Is Homosexuality a Sin?

Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty has always been a hot top­ic for debate, a con­tro­ver­sial issue in most soci­eties. The same goes for reli­gion. Com­bine the two and you get a pow­er­ful emo­tion­al brew. The Islam­ic view on homo­sex­u­al­i­ty relies heav­i­ly on the sto­ry of Prophet Lot and his peo­ple as nar­rat­ed in the Quran. In this sto­ry the prophet warned his peo­ple, who were inclined towards homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, against ‘immoral’ behav­iour. But the same peo­ple tried to excom­mu­ni­cate their prophet and attempt­ed to rape the angels sent to the prophet’s aid, who were dis­guised as men. As a result, the peo­ple of Lot were hit with an enor­mous earth­quake as pun­ish­ment for their sins, while the prophet and his fel­low believ­ers remained unharmed.

Con­ser­v­a­tive Mus­lims use this sto­ry to jus­ti­fy their homo­pho­bia . Even if we choose to ignore all oth­er Quran­ic injunc­tions to con­demn the stigma­ti­za­tion and dis­crim­i­na­tion of oth­ers, the fol­low­ing ques­tion aris­es: Were the peo­ple of Lot destroyed for being homo­sex­u­al, or for attack­ing the prophet and attempt­ing to rape his guests?

“The Qur’an is silent about sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion”, says Muhsin Hen­d­er­icks in an inter­view with Vice. “The sto­ry of Sodom and Gomor­rah does not refer to homo­sex­u­al­i­ty as such but rather to var­i­ous atroc­i­ties, includ­ing sex­u­al atroc­i­ties unre­lat­ed to sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion or gen­der iden­ti­ty”, he adds fur­ther. “Quran is not against homo­sex­u­al­i­ty” says Hen­dricks in anoth­er inter­view. “Even schol­ars have begun to agree on that nowa­days. All they can say is that it is a sin but not a crime. Yet noth­ing about homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is men­tioned in the Quran. You have the sto­ry of Sodom and Gomor­rah, which if you study prop­er­ly is about pros­ti­tu­tion, molesta­tion, rape and oth­er such instances. It’s not about gay peo­ple.”

Muhsin Hen­dricks, who lived in Pak­istan for four years dur­ing his stud­ies at a local madras­sah to become an imam, recounts his own strug­gle with reli­gion and sex­u­al­i­ty in a doc­u­men­tary film called A Jihad for Love, “I was brought up in a very ortho­dox home. My grand­fa­ther was the imam of a mosque in Cape Town and my moth­er used to teach in the mosque. I was vir­tu­al­ly born in the mosque. It was a very safe envi­ron­ment for me until I became aware of my sex­u­al­i­ty. I would hear my grand­fa­ther preach from the pul­pit that gay peo­ple would go to hell, so there was no place of expres­sion for sex­u­al­i­ty in my life.” Hen­dricks sim­ply could not accept that a mer­ci­ful and com­pas­sion­ate God would reject him for some­thing that he did not even choose for him­self. And through his reli­gious schol­ar­ship he was able to con­vince him­self that he would rather meet his cre­ator know­ing he did not live a false life.

An even more impor­tant dis­tinc­tion is that although the Quran men­tions divine pun­ish­ment for Prophet Lot’s peo­ple, it does not order an earth­ly pun­ish­ment for being attract­ed to the same sex. Islam­ic schol­ars in his­to­ry deduced pun­ish­ment for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty by treat­ing it as a type of infi­deli­ty. But very impor­tant Islam­ic thinkers, like the 8th cen­tu­ry schol­ar Abu Han­i­fa (who found­ed the Hanafi school of jurispru­dence) rea­soned that because a homo­sex­u­al rela­tion­ship could not pro­duce off­spring, it could not be con­sid­ered infi­deli­ty.

So how do fun­da­men­tal­ists like ISIS jus­ti­fy their killing of homo­sex­u­als? The answer lies in the hadiths or say­ings ascribed to Prophet Muham­mad (PBUH) that alleged­ly serve as a basis for pun­ish­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.
The same holds true for pun­ish­ments hand­ed out for dis­re­spect, apos­ta­sy or ‘insults’ of Islam; they do not come from the Quran but cer­tain hadiths. But the said hadiths were gath­ered in writ­ten form almost two hun­dred years after the time of the prophet (PBUH) and their cred­i­bil­i­ty has often been ques­tioned. The first crit­i­cisms on authen­tic­i­ty of hadith appear as ear­ly as the 9th cen­tu­ry, and who is to say that they can­not be ques­tioned anew today. Also more impor­tant­ly, there is no record of the prophet at any point pun­ish­ing some­one for homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.

These jurispru­den­tial facts can be used to devel­op a more humane and mag­nan­i­mous atti­tude toward LGBT peo­ple, as some pro­gres­sive Islam­ic schol­ars like Reza Aslan, are encour­ag­ing. The sto­ry of Lot con­demns sex­u­al aggres­sion but not sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion, accord­ing to Aslan. What peo­ple do in pri­vate is their own busi­ness, he con­tends. Grant­i­ng all this the pub­lic Mus­lim atti­tude toward LGBT peo­ple when they are bul­lied or dis­crim­i­nat­ed against should be to defend them because Islam stands with the oppressed. But unfor­tu­nate­ly this is not what we see hap­pen­ing in soci­ety.

Chand­ni, who is a trans­gen­der from Lahore, nar­rates a hor­ri­fy­ing tale of dis­crim­i­na­tion she expe­ri­enced at the hands of the doc­tors at a local hospital:“I was shot in the leg once when I used to dance at car­ni­vals. After I was shot I got admit­ted to a local hos­pi­tal. Every­one there mis­be­haved with me. The doc­tors did not give me the med­ical care they would to a reg­u­lar patient. The nurs­es made fun of me and the doc­tors mocked me. When­ev­er we go to a hos­pi­tal we have to face dis­crim­i­na­tion and do not get prop­er med­ical care”. But when asked if life would have been eas­i­er for her, were she not a trans­gen­der, she replied, “I am very hap­py that God made me a trans­gen­der. I have no prob­lem with any­one where my gen­der iden­ti­ty is con­cerned. If any­one else has an issue with me being a trans­gen­der and they crit­i­cize me over it, I tell them you are crit­i­cis­ing God’s cre­ation, because he made me the way I am.” In recent times, steps have been tak­en by the Supreme Court to make Pak­istan a more inclu­sive coun­try for the trans­gen­der com­mu­ni­ty. The progress in this regard is slow, but can still be viewed as a pos­i­tive sign.

In spite of these argu­ments, the mis­treat­ment of the LGBT com­mu­ni­ty in our soci­ety will con­tin­ue if the reac­tion in Pak­istan to the legal­iz­ing of gay mar­riage in the US ear­li­er this year is any indi­ca­tion. So those believ­ers who con­sid­er homo­sex­u­al­i­ty a sin and insist upon con­dem­na­tion of LGBT peo­ple should remem­ber that in our reli­gion, there are many sins, includ­ing arro­gance that the Quran treats as among the most seri­ous of moral vices. And for us, it could be our own deliv­er­ance from the sin of arro­gance to no longer stig­ma­tize oth­ers for their behav­ior and instead focus on improv­ing our­selves.