Posts Tagged ‘religion’

Gay Muslims

// February 3rd, 2009 // 13 Comments » // All things LGBT, Desi-Indian, DesiPundit, Videos

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“I can be a good Muslim and be gay.”

The LA Times recently ran a story on Aliyah Bacchs, who is a Muslim lesbian that left an arranged marriage and came to her family with two choices: accept her sexuality or lose her forever. Her case is not an isolated incident or limited to Muslims in America as exemplified in the Channel 4 documentary that was shot in Britain.

“I think my mom would rather say that I’ve been hit by a truck than say that I am gay.”

-Farah

Abdullah says in the documentary that people pick and choose what they want from the Koran. He takes the good parts and does not believe he is doing anything wrong. After all, Allah is forgiving.

While the documentary is restrictive in terms of the fact that many faces are never shown or blurred, it still manages to explore the lives of a group of gay Muslims living in Britain, some closeted and others openly homosexual, but all struggling with some aspect of their sexuality. The double standard of condemning gay men more than lesbians is always worth mentioning : Islam does not have an opinion on lesbians but gay behavior is strongly condemned and punishable to death. That stems from living in a society where the feminine is disparaged and women are merely objects for consumption (and it is true for all countries including the United States).

There were several profound statements in the video. One that particularly struck me had to do with the intersectionality of being an ‘Asian’ and a queer. The gay community wants us to step out and be proud while the pan-Asian community wants us to remain in the closet and constrict ourselves. How does someone deal with that contradiction? Says a queer Muslim in the video, “Are they both competing with each other and we are having to pay for it? Why can’t I live my life?” Why can’t we live our lives?

It’s an un-Islamic notion to be ‘out and proud’ says one member of Imaan — the largest support group for gay Muslims (more support groups can be found here). With colorful hijabs on at Gay pride in Britain, the members of Imaan seem to tow the fine-line between leading their lives as queers who are also respectful of the modesty in Islam. But Abdullah, another gay Muslim, says he wouldn’t have hidden his identity at Pride as it is important for people to see who is speaking, who is telling their story.

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Moron of the Week: Kingdom of Heaven

// November 20th, 2008 // No Comments » // Moron of the Week

Comic relief time my pro-migrant, pro-queer comrades!

This amicus curie brief a MUST-READ for when you are down, depressed or taking a shit (though it is not worth printing out so take the laptop with you…)

Some great quotes:

“In order to fill the earth with human physical bodies, God ordered each and all marriages to be between a one man and one woman. Indirectly, god prohibits gay and lesbian marriage. Through Genesis 1: 26-27, God also orders that all children must be born from natural conception and prohibits all abortion.”

No, I am serious. Half the brief is about abortions, unborn children and the devil.

“If gays and lesbians do not change their sexual behavior to natural ways that the Almighty Eternal Creator created between one man and one woman, they will lose their eternal life.”

Parts of the bible are under-lined and attached to the brief as ’supplemental documents’ for the next 35 pages.

Isn’t it amazing how the Eternal Almighty Creator has to appeal to the human-made Court?

I propose that God come to the hearing in March to argue for Prop. 8. If God doesn’t show up, than Prop. 8 is null and void.

Anyone else wondering why we are not suing for Prop. 8 based on FREEDOM FROM RELIGION?

Someone tell the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ and other comedy writers to please keep filing amicus briefs such as these for the next 2 months.

The other ones are on exercising ‘judicial restraint’ and preserving the ‘will of the people’ so not as entertaining.

The Pacific Justice Institute
Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence
Steven Meiers
American Center for Law and Justice

Maybe I should file a brief considering some of the briefs are not even worthy of being ‘legal matter.’

The Perversion of Tolerance – I Don’t want to be ‘Tolerated’ and neither should you

// November 14th, 2008 // 5 Comments » // All things LGBT, Desi-Indian, Immigration, Political Theory, Racism

Tolerance is intolerant and demands assimilation.
—Herman Broch, cited in the Jewish Museum, Vienna, Austria

Conversely, what is proclaimed and practiced as tolerance today, is in many of its most effective manifestations serving the cause of oppression.

-Herbert Marcuse

The mainstream, alternative press and bloggers are so inundated and knee-deep in the discourse of tolerance that hardly anyone has stopped to analyze the etymology and meaning of tolerance and its implications for society.

Tracy Hickman laments in The San Francisco Chronicle:

How ironic that the same people who call for tolerance of diverse lifestyles are perpetrating aggression against others for standing up for their beliefs and voting for the principles they hold dear?

Gary Bauer whines about “The Intolerance of the Same Sex Movement” (See also Lone Star Times, WorldNetDaily) while John Kass expresses disappointment at the lack of tolerance shown to T-shirts with political slogans.

Religious forces such as the LDS and Catholic Church take pleasure in pointing out the random and isolated attacks on churches, defacing of anti-gay yard signs, while right-wingers like Matt Barber are slamming the opponents of H8 for taking to the streets and not respecting the “rule of law” and democracy.

Even on the pro-migrant side, bloggers and organizations call for greater ‘tolerance’ as a response to the hate-crime against Latinos such as Marcello Lucero. The history of immigration discourse is ripe with tolerance discourse on all sides — tolerance for new immigrants, intolerance for ‘illegal immigrants’ and so on. Blacks, Latinos, Asians, religious minorities, gays and lesbians are all “tolerated” groups.

I have quietly sat on the side-lines for months, silently ‘tolerating’ the calls for tolerance. Enough.

I don’t want to be tolerated and neither should you. The discourse of tolerance–a noble and grandiose liberal experiment–must be stripped naked and exposed for what it really is: a colonizing discursive tool with the power to label and reproduce our identities, thereby designating minorities as permanent Others in civil society and globality, and justifying their ‘civilizing.’

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Church of England Owes Apologize to Dead Darwin

// September 16th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Education

We all know he is dead now. But nonetheless, one clergyman thinks the Church of England shall apologize to the dead man. Maybe if we were to buy into the Hindu theory of Transmigration, Darwin might be a phytoplankton, an oak tree or bird right now, hence undergoing the processes of evolution himself. Alas, he might not make it back to his human form this time to report his findings due to global warming or nuclear war … From The Guardian:

The Church of England owes Charles Darwin an apology for misunderstanding his theory of evolution and making errors over its reaction to it, a senior clergyman said today.

In a bid to recognise its faults in the run up to next year’s 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, the church has launched a series of articles on its website.

An essay by the Rev Dr Malcolm Brown, the church’s head of public affairs, called Good Religion Needs Good Science directly addresses Darwin. It concludes: “We try to practise the old virtues of ‘faith seeking understanding’ and hope that makes some amends. But the struggle for your reputation is not over yet, and the problem is not just your religious opponents but those who falsely claim you in support of their own interests.

Next year also marks 150 years since the publication of On the Origin of Species, in which Darwin outlined the theory of natural selection. This anniversary, the church says, presents an opportunity “to look back on the relationship between Darwin, his supporters and the Christian church”.

He writes: “People, and institutions, make mistakes and Christian people and churches are no exception. When a big new idea emerges which changes the way people look at the world, it’s easy to feel that every old idea, every certainty, is under attack and then to do battle against the new insights.

“The church made that mistake with Galileo’s astronomy, and has since realised its error. Some church people did it again in the 1860s with Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. So it is important to think again about Darwin’s impact on religious thinking, then and now – and the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth in 1809 is a good time to do so.

A Church of England spokesman said Brown’s piece was a “personal view” of Darwin’s contribution to science and did not amount to an official apology by the church.

On this note, I came across a rather noteworthy point made in my Powerscore LSAT Logical Reading Bible (no seriously, that is the name of the review book). This was in the ‘Flaw in Reasoning Questions’ section, page 387:

Errors in use of evidence

Lack of evidence against a position is taken to prove that position is true.

Just because no evidence disproving a position has been introduced does not mean that the position is true. Here is a famous example:

“There has been no evidence given against the existence of God, so God must exist.”

I am sure my mother won’t be too amused with this one. I wonder how the rabidly religious students sit through the increasingly liberal, anti-imperial, gender-neutral, politically-correct LSAT.

Of course the trend nowadays is to formulate or conjure up hypotheses such as “intelligent design” to offer as ‘evidence’ for the existence of god.

American Muslims Not What You Think – Breaking from Stereotypes

// August 20th, 2008 // 3 Comments » // Ethnic Studies

There is this great Pakistani song titled “Yeh Hum Nahin” meaning “This is Not Us” as in “We are not Terrorists”–a truly great message. Here is a subtitled version:

Anyway, I was reminded of that song as I discovered a surprisingly good editorial in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this past weekend. It pretty much asks Americans to discard the stereotypical images of Muslims, especially American Muslims, as robotically praying people.

In television land, it always seems to be prayer time for Muslims. Every mention of Islam evokes rows of men bowing toward Mecca, rising and falling in robotic unison.

So pervasive is this image that many Americans think Islam alone defines the attitudes and actions of all Muslims, even those in the United States. By extension, many fear that all Muslims are a threat to U.S. democracy. We see this manifested in the hostile reactions to the persistent — and false — rumor that Barack Obama is a Muslim.

These attitudes cripple our debates over immigration, law enforcement, education and foreign policy. They also hide the fact that U.S. Muslims are a constituency up for grabs in the November election. Electoral swing states such as Michigan, Ohio and Virginia all have significant Muslim populations. And on some hot-button cultural issues, Muslim Americans could potentially be a strong ally to the Christian right.

If that seems improbable, think again. As a professor of sociology who studies U.S. Muslim assimilation patterns, I have analyzed numerous nationwide polls of American Muslims on a variety of topics, ranging from their satisfaction with American society to their opinions on U.S. foreign policy to their attitudes on abortion and the environment. U.S. Muslims are a diverse, well-informed group; in fact, they are the most ethnically diverse Muslim population in the world. They come from more than 80 countries on four continents. Most are not Arab. Not all are immigrants. None are Barack Obama.

One-fifth are U.S.-born black Muslims (mainly converts), and a few are U.S.-born Anglo and Hispanic converts. The vast majority of Muslim immigrants have lived here 10 or more years, and they resemble the general U.S. population in their socioeconomic status. Most are employed, a quarter have a bachelor’s degree or higher and a quarter earn $75,000 a year or more.

U.S. Muslims are also like most Americans in another important way: They are not uniformly religious. Nearly half — 46.7 percent — attend a mosque seldom, never or only a few times a year. About one-fourth go weekly, and one-third go more than once a week, proportions similar to those of U.S. Christians and Jews. Like these other groups, U.S. Muslims range from ultra-conservative to ultra-liberal and from devout practicing believers to secular, non-practicing, in-name-only Muslims. More Christians say they pray daily — 70 percent to 61 percent — than do U.S. Muslims.

Like most Americans, U.S. Muslims are generally not activists. Just as regular church and synagogue attendance correlates with higher political activity for U.S. Christians and Jews, so does regular mosque attendance for U.S. Muslims. Even among the devout, however, there’s a sharp distinction between being a good Muslim and being an Islamic fundamentalist.

The elements that tell us how U.S. Muslims will behave politically are the same ones that predict the political attitudes and involvement of other Americans. People with more education, higher incomes, more group consciousness and more feelings of marginalization are the most likely to be politically active because they feel they have more at stake.

Many U.S. Muslims are immigrants and not yet eligible to vote. Only 63 percent are registered voters, compared to the U.S. average of 76 percent. But they are slightly more likely than most citizens to have contacted a politician and, like other racial and ethnic minorities, are a bit more likely to be Democrats.

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Can you be bible-thumping and anti-immigrant?

// July 1st, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Human Rights, Immigration

I suppose. The religious “right” pick and follow whatever is convenient. Love thy neighbor is forgotten when the neighbor is gay. Is this another one of those cases? Take a look.

Leviticus 19:34 The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the LORD your God.

Now, I must say that the Catholic Church has long stood up for the rights of undocumented immigrants and provided a safe haven (sanctuary) for migrant workers. No matter how much I take issue with their position on other matters like homosexuality, this one deserves props.

How many rabid ALIPacers, ‘FAIR’ and NumbersUSA members are actually compassionate Christian conservatives? Going by the hatred and scapegoating, not an overwhelming number would be a wise guess.

IF YOU are bible-thumping and anti-immigrant (legal or illegal), I would love to hear your justification in light of Leviticus 19:34

Who is more ‘undesirable ?’ The ‘illegal alien’ or homosexual ?

// May 19th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // All things LGBT, Gender, Human Rights, Immigration, Politics

Over the weekend, I was reading some pro-migrant news at a Catholic site that I had stumbled on via Google News Alert service. And on the sidebar, the very site was spewing hatred about same-sex marriage in California. The churches and religious ‘right’ who first established ’sanctuary’ and are very pro-migrant, are also the ones who are very wrong on LGBT issues. So what happens when we have a gay undocumented migrant??

This post has been in my mind for quite some time because lets face it, those of us in the pro-migrant community know undocumented persons who are also gay, lesbian, transgender. This intersectionality is further complicated by our homophobic and heterosexist immigration laws that do not recognize ‘marriage’ or partnership between people of the same-sex, and hence we have undocumented partners who are forced to live in the shadows, break off their relationships or move to another country.

It is utterly discriminatory to single out a ‘particular group of people’ and deny them equal rights and protections under the law–that is not debatable.

The sheer increase in the hate mail on my pro-migrant/pro-gay Youtube videos since the marriage equality ruling has prompted me to finally say something. To some extent, I can understand arguments against ‘undocumented migrants.’ I can understand working class fears of migrants taking their jobs, respect for the ‘rule of law’ and those who apply legally etc. even while refuting them. But marriage equality and anti-discrimination laws for LGBT people? NOT even debatable, which is often why the comments I receive are hilarious:

“…California will face the wrath of Sodom and Gomorrah…Now that gays are destroying marriage, there will be a huge earthquake in California… violence, perversion, lawlessness …Sodom and Gomorroh II. The U.S. will come to an end soon…Thank god you people cannot pass on your impaired genes by reproducing…What is next–legalizing sex with animals?…Why aren’t real lesbians hot like the ones in TV sitcoms?…”

What is this –the new Comedy Central Online???? It reminds me of this one scene in The L word when Kate Moening (Shane, the poster child of androgyny) waves her hands in the air saying “Where do you live, ________? It’s entirely possible” when her ignorant straight male housemate says that lesbians can’t fuck. But we are going off on a tangent.

The point is that as an out and proud lesbian, I haven’t dedicated my time to the gay rights movement precisely because I cannot begin to wrap my mind around the egregious fallacies, inaccuracies, lies, misrepresentation and sheer IGNORANCE of a vast majority of people. But that will change in the next 6 months as I am not about to sit around and watch California voters dash the hopes and dreams of people in my community, some of whom are our idols, since we so lack representation of ‘healthy, stable and loving’ same-sex families.

So where does the church stand on undocumented gays and lesbians? Who do you think is more undesirable in the current political climate of immigrant crackdowns and constitutional amendments for marriage discrimination? And how can we support our undocumented gay/lesbian students who have to deal with both anti-migrant and anti-gay sentiments?

The biggest lesson from this post is that social and political rights cannot be ‘divided’ and given to people on the basis of binary categories and identities. It is not enough for some of us to push for just pro-migrant rights because even when some of us become legal citizens, we would be SECOND-CLASS citizens who pay taxes but don’t have our lives affirmed by the state. Likewise, it is not enough to exercise ‘federalism’ when it comes to LGBT rights since state laws do not affect homophobic federal immigration laws and the lives of our bi-national couples, who are torn apart by their countries for the crime of love. This struggle is not just about selective rights for a select group of people; it is a small step forward in the bigger fight against global inequity.

I hate identity politics. But it does matter.

Quote of the day:

“Gay haters just can’t get enough news about gay sex and gay everything.” jerrydoubleu