The photo shows a candidate for the head of Istanbul’s Sisli district signing a cooperation agreement with LGBT organizations. Recently, homosexuality, or rather the attitude towards it, has again become a political issue in several parts of the Islamic world. This is completely unnatural and imposed from outside because homosexuality has never been a political problem in the Islamic world.
Let’s explain what we are talking about. As a sexual or psychosexual phenomenon, homosexuality is, if not eternal, at least ancient and universal, just like drug addiction, gambling, suicidal tendencies, and so on. These are problems that many societies and many people face, and they have never been completely eliminated, and it is unlikely that they ever will be, because Satan, may he be damned, promised to tempt people from all sides, and he was given the opportunity to do so, just as true believers were given protection from this in the form of following the laws of the Creator.
In this sense, of course, homosexuality existed and exists in many Muslim societies, but it was never a question of how to deal with this phenomenon. That is, it was not a political problem because politics is about public relations and is based on values that society has accepted as the basis of its existence. Therefore, it could be someone’s personal or family problem, or even a social problem, if this phenomenon spread threateningly for some reason, but it was not a political problem because how to deal with it in principle did not raise any questions among Muslims and does not raise any questions now.
Today, however, an attempt is being made to make homosexuality a political problem in the Islamic world, where it has long since become a problem in the Western world, whose standards are being imposed as global ones. The most prominent recent example of this is the story of Brunei, where the implementation of classical Sharia criminal punishments, including corporal punishment (hudud), has been announced. And it should be understood that we are not talking about punishment for homosexuality, as opponents try to portray it — we are talking about Sharia punishments that will be applied for, among other things, proven acts of sodomy in court. Nevertheless, the homosexual community perceives and presents it as a declaration of war against itself. And it should be understood that no matter what Sultan Brunei was guided by, it will be seen as exactly that, and considering that the so-called LGBT today are one of the leading parts of the global establishment, this country is challenging the entire world order.
Does little Brunei have enough strength to withstand the pressure that will undoubtedly be unleashed on it? The answer to this question is not yet clear, and this is apparently why Brunei’s Muslim neighbors, such as Malaysia and Indonesia, which criminalize sodomy (i.e., the act itself, not the inclination), limit themselves to imprisonment for it. By the way, it should be said that some Islamic jurists, for example in the Hanafi madhhab, believe that this act does not fall under hudud — the punishment prescribed in a certain form — but under ta’zir — the punishment that the ruler has the right to choose, which actually happens in countries where imprisonment is applied for it.
However, the problem is that even the maximum tolerance for LGBT fundamentalists within the Islamic system of coordinates is still not satisfactory. Only recently, historically speaking — still in the last century — many Western countries also had criminal penalties for sodomy. They no longer executed for it, and over time these penalties were applied less and less, practically giving way to the implicit approach of «don’t tell, don’t ask», that is, if the person himself does not admit it, there is no need to ask him or to interfere in his private life. From the point of view of conservative society, this approach was a maximum concession, and what happened? In the end, representatives of this community declared it repressive.
In addition, after achieving the decriminalization of sodomy, they began to fight for the recognition of their relationships as normative. In countries where they were allowed to register their «partnerships» while leaving the status of marriage for a union between a man and a woman, they began to demand and seek the elimination of such «discrimination» and the recognition of their relationships as marriages. The resulting right to adopt children and raise them in such «families» is not the limit either. Gender ideology holds that it is wrong to raise a child as a boy or a girl according to their biological sex, and that they should be given the opportunity from an early age to choose from numerous options of «gender identity»: heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, transvestite, and so on. Enforcing gender identity is also considered «oppressive».
If today Brunei is openly advancing, with countries like Malaysia defending on distant fronts, then countries like Turkey or Bosnia and Herzegovina find themselves on the last or penultimate lines of defense for Muslim society. For example, against the backdrop of the recent local elections in Turkey, it emerged that an agreement had been reached between a candidate for the Sisli district of Istanbul from the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the local LGBT community. Such a demonstrative gesture by the CHP, even though it involves a local branch in a district known for its nightlife (because the party’s central leadership tacitly approved it), should be taken into account in any discussion of internal and inter-party processes in the country. Much has been said recently about the hypothetical return of the CHP to power in a coalition with the IYI party, which does not pose a threat of reviving state Islamophobia because Turkish society has changed and the rights that observant Muslims have gained thanks to Erdogan’s party (AKP) are no longer contested by anyone. The CHP members themselves, it seems, celebrated the news of their victory in the elections in Ankara with takbirs and zikrs, and the winning or not winning mayoral candidate of the CHP, Ekrem Imamoglu, prevented his supporters from chanting slogans about «Atatürk’s soldiers» and declared that he wants to be the mayor of all citizens. So the CHP is not the same anymore, but it is also not the same in many respects. Under the old CHP, it is hard to imagine takbirs and zikrs celebrating an election victory, but they would also not allow themselves to publicly embrace LGBT activists. Thus, this liberalization of the neo-Kemalists is a double-edged sword: on the one hand, it seems to guarantee protection against the return of discrimination and repression against observant Muslims; on the other hand, it opens the doors for the decay of Muslim society by forces that are not tolerant of those who do not accept them.
Under these circumstances, what the AKP is doing can be considered as the line of behavior of a conservative party with a religious inclination within the coordinates of the secular-democratic political system. It does not seek to criminalize sodomy, let alone impose the death penalty for it, but at least it demonstrates an alienation from the so-called LGBT community, which is particularly evident in the dispersal of «gay parades» in Istanbul for the second consecutive year. This, by the way, could change if CHP representatives come to power in the city.
This is exactly what is happening now in another Muslim country with a secular-democratic political system — Bosnia and Herzegovina. Specifically, in the Sarajevo Canton, where a coalition of «progressive» forces came to power after last year’s elections in opposition to the national-conservative Party of Democratic Action (SDA). The latter is a partner of the AKP and was founded by Alija Izetbegovic and is now led by his son Bakir Izetbegovic. Sensing a golden opportunity, the LGBT community of Bosnia and Herzegovina announced its intention to hold a gay parade in the country’s capital, while according to a poll conducted by the popular N1 television channel, 96.5% of viewers opposed the event, with only 2% in favor. The SDA also officially condemned it. However, they are not condemning sodomy and LGBT per se, but the division that such demonstrations create in society — the party cannot afford a harsher rhetoric and position, as they, like AKP, are trying to bring their country into the EU.
Thus, in these cases we can see very different realities representing the interests and values of Muslim societies — from a cautious, unfriendly distance from LGBT while officially not interfering with their «rights,» to making them illegal through a cautious repressive policy, to declaring war on them, as the Sultan of Brunei has done. In all cases, however, the goal is to make homosexuality a political problem of the Islamic world, actively imposed on it from the outside. And this is a challenge that Muslims will have to accept, and the answer to which already requires considerable efforts in the modern world, starting from the intellectual efforts needed to justify it in specific conditions (a separate question is the position of Muslim minorities in the countries of the triumphant LGBT community), to the spiritual and volitional efforts needed to implement it on a practical level.