Week 9

In the Jasbir Puar and Scott Long pieces we learn about how the West is wrong about homosexuality in Islam. The Puar piece challenges the view that being Muslim and being gay are mutually exclusive. The Long piece criticizes Western projections of Islam’s harsh response to homosexuality. Puar includes a picture of a man holding a sign that reads “I am homosexual also”. The “also” signals the challenge of his identity as both a Muslim and gay man. Long gives examples of many Western activists embellishing stories for the sake of their activism. He cites several cases in Islam where boys were executed for alleged rape. Although there was no talk of or evidence suggesting consensual sex in these cases, the Western activists developed those narratives, embellishing a gay rights struggle. Instead of being boys hung for charges of rape, they became young men hung for being gay. These embellishments served to fit into the Western framework of Iran as backwards and oppressive. From these pieces one can see that the way many Western activists represent homosexuality in Muslim nations serves to perpetuate the view of the Orient as backwards. Like “look at these countries, they kill people for being gay.” It reaffirms the hierarchy of the West as progressive and superior and the Orient as traditional and behind. The gay rights activists are able to put themselves in a position identical to that assumed by many Western feminists who discuss third world women.

I understand and appreciate the task of righting Western misconceptions about Islam. But I feel like we’ve spent a lot of time talking about what Islam isn’t and less time talking about what it is. I don’t feel like I have a good understanding of what the Islamic view of homosexuality is. I know it’s not uniform among all the Muslim countries. But I don’t even feel like I have a good understanding of homosexuality in the specific countries these readings discussed. I feel like a lot of the readings have been describing Islam from a negative sense: it’s not backwards, it’s not oppressive. I want to hear about what it is. The title of the Long piece “Unbearable witness: how Western activists (mis)recognize sexuality in Iran” pretty much sums up what I feel like we’ve been hearing a lot of. I feel like a great deal of the readings we’ve done have addressed some Western misrecognition. That’s totally interesting and insightful and valuable. I just wish that we could also read more of how these things should be recognized.