Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature

There is little information about lesbians in the book. In fact, there are only two lesbian voices in the book! A "Balkan Sworn Virgin" and a "Gender-Crossing in Southern Iraq." Beside those, the book is all about the boys, the boys and just some more boys.

I will tell you right now, the last part of the book is my favorite! Why? Because it is packed with stuff from our time. While it was interesting reading about Muslim fags in the Ottoman Empire, it couldn't be compared with the current situations in places like Pakistan. Delicious, Oh my Goodness! And I don't mean that in a sexual way, mind you. But rather it feeds the soul. Hassan Mujtaba, a journalist, hits the road and you can just take big guesses what he finds!

Without giving away the nutrious stories in the book, let me just say that it remains the top on my "best" list... for... ever!


Why are there no negative stars?   August 20, 2002
A. Alto (Woodside, CA United States)
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Honestly, I wish there were negative stars so that I could express my opinion of this book more accurately.

This book should be better listed in the "fiction" category, since so much of it is based on unreliable personal accounts. The whole premise of the book rests upon the old Euro-orientalist myth that "sinful" behavior such as homosexuality runs rampant in the "sinful" realm of Islam, and that the religion of Islam is more tolerant of gays and lesbians than Christianity.

As most Muslims know, such ideas are utter nonsense. After all, a few strict Muslim jurists argue that the death penalty is the proper Islamic punishment prescribed for persons convicted of homosexual intercourse. How many Christian high-priests would today concur with that sentence? (Of parenthetical note, however, is the fact that the Biblical book Leviticus actually recommends that very punishment.)

All things considered, the book represents less an in-depth analysis into homosexuality in Muslim culture than an idealized, perverted fantasy world of these Western-born and bred authors.


Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature.   July 31, 2001
Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA)
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Put aside the homophilism and the jargon, both of which are a bit strong, and what?s left is a fascinating and eye-opening book about a topic much hinted at but little considered systematically. The authors not only have the benefit of knowing homosexuality in many other societies but are well grounded in matters Islamic. Despite the title, they deal predominantly with men; lesbians are little known about.

As with so much else in the sexual realm, Islamic norms differ profoundly from Western ones. The authors establish several points: (1) Islam treats homosexuality far less harshly than does Judaism or Christianity. (2) Sex between men results in part from the segregation of women and in part from the poetic and folk heritage holding that the penetration of a pretty boy is the ultimate in sexual delight. (3) Sex between men is ?frowned upon, but accepted? so long as the participants also marry and have children; and also if they keep quiet about this activity. (4) The key distinction is not hetero- vs. homosexual but active vs. passive; men are expected to seek penetration (with wives, prostitutes, males, animals); the only real shame is attached to serving in the female role. (5) Youths usually serve in the female role and can leave behind this shame by graduating to the male role. (6) The great Muslim emphasis on family life renders homosexuality far less threatening to Muslim societies than to Western ones (Muslim men seeking formally to marry each other remains unimaginable).

In the most startling parts of Islamic Homosexualities, Murray and Roscoe re-interpret important historical developments through the prism of male sex among Muslims. For example, they make a plausible case that sexual attraction was a significant impetus for the development of military slavery throughout the Muslim world. Less persuasively, they speculate that the relaxed Muslim attitude on this subject incited medieval European hostility to homosexuality as a way for those otherwise backward peoples to ?feel superior? to Muslims.

Middle East Quarterly, June 1997


Demonstration of plurality of Muslim societies   July 11, 1999
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Less than a third of this book is about homosexuality in present-day Muslim countries, but a major purpose of the book is to show that the repressiveness sponsored by contemporary "Islamicist fundamentalists" is not the only Muslim approach. Indeed, historically, accommodations to pederasty and to a few gender-variant individuals were made, and The Abode of Islam was far less hostile to same-sex eros and same-sex sex (so long as the insertees were young, effeminate, and/or non-Muslim) than Christendom.

This is not to say that homosexuality is part of the religion. As Roscoe's chapter shows, the area conquered/converted by Muslims had a history of accommodations of pederasty and gender-dichotomized homosexuality (the two types have been mixed in many places with entertainers who have been both young and effeminate). Murray's longest chapter on "the will not to know" about what anyone who looked or thought about what's going on has a wide utility (he specifically links it to Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" "policy").
The chapters on literature -- especially those of Jim Wafer -- push perhaps too hard for a homosexual (rather than homoerotic) readings. The line between "history" and 'anthropology" is blurred, and the contemporary materials are mostly non-Arab, centering on Pakistan.