Kugle proceeds to affirm sexuality as “an indicator of our core being, a sexuality which interweaves thoughts, desires, motivations, acts and psychological and. Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani (Azerbaijani: Səkinə Məhəmmədi Aştiani, Persian: سکینه محمدی آشتیانی ‎‎; born 1967), is an Iranian Azeri woman. PUNISHMENT FOR NON-MARITAL SEX IN ISLAM Sharia law as applied in some Muslim countries. Sponsored link. Overview: Some versions of Sharia law require that married or. Get information, facts, and pictures about Saudi Arabia at Encyclopedia.com. Make research projects and school reports about Saudi Arabia easy with credible articles. Shohreh Aghdashloo, Actress: X-Men: The Last Stand. Shohreh Aghdashloo was born Shohreh Vaziri-Tabar on May 11, 1952 in Tehran, Iran. In the 1970s at age 20, she.

Can Islam Accommodate Homosexual Acts? Quranic Revisionism and the Case of Scott Kugle.

This article contains many extensive notes, rendered here as end notes. To download a PDF version in footnote format for easier reading and navigation of the notes click here: clicking here. I.     Introduction. Islam, like other major world religions (with the very recent exception of certain liberal denominations in the West), prohibits categorically all forms of same- sex erotic behavior.[1] Scholars have differed over questions of how particular same- sex acts should be technically categorized and/or punished, but have never differed over the fact of their prohibition.

The full and unbroken Islamic consensus on this issue embraces all recorded legal schools, theological persuasions, and historically documented sectarian divisions. The evidentiary basis underlying Islam’s categorical prohibition of liwāṭ (sodomy) and other same- sex behaviors lies in explicit proscriptive statements of the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth, the transmitted consensus of the Prophet’s Companions and Successors, and the documented unanimity of the Islamic legal tradition throughout the ages. Notwithstanding, the past decade and a half has witnessed the rise of Muslim reformist voices, primarily in the West, challenging Islam’s proscription of homosexual activity and calling for the religious affirmation of same- gender sexual expression, relationships, and identities. This challenge has consisted not only in a questioning of the probative value of the relevant ḥadīth evidence and a disregard for juristic and wider community consensus, but also in the assertion that the Qurʾān itself does not prohibit same- sex relations per se, but only homosexual rape motivated by inhospitality with intent to dishonor. It has been further argued that the Qurʾān should not be taken to prohibit same- sex behaviors categorically since it does not specifically address the abstract modern concept of “homosexuality” as an orientation or, for that matter, the notion of “sexual identity” more broadly. The present article attends to such revisionist readings of the Qurʾān, particularly as pertains to revisionist efforts to accommodate homoerotic behavior as religiously permissible in Islam.

Although a fair amount of research and effort have gone into addressing the Islamic tradition’s treatment of homoerotic behavior, analysis has often centered on juridical discussions concerning punishment,[2] medieval poetry,[3] and exegetical texts.[4] The only sustained attempt to argue for the permissibility of same- sex acts in Islam to date has come from Scott Kugle in both his contribution to the 2. Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, entitled “Sexuality, Diversity, and Ethics in the Agenda of Progressive Muslims,” and his later book Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims (2.

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Though this article will address both simultaneously, Kugle refers the reader in Homosexuality in Islam back to his previously published piece in Progressive Muslims for his full argument on certain points. Accordingly, Kugle’s Progressive Muslims piece will constitute the focus of this study, with Homosexuality in Islam serving as a point of departure for additional arguments not contained in, or altered since, the earlier piece. The current article begins by evaluating the conceptual basis for Kugle’s Qurʾānic revisionism. This includes his deployment of the notion of “sexuality,” Islam’s purported “sex positivity,” and the Qurʾān’s celebration of diversity, to which Kugle attempts to assimilate a diversity in sexual orientations and related practices. After evaluating this foundation, we proceed to review Kugle’s critique of the tafsīr tradition, and in particular the interpretation of the Lot[5] narratives recorded in the work of the famous early exegete Muḥammad b. Jarīr al- Ṭabarī (d. From this, we transition into Kugle’s proposed revisionist hermeneutic, which makes use of both what he calls a “semantic analysis” and a “thematic analysis,” evaluating the sources used to develop both heuristics.

Finally, we review the contributions of the distinguished Andalusian jurist and belletrist Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba (d. Kugle claims to endorse. The reader should note that the present article follows Kugle’s own order of presentation (particularly in his 2. Lot in the Qurʾān.

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Accordingly, roughly the first half of this article attends to Kugle’s conceptual, terminological, and other preliminaries, while the second half (as of “IV. Kugle and the Qurʾān” below) analyzes his attempted rereading of the Lot narrative.

II.     Sexual Orientation, Homosexuality, and Sexuality as Categories. In his Progressive Muslims chapter, Kugle begins by articulating the “integral relationship between spirituality and sexuality,”[6] later positing Islam as a “sex- positive”[7] religion, particularly when compared to other, ostensibly more repressive and prudish, faiths. Kugle buttresses this view of a purportedly sex- positive Islam on the basis of several considerations, including: (1) the intersectionality of sexuality and spirituality in Islam; (2) the Qurʾān’s treatment of the Adamic fall as resulting from a shared failing of both Adam and Eve, rather than from sex or sexual desire per se; and (3) the Qurʾān’s affirmation of “diversity” as part of God’s signs, a diversity which Kugle will argue should be extended to diverse sexual orientations and related erotic practices. Like this? Get more of our great articles. Kugle proceeds to affirm sexuality as “an indicator of our core being, a sexuality which interweaves thoughts, desires, motivations, acts and psychological and mental well- being,” a definition borrowed from Momin Rahman’s Sexuality and Democracy.[8] Kugle later points to the historical and cultural contingency of homosexuality as a category, engaging with essentialist and constructionist responses to the homo/hetero binary and suggesting “queer” (in the 2. A similar argument appears in Homosexuality in Islam, where Kugle remarks (correctly) that the Islamic tradition never expressed a conception of “sexuality” that exactly parallels modern psycho- social categories, in which one’s sexuality is interpreted as a psychological marker and a central part of one’s being.[1. Kugle uncritically endorses contemporary terms and categories related to sex and sexual identities[1.

Yet the willingness to approach such categories from a critical perspective is an unavoidable prerequisite for any serious discussion of the relationship between the Sharīʿa and same- sex acts in Islam. Kugle is correct to note that the homo/hetero binary is a recent one and can be accounted for as a product of modernity. In this regard, one in fact finds a layer of complexity when addressing the enterprise of “sexuality” in the pre- modern tradition (both Islamic and otherwise) that is considerably more nuanced than the contemporary Western notions of “sexuality” and “queer” that Kugle endorses. In both the notions of “sexuality” and “queer,” there is an undifferentiated conglomeration of desires, motivations, psychological well- being and, crucially, acts.

These definitions elide any meaningful distinction between inclinations and behavior—the very distinction which is, however, most relevant to the discourse and moral valuation of the Sharīʿa. In addition, Kugle treats sexuality and sexual orientation as predetermined, essential, and immutable, a claim disputed even in contemporary queer studies circles.[1. Though the exact date of the emergence of the homo/hetero binary is difficult to pinpoint, historians tend to agree that it emerged sometime in the late 1. Some constructionist scholars have further argued that the conceptual categories of “gay” and “straight” were developed in order more clearly to locate sexual irregularity as a distinct psychological condition.[1.