Gay and lesbian identities and experiences

Jihad Love

Global Issues in the Sociology of Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Culture: Muslim Homosexuality and a Jihad for Love

Culture is almost always in a state of change -- the necessities for a static culture are so stringent, pervasive, and extreme that very few cultures are known to have remained unchanged for long periods since the beginning of recorded history. Simple cultural exchange with other cultures -- a trade meeting with a neighboring tribe, or a war with a more distant city-state -- is a huge factor in creating change in both cultures, and few cultures have lived in isolation. Other cultural changes arise from within a given culture, as innovations are made or questions are asked that can shift -- subtly and slowly or dramatically and rapidly -- the values, beliefs, and actions of a culture in ways that lead to fundamental change.

When cultures attempt to resist change, conflict almost inevitably arises between the individuals and institutions in that culture that have changed, or are experiencing change, and those who attempt to maintain a rigid sense of the traditional culture. This can be easily extrapolated from the functionalist view that all cultural institutions are human constructs. Specifically, cultural institutions and values are not the natural results of any universal laws of human nature and behavior; though there are some commonalities throughout humanity in the types of cultural institutions that are created, their form, function, and focus is constructed radically different from culture to culture. Thus, when specific institutions and/or individuals begin to doubt or question another part of the culture, human conflicts arise that attempt to restore the perceived balance of culture through the adaptation of these constructs.

The religion of Islam, though not actually a culture in and of itself, can in certain ways be viewed as such, especially in current times. Though the fundamentalist versions of the religion that receive extensive media coverage in the Western world are not truly representative of the religion or its adherents as a whole, there are elements of the Islamic religion and Muslim culture -- specifically its attitude towards homosexuality -- that are still highly reactive in a fundamentalist way. The increasing multiculturalism of the world has not only been accompanied with a general rise in the awareness and protection of rights for homosexuals, but also in the increased exposure of intolerant cultures to perspectives of tolerance. This has made the issue of homosexuality more prominent in many Islamic countries, and in the religion as a whole, as a divisive factor emblematic of the resistance to change.

A Jihad for Love

In his debut film, A Jihad for Love, director Parvez Sharma spent five and a half years at great risk interviewing and video taping homosexuals, both open and those extremely fearful of being outed, in twelve different countries. His international stops included countries like Pakistan, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, where official or de fact theocratic governments still harshly condemn -- even to the point of execution -- homosexuality on the basis of Islamic customs and teachings. Though the stories that Sharma's intimate and profound documentary reveals are perhaps more extreme than the Western world is used to hearing, they are truly emblematic of the essential struggle for homosexual rights around the world.

The fact that it took the Supreme Court until 2003 to declare that state anti-sodomy laws aimed at enabling the prosecution of those engaging in homosexual sex were unconstitutional is an indicator of how very political this otherwise personal situation is. This is far more the case in many of the countries that Sharma visits in his film, where ideologies are both more officially and socially apparent. Scholarship has shown that "patriarchal ideology is embedded in our socioeconomic and political institutions," but tough there is a sense of subtlety (or insidiousness) to this embedding in the Western world, it is quite consciously and obviously a part of many Muslim societies (Shifting the Center p. 16). This leads to certain stringent expectations regarding attitude and behavior, and an extreme sense of control -- and the need for control -- in the patriarchal figures in these societies.

This leads to the identification of the two primary cultural/social institutions that show a traditional and an extreme resistance to the development of homosexual rights in Muslim societies: the state and the family. Hegel identified a close relationship between these two institutions, as the family establishes both the internal and external (i.e. social and sexual) roles of its members in a way that creates the basic social structure of the state -- but influence works both ways. It is not merely that the family creates the state, then, but that the state also influences the formation and form of the family. In other words, "the family is a universal institution which performs certain specific functions essential to society's survival" (Shifting the Center p. 7). The Islamic religion and Muslim society are in danger from homosexuality, according to many state governments and the religious hierarchy, so the family is invoked as a means of control.

The Issue of Family

One Afghani lesbian that Sharma interviews is positive that her family would kill her if they knew about her sexuality, and her fears are far from unjustified. It is almost certain that no one would be prosecuted for her death, either; her shame would be publicly known, and her family's shame (particularly her father's, the patriarch of the family) would be mitigated by her murder. This demonstrates how powerful the family is as a perpetuator of cultural traditions and values. Though the wider world is increasingly adopting homosexual rights, though perhaps slower than they ought, the general reaction from the Islamic religion and Islamic states around the world has been a reactive cracking down on such behaviors, through both familial and state intervention. Religion has even taken a back seat to the issues of social control, with morality mattering far less than power.

Though an outright murder would be a very explicit act of exerting power and control by a family over an individual member, the family also works in more subtle ways. Indoctrination into the family's values and belief systems begins at birth and continues throughout membership in the family, and the subtle workings of this process are often invisible to the members of that family (Shifting the Center p. 18). As the issue of homosexuality has become increasingly politicized, the importance of the family in regards to either the support or the condemnation of such acts has also increased dramatically, and not with favorable results for many homosexuals living in the Muslim world.