Little White Pills

#5 Scout, I agree with your funny comment, but Bismil`s work has more than just sex, Indian, and Pakistani. Good work, Bismil. Keep it up!

Farhan

exact same Zeejah case. The short Mrs rashid did make me read more from you. Good work. Keep it up! This reminds me of my stay in Aitchison and how ``sexuality`` was a joke there since everyone is ``fakely gay`` as in, we joke about gay stuff and to most elite Pakistani`s homosexuality does not exist. I myself am doing research on ``gay gene`` vs `` environmental homosexuality`` debate before I can make up my mind. Are people born gay? Do they become gay? If they become gay, is not it reversable? And if so, then why reverse?
-Khosa

i came to this after reading about Mrs Rashid ... and liked it as much... hope to be reading more from you
zee

Unsophisticatus_Maximus

when you say:

``Let`s say my next door neighbor is gay... he earns as much as I do... he spends all of it on himself. Who do you think is better off... me or my neighbor? Who do you think is better for the society as a whole... me or my neighbor? Yes... both of us work as hard and benefit the society by the same amount... but then I get to keep much less in return because I go on to benefit the society even more by raising three children!``

My friend, isn`t it your choice how many children you raise? And suppose if your neighbour is not gay, a bachelor, then what? Will you hold it against him? Does the society even gives him a choice to get legally married. Or what about married people who can`t or don`t want children then what? And how do you know he is not contributing to the society? My friend those are just assumptions and sometimes assumptions are the death of reality.

So you say:

``Ever wondered what the world would be like if all of us were gays? (well, for one, it would be extremely disgusting... but this is not the point here) There would be no ``effective`` society as no one would care for anyone else! So one thing is for sure... we can`t allow those two gay guyz to live happily as a couple and take away the rights of the a vast majority of the society!``

So what are you fearing here, that you would become a minority? or once you become a minority the society would treat you like the way you treat ``the minority``?

So you say:

``there are so many things which appearently seem unfair... there are people who are born blind, crippled etc... and they are naturally like that too. What do they do... just bear it for the most part!``

Its funny how easily you say that. Ofcourse everyone have their crosses to bear but then there are ways that the society trys to help them and lessen their obsticles. Try to put yourself in their shoes and that includes all those people or segments of the society that you hold grudges for, i am sure your walls will crumble, for i do have a feeling that you are capable of that.

karakoram:#76

smiles...laughTER----GuffAWS.

Thanks.

``Woh Inny hongay jo kehtay haiN shehvat kul humay hogee

Yahaan tayyar baithay haiN,murra ley jiss ka jee chahay``

Inny:means impotent.

WASSALAM.

Unsophisticated_Mountamus:

``When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes.`` (Hadith)

Is this a Abu Huraira hadith ?

Someone should tell these men to get off the throne.

shankar #120 ``Jeeze; I hope youre from Kerala. The Keralites I know personally are pretty intelligent guys:) Wonder what major malfunction befell Jay in the course of the development of his brain?``

You know, I too have wondered on this anomalous situation.

Sorry to butt in

``EACH ORGAN HAS ITS PRIMARY & SUGGESTED USE ``

true but htere is also something called out-of-the-box thinking : )

I have noticed some double standards here too on the part of men&women regarding gays and lesbians. They seem to be more fascinated by homosexuality of the opposite sex(imaginations tripping) hence a little more acceptable of this fact and more threatened by that displayed by hteir own sex. I wonder why taht is so : )

But it hits you the most having to see a near and dear one go thru the process of figuring out his/her sexual orientation - one of the hardest things to do. All you fcan do is give them all the love,support and courage and pray taht the rest of the world will not be judgemental. Some come out while some reamin lost forever.

#: 57

scout

anNy #51,

Hmmm, I can understand your stance. About alcohol and drugs, they inevitably cause harm. I dont` think you can say the same about homosexuality though

SCOUT,I SUGGEST YOU READ EITHER TRANSLATION OF KORAN BY M.YOUSUF,PICTHAL,OR SHAKIR

VISIT ISLAM INFO SITES LIKE iISLAM.ORG.



Topic: Homosexuality

FROM TRANSLATION INTO ENGLISH BY YUSUF ALI

The Poets (Arabic) - Recite

26:165 ``Of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males,





The Poets (Arabic) - Recite

26:166 ``And leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing (all limits)!``





The Ant, The Ants (Arabic) - Recite

27:55 Would ye really approach men in your lusts rather than women? Nay, ye are a people (grossly) ignorant!





The Spider (Arabic) - Recite

29:28 And (remember) Lut: behold, he said to his people: ``Ye do commit lewdness, such as no people in Creation (ever) committed before you.





The Spider (Arabic) - Recite

29:29 ``Do ye indeed approach men, and cut off the highway?- and practise wickedness (even) in your councils?`` But his people gave no answer but this: they said: ``Bring us the Wrath of Allah if thou tellest the truth.``

Reply #: 64

abysmal

The Gay movement ,in the western countries,have yet to win acceptence religously either in Christianity or Judeaism.

And these religion according to muslims like us ,are corrupted religion due to many deviation from its original scriptures.Without useless debate of gays trying to twist surah Fatiha & naming there group Al Fatiha or conservative sections siting even more descriptions of Hell Fire sodom & gomorrho ,i think is waste of time.

If there are christian & jew ,Hindu Sikh ,Buddhist gays,there must be gay tendency in many muslims.After all Islam is not an antidote against gayness,nor is it predesposed towards it.

The official reaction of mainstream Islam probably will be very much like mainstream christianity,& judeoism.While opposition to gays will be present & ostracization may continue ,but if Gay Muslims want they can organize themselves as yet another special interest group ,within the ummah,at best or outlawed muslims like Ahmedia group.

The fear of the mainstream muslims is to stop active encouragement of otherwise bisexual or borderline tendency ,encouraged to express themselves agressively & there by increase there clout neumerically.

[The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 6.23.2001]

ATLANTA PRIDE 2001

VERNON CARNE / Staff



Homosexual people who embrace Islam struggle to find a place within their faith

By SAEED AHMED

Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer

MICHAEL TEMCHINE / Special

Activist Faisal Alam says he and others are ``putting forth a human face`` to counter the idea that there are no gays within Islam.

From a life of secrecy

to gradual emergence

The intolerance and hostility of the conservative Muslim community around the world toward gay Muslims drove many of them underground, where for years they lived in constant fear of being discovered.

The few occasions they banded together proved disastrous.

In 1979, a San Francisco-based group, the Lavender Crescent Society, sent five members to Iran to create a gay Muslim movement. The five were taken straight from the airport to a prison and killed.

And in the early 1990s, a Toronto-based organization, Min-Alaq, folded after its members received death threats from other Muslims.

With the advent of the Internet, however, gay Muslims have found a safe and anonymous place for their exchanges -- from sites that let them identify themselves by nationality, such as Gay Iran, to those built around ethnic affiliation, such as the Gay and Lesbian Arab Society of New York.

Al-Fatiha, which grew out of an e-mail discussion group in 1997, now has nine chapters in the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, and claims to have reached more than 2,000 Muslims.

There are even plans to open a chapter in Jerusalem -- in conjunction with Jerusalem Open House, a multifaith gay center co-founded by Steven Greenberg, an openly gay Orthodox rabbi in the United States.

``Roughly a thousand years ago, in cities like Baghdad and Granada, Jews and Muslims created vibrant, religiously complex and remarkably open cultures, which included a quiet toleration of same-sex love,`` said Greenberg, who sees the partnership as an experiment in cultural renewal.

``Our traditions have very old and venerable resources of tolerance and respect for difference. Our job is to find them and run with them.``

-- Saeed Ahmed



The dinner invitations stopped coming months ago. The letters and phone calls ceased shortly after.

Ever since Shareef Khatib came out to his family at a holiday gathering in Tampa last year, he has felt increasingly ostracized by his father.

Khatib`s tale is yet another instance of a gay son rejected by a deeply religious parent, but with a twist.

The 22-year-old graduate student, who lives in Atlanta, is also a Muslim.

And in a faith that condemns homosexuality as an abomination, Khatib`s dual identity presents a contradiction his father cannot reconcile.

``In my father`s eyes, I have become everything I was brought up to hate,`` said Khatib, who is part-Palestinian, part-British. ``I went through a long period of guilt and self-hatred until I realized that being gay and Muslim isn`t an oxymoron.``

At a time when major religious denominations are grappling with the issue of homosexuality in their ranks -- from Baptist congregations divided over reaching out to gays and lesbians, to the country`s largest group of rabbis sanctioning same-sex unions in the spring of last year -- a small but growing number of gay Muslims are seeking validation of their sexual identity within Islam.

``For too long we`ve been relegated to the outside boundaries of Islam,`` Khatib said. ``It`s time to stop hiding.``

This weekend, more than 150 Muslims -- including Khatib and a handful of other Atlantans -- are gathered in San Francisco to explore ways to cope with the challenges they face in their faith as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered individuals.

The participants, who have traveled from countries as far away as Bangladesh, are members of Al-Fatiha, the only international support group for gay Muslims in the world.

On Sunday, the group will march for the first time as a gay Muslim entity in San Francisco`s Pride Parade, the world`s largest gay and lesbian celebration.

Faisal Alam, who founded the organization as a college student four years ago, said he named the group Al-Fatiha -- Arabic for ``the opening`` and title of the first chapter of the Muslim holy book, the Quran -- because he wanted to initiate a conversation with orthodox Muslims.

``The only reason the Muslim community hasn`t challenged homophobia is because it refuses to believe that homosexuality exists in their community,`` said Alam, now a caseworker for the National Minority AIDS Council in Washington. ``We are putting forth a human face to challenge that perception.``

Al-Fatiha`s movement comes during a period when Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the United States. There are an estimated 6 million Muslims in this country and some 1.2 billion worldwide, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Al-Fatiha claims that a full 10 percent of the Muslim population -- or 120 million -- is gay, although actual figures do not exist.

`Roles assigned to you`

Gay Muslims face an insurmountable obstacle in their quest for acceptance, said Plemon El-Amin, spiritual leader of the Atlanta Masjid of Al-Islam, an area mosque.

The Quran -- considered the final word on Islamic matters -- contains explicit proscriptions against homosexuality, El-Amin said.

Like the Old Testament, the Muslim holy book includes the story of Lot (Lut in the Quran), who narrowly escaped death when God destroyed the residents of Sodom (the Quran doesn`t mention Gomorrah) because, according to the text, they ``commit unnatural offense and come with lust unto men instead of women whom your Lord had created for you.``

``The whole position Islamically is that God makes you either a man or a woman and you`re responsible for upholding the roles assigned to you,`` El-Amin said.

Some gay Muslims say that those who use the story of Lot as a blanket condemnation of homosexuality are misinterpreting the scripture. It`s a similar complaint often raised by gay Christians and Jews.

Omar Nahas, an activist for the Yoesuf Foundation -- an organization based in the Netherlands working to change the view of homosexuality in religion -- said the men of Sodom were punished not for their same-sex preferences, but because they broke ancient codes of hospitality.

``When we talk about homosexuality, we`re talking about a relationship based on love and consent,`` Nahas said. ``When we talk about Sodom, we`re talking about a group of people who were punished by God for demanding that Lot turn over his visitors so that they might rape and molest them.``

The debate can never be definitively resolved. Since Islam is a nonhierarchal religion, there is no pope, for example, to hand down decrees. So scholars can make various pronouncements regarding homosexual behavior without a centralized religious authority taking an official stance, said Abdullahi An-Na`im, a professor of Islamic law at Emory University.

To him, the best approach is to avoid the issue, since a dialogue might actually make it worse for those in the sexual minority.

``The fact that it is not debated allows the informal practice to continue more than if it were debated,`` he said.

Others say a conversation is exactly what`s needed.

``In many ways, Al-Fatiha exactly parallels where gay Catholics were 25 to 30 years ago,`` said Marianne Duddy, executive director of Dignity/USA, the nation`s oldest and largest gay Catholic association. ``Our first five years were all about just putting the words gay and Catholic together.``

Today, a number of outreach programs exist for gay Catholics, and the group boasts 2,700 members.

Death penalty

Homosexuality in Muslim society is nothing new.

While some in the orthodox Muslim community grouse that the practice is a recent ``Western import,`` author Stephen Murray, in his book ``Islamic Homosexualities,`` said homosexuality has been prevalent in Islamic countries for centuries.

The poetic works of the Sufis -- Muslim mystics who were said to have fully understood the meaning of Islam and creation -- are rife with homoerotic themes, said Murray, who has written extensively about homosexuality in various cultures.

What is recent, however, are laws that have been introduced to punish same-sex behavior, he said.

Of the 82 countries where homosexuality is against the law, 36 are predominantly Muslim, including all nine where the practice is punishable by death, according to the International Lesbian and Gay Association, a coalition of groups fighting for equal rights for gays.

In Afghanistan, for example, a wall is collapsed on top of those convicted of sodomy, despite the fact that the Quran stipulates no specific punishment for homosexuality, as it does, say, for adultery.

In more liberal countries, such as the United States, gay Muslims say they are often scorned and targeted for violence.

Ifti Nasim, a gay Pakistani poet, was attacked at a Chicago restaurant in March by a man who declared an Islamic jihad, or holy war, against gay Muslims.

And an Al-Fatiha retreat last year in London was almost abandoned at the eleventh hour after threats from a conservative Muslim group.

It`s worst for lesbian Muslims, Al-Fatiha members said.

While Muslim men can often get away with gay liaisons as long as they are discreet and fulfill social appearances by getting married to the opposite sex, the patriarchal structure of many Muslim societies means that women are under pressure to conform to the role of dutiful daughters.

Atlantan Amira Husseiny, a Palestinian graduate student, said she`s pursuing a master`s degree in part because she needed an excuse to avoid being married.

``I think I will probably end up with a Ph.D.,`` Husseiny added, only half-jokingly.

Her former partner endured years of physical and mental abuse and was eventually coerced into marriage to a Muslim man who ``eats pork and drinks but is not considered less of a Muslim,`` Husseiny said.

Alcohol and pork are forbidden in Islam; there`s no specific mention of lesbianism in the Quran.

Taking different paths

In the face of such relentless opposition, gay Muslims often find themselves asking why they continue to embrace a faith that is so reluctant, in turn, to embrace them.

Many don`t. They see their two identities as being mutually exclusive and walk away from Islam.

That is what Shareef Khatib did for six years after coming to terms with his sexuality at 15.

``Then I realized that people have spiritual needs that have to be met independent of the official policy of a denomination,`` said Khatib, who considers himself a practicing Muslim again. ``A handful of verses is not the sum total of a religion.``

Others, like Aamer Ibrahim, head of the Atlanta chapter of Al-Fatiha, can only reconcile their two identities by picking one over the other.

In Ibrahim`s case, his religion takes precedence over his sexual orientation, and he chooses to remain celibate.

``I`m more on the conservative side of gay Muslims,`` said Ibrahim, a researcher at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who is very active in mosque activities. ``I don`t want anything in the theology changed or even acceptance of any type for same-sex marriages.``

And then there are the Raja Rayeeses of the movement.

Rayees, a 33-year-old transsexual man from Pakistan, knows he will never be accepted in the Muslim community if it finds out about his surgical transformation from a woman to a man. But, he said, his aim is to please God, not his fellow Muslims.

``All my life I have lived with this guilt that I am living a lie, but my relationship with God is deeper and richer ever since I became true to myself,`` said Rayees, executive director of the newly formed Atlanta-based Southern Association for Gender Education.

``And in the end, isn`t that what matters?`` he said. ``When you face God on Judgment Day, the first question he`ll ask is not if you`re gay or how many sexual partners you had, but did you believe in me?``

FARANGI KUSH # 52

[[[``Mein khayal hooN kisi aur kaa,mujhay sochtaa koi aur hai.``

Ubaidullah Aleem?]]]

This beautiful nazam is of Saleem Kausar,not U.A. and Jagjit Singh has sung it . :)

Regards,

sa:)

Unsophisticatus_Maximus

I say again...Use your intellect. Use it to see the world around you and also in your discussions.

Since you are so desperately want to bring Islam in everything. How about reading the Surah called the bee. The gist of that parable is that like a bee, take the sweetness of life.

Islam is not all about rules and laws. Sure it is a part of it, and those laws if analysed, are about giving justice to all members of the community.

Islam is about humanity, love, care and tolerance for the whole humanity. It was never about who is right who is wrong. Prophet Muhammad`s (pbuh)

life is a perfect example.

I believe you don`t have anyone close in your life, who is gay or a lesbian. They are people are just like you and me. You would not deny human rights to your loved ones if they were gay. Would you?

In response to writer_77, who wrote:

``It is really interesting to note in this discussion that most people equate homosexuality with sex and sexual organs.``

Homosexuality is a *sexual * orientation. For example, there is nothing more to male homosexuality than the act of a male

having sex with another male, or the state of one male being attracted to other males.

Further, the homosexual community defines itself in terms of it`s sexuality. For example, look at over sexed Gay pride day parades, sex-themed gay dramas (produced by gays themselves). Even their political movements revolve, as they must, around

their sexual behavior. There is only one logical conclusion a reasonable person can make.

There is NOTHING exclusively unique to the homosexual `community` other than their sexuality. As we all know, they don`t

have their own language, traditions, etc. They just have their peculiar and, statistically speaking, abnormal behavior.

One must give credit for gay lobbyists and activists for being very successful in convincing liberal elements that their particular

behavior entitles them to some kind of special quasi ethnic status, viz-a-viz this fictitious notion of a ``gay community``. Heck, even our

legal codes and school curricula have been revised on behalf of this group of people. If only polygamists were so lucky...

But this status is superficial, it`s existence being explained by heterosexual sympathizers who see the obvious parallels between notions of free love and the particular ``cultural`` traits found within the homosexual community.

``What about love? The right that most hetrosexuals take for granted.``

Love is an emotion, not a right (hmmm...interesting how you`ve cast a basic human emotion in political terms...).

What`s more, homosexual behavior in the western world tends to mimic the heterosexual equivalent. Elsewhere in the world, where the

date-mate-marry paradigm of heterosexual relations isn`t prevalent, homosexual relationships tend to be little more than illicit

sexual encounters. In this sense, I think it is a more honest expression of homosexuality than the ``we`re very much like heterosexual`` nonsense we get on this side of the world.

``So if someone is a homosexual, it is wrong to have feelings for someone of same-sex?``

Morally, perhaps. However it`s rather in vogue now days to poo-poo morals. To be honest, in this case I will be willing to submit that perhaps a bit of understanding and sympathy for one`s ailment may be in order instead of a blind rejection.

However, this recent popularization of gay culture, and it`s associated political movement is a bit much to stomach. It`s stupid, to put it bluntly. `Hi, my name`s Joe, and I stick my penis inside another man`s anus. NOW GIVE ME MY RIGHTS!!!`. Give me a break.

``Enough with this homophobia.``

Oh, don`t even get me started on this stupid, stupid, stupid homophobia word...:)

Take care,

digit.

Well written piece of questionable content.

Ras