Sex and politics in Islam
A conversation with Michiel Leezenberg
By Dino Suhonic
Islam has a reputation of being exceptionally repressive when it comes to sex. Yet this reputation is surprisingly recent. Only a century ago the Islamic world was seen as licentious and sensual — even flat out effeminate.
These changes in the Western depiction of Islam are not just a reflection of changes in political relations and their ensuing propagandistic imagery. For many centuries, the Islamic world truly had a more tolerant stance towards male and female sexuality as well as towards homosexual desires and practices. Michiel Leezenberg, a professor at the university of Amsterdam, researched the different ways in which the West perceived the sexuality of Muslims. His book The Minarets of Bagdad (which, sadly enough, has so far only been published in Dutch as De minaret van Bagdad) offers a new and refreshing perspective on these overheated topics.
Though often presented in a negative frame, the relation between Islam and sex is a… well… rather ‘sexy’ topic these days. It’s all over the public debates. Why exactly does this focus on gender and sexuality feature so strongly in the broader discussions about religion?
If you have a bit of a deeper look at these debates in different parts of the world, you can indeed see how gender and sexuality play an important, though not always recognized, role. To name but a few examples: in the fiery discussions on veils, niqabs, or burkinis all sorts of broader philosophical topics like freedom and secularism are quite literally fought out over the bodies of females. Just look at the alleged mass rape by Syrian refugees on the New Years Eve of 2015 in Cologne. That bit of news was hyped tremendously even though it didn’t really happen, as turned out afterwards. Yet, if you look at extremist groups like Daesh, you can also see how they sometimes ‘sexually advertised’ themselves by openly and provocatively making women into sex slaves and throwing gays from high rise buildings.
As such, I thought it might perhaps be useful to have a more systematic look at the theme of sexuality and Islam. In my own research as a philosopher, which normally entails quite different subjects, I had often come across bizarre and unexpected sexual phenomena. Gathering some of those examples, I once did a lecture in Iraq about the sexuality in the national epic of Kurdistan, a text from the 17thcentury. Normally there would be animated discussions about everything the speaker proposed. But when I finished my talk, the audience remained dead silent. That’s when I knew I had struck a sensitive nerve.
So, what were your most important conclusions after digging somewhat deeper into the topic?
The most important point is that all sorts of sexual norms, which we consider timeless and immutably Islamic, are in fact really novel. In the classical Islamic world there was a remarkably relaxed attitude in the way people dealt with issues like adultery and intercourse between men and women of the same sex. Even devout religious scholars considered homo-erotic desire as something natural. Sometimes it was even praised as a sign of civilization.
Also, sexual pleasure in itself was never seen as a moral problem, unlike what was sometimes the case in Christianity. There are plenty of medieval Islamic sex manuals which, without any trace of shame, discuss the pleasure of both partners and describe techniques to augment that pleasure.
Many people feel very surprised when they hear about such a rich history of sexuality and gender identity within pre-colonial Muslim cultures. When did it change and what exactly happened?
The repressive attitudes we see today are a radically new reality and not an expression of some original or timeless Islam. Specialists on the matter will often explain how the new prudishness arose during the colonial occupations. Muslims, and many other groups, like for example Indian Hindus, would have taken over the prudish morals of the bourgeois and Victorian rulers. But you also see those new attitudes toward sexuality in places which were never colonized. That’s why I suggest the arrival of nationalism and the nation state might be at least as important. By instating modern citizenship and modern army service it became the duty of every man in the 19thcentury to serve his country as a soldier. Women, on the other hand, were supposed to produce new generations of children for the country. In modern times, men-women-relationships did not loosen up but actually became stricter — alsoin Europe. Homosexuality, for example, all of the sudden became a political problem.
Then, would you say Islam was more ‘gay friendly’ before?
You could say so, provided you immediately add the nuance that ‘homosexuality’ is a modern concept, which throws feelings of love and desire on the same heap with sexual acts. In the Islamic world — much like in India, Africa or Russia — it’s often seen as a Western invention. And there is some truth to that. In classical Islam nobody would think of the possibility to equate the homo-erotic love, which was expressed in much poetry, with sexual intercourse between men. The latter could be heavily punished. At least in theory. In practice the jurists made the judgment and the application of those punishments nearly impossible. As a result, the tolerance towards homosexual practices used to be so far reaching that Western travelers spoke of it with a lot of contempt.
Some Muslims have criticized your work on these matters because, in their view, you’re not dealing with the source of real Islam. What’s your reply to such allegations?
I’d answer with a counter question: what is the ‘real’ Islam you’re talking about? On the one hand, I can’t answer this question as a scientist and outsider. I have to leave it over to Muslims themselves to decide. On the other hand, what I can say is simply that what was considered to be ‘true’ or ‘correct’ Islam has changed a lot throughout the centuries. In the Islamic tradition there has always been room for discussion, different attitudes and practices. In the Koran and ahadith, we find very little about sexuality — and the little we do find turns out to be very different than what we generally assume. Only later on, certain verses, sayings and texts were interpreted in more repressive and patriarchal ways. Even scholars like al-Suyûtî and Ibn Taymiyya, which are praised by contemporary Salafis, turn out to have quite different opinions than what you’d expect.
From this perspective, how do you asses someone like Ahmedinejad, the previous president of Iran, who once said there are no homosexuals in Iran.
Islamic moral crusaders often try to forget or deny particular parts of history. And, by the way, the same can also be heard in the discourse of certain Hindu nationalists, African political elites or Eastern European conservatives. But in the particular case of Iran, it’s simply undeniable that classical Persian civilization has an immense tradition of homoerotic poetry and of openly tolerated homosexual practices. Nevertheless, when such moral crusaders remark the modern concept of ‘homosexuality’ is a Western invention, they do have a point. Of course, I’m not saying that we should endorse non-Western homophobia in any way. But even when we strongly oppose any type of homophobia, we should still be able to admit that homosexual marriage reflects a typical modern, bourgeois mentality and is only one of the many ways to express your life as a homosexual. In this respect a look at Islamic history is very refreshing.
In its gaze at the Islamic world, the way the West perceived masculinity and femininity also changed over time. Before, the heterosexual Muslim man was considered to be to feminine while today he’s viewed as to masculine. Do we see a similar fluidity within the Islamic world when it comes to masculinity and femininity?
People often think that everyone is either ‘just’ a man or ‘just’ a woman. It’s seen as a natural given. However, in reality what is seen as ‘really’ masculine or ‘really’ feminine and even what is seen as ‘natural’, isn’t very solid at all. Many Muslims used to think falling in love with someone of the same gender was simply a normal part of human nature. (fitra) These days both religious and secular people think it’s ‘unnatural’. This insistence on ‘the laws of nature’ is, just like an insistence on ‘real Islam’, a claim of authority. It can be disputed just like any other claim of authority.
What does all of this mean for the struggle of women and homosexuals? In many ways, they find themselves right in the middle of the ‘clash’ between Occident and Orient and it’s often implied they have to be liberated.
The idea of liberating the helpless Muslim or Hindu women is a piece of colonial heritage. It’s also very paternalistic. By definition freedom is not something others can determine for you but something which you determine for yourself.
The idea of a timeless opposition between East and West is also misleading. In Europe as well as the Islamic world, there have been deep changes in the relations between men and women as well as in the attitude towards sexuality. And, of course, the relations between the East and the West themselves have also greatly changed.
For many people in the West, during the last decade, the extremism of ISIS served as an example of Islam’s ‘devilishness’. Sex and sexuality also had a strong presence within their propaganda. Some even spoke of ‘sexy jihad’.
Indeed. ISIS very consciously and provocatively used sexuality as a part of its ‘advertising campaign’. The message they sent to Western youth was: “Come over here, it’s a sexual paradise.” To their opponents, like for example Yezidi’s, they signaled: “We’ll rape your women and destroy the honor of your group.” But you can see this practice of systematic ethnic rape in other places and times as well, like for example in the nineties during the war in former Yugoslavia.
A final question then: how can we get a more nuanced debate about all of these themes and issues?
“What to do?” Lenin would ask. But I have no policy recommendations. The only thing I’d propose is to have a thorough look at Islamic history and to critically engage with the widespread insistence on a sort of generic Islam as an explanation for the issues we’re confronted with.
Also, I’ve noticed it’s useful to enter in a debate with anyone. Besides a lot of positive reactions, I also received a small amount of hate mail when my book was published and when I gave some interviews. Those mails came from Salafists as well as Islamophobes. But when I reacted to them without going into a rant myself, it often quite quickly developed into a much more positive and constructive dialogue.
