news As Muslims’ status as political punching bag fades, some are fighting against LGBTQ+

[VOSS]

Quote

For months, hundreds of religious parents have regularly rallied outside a Maryland school board building, aghast at curriculum featuring books that portray LGBTQ+ families to elementary school kids. Waving American flags, they have chanted against “indoctrination” of children. They’ve sued to pull their kids from lessons and argued their case on Fox News.

 

In battles against LGBTQ+ acceptance, it is often white evangelicals pushing for book bans or boycotts over beer brands or bathing suits. In this case, Muslims are leading the fight.

 

The controversy in an overwhelmingly blue Washington, D.C., suburb highlights a shift. For decades, Muslims have been focused on fighting back against accusations of terrorism. But now, in clashes in left-leaning, diverse areas from the coasts to the heartland, they’re speaking out about what they see as intolerance of their faith.

 

“The school system believes it is being inclusive toward LGBTQ parents and students,” said Zainab Chaudry, the Maryland director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national civil rights group that put out calls for rallies over the Maryland books controversy. “But in doing that, it is not being inclusive toward another set of parents and students.”

 

In the blue city of Hamtramck, Mich., an all-Muslim city council recently sided with Muslim activists and banned the LGBTQ+ Pride flag on city property. Muslim residents are pushing for the same in nearby Dearborn, where close to half of residents are Arab Americans and protesters derailed a school board meeting last fall over an LGBTQ+-related curriculum.

 

And at dozens of American mosques in other cities, congregational prayer leaders have instructed followers to confront “gender ideology.”

 

It all bewilders some who say they supported Muslims when they were under attack from the far-right and now feel betrayed.

 

“When they wanted to broadcast their call to prayer from mosques, we defended them. When they were being hit with hate crimes, we stood by them, and we opened our arms when they were refugees,” said Russ Gordon, who was kicked off the Hamtramck Human Relations Commission this year after he defied the flag ban.

 

Muslims were once reliable allies in a coalition of racial, religious and sexual minorities courted by the left. The umbrella grew after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and hit a stride during the Trump presidency as policies and pronouncements from the White House targeted each group with regularity.

 

Now, some of the 3.5-million followers of Islam in the U.S. are speaking out on topics where their conservative take on the faith more closely aligns with Republican politics.

 

“Muslims have long stayed out of these controversies,” said Youssef Chouhoud, a political science professor at Christopher Newport University in Virginia who studies the role of Muslims in politics. “But now, they are jumping in. It’s seen as less risky than it was before.”

 

For Asma Uddin, a mother of two elementary school-age kids who attend Montgomery County schools, the issue has little to do with political party or anti-LGBTQ+ views. She just wants to decide when and what her kids learn about sexuality or gender identity.

 

“I’ve voted for Democrats my whole life,” said Uddin, a visiting assistant law professor at Catholic University who wrote “The Politics of Vulnerability: How to Heal Muslim-Christian Relations in a Post-Christian America.” “I voted for same-sex marriage,” she said in reference to a 2012 state referendum that included protections for conservative religious ministers. “I am left of center.”

 

“Pride is not a religion, it is not something everyone has to celebrate or respect,” said Hassan Aoun, a Muslim Uber driver in Dearborn. “I respect people who are gay. They can do what they want. It’s a free country. ... But that doesn’t mean we have to put up a flag or shove it down people’s throats. It is clearly against Islam and we make up a lot of this community.”

 

Aoun, 42, said he usually voted for Democrats until gradually switching sides over the last decade over LGBTQ+ issues.

 

About 10 miles from Dearborn, liberals celebrated when Hamtramck elected the nation’s first majority-Muslim council in 2015. But in the three months since the council — now all-Muslim and all male — banned the Pride flag on public property, there have been protests and scathing online critiques.

 

Mayor Amer Ghalib said the council was trying “to keep the city neutral.”

 

“It’s the only Muslim-majority city in the Western Hemisphere and people here care so much about their faith and family structure. We don’t discriminate against any group, but we don’t give special or preferential treatment to any group either,” he said.

 

However, while many traditional schools of Islam see LGBTQ+ identities as incompatible with the faith’s instructions, the views of American Muslims are more diverse.

 

A 2017 Pew Research Center survey found that more than half of American Muslims believed homosexuality should be accepted by society, close to double the support found a decade before. Pew found that Muslims were more likely to accept homosexuality than white evangelicals and Black Protestants, but less likely than mainline Protestants, Catholics and people with no religious affiliation.

 

“This summer was the first that, for weeks on end, our Friday khutbah [sermon] was focused on LGBTQ+ questions,” said Chouhoud, a Muslim who lives outside Richmond, Va.

 

That was in part spurred by an open letter that hundreds of American imams signed, titled “Navigating Differences,” a rare coming together of the biggest names in American Islam in an attempt to course-correct followers.

 

“We refuse the false choice between succumbing to social pressures to adopt views contrary to our beliefs or facing unfounded charges of bigotry,” the 1,289-word essay said.

 

Yasir Qadhi, a widely followed Islamic scholar who serves at the East Plano Islamic Center in Texas, was a lead writer of the notice.

 

“We have as Muslims been relatively quiet on LGBTQ topics because we thought there were bigger fish to fry, so to speak,” said Qadhi. “But then the issue was coming directly to our communities and involving schools and children.”

 

Qadhi was also involved in another letter released by the same group in 2016, after a Muslim man who supported the Islamic State shot and killed 49 people the Pulse gay club in Orlando, Fla. That statement praised LGBTQ+ Americans for standing by Muslims who faced discrimination and encouraged Muslims to defend the humanity of LGBTQ+ people.

 

Now, some Islamic leaders express regret about supporting communities they see as being at odds with Islam. Sheikh Mustafa Umar, the senior religious director of the Islamic Center of Irvine, put it bluntly in recent remarks at the Chino Valley Islamic Center on the “LGBT lobby.”

 

“The Muslim leadership post-9/11 got so afraid, everyone got so scared, [saying:] ‘Our visas are going to be revoked, we’re going to get kicked out of the country, we’re going to have to move somewhere else...,” he said. “So people are like, ‘Let’s just team up just with anybody who is willing to talk to us.’ Not thinking about the long-term consequences. And when we look at that in retrospect, that was a huge mistake, and now it’s coming back to bite us.”

 

LGBTQ+ Muslims and progressive Muslim groups have responded forcefully to such perspectives.

 

“The Prophet Muhammad asked Muslims to stand up against oppression of the vulnerable,” said Ani Zonneveld, the Los Angeles-based founder of Muslims for Progressive Values, which organizes LGBTQ+-friendly worship groups across the U.S. “The prophet never punished a person for being gay, even though there were absolutely gay people existing during his life.”

 

Muslim scholars “keep on saying that being LGBTQ is morally wrong but then say they are not to blame for any hate or harm against LGBTQ people,” she said. “Nobody explicitly said to attack Muslim Americans after Sept. 11, but the political rhetoric around Islam led many people to commit hate crimes.”

 

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Edited September 26, 2023 by VOSS

[byzantium]

Interesting...I wonder how ATRL feels about this. 

[Lagerfeld]

People need to stop defending them.  

[YellowRibbon]

The values of The West and the ones of the Islamic World are simply incompatible. 

[LustSpell]

Religions, but especially Islam, have no place in modernized societies 

[Blade Runner]

From Brazil to Russia, queers are now the common enemy. The world is finally united against something again and it's us. Countries, and people in general, need a common goal and a common nemesis that's "destroying society" to distract from real stuff. 

 

It's such a tough time and it's only gonna get worse. 

Edited September 26, 2023 by Blade Runner

[worldwide angel]

its going to backfire so bad  

 

and homophobia / transphobia in islamic communities is quite ironic if you look back in pre-colonial muslim societies. 

i could write a whole essay about how islamic fundamentalists are.... i'll say not smart people / hypocrites bc again

its in the history books which tend to be behind a paywall but that's what the twitter academics are for  

 

[bunnyeyes]

What everyone seems to forget in this conversation is that there are people who live at the intersection of both Queer and Muslim identities, no matter how hard different groups on both ends may try to deny it, and they are the ones who are most vulnerable and need our love and support in the face of this adversity and increasing hatred. 

Edited September 26, 2023 by IvyTower

[nostalgic]

Oppressed minority attacks other oppressed minority to gain favor with the majority and take the heat off of themselves - a tale as old as time. Shame on them. 

[wastedpotential]

Oh not again