����������� The web page is unadorned, draped in a martyr�s green, and the title boldly proclaims a putative oxymoron: �Queer Jihad.�� �Queer Jihad is the queer Muslim struggle for acceptance: first, the struggle [(jihad in Arabic)] to accept ourselves as being exactly the way Allah has created us to be; and secondly, the struggle for acceptance and tolerance among Muslims in general.����

Its mission statement reads as a tragicomedy, beckoning �queer people to remain true to Islam� in the face of reams of hate mail promising the gore of hell and expressing the pious desire to speed homosexuals to their final destination.� Its founder Sulayman X has for unspecified reasons taken down the extensive email archives that have drowned in believer bile during the three years of Queer Jihad�s existence.� But a message board supplanting the archives still bears the imprint of unquestionable dogmas and uncompromising opposition.

Message headers in all caps shout that �YOU PEOPLE ARE GOING ASTRAY!�, �MAY YOU BURN IN THE FIRES OF HELL,� �and �U R DISGUSTING!!!!!!!!�� The poster disgusted by the reality of Muslim homosexuals expresses little disgust at murder: �IF I OR ANY OTHER MUSLIM COMES ACROSS U U WILL DIE A PAINFUL DEATH!!!!!!!!!!!��

Among the level-headed postings, a na�ve Australian convert expresses perplexity at the hysteria: �I find this really disgusting, knowing that muslim brothers and sisters are out there making death threats to other Muslims! You should be helping these Queer Jihad Muslims learn the truth, if homosexuality is wrong!�

The truth.� Are the bulletin board purveyors of wrath merely misinterpreting Islam, muddling its �pristine� teachings with a frightful totalitarianism?� Or is Islam a homophobic religion par excellence?��

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Sulayman X, a gay convert whose Sufi interpretation of Islam exalts the qualities of divine love and mysticism, answers to the latter with a qualified negative.� While ambivalence can be found throughout his writings on Queer Jihad, he still holds a sense of gratitude for Islam that baffles: �Fueled by Islam, I turned a crooked life into a straighter line, got an education, roamed the world, made something of myself.�� The parallels between Sulayman�s troubled life of poverty and drugs with Malcolm X�s brought him into Islam.�� His subsequent self-transformation shaped his perspective that Islam gives �wonderful things, in spite of itself.��

� That parallelism even envelops his view of gays as another oppressed minority, no more responsible for their inborn desires than the amount of melanin in their skin. Sulayman changed his Muslim last name from Muhammad to X in protest of the mainstream Muslim hatred of homosexuals, but in one of the many ironies of Queer Jihad, he fully acknowledges the likelihood that his role model� (an orthodox Muslim in his final days) would not have had a jot of sympathy.�����

� It's not hard to imagine what Malcolm X would say of me�. He would say --�as the more reasonable correspondents say --�that Allah destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah because of homosexuality, and consequently, homosexuality is a sin. And he might quote one of the sayings of the Prophet, to the effect that, �if you come upon a homosexual, you should kill him� or one of the other popular sayings which call for homosexuals to be thrown off the tops of high buildings.�

����������� Sulayman X doesn�t intend to take skydiving lessons at the behest of the �straight devils�, so he takes the next closest precipitous leap.�� Lethal homophobia is diametrically opposed to �true� Islam.� Under the debris of shari�ah law, past the tangles of �spurious� sayings of the Prophet, there exists a radiant, antiseptic Islam, waiting for exegetical discovery.� Or so the fable goes.

����������� As a matter of exegesis, Sulayman X doesn�t have the benefit of a liberal Christian or Jew reinterpreting the Bible as a manmade book, divinely inspired.� Islam is bibliolatrous- taking the entire contents of the Qur�an as verbatim words of Allah Almighty.� Regardless of how untenable that position may be in the face of evolution, cosmology, and higher biblical criticism inter alia, some Muslim reformers still attempt harmonize it with present day standards of humaneness and reasonableness.� The supreme difficulty in this is that the veneer of the Qur�anic �miracle� must remain undisturbed.�� Retrogressive beliefs propagated within its covers can�t be unceremoniously jettisoned on the basis of their transparent human origin, but rather a more circuitous understanding of the underlying text found.��

Nowhere is this more in evidence than in Sulayman�s tortured reinterpretation of the story of Sodom- blatantly inspired by Judeo-Christian reinterpretations of �homosexuality� in the Bible.� Writing for Outcast Magazine, he lays bare his perhaps anachronistic modus operandi: �A few things seem clear, and are generally accepted as fact by the Muslim world: the people of Sodom were either homosexual, or heterosexual men experimenting with homosexuality - 'Do you leave off your natural affection for women to pursue your lust for men?' as the Qur'an asks. Homosexuals don't have a natural affection for women, so it would seem likely that something else is going on. The people of Sodom were also known to be bandits and thieves and rapists - of straight men and young boys - who did not honour the hospitality laws of their society.�

Sulayman is correct in asserting that the Qur�an condemns the �people of the Prophet Lot� for more than homosexual activity.� But the story of Lot is relayed in more than one instance in the Qur�an, and with different variations.�

In one short five-verse summation of the story of Sodom those �other� wrongdoings (proposed by Sulayman as alternative �sins� bringing Sodom�s destruction) are elided, and the passage focuses exclusively on the Sodomites� sexual behavior and rejection of Lot�s indictment: �Would ye really approach men in your lusts rather than women? Nay, ye are a people (grossly) ignorant!� (27:55)� If thievery and rape were the primary offenses, it�s rather strange that they don�t receive direct mention in the restatement.�

This is but the first of many possible prima facie objections.� For it isn�t beyond the hypothetical power of �Allah� to explicitly condemn the Sodomites for sex with unwilling partners rather than for reversing the �natural� roles of male and female.� If �there is no power and strength save in Allah,� we could expect the Most Powerful, Most Merciful to spare future generations bloody confusion by also revealing that he created some humans as homosexuals.� But �Allah knows best,� has to know best, even if Sulayman X knows better by virtue of his research into modern psychology and biology.�

Sulayman nevertheless manages to second-guess �Allah,� the supreme arbitrator of �morality.�� The Qur�an and ahadith (traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) allow rape (as far as the modern definition of heterosexual rape is concerned) in some situations.� A slave master (such as the Prophet Muhammad) is granted such a right with his female slaves by a verse that says that �those whom the right hand possess� (4:24) are lawful for intercourse.� In the ahadith, there are also narrations that suggest the Prophet Muhammad permitted early Muslims to have sex with female war captives, as the Prophet is asked only whether it is permissible to practice coitus interruptus on the prisoners they plan to ransom back (Muwatta 29.32.95).� Sulayman�s modern-day scruples against rape hardly translate into the Prophet of ahadith having taken action to forbid it against slaves and captives.���

And if Sulayman would like to read pedophilia into the story of Sodom, even though there is no explicit mention, there is the mighty problem of the most respected books of Sunni hadith purporting that the Prophet Muhammad consummated his marriage to his wife �Aisha when she was nine years old (Sahih Bukhari 7.88).� Even if such ahadith are fabrications, their widespread acceptance as genuine indicates Islam didn�t convey any teaching in the Qur�an that explicitly forbade a case of what would now be considered pedophilia.� In light of the Islamic acceptance of behaviors (or lack of decisive comment) that would equally be condemned by the logic of Sulayman�s interpretation, his explanation for the destruction of Sodom remains underwhelming.���

The abiding anachronism throughout Sulayman X�s interpretations is that the author(s) of the Qur�an gives no indication that he is aware �homosexuals don�t have a natural affection for women.�� Sulayman merely assumes that Allah is the author and knows this since he is the creator of homosexuals.�� Not having a direct basis in the Qur�an for his assertion that Sodom was destroyed for rape, however, he seeks it in linguistics and ethnography, directing the charge of anachronism towards mainstream Muslims.�� �An Arabic scholar would know, for example, the difference between a �gay man� and a �straight man who enjoys raping young boys�. It�s this latter category that many references to homosexual activity are most likely meant to condemn, not the former.�� In his attempt at hermeneutical analysis, he unwittingly creates a paradox: if the author of Qur�an had such categories available and did not use them, thinking that his audience (of Geniis and mankind) would surely understand, it�s but another example of the fallible and ephemeral nature of the Qur�an.� If the author(s) of the Qur�an, on the other hand, was a mortal living in the seventh century, we would have no expectation that he would have to conform to Sulayman�s (or Arab culture�s) understanding of the issue.�

And this is what we find with regard to sexual relationships.� The implorations of the Qur�an and ahadith demonstrate a one-size fits all mentality.� Celibacy is frowned upon as an innovation.� Heterosexual marriage is mandated for all believers with the means.� This �straight path� scheme of things even extends to the afterlife.� Male believers are promised plentiful dark-eyed houris in Paradise, nubile females who never menstruate.� There is no indication that faithful gay Muslims will receive their equivalent of the ultimate heterosexual male fantasy.� No mention, obviously, is made of forming an institutionalized homosexual marriage that would serve to protect gay Muslims from the �casual sex or promiscuity� that Sulayman moralistically states, ��should be avoided by anyone, regardless of sexuality.��

Sulayman�s sentiment conflicts on philosophical grounds as well: �When two consenting adults love each other and want to share their love physically, one can reasonably doubt its supposed �sinfulness�.�� The author of the Qur�an clearly disagrees with this contention- a Muslim woman is forbidden from marrying a non-Muslim man.� Love doesn�t enter the equation for Islam in determining the sinfulness of such a relationship- a formidable hurdle in promoting a syrupy �spirit of the law,� in the face of the astringent �letter of the law.����

Though Sulayman X is an eloquent proponent of the Golden Rule �ber alles, his website makes it clear that Sunni and Shi�a Islam have their own �kampf�- the struggle to suppress �deviancy.�� As his hopes for reform require a radical shift away from the ahadith texts that justify the execution and torture of homosexuals, it would be overly optimistic to predict widespread �acceptance and tolerance among [pious] Muslims� just over the rainbow.� �But if his exegesis is unconvincing to a cynic or a zealot, Sulayman�s reflections, right, wrong, and in between are a beginning that promises at the very minimum to expose some online Muslims to perspectives that would otherwise be suppressed or ignored.