some of you may recall that at the peak of the 1998 political crisis, PAS even toyed with the idea of opening its membership to the so-called pondan community. This, if anything, is proof that even if the Ulama can't stand this constituency, they have been forced to admit that it exists).
The second question I would like to raise is if we can, via recourse to the same Islamist discourse that has alienated and marginalised these constituencies to the periphery, find the discursive resources to bring them back within the fold of sameness and equal identity.
By this I mean not only the recognition of gays and lesbians as human subjects, but more importantly as equal human subjects endowed with moral agency and rights. My argument is that as long as this is not done, we cannot claim that religion may serve as a basis of any struggle for human rights and democracy.
Furthermore, failure to do so would undermine Islam's (and any other religion's) claim to universal love, fraternity, humanity, etc.
The Sufi and the boy
Though most of us would not believe it when looking at our Ulama today, Islam and Islamic civilisation has had a long history of dealing with matters of sexuality.
That Islam can deal with questions of sexuality is of no great surprise for those who have even a modicum of understanding of what it is. Islam has never presented sexuality as a sin or as something essentially corrupting and evil.
Indeed, as Abdelwahab Bouhdiba has argued in his book Sexuality in Islam, the religion of Islam views the sexual act itself as inherently pure and good - indeed commendable. In Islam, the act of sexual union itself is a symbolic re-enactment of the union between the Self and God.
It is through the sexual act and a sexual life that we come to recognise ourselves through the Other - and love for another is already a step towards love for God, the creator of all things. As Bouhdiba puts it, 'sexuality is a transcending of solitude. It is a call to others, even at a carnal level.'
What is more, Muslim writers, mystics (Sufis) and philosophers have often pondered over the question of sexuality - with all its inherent complexities- as a metaphor for the human condition itself.
In the vast corpus of Islamic mystical writings by the Sufis, we often encounter references to sex, sexuality and sexual relations as part of a larger cosmological and philosophical framework that tries to locate the human subject within the grander scheme of things.
Interestingly enough, Sufi literature is also full of references to homosexuality and homosexual relations. The poems of the famous Sufi poet, Sa'adi, for instance, are littered with references to beautiful boys and young men, whose dark eyes and curling locks are meant to serve as both an invitation and call to transcendence.
Selfless love
One story that comes to mind is that of the old Sheikh and the young boy who meet in the hammam (sauna). In the story the wise old sheikh is struck by the beauty of the young man he sees in the baths.
Awestruck by the sight of the boy, the sheikh falls helplessly in love with him and begins to devote his life to the object of his desire. The old Sufi even goes as far as searching the floor of the baths for traces of the hair of the young man who has been shaved, in his attempt to get closer to him.
But the youth scorns the advances of the older lover, who in turn is heartbroken and dies.
Much later, the youth has a dream where he realises that the love of the older man was the purest form of love he could ever have attained, for the simple reason that it was a form of selfless love born out of pure devotion.
(This, of course, is meant to represent the purest love of God - love that is born out of sheer selflessness and adoration). The boy regrets his callous deed, changes his ways and repents for his sin by fighting against his own pride and vanity. This way, he too will learn to conquer his all-consuming self and come to love the Other.
Now, what is interesting about this Sufi tale is that it obviously uses the theme of homosexual attraction as the leitmotif or backdrop against which the entire drama and philosophical argument is played out.
Yet it remains silent over the question of homosexuality itself, and if anything, the story shows just how prevalent the practice was in those times. Once again, we encounter the difference between the message of Islam per se and the actual lived experience of Muslims.
The story tries to communicate the message of Islam via a medium that could be understood by Muslims whose lives and life-styles may not have been in accordance with the teachings of Islam in toto, but were nonetheless not excluded from the community.
Differences there undoubtedly were, but those who were different were not regarded as outsiders, permanently cast beyond the pale of Islam. Indeed, as the Sufis would argue, there cannot be any outsiders to Islam for the simple reason that there is always that inclusionary factor that redeems and saves us all - God.
God's endless oceans
The Sufis often talk of God's 'endless oceans' of love. In the context of today's jaded realities, this may sound like a little too much like the hip rhetoric of the swinging 1960s - but there is, in fact, a deeper theological point that is being emphasised.
Muslims begin practically every important act they do with the phrase Bismillahi Rahman-i Rahim (In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful). Note that 'God' is mentioned along with 'Compassion' and 'Mercy'.
Indeed, Compassion and Mercy are among the ninety-nine names of God in Islam, and God, for Muslims, is Compassion and Mercy itself. (God is also Love, Peace and Beauty, among other things).
Identifying God with mercy and compassion is not merely a case of forming a chain of equivalences. Muslims do not equate God with mercy (for that would imply that the two are distinct), but rather argue that God is mercy itself.
The claim here is a universal one as it is absolute. God's mercy is universal and absolute as God is universal and absolute.
Now, if we were to begin from this premise then it would follow from that noone is excluded from or denied this mercy and compassion of God. To suggest that anyone can fall outside the all-encompassing Love of God is to suggest that there is a limit to God's love; which in turn implies that there is a limit to God itself. (And that, of course, is tantamount to heresy.)
So, for the Ulama to claim that some groupings in society have fallen beyond the pale of Islam and that they need to be cast outside the margins of the community is both a contradiction in terms as it is an affront to the message of Islam itself.
Islam may have certain restrictions and injunctions against the practices of some of these communities and individuals, but at no point does it expel them from the community in toto for good.
Why, even in cases of war, Muslims are bound by an adab or ethics of disagreement which prevents us from radically exteriorising the people we are in conflict with.(5)
Ethics of communication
I would argue that this universalist outlook can and should be used as a basis for Islamic ethics of difference and accommodation that allows us to engage with gender groupings that have been relegated to the margins of the Muslim community.
It is upon the universalist principles of Islam that a de-constructive reading of the relationship between the inside and the outside, the Self and the Other within Islam can be based.
Now, there will, of course, be those who disagree with me (and I am happy to accept their objections as long as they are couched in terms of a respectful ethics of disagreement). But before anyone jumps the gun and accuses me of trying to justify what Islam (and other religions) may regard as haram or forbidden, allow me to reiterate the point of this article.
What I have been trying to say is that Muslims (like everyone else) should learn to differentiate between their religion per se and the actual lived realities of the communities that belong to that faith.
Furthermore, we also need to differentiate between the actors who do certain things which Islam regards as unlawful and the act itself. What needs to be developed and cultivated at this stage is an ethics of communication and recognition which allows us to encounter and deal with differences without necessarily consigning it to the negative register of the 'alien' or 'outsider'.
We need to be able to accept the fact that within this Muslim community of ours there exist Muslims who are gay, and for whom their sexual identity is part of who and what they are. To deny their sexuality is one thing, but to deny them membership of the same faith is to compound the problem even more.
Hetereosexist prejudices
Why is this so important? Because the Other is always the constitutive other to ourselves, whose presence and existence is a precondition for our own sense of self-identity. (Knowing who we are and what we are is also dependent on knowing who and what we are not.)
But for us (in the Muslim world and elsewhere) to be comfortable with ourselves, we also need to be able to transcend the oppositional dialectics that has transformed Islam from an inclusivist way of life into what Ebrahim Moosa has called the 'ideological hate machine' that continues to frame the Other in terms of the negative threat, enemy, contaminant, etc.
Coming to terms with the internal differences within our community is the first step to coming to terms with differences elsewhere. For how can we Muslims talk of a 'dialogue among civilisations' if we cannot even open the way for dialogue with others within our own civilisation?
Both in the past and in the present (and long into the future no doubt), gays, lesbians and other gender minorities will continue to exist in the Muslim community as they have elsewhere. They remain the other side of Islam and they belong to that Other Malaysia we often speak about but never acknowledge.
In the context of a society like Malaysia's, coming to terms with broad spectrum of gender differences is one way of giving recognition to a constituency that has (in the past at least) been one of the principle victims of HIV/Aids. (This is obviously not true any longer as HIV/Aids is now spreading faster among heterosexuals, including homophobic ones.)
Accepting the fact that such pluralism exists in our midst is also a way for us to come to terms with the differences within ourselves and how these differences have been founded upon heterosexist prejudices and gender biases (often couched in terms of a religious discourse of purity and authenticity).
And as Julia Kristeva has argued, it is only through coming to terms with the Other within, that we cease to be strangers to ourselves.
Endnotes:
(1) The CNN report claimed that Malaysia was instrumental in trying to block the entry of gay rights activists to the meeting at the UN. What it failed to note was that the posture taken by Malaysia was not unique, and that it was supported by numerous conservative groupings from the Vatican, the (not so liberal) United States and even Cuba.
By doing so it effectively cast Malaysia, along with other Muslim countries, in the role of the 'bad guys' who were intolerant and repressive. Malaysia was forced to take this public stand because it was (till June 23) the current chair of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).
But this does not imply that all the member states of the OIC were openly against the inclusion of gays and lesbians in the debate. Indonesia, for instance, remained neutral over the issue. But as always, the Arab countries wielded much more influence within the OIC and in the end, it was the Arab states that forced the OIC to take an exclusionary stance.
Malaysia, as the chair of the OIC then, was forced to speak on behalf of the group. It should also be noted that Malaysia's representative at the UN meeting was a woman who, according to some of those present, 'did a sterling job of her work' and was generally respected by the other participants, including the NGOs.
The bottom line, however, is that once Aids/HIV comes to an international forum like the UN, the work of activists and healthcare workers goes out of the window. In such cases, it is usually diplomats (most of whom have no knowledge of medicine or the realities of activism on the ground) who handle the negotiations and it is they who have to represent the political interests of their countries.
(2) The Hikayat Panji Semerang tells the story of the Javanese hero Panji and his exploits in the ancient Malay archipelago. The tale is littered with numerous moral vignettes, but also numerous references to cinta sejenis between same-sex couples. There is a fairly reliable edition by Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka (DBP).
(3) It is interesting to note that this conservative attitude is not exactly new in this hypocritical society of ours. In fact, it was already on the rise from the early 1970s.
Though the author has said this before, it its worth reminding ourselves of the fact that when the Minister for Education suggested that Malaysian students being sent abroad in the 1970s should be taught how to use condoms in order to prevent unwanted pregnancies or catching venereal diseases, he was attacked by a certain Islamist youth leader named Anwar Ibrahim, who accused him of promoting 'free sex' among the students.
(4) Here the example of the Taj Mahal comes to mind. Built by the Moghul Emperor Shah Jahan in the memory of his beloved Empress Mumtaz Mahal, the Taj Mahal has been regarded as a classic example of Muslim/Islamic architecture.
But we often forget that the Taj Mahal contradicts one of the most basic injunctions in Islam, which is the prohibition on building vainglorious monuments to commemorate one's life after one's death.
In this respect, the Taj Mahal may borrow from the rich repertoire of Islamic images, symbols and codes from the Islamicate register, but it remains (conceptually at least) un-Islamic. Yet despite this fact, millions of Muslims still refer to it as an example of Islamic art and civilisation at its highest stage of development.
(5) It is interesting to note that even in cases of all-out conflict, Muslims are nonetheless obliged to act and think in terms of an adab (ethics) of respectful opposition. The Muslim is reminded that although he/she may be in conflict with another, it is the difference of belief/practice that constitutes the basis of that difference.
The Other remains a human subject endowed with full humanity and the rights that come with it. That is why Muslims cannot perpetrate acts of cruelty or wanton violence against their opponents (even burning their crops and killing their animals in haram (forbidden)).
In fact, Muslims are not even allowed to indulge in lies and propaganda against their foes that dehumanise or demonise the other, for the simple reason that they are bound to respect the common humanity they share, even with their enemies.
What this in fact entails is a point of view which sees the Other as someone who is deserving of respect and equal treatment even if we happen to disagree with him/them. Confrontation and conflict remain centred on differences of belief and practice, but it never goes as far as denying the common humanity we share with our opponents.
