Gays in Iran and Queer Jihad in South Africa

Today’s Front Page Magazine (http://frontpagemag.com) features an article on the persecutions committed against gay and lesbian people in Iran. Further, the article draws reference to the President of Iran’s 2007 denial of homosexuality existing in Iran. According to the post:

There is a good reason that Iran’s theocratic dictatorship denies the existence of gays inside the country. An honest acknowledgment of reality would force the authorities to acknowledge that Iranian gays are regularly marginalized, harassed, tortured, and executed. Sometimes, they are forced into gender-altering operations. Ahmadinejad’s claim also called attention to the hypocrisy of the international community on the issue of gay rights in Iran. President Ahmadinejad’s absurd claim received overwhelming disapproval, yet when Iranian homosexuals are routinely abused and lawfully executed simply for their sexual preferences, that same international community, and the “progressive” Left that claims to champion gay rights, are deafeningly silent.

The article continues by explaining the current situation in Iran and other Middle East countries:

Iran is currently one of five Muslim countries to apply capital punishment to homosexuals along with Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Sudan, and Yemen, according to the 2010 International Lesbian Gay Association’s World Legal Survey. Under the Taliban, Afghanistan also applied the death penalty, as did Sadaam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. After the collapse of the Taliban regime, Afghanistan began punishing homosexuality with fines and imprisonment. In Iraq, Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Islamist militia followed the Taliban’s lead, attacking, torturing and murdering hundreds of gay men in “honor killings.”

Although Front Page’s article is interesting, I would also recommend reading another perspective (albeit on a different country of focus) – Scott Kugle. You can read Kugle’s article “Queer Jihad” online on Urgency Required’s website. Here is the abstract for Kugle’s article:

Muslims in Cape Town, South Africa, explore ways to be openly lesbian, gay, and transgendered and still be part of a muslim community. Advocacy groups there assert their place as interpreters of Islam in a way that is open to diversity and engaged in a quest for justice.

Observer-Reporter: “Islam not the only religion with haters”

Today’s Observer-Reporter includes an editorial outlining how Islam is not the only religion “with haters.” This article is a much needed voice in the current debate over religion in this country. Someone once said to me that if you took all of the religions in the world and asked all of those without blood or persecution on their hands to stand on one side of the room and all those who have been without to stand on the other … only one side of the room would have religions. This article helps to shed light on that fact.

We must come to a common understanding that all religions have fundamental sects, but that at their core, all religions are devoted to peace and love — two things which are deeply needed in our world today.

Read the entire editorial on the Observer-Reporter’s website.