Societies in Islam have recognized "both erotic attraction and sexual behavior between members of the same sex." However, their attitudes about them have often been contradictory: "severe religious and legal sanctions" against homosexual behavior and at the same time "celebratory expressions" of erotic attraction.[2] Homoeroticism was idealized in the form of poetry or artistic declarations of love from one man to another. Accordingly, the Arabic language had an appreciable vocabulary of homoerotic terms, with a dozens of word just to describe types of male prostitutes.[76] Schmitt (1992) identifies some twenty words in Arabic, Persian and Turkish to identify those who are penetrated.[77] Other related Arabic words includes Mukhannathun, ma'bûn, halaqī, baghghā.[78]

Pre-modern era

There is little evidence of homosexual practice in Islamic societies for the first century and a half of the Islamic era.[3] Homoerotic poetry appears suddenly at the end of the 8th century CE, particularly in Baghdad in the work of Abu Nuwas (756-814), who became a master of all the contemporary genres of Arabic poetry.[3][79] The famous author Jahiz tried to explain the abrupt change in attitudes toward homosexuality after the Abbasid Revolution by the arrival of the Abbasid army from Khurasan, who are said to have consoled themselves with male pages when they were forbidden to take their wives with them.[3] The increased prosperity following the early conquests was accompanied by a "corruption of morals" in the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina, and it can be inferred that homosexual practice became more widespread during this time as a result of acculturation to foreign customs, such as the music and dance practiced by mukhannathun, who were mostly foreign in origin.[45] The Abbasid ruler Al-Amin (809-813) was said to have required slave women to be dressed in masculine clothing so he could be persuaded to have sex with them, and a broader fashion for ghulamiyyat (boy-like girls) is reflected in literature of the period.[45]

The conceptions of homosexuality found in classical Islamic texts resemble the traditions of classical Greece and those of ancient Rome, rather than modern Western notions of sexual orientation.[3][5] It was expected that many or most mature men would be sexually attracted to both women and adolescent boys (with different views about the appropriate age range for the latter), and men were expected to wish to play only an active role in homosexual intercourse once they reached adulthood.[3][5] Preference for homosexual over heterosexual relations was regarded as a matter of personal taste rather than a marker of homosexual identity in a modern sense.[3][5] While playing an active role in homosexual relations carried no social stigma beyond that of licentious behavior, seeking to play a passive role was considered both unnatural and shameful for a mature man.[3][5] Following Greek precedents, the Islamic medical tradition regarded as pathological only this latter case, and showed no concern for other forms of homosexual behavior.[3]

Mahmud of Ghazni (in red robe), shaking hands with a sheikh, with his companion Malik Ayaz standing behind him. (1515)

During the early period, growth of a beard was considered to be the conventional age when an adolescent lost his homoerotic appeal, as evidenced by poetic protestations that the author still found his lover beautiful despite the growing beard. During later periods, the age of the stereotypical beloved became more ambiguous, and this prototype was often represented in Persian poetry by Turkish soldiers.[3] This trend is illustrated by the story of Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030), the ruler of the Ghaznavid Empire, and his cupbearer Malik Ayaz.[3] Their relationship, which was sketchily attested in contemporary sources, became a staple of Persian literature comparable to the story of Layla and Majnun.[3] Poets used it to illustrate the power of love, pointing to Mahmud as an example of a man who becomes "a slave to his slave", while Malik Ayaz served as "the embodiment of the ideal beloved, and a model for purity in Sufi literature".[80][81]

Other famous examples of homosexuality include the Aghlabid Emir Ibrahim II of Ifriqiya (ruled 875–902), who was said to have been surrounded by some sixty catamites, yet whom he was said to have treated in a most horrific manner. Caliph al-Mutasim in the 9th century and some of his successors were accused of homosexuality. The popular stories say that Cordoba, Abd al-Rahman III had executed a young man from León who was held as a hostage, because he had refused his advances during the Reconquista.[45]

The 14th century Iranian poet Obeid Zakani, in his scores of satirical stories and poems, has ridiculed the contradiction between the strict prohibitions of homosexuality on the one hand and its common practice on the other. Following is just an example from his Ressaleh Delgosha:“Two old men, who used to exchange sex since their very childhood, were making love on the top of a mosque’s minaret in the holy city of Qom. When both finished their turns, one told the other: “shameless practices have ruined our city.” The other man nodded and said, “You and I are the city’s blessed seniors, what then do you expect from others?”[82]

Mehmed the Conqueror, the Ottoman sultan living in the 15th century, European sources say "who was known to have ambivalent sexual tastes, sent a eunuch to the house of Notaras, demanding that he supply his good-looking fourteen-year-old son for the Sultan's pleasure. When he refused, the Sultan instantly ordered the decapitation of Notaras, together with that of his son and his son-in-law; and their three heads … were placed on the banqueting table before him".[83] Another youth Mehmed found attractive, and who was presumably more accommodating, was Radu III the Fair, the brother of the famous Vlad the Impaler, "Radu, a hostage in Istanbul whose good looks had caught the Sultan's fancy, and who was thus singled out to serve as one of his most favored pages." After the defeat of Vlad, Mehmed placed Radu on the throne of Wallachia as a vassal ruler. However, Turkish sources deny these stories.[84]

According to the Encyclopedia of Islam and the Muslim World:

Whatever the legal strictures on sexual activity, the positive expression of male homeoerotic sentiment in literature was accepted, and assiduously cultivated, from the late eighth century until modern times. First in Arabic, but later also in Persian, Turkish and Urdu, love poetry by men about boys more than competed with that about women, it overwhelmed it. Anecdotal literature reinforces this impression of general societal acceptance of the public celebration of male-male love (which hostile Western caricatures of Islamic societies in medieval and early modern times simply exaggerate).[85]

Shah Abbas of Iran with a page (1627).

European travellers remarked on the taste that Shah Abbas of Iran (1588-1629) had for wine and festivities, but also for attractive pages and cup-bearers. A painting by Riza Abbasi with homo-erotic qualities shows the ruler enjoying such delights.[86]

"Homosexuality was a key symbolic issue throughout the Middle Ages in [Islamic] Iberia. As was customary everywhere until the nineteenth century, homosexuality was not viewed as a congenital disposition or 'identity'; the focus was on nonprocreative sexual practices, of which sodomy was the most controversial." For example, in "al-Andalus homosexual pleasures were much indulged by the intellectual and political elite. Evidence includes the behavior of rulers . . . who kept male harems."[87] Although early islamic writings such as the Quran expressed a mildly negative attitude towards homosexuality, laypersons usually apprehended the idea with indifference, if not admiration. Few literary works displayed hostility towards non-heterosexuality, apart from partisan statements and debates about types of love (which also occurred in heterosexual contexts).[88] Khaled el-Rouayheb (2014) maintain that "much if not most of the extant love poetry of the period [16th to 18th century] is pederastic in tone, portraying an adult male poet's passionate love for a teenage boy".[89]

El-Rouayheb suggest that even though religious scholars considered sodomy as an abhorrent sin, most of them did not genuinely believe that it was illicit to merely fall in love with a boy or expressing this love via poetry.[90] In the secular society however, a male's desire to penetrate a desirable youth was seen as understandable, even if not lawful.[91] On the other hand, men adopting the passive role were more subjected to stigma. The medical term ubnah qualified the pathological desire of a male to exclusively be on the receiving end of anal intercourse. Physician that theorized on ubnah includes Rhazes, who thought that it was correlated with small genitals and that a treatment was possible provided that the subject was deemed to be not too effeminate and the behavior not "prolonged".[92] Dawud al-Antaki advanced that it could have been caused by an acidic substance embedded in the veins of the anus, causing itchiness and thus the need to seek relief.[93]

In mystic writings of the medieval era, such as Sufi texts, it is "unclear whether the beloved being addressed is a teenage boy or God." European chroniclers censured "the indulgent attitudes to gay sex in the Caliphs' courts."[94]

Modern era

The attitudes toward homosexuality in the Ottoman empire underwent a dramatic change during the 19th century. Before that time, Ottoman societal norms accepted homoerotic relations as normal, despite condemnation of homosexuality by religious scholars. The Ottoman Sultanic law (qanun) tended to equalize the treatment of hetero- and homosexuals. Dream interpretation literature accepted homosexuality as natural, and karagoz, the principal character of popular puppet theater, engaged in both active and passive gay sex. However, in the 19th century, Ottoman society started to be influenced by European ideas about sexuality as well as the criticism leveled at the Ottoman society by European authors for its sexual and gender norms, including homosexuality. This criticism associated the weakness of the Ottoman state and corruption of the Ottoman government with Ottoman sexual corruption. By the 1850s, these ideas were prompting embarrassment and self-censorship among the Ottoman public regarding traditional attitudes toward sex in general and homosexuality in particular. Dream interpretation literature declined, the puppet theater was purged of its coarser elements, and homoeroticism began to be regarded as abnormal and shameful.[6]

Nonetheless, homosexuality in the Ottoman Empire was decriminalized in 1858, as part of wider reforms during the Tanzimat.[95][96]

In the 19th and early 20th century, homosexual sexual contact was viewed as relatively commonplace in the Middle East, owing in part to widespread sex segregation, which made heterosexual encounters outside marriage more difficult.[97] According to Georg Klauda, "Countless writers and artists such as André Gide, Oscar Wilde, Edward M. Forster, and Jean Genet made pilgrimages in the 19th and 20th centuries from homophobic Europe to Algeria, Morocco, Egypt, and various other Arab countries, where homosexual sex was not only met without any discrimination or subcultural ghettoization whatsoever, but rather, additionally as a result of rigid segregation of the sexes, seemed to be available on every corner."[97]

With reference to the Muslim world more broadly, Tilo Beckers writes that the modern rejection and criminalization of "homosexuality in Islam gained momentum through the exogenous effects of European colonialism. . . . " European thought at the time treated homosexuality as "against nature."[7]

According to University of Münster professor Thomas Bauer, for about a thousand years, up to 1979, there is no documented case in the Islamic world in which a man was prosecuted for consensual sexual relations with another man. Although contemporary Islamist movements decry homosexuality as a form of Western decadence, the current prejudice against it among Muslim publics stems from an amalgamation of traditional Islamic legal theory with popular notions that were imported from Europe during the colonial era, when Western military and economic superiority made Western notions of sexuality particularly influential in the Muslim world.[98]

In some Muslim-majority countries, current anti-LGBT laws were enacted by European colonial powers or Soviet organs and retained following independence.[8][9] The 1860 Indian Penal Code, which included an anti-sodomy statute, was used as a basis of penal laws in other parts of the British empire.[99] Among former British and French colonies, only Jordan, Bahrain, and (more recently) India abolished the criminal penalties for consensual homosexual acts introduced under colonial rule. Persecution of homosexuals has been exacerbated in recent decades by a rise in Islamic fundamentalism and the emergence of the gay-rights movement in the West, which allowed Islamists to paint homosexuality as a noxious Western import.[9] In Iran, several hundred political opponents were executed in the aftermath of the 1979 Islamic Revolution on accusations of homosexuality, and homosexual intercourse is declared a capital offense in Iran's Islamic Penal Code, enacted in 1991. Though the grounds for execution in Iran are difficult to track, there is evidence that several people were hanged for homosexual behavior in 2005-2006 and in 2016, in some cases on dubious charges of rape.[100][9] In Egypt, though homosexuality is not explicitly criminalized, it has been widely prosecuted under vaguely formulated "morality" laws, and under the current rule of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi arrests of LGBT individuals have risen fivefold, apparently reflecting an effort to appeal to conservatives.[9] In Uzbekistan, an anti-sodomy law, passed after World War II with the goal of increasing the birth rate, was invoked in 2004 against a gay rights activist, who was imprisoned and subjected to extreme abuse.[8] In Iraq, where homosexuality is legal, the breakdown of law and order following the Second Gulf War allowed Islamist militias and vigilantes to act on their prejudice against gays, with ISIS gaining particular notoritety for the gruesome acts of anti-LGBT violence committed under its rule of parts of Syria and Iraq.[9]

Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle has argued that, while "Muslims commemorate the early days of Islam when they were oppressed as a marginalized few," many of them now forget their history and fail to protect "Muslims who are gay, transgender and lesbian."[101]

Pederasty

Ottoman illustration depicting a young man used for group sex (from Sawaqub al-Manaquib), 19th century

While friendship between men and boys is often described in sexual ways in classical Islamic literature, Khaled El-Rouayheb and Oliver Leaman have argued that it would be misleading to conclude from this that homosexuality was widespread in practice.[58] Such literature tended to use transgressive motifs alluding to what is forbidden, in particular homosexuality and wine.[58] Greek homoerotic motifs may have accurately described practices in ancient Greece, but in their Islamic adaptations they tended to play a satirical or metaphorical rather than descriptive role.[58] At the same time, many miniatures, especially from Ottoman Turkey, contain explicit depictions of pederasty, suggesting that the practice enjoyed a certain degree of popularity.[58] A number of pre-modern texts discuss the possibility of sexual exploitation faced by young boys in educational institutions and warn teachers to take precautions against it.[58]

In modern times, despite the formal disapproval of religious authority, the segregation of women in Muslim societies and the strong emphasis on male virility leads adolescent males and unmarried young men to seek sexual outlets with boys younger than themselves—in one study in Morocco, with boys in the age-range 7 to 13.[102] Men have sex with other males so long as they are the penetrators and their partners are boys, or in some cases effeminate men.[103]

Liwat can therefore be regarded as "temptation",[104] and anal intercourse is not seen as repulsively unnatural so much as dangerously attractive. They believe "one has to avoid getting buggered precisely in order not to acquire a taste for it and thus become addicted."[105] Not all sodomy is homosexual: one Moroccan sociologist, in a study of sex education in his native country, notes that for many young men heterosexual sodomy is considered better than vaginal penetration, and female prostitutes likewise report the demand for anal penetration from their (male) clients.[106]

It is not so much the penetration as the enjoyment that is considered bad.[107] Deep shame attaches to the passive partner: "for this reason men stop getting laid at the age of 15 or 16 and 'forget' that they ever allowed it earlier." Similar sexual sociologies are reported for other Muslim societies from North Africa to Pakistan and the Far East.[108] In Afghanistan in 2009, the British Army was forced to commission a report into the sexuality of the local men after British soldiers reported the discomfort at witnessing adult males involved in sexual relations with boys. The report stated that though illegal, there was a tradition of such relationships in the country, known as bache bazi or "boy play", and that it was especially strong around North Afghanistan.[109]

Image gallery

• Homosexuality was accepted for a long time in the Muslim world
  This Turkish miniature shows ten men engaging in anal sex in the Ottoman Empire
• Two men engaging in anal sex in Safavid Iran