[CW: mentions of Islamophobia] Is Islam as homophobic and sexist as westerners claim?
[CW: mentions of Islamophobia] Is Islam as homophobic and sexist as westerners claim?
I'm guessing it's like Christianity where there are leftist Christians who follow Jesus' more progressive messages such as giving to the less fortunate and healing the sick, and then there are the scary Christian evangelicals that want A Handmaids Tale and conversion therapy. Logically, Islam probably isn't a monolith in a similar way other religions aren't.
However, I have never heard about what those of the Islamic faith actually believe outside of the hysterical post 9/11 Islamophobia I've been indoctrinated with as a child.
I want to know what the truth is and hear the other sides story. To me it's obvious that Islamophobia is wrong, however when Islamophobes make wild claims about it, I can't really refute them confidently because I'm simply ignorant of the facts. Please educate my dumb, white ass.
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I was debating whether to respond to this or not and how to respond to this.
Mandatory general reading:
Orientalism, Edward Said and Eurocentrism, Samir Amin
I will link this article again, titled: Gay universalism, homoracialism and « marriage for all » by Houria Bouteldja.
I can also list various writers and works across the Islamic world, from Islamic feminism, Islamic liberation theology, decolonial marxists, to Islamic socialists. But I think that may not be helpful because again we are stuck in this false dichotomy of “liberal” and “conservatism”. Of a rigid notion of “progress” and “reaction”, which I might add spits in the face of dialectics.
I can’t fault those that believe in a linear progress of history. Early Marxism itself was tainted with such notions until the 20th century.
So instead I will posit this question:
If we are to believe that gender and sexuality are socially situated within a specific cultural and time dependent context, then why do we assume that terms derived from such contexts like “homophobia” and “misogyny” are universally applicable and can be compared across different regions and areas of the globe?
This is not to discredit the admirable goal of internationalism, of universalising the struggle, but we then have to ask ourselves if this “internationalism” is based on actual applicability of it’s critique to the entire world or merely a projection based on false conceptions, with aid from the cultural and political hegemony of US-led Capital?
Also I’d like to note: if the Communists and “Progressives” were correct and listened to the masses in the Islamic World, they would have won. But they did not. So who is at fault here?
I'm glad you responded because that is a damn good comment
If we are to believe that gender and sexuality are socially situated within a specific cultural and time dependent context, then why do we assume that terms derived from such contexts like “homophobia” and “misogyny” are universally applicable and can be compared across different regions and areas of the globe?
because eurochristians exported that bullshit and imposed it upon most of the world?
implying muslim cultures aren't predominantly heteropatriarchal is probably some kind of orientalism
implying muslim cultures aren't predominantly heteropatriarchal is probably some kind of orientalism
what the fuck am I reading
Something something Muslims are the real racists.
It's actually racist to deny that Muslim cultures are inherently misogynistic.
I will never stop Hoxha-posting.
Americans (and their simps) will literally devastate a Muslim country, install the most psychotic fundamentalists in power, and then have the audacity to say shit like
"I'm a leftist but why is it that despite being 20% of the population, Muslims commit 90% of the misogyny and homophobia? Must just be characteristic of the Islamic brainpan."
Fun fact: The word "Hoxha" means
Noun
hoxhë m (plural hoxhë, definite hoxha, definite plural hoxhët) imam
The man from a family of Islamic teachers led the majority Muslim country through the most extensive improvement of women's rights in history. Women went from being essentially chattel property and rarely getting rudimentary schooling, to being almost half the government, scientists, doctors, engineers in a few decades.
The sheer audacity of westerners to make such presumptions about "Muslim cultures" is mind-boggling. A Muslim country hit the communism button and completely rebuilt the social order, uplifting women to a position better than that of any in the west, and how does the west respond?
By trying, tooth and nail, to destroy it. And after they've destroyed it, western so-called leftists will opine that Muslim cultures just be misogynistic like that.
Something something Muslims are the real racists.
It's actually racist to deny that Muslim cultures are inherently misogynistic.
no, i mean that saying they're so wildly different from the patriarchal homophobic west that we shouldn't use terms like "patriarchy" would also be orientalist.
the progressivism of now-fallen socialist governments does not outweigh the majority of current societies. east and west are both predominantly patriarchal, largely but not exclusively because of european christian exports and imperialism
One of them Muslim cultures:
(WARNING: heteropatriarchal)
got a long way to go before we invalidate my "predominantly" qualifier. there are feminists who don't reject christianity for whatever reason too, it doesn't change my baseline expectations of reactionary or "moderate" christians.
I don't see how there's anything necessarily bad inherent in Christianity. That Jesus guy seems like a pretty cool dude. kind of a revolutionary figure.
He was big on pacifism, and the guys that killed him co-opted his name and went on killing in his name. Kinda messed up to conclude that his ideas are responsible for the killing.
This has happened with countless groups over the centuries. Those truly following the teachings of Christ won't murder at the behest of empire? Exterminate those heretics and replace them with ones that will follow orders and pay lip service.
In modern times, any Muslim state that tries to do anything remotely good will be decimated by the US, who will then support the most violent reactionaries in the region.
Are all the oppressive reactionary Muslim states to be blamed on the nature of Islam?
Personally, I see religion as a versatile tool. People get so many different things out of it.
you are not the authority of "true" christianity. worshiping a genocidal entity is bad, full stop.
you are not the authority of "true" christianity.
I'm not the authority of Christianity, that would be Christ. Christianity is the teachings of Christ, yes?
I don't think any of the above is controversial, so I hope we can agree on this basic definition.
And yes, the teachings of Christ include what one could argue is the "worship of a genocidal entity".
But do you not feel utterly ridiculous?
Like your immediate response to the sermon on the mount is "fuck you you worship a genocidal entity"?
Your immediate response to John Brown is "bro you worship a genocidal entity"?
Your immediate response to Malcolm X is "you worship a genocidal entity (and in the worst way bc Islam)"?
Can you so casually dismiss every religious person who has fought, struggled and died for a just cause? Because they believed in the Abrahamic god, while you're here smugly patting yourself on the back for having the correct opinions?
Can you so casually dismiss every religious person who has fought, struggled and died for a just cause? Because they believed in the Abrahamic god, while you're here smugly patting yourself on the back for having the correct opinions?
there were or are religious people on the other side of all of those conflict. john brown was good because of the side he was on but venerating religious fanaticism is fucking dangerous because he could've read a different part of the book and been pro-slavery based on the literal instructions on who and how the israelites were instructed to keep slaves.
jesus never wrote anything down, the supposed gospels were written decades later and canonized centuries later. there's no basis for you or anyone else to say what version of the religion is "correct" or "authentic".
this is wildly off-topic from OP's question.
john brown was good because of the side he was on but venerating religious fanaticism is fucking dangerous because he could've read a different part of the book
He doesn't sound good at all by your reckoning. He just happened to be "on the right side" after flipping a book to a random section and believing utterly what he read. He was just a crazy person. Like Nat Turner and Louverture. Getting themselves killed just because they read the wrong section of a book.
Anyway, how'd it turn out for the people who flipped to the Israelite slavery how-to section? Did any go out and risk their lives to capture some Canaanites or whatever? Did any just reject it, become atheists, and then go start a slave rebellion?
jesus never wrote anything down, the supposed gospels were written decades later and canonized centuries later.
True, I can't claim to know anything for sure about the historical Jesus. But he's at least a literary character and you say the works were canonized. So we can at least speak of him in the way people can argue over what Darth Vader said.
this is wildly off-topic from OP's question.
Maybe so. Would it be sufficiently on topic to say "Islam is pro-slavery because it endorses the Torah, which teaches the proper ways of buying and selling slaves"?
"Islam is pro-slavery because it endorses the Torah, which teaches the proper ways of buying and selling slaves"?
i'm not familiar with specific doctrine or how the official slave trade ended in the islamic world. it is a severe criticism of all abrahamic religions that they claim what they claim about god and morality yet are compatible with slavery. this is not unique to islam and i wouldn't bother bringing it up in a discussion about contemporary expressions of patriarchy and homophboia