[A modernist approach]
It is important that you take time to read this article carefully and in full. Alas, there are no easy answers.
Firstly, there is no such thing as "Islam says…" for there are many voices within the house of Islam, some dominant and others smothered, some articulated and others silent. Islam does not speak, nor does the Qur’an. When it has to be understood, then it cannot escape the mediation of people who are all carriers of their own experiences and prejudices and who interpret it in terms thereof. Secondly, what The Creator says in the Qur’an is not always what Islam says. Islam, we must remember is the composite of many, many years of religious and legal thinking, by hundreds and thousands of people. People, who despite their immense contribution to our collective legacy, were just that, people. Some of their scholarship pertains to better parts of Muslim history and others, well…. As Muslims, we are left with the Qur’an and , ultimately, only ourselves and our Creator.
The centrality of our Creator in all of this is very important because as Muslims, we believe that the "buck stops here" , that Our Creator is greater than our conception of Him, than our religion and its laws. The Creator is free ultimately from whatever we ascribe to Him. Let’s deal with the question of our relationship with our Creator, before coming to the question of the Qur’an. In many ways, the image of our Creator whom we serve is one which is reflective of who we and our values are. In other words, unforgiving or unkind persons, particularly towards themselves will often think of their Creator as being just that. Also remember that those who are unkind towards themselves find it particularly hard to be kind to others. Similarly, compassionate people will seek to relate to their Creator as a kind and compassionate Being. You need to decide for yourself which of these values enable you to live out your full potential as If you believe that justice and compassion are non-negotiable values, then you will be compelled to see The Creator as just and compassionate. Fortunately, you would not be hard pressed to find such an image of The Creator in the Qur’an, for, does not every chapter open with the description of The Creator as The Compassionate, The Merciful? Did The Creator not at the time of creation proclaim that "Verily My compassion overcomes My anger". The Creator prescribed mercy upon His-self. The whole concept of a Compassionate Creator is important because it enables you to enter into a relationship with a Creator who understands where you have been, where you are coming from and how desperate you are. It is not as if you were in a restaurant and upon being offered a variety of tasty and ordinary meals you wilfully decided to go for the chopped teeth of a bull.
This brings in another issue which that it is not just the question of a Compassionate God who understands perversion and looks upon people benignly until they come to their senses. It is also a question of a Creator who DOES NOT IMPOSE UNFAIR BURDENS ON HIS SERVANTS. In other words, when there are burdens which you, by your deeds are not responsible for, then either you or society have imposed them. From this understanding of The Creator as an essentially JUST BEING flows an important idea. God as the Creator of human beings cannot conceivably create human beings with hunger and the capacity to eat without allowing human beings to eat food. Similarly, The Creator cannot create human beings with peculiar urges to reach out to others of their own kind sexually and then deny them the right to sexual self-expression. Unlike food for which tastes are acquired and where the appeasing of an appetite may be regulated by lawful or unlawful methods of slaughter or prohibition on pork and alcohol, sexuality is not a question of one choice among a variety, not merely a question of taste. In fact it is a question of one’s essence, the very nature of one’s being. Given that that is the case, it cannot be a sin because sin always involves choice. In fact if homosexuality does involve choice, then given the absolute hell which those who exercise this choice live through in even the most progressive societies, then they clearly need to have their heads read. In which case, they can also be excused on the grounds of insanity!
What does the Qur’an say about homosexuality? Before that, a word about understanding the Qur’an. This is rather complex and numerous scholars both early and contemporary have written extensively about the difficulties involved here. Sufficient for the moment to say that one cannot engage in human and compassionate reading of the Qur’an without taking on board the ideas on re-interpretation and contextually developed by scholars such as Mohammed Arkoun, Fatimah Mernissi and Riffat Hassan. One also has to consider even earlier Muslim thinkers such as the Mu’tazilites who argued for the historicity and time-boundedness of the Qur’anic texts. Furthermore, there is the idea that the objectives and principles of the Qur’anic message are eternally valid without necessarily all of its finer details. Alarming and unthinkable as some of this may sound to the ordinary Muslim, much of this has been debated for centuries already in Islam and, in fact, it is to be found that the earlier scholars were far more open to critical thinking than the later ones were. As one should be committed to justice and compassion for all the family of The Creator, particularly those who have been marginalised and discriminated against - including gay people, women, the hard of hearing and left-handed people (all categories seemingly damned or discriminated against in the Qur’an) it is perhaps only possible to live in fidelity to the text within the broader struggle to re-think the Qur’an.
So what does the Qur’an say about gays? Well, surprisingly nothing. Some texts are read as if they pronounce on homosexuality. The following seems to emerge. The stories nearly always seem to commence with the visit of two strange men to Nabi Ibrahim. In accordance with traditional Semitic hospitality, he, without inquiring where they came from, proceeds to slaughter and roast a sheep for them. Upon being offered the meal they, contradicting the rules of hospitality refused to eat. On seeing the anxiety in the face of Nabi Ibrahim, who feared ill from such uncouth visitors, they asked him to relax and not be afraid. They were the messengers of God who have been sent to a wrongdoing folk who were given to evil. They gave Nabi Ibrahim and his wife tidings of a child to be born unto them and informed him that they were on their way to the people of Lut whose time had come. Nabi Ibrahim then pleaded with The Creator on their behalf. Nabi Lut was deeply distressed by the appearance of the men and feared for their safety. He was distraught at the humiliation that would befall him if his guests were to be assaulted in his house. A number of people, bent on attacking his visitors and possibly raping them, stormed the house and Nabi Lut, in despair asked what was wrong with them that they prefer men above women. He suggested that they have his daughters and also that they fear The Creator and not humiliate him with regards to his guests! Was there not amongst them a righteous man? But they replied that they were not interested in his daughters and that he full well knew what they wanted. The visitors consoled Nabi Lut and told him that they were in fact messengers from God and they instructed him to leave the city in the anticipation of its destruction.
So what is to be learnt from this ? a] looking at the text’s continuous interplay with Nabi Ibrahim, the major theme seems to be hospitality, proper behaviour for guests and more specifically, proper behaviour for hosts. The first major crime of the people of Lut was that they violated this cardinal principle of then society. This is contrasted with the behaviour of Nabi Ibrahim who was the personification of hospitality. Muslim accounts have it that he would go in search of someone with whom to share his meals. b] Nabi Lut’s people were bent on assaulting and raping his visitors. This is a violation of the rights of others and tearing at their God-given dignity. It wasn’t only in rape that this was evident, but also from their habit of waylaying strangers and robbing them. Their behaviour was abominable and they were destroyed in order to protect the lives and property of others. The text says nothing about consensual sex. c] Finally, Nabi Lut’s exasperation is with men preferring men above women. Preferring, however, involves choice and the picture that one gets is of a group of people who abandoned all sense of fidelity to partners and were just bent on having their own way with others. Islamic history and Muslim society are of course another thing altogether - and replete with - not all negative and judgemental of male-male sexuality accounts.