HOMOSEXUALITY: An Islamic Perspective | Dr. Shabir Ally

welcome back in the past couple of months we have received quite a few questions from you our viewers on the issue of homosexuality how is homosexuality discussed in the for n as a community how can we promote an inclusive environment for all while still staying true to our beliefs and values joining me is dr. Shapiro le to explore this topic further welcome to the show dr. Shapiro pleasure to be on um so what does the Quran say about homosexuality actually surprisingly there is nothing directly mentioned in the Quran about homosexuality in particular the Quran of course tells us about guarding our private parts except for the illegal matters of expressing our sexual urges at the notable form being in a legally sanctioned marriage according to the quranic rules and dictates and usually the marriage is between a man and a woman so one can infer from this that homosexuality is it seemed replied that this is excluded on in principle there is a verse in the quran which may be interpreted as referring to homosexuality in as a prescriptive verse in surah 4 verses number 15 and 16 where it mentions if if two persons commit fahisha which is like sexual impropriety and here it I mean the two persons could be interpreted as a man and a woman or grammatically it could refer to two men as well and this is not entirely clear but in any case it says that if two persons commit in sexual immorality then they should both be punished but the specific punishment is not mentioned the story of the Prophet lot and his people is often cited as referring to a homosexual behavior but in fact what is given in the Quran is a long list of crimes that these people have committed and for which eventually they were punished homosexual acts only being one of those in the list of crimes of the F Committee so can Muslims say that they have there's someone who identify with na'toth a homosexual orientation per se well the the Quran does not actually going to details about the difference between the orientation and and the intimate act and so to differentiate between the two we must draw on modern views especially scientific views and other discussions about the origins of homosexual orientation so what is recognized widely in modern times is that a person may feel a certain attraction to a person of the same sex in fact we know that in traditional times you just thought of male and female as being dichotomous either male or female now we know that there is a wide range of variation among human beings and some some are very macho male and some are very feminine and in between you have some blurring of the distinctions it seems that the Quran also takes note of this possibility that some people are not attracted to persons of the other sex in in the Quran and 34th chapter some mention is made of those persons to whom a woman made would be allowed to reveal some of the parts of her body or some of the her beauty as the Quran puts it in this verse so for obviously with different degrees of allowability the quran mentions for example children and then it mentions also the male servants who have no need of women and apparently what this might refer to is that in in traditional Muslim societies you have the inner quarters where only the women would what well the women would dwell and strange men are non related to these women would not have access to these inner quarters but they were servants especially now for our discussion male servants who would be allowed and from whom if the women would feel no danger or or any sort of discomfort if they came in and out bringing food or whatever the case is that these were especially male servants who the the Quran now put said those male servants who have no need of women so who were they they could be in ancient times there were you next people who emasculated themselves and more broadly now if we think about what we what we know and try to retroactively back to this Quranic situation it may also refer to persons who were though physically male were were known to not be of any danger to the to the women and particularly if they didn't look at women in a way that made them uncomfortable or they just were known to be men who did not feel any attraction physical attraction to the women so then if we know that this sort of I guess this this idea of home habit of having homosexual orientation was something that has been sort of alluded to then how do we as a Muslim community sort of create a safe space in and foster that you know within our communities and be able to have a proper not proper but a healthy conversation about this topic yeah regarding the regardless of the specific interpretation of that Quranic for us more generally Muslims are like anybody else we we are informed by all modern developments we get a better sense of the world around us we understand human nature a bit better than some of our predecessors did given that understanding and now add that to our general appreciation for Quranic core values such as being kind in our treatment of other human beings understanding human beings as they are appreciating people and not finding faults in others but rather finding faults in ourselves and looking for the good and other people we need to create an XK and an inclusive environment in our community so that people of all shades can come in and feel at home we want our worship spaces to be accessible so that people can come in and comfortably worship God the only thing we would not tolerate within our worship spheres is that kind of activity which takes away from the sanctity of the environment or disturbs the worship ceremonies or something like this but other than that we welcome people to come in as they are and and to sincerely worship God without violating any of the the precepts of our worship services are there any penalties in the Islamic sharia for someone who identifies himself or herself with with a homosexual orientation in in some traditional books it is mentioned that the scholars pondered this issue and partly they did not have anything clear to go on like if we think about the penalty for theft for example this is clearly stated in the Quran that the hand of the thief should be cut if we think about the penalty for adultery this was clearly mentioned in the Quran as as a number of lashes 100 of course the stipulations and when and how to apply this and so on this is a separate discussion but not no specific penalty was mentioned for homosexual acts except for what I mentioned previously about that verse of the Quran which could possibly refer to homosexual acts but there no specific penalty was mentioned though it was said punish them both and that could be two persons who committed some acts of sexual immorality may be short of actual intercourse because if it were intercourse then it would be a hundred lashes but short of that it could be some discretionary punishment so it to be more clear in the Islamic sharia in traditional times the distinction was made between the the had punishments like fixed punishments mentioned in the Quran on the one hand and then on the other hand what is referred to as TAS year or a kind of punishment that is discriminatory it the judge would have wards some kind of punishment as though as a deterrence so that more serious crimes are not contemplated or committed so in short nothing specific is mentioned about that in the Quran now when Muslim scholars pondered this they got hold of a hadith saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad peace be upon him that would prescribe a punishment but this is not deemed to be an authentic narrative from the Prophet peace be upon him it looks like this came more as a result of Muslim scholars thinking about the issue and by analogy they said that the people of lot were or punished in this particular way that their entire city was lifted up by the angel and then thrown over on its head so the penalty by analogy they said was to take the the homosexual person up to a mountain and then throw him over I know that sounds ghastly that that's what they ruled but but this is not something that is in the Quran and it is not any authentic narrative back to the Prophet peace be upon him and Muslims today should not apply such a hurry horrific punishment especially in the case of a person who we we know to be I mean we have to look at it from the other direction and say that persons of homosexual orientation really are going through some severe test in that most other persons would have the illegal outlet for their urges in the form of a recognizable marriage within the Sharia whereas on the other hand a homosexual person would not have the same sort of legal outlet and so we could only say that the the person such a person is going through a tremendous test and if such a person exercises patience and refrain from any sexual immorality then such a person will get the greater degree of reward then let's say a heterosexual person who is also going through some tests and and and maintaining patience in the face of such trials is this how other religions also view homosexuality or do they have a different take on things the book ethical issues and six world religions by Morgan and Lawton traces the views of six religions as title shows on the one hand there are the Eastern religions like Buddhism Hinduism Sikhism and in the Western religions Judaism Islam and Christianity and all of these religions in one way or another prescribe homosexual acts at least in their traditional forms the religions in these traditional and their traditional forms in all of these religions you have some individuals in modern times arguing for a reform or a new way of looking at this but the traditional forms do to keep a very strong hold on the prescription of intimate homosexual acts the strongest we find is what is mentioned in the Bible and thus having a bearing on both the Judaism and Christianity as at least as far as we speak of the Old Testament in in the Old Testament in the Book of Leviticus in chapter 18 verse 20 we find a prescription against male homosexuality and in chapter 20 verse number 13 even the death penalty is prescribed for male homosexual intimate acts and not nothing seems to be mentioned about female homosexuality here in the New Testament and this now is specific to Christianity we find in the book of Romans chapter 1 verse 27 that both male and female homosexual acts are condemned and in in the book first Corinthians in chapter 6 verse number 9 again both forms of homosexual behavior it is given as one of the reasons for excluding a person from from the grace of God thank you very much dr. Shapiro you're welcome that was very helpful in contextualizing the conversation on homosexuality I'm glad that I was able to make sense of such a complex issue thanks

Channel: Let the Quran Speak

Views: 231,921

Keywords: Dr. Shabir Ally, Quran, Muhammad, Islam, Safiyyah Ally, Homosexuality (Quotation Subject), Shabir Ally (Person), Sheikh, Prophet, Koran, Ramadan

Id: VBWD3cr1pC8

Length: 13min 52sec (832 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 12 2015