Homosexuality is anathema to Islam – or so the majority of both believers and non-believers suppose. Throughout the Muslim world, it is met with hostility, where state punishments range from hefty fines to the death penalty. Likewise, numerous scholars and commentators maintain that the Qur’an and Hadith rule unambiguously against same-sex relations. This pioneering study argues that there is far more nuance to the matter than most believe. In its narrative of Lot, the Qur’an could be interpreted as condemning lust rather homosexuality. While some Hadith are fiercely critical of homosexuality, some are far more equivocal. This is the first book length treatment to offer a detailed analysis of how Islamic scripture, jurisprudence, and Hadith, can not only accommodate a sexually sensitive Islam, but actively endorse it.

-- With a foreword from Jan Jaap de Ruiter. Translation and Afterword by Adi S. Bharat. -- In *Homosexuality, Transidentity, and Islam: A Study of Scripture Confronting the Politics of Gender and Sexuality*, Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed systematically analyses the entirety of Islamic scriptural sources that relate to the question of gender and sexuality in relation to their historical contexts. Through an approach that is certainly more politically engaged than that of most Islamic thinkers of our time, he clarifies key theological concepts that may seem esoteric to the uninitiated. In doing so, he makes a compelling case for the compatibility of sexual and gender diversity within Islam. Zahed also examines the historical and contemporary socio-political impacts of inclusive and exclusive (or, quite simply, homophobic, transphobic, and misogynistic) interpretations of scripture. This important study dynamically examines the connections between scripture, interpretation, and the politics of gender and sexuality.

Attitudes toward homosexuality in the pre-modern Arab-Islamic world are commonly depicted as schizophrenic—visible and tolerated on one hand, prohibited by Islam on the other. Khaled El-Rouayheb argues that this apparent paradox is based on the anachronistic assumption that homosexuality is a timeless, self-evident fact to which a particular culture reacts with some degree of tolerance or intolerance. Drawing on poetry, biographical literature, medicine, dream interpretation, and Islamic texts, he shows that the culture of the period lacked the concept of homosexuality.

This publication documents the voices of Muslims who live in secular democratic countries and who are gay, lesbian, and transgender. It weaves original interviews with Muslim activists into a picture which showcases the importance of the solidarity of support groups in the effort to change social relationships and achieve justice.

An extensive collection of essays that examines the place of homosexuality in the contemporary and classical Muslim world. The place of sexual and gender minorities in the contemporary Islamic world is the subject of fascinating new directions in research and scholarly thought. Islam and Homosexuality gathers together 20 experts exploring these issues to provide an expansive look at the treatment of same-sex interactions in Muslim cultures today. Islam and Homosexuality offers one volume on the specific experiences of gay Muslims today and a second volume viewing the issue from a global perspective. Essays explore the lives of LGBTIQ persons in both Islamic nations and Muslim communities in non-Islamic countries. Additional writings explore the roots of homophobia in the theology of Islam, the various judgments against homosexuality in the different schools of Islamic law, and the potential scriptural basis for including LGBTIQ persons in the Muslim community. No other resource on the relationship between LGBTIQ persons and the world's largest religion covers the topic with anything approaching this work's range or depth.

While Muslims in Indonesia have begun to turn towards a strict adherence to Islam, the reality of the socio-religious environment is much more complicated than a simple shift towards fundamentalism. In this volume, contributors explore the multifaceted role of Islam in Indonesia from a variety of different perspectives, drawing on carefully compiled case studies. Topics covered include religious education, the increasing number of Muslim feminists in Indonesia, the role of Indonesia in the greater Muslim world, social activism and the middle class, and the interaction between Muslim radio and religious identity.

The first anthropological collection that reveals patterns of male and female homosexuality in the Muslim World The dramatic impact of Islamic fundamentalism in recent years has skewed our image of Islamic history and culture. Stereotypes depict Islamic societies as economically backward, hyper-patriarchal, and fanatically religious. But in fact, the Islamic world encompasses a great diversity of cultures and a great deal of variation within those cultures in terms of gender roles and sexuality. The first collection on this topic from a historical and anthropological perspective, Homosexuality in the Muslim World reveals that patterns of male and female homosexuality have existed and often flourished within the Islamic world. Indeed, same-sex relations have, until quite recently, been much more tolerated under Islam than in the Christian West. Based on the latest theoretical perspectives in gender studies, feminism, and gay studies, Homosexuality in the Muslim World includes cultural and historical analyses of the entire Islamic world, not just the so-called Middle East. Essays show both age-stratified patterns of homosexuality, as revealed in the erotic and romantic poetry of medieval poets, and gender-based patterns, in which both men and women might, to varying degrees, choose to live as members of the opposite sex. The contributors draw on historical documents, literary texts, ethnographic observation and direct observation by both Muslim and non-Muslim authors to show the considerable diversity of Islamic societies and the existence of tolerated gender and sexual variances.

Pathways to Contemporary Islam: New Trends in Critical Engagement highlights that the current tensions in Islam and the Muslim world are the result of historical dynamics as opposed to an alleged incompatibility between religious tradition and modernity. The emphasis on pathways indicates that critical engagement and contestation have always been intrinsic to the history of Islam. The aim of the book is to elaborate the contemporary pathways and analyse the trends that contest the Islamic intellectual tradition, the relationship between religion and politics, and the individual and collective practice of religion. The collection of essays analyses the current efforts of critical re-engagement with the Islamic intellectual tradition and underlines the historical diversity of Islamic orthodoxies that led to the establishment of various pathways in the practice and role of religion in Muslim societies.

This book addresses the increasing role of queer politics within forms of Islamophobia, both by exploring the framing of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) issues as a key marker of western superiority and by identifying the ways in which Muslim homophobia contributes to this dialectic.

“A delightfully original take on…the prospects for liberal democracy in the broader Islamic Middle East.”—Matthew Kaminski, Wall Street Journal As the Arab Spring threatens to give way to authoritarianism in Egypt and reports from Afghanistan detail widespread violence against U.S. troops and women, news from the Muslim world raises the question: Is Islam incompatible with freedom? In Islam without Extremes, Turkish columnist Mustafa Akyol answers this question by revealing the little-understood roots of political Islam, which originally included both rationalist, flexible strains and more dogmatic, rigid ones. Though the rigid traditionalists won out, Akyol points to a flourishing of liberalism in the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire and the unique “Islamo-liberal synthesis” in present-day Turkey. As he powerfully asserts, only by accepting a secular state can Islamic societies thrive. Islam without Extremes offers a desperately needed intellectual basis for the reconcilability of Islam and liberty.