TL;DR: British Colonization is to blame for the vast majority of muslims hating gays.
I get that some people are stuck in the past, but blaming British colonization for modern-day gay bashing is beyond ignorant.
This is like every other culture & race that has internal problems but doesn't want to admit it and needs to distract you from the issues by blaming another group. And of course, any 'outsider' that points out said problems is obviously a 'racist'.
Some politicians pander to this, while other point it out and society wonders why we're diametrically opposed.
'Dang' ADMITS its a divisive political issue, then complains when someone has a political opinion? or is it that my political opinion doesn't match Dang's? If you don't want political dialogue, then don't put political articles on a technology-driven news site.
Race/religion/poltical issues won't go away unless there is an actual conversation about them - but most people are too scared to do that. The left cries 'racism!' at every turn, while the right cries 'oppression!'
You've been using HN primarily to comment on divisive political topics. That's not what this site is for. Please take a look at what we're looking for:
This was a particularly good thread not to poison with polemic, because the only value of an article like this on Hacker News is what it might teach us about history. It's probably hopeless to imagine that we could have a substantive discussion about the history of homosexuality in Islam, but a first comment like yours squashes what faint hope there might have been.
It's extremely easy to link hot topic X back to whatever is sitting in L1 cache about hot politics Y, show up first in the thread and dump it out. Thoughtful reactions are invariably much slower. But it's the thoughtful reactions we want (and the cache dumps that we don't want). This is a big problem. Please don't use the site this way.
I haven't gotten to fact check the entire article yet but one glaring error is that Jordan was never colonized by the British.
Jordan was not only "colonized" by the British it was created by the British it was part of the "Syrian Province" which later turned into the British Mandate of Palestine.
The Kingdom of Transjordan was created on 75% of what then was Mandatory Palestine after the Brits got the Mandate after the San Remo conference.
Lebanon in which the Muslim population has (and is) mistreated homosexuality was never a British protectorate/colony.
Iran which was never a British colony especially during victorian rule now is probably one of the worse offenders as far as male homosexuality goes in the world.
If we take Pew research numbers then Turkey which was never part of any British legal system and is the most "western" majority Muslim country today then only 7% of it's population support of acceptance of homosexuality.
While I'm sure that victorian era laws on sodomy really didn't help I would really find it a stretch to call them the reason that Islam rejects homosexuality so violently these days.
Also the article seems to ignore the resurgence of Shia Islam as well as the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabism which I don't think have anything to do with Victorian England while being quite anti-LGBT.
It was written in Arabic in the 13th century, and is a look at the sexual practices of the time. It was eventually, much later, translated into French, and the French to English, and then Gay Sunshine Press published the edition cited above, which is just the gay-related parts of the book.
5 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 25.2 ms ] threadI get that some people are stuck in the past, but blaming British colonization for modern-day gay bashing is beyond ignorant.
This is like every other culture & race that has internal problems but doesn't want to admit it and needs to distract you from the issues by blaming another group. And of course, any 'outsider' that points out said problems is obviously a 'racist'.
Some politicians pander to this, while other point it out and society wonders why we're diametrically opposed.
'Dang' ADMITS its a divisive political issue, then complains when someone has a political opinion? or is it that my political opinion doesn't match Dang's? If you don't want political dialogue, then don't put political articles on a technology-driven news site.
Race/religion/poltical issues won't go away unless there is an actual conversation about them - but most people are too scared to do that. The left cries 'racism!' at every turn, while the right cries 'oppression!'
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
This was a particularly good thread not to poison with polemic, because the only value of an article like this on Hacker News is what it might teach us about history. It's probably hopeless to imagine that we could have a substantive discussion about the history of homosexuality in Islam, but a first comment like yours squashes what faint hope there might have been.
It's extremely easy to link hot topic X back to whatever is sitting in L1 cache about hot politics Y, show up first in the thread and dump it out. Thoughtful reactions are invariably much slower. But it's the thoughtful reactions we want (and the cache dumps that we don't want). This is a big problem. Please don't use the site this way.
Jordan was not only "colonized" by the British it was created by the British it was part of the "Syrian Province" which later turned into the British Mandate of Palestine. The Kingdom of Transjordan was created on 75% of what then was Mandatory Palestine after the Brits got the Mandate after the San Remo conference.
Lebanon in which the Muslim population has (and is) mistreated homosexuality was never a British protectorate/colony. Iran which was never a British colony especially during victorian rule now is probably one of the worse offenders as far as male homosexuality goes in the world.
If we take Pew research numbers then Turkey which was never part of any British legal system and is the most "western" majority Muslim country today then only 7% of it's population support of acceptance of homosexuality.
While I'm sure that victorian era laws on sodomy really didn't help I would really find it a stretch to call them the reason that Islam rejects homosexuality so violently these days. Also the article seems to ignore the resurgence of Shia Islam as well as the emergence of the Muslim Brotherhood and Wahhabism which I don't think have anything to do with Victorian England while being quite anti-LGBT.
It was written in Arabic in the 13th century, and is a look at the sexual practices of the time. It was eventually, much later, translated into French, and the French to English, and then Gay Sunshine Press published the edition cited above, which is just the gay-related parts of the book.