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.

  • CommunistCuddlefish [she/her]
    ·
    edit-2
    21 days ago

    Disclaimer: you're going to get wildly differing answers because Islam is not a monolith.

    Edit: also thank you for asking this respectfully

    At least in my experience with the Muslim side if my family, no. There's maybe a little "oh that's different and a little weird, but if someone's queer that's just Allah's plan for them and it's not our place to judge", but there isn't the hatred and condemnation you see in conservative christian cults. It can break more along political lines.

    It also gets weird with regional variation, like where my family is from trans people are kind of normal. I was even taught that transness is generally accepted religiously as long as the trans person is straight (so since I'm lesbian that doesn't work as well for me, but whatever).

    Generally I consider the "Islam is violently queerphobic" shit essentially a form of colonialist blood-libel to paint Muslim cultures as backwards and oppressive in order to justify committing horrible colonialist and imperialist violence against them, and it's victim-blaming too. Queerness is very culturally dependent -- what is feminine in one culture may be masculine in another. Colonizers exported their queer-bashing ideas during conquest, cracked down on queer communities as removed, reshaped mores in the places they conquered, and now these "enlightened" colonizers have the audacity to condemn the people they colonized for bearing those scars. Of course we're "behind the times" -- you fuckers made us be!

    There is certainly room for and indeed a need for conversation and struggle around queer acceptance and liberation in different Islamic cultures, but that's going to vary greatly by region and is less of a theological question and more a cultural question (of course there's a give and take between theology and culture). Islam in Iran is wildly different from Islam in Pakistan is wildly different from Islam in Saudi Arabia is wildly different from Islam in Algeria, and even within those places there is a great amount of variation