ΑΦΓΑΝΙΣΤΑΝ. Η ΟΜΟΦΥΛΟΦΙΛΙΑ ΣΤΟ ΠΛΑΙΣΙΟ ΤΗΣ ΠΑΡΑΔΟΣΗΣ

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Gay Afghanistan, After the Taliban. Homosexuality as Tradition
By Richard Ammon, Maura Reynolds and Lou Chibbaro (N.Y. Times, Feb. 2002)
Homosexuality and Lesbianism have no place in Islam. This issue is clear from the primary source of Islam, The Holy Quran. No Muslim scholar, Imam or a leader of a Muslim community can alter this injunction. A person committing such an act is in violation of God's Law and should seek repentance before God gives up on him or her. It was the people of prophet Lot (peace be on him) who started this evil act and were severely punished by God."

So proclaims a vigorously religious ‘imam’ from his Internet pulpit, making clear the position of the vast majority of Muslims regarding homosexuality. From the western shores of ancient Morocco across thousands of sandy Islamic miles to the far eastern islands of Indonesia, almost half the distance of our known world, homosexual behavior is pronounced anathema to the faithful. The sweep of condemnation of same-gender love is about equal to the sweep of eastern and western Christianity in the other half of the world. So the world, one would think, should be shorn of such an abomination wherein a man layeth with a man as a woman.
Sex and Scripture

Except it’s not. And the simple reason is that both of these imposed belief systems ignore and deny the natural varieties of the human psyche. There has always been heterosexual attraction and there has always been homosexual attraction.
To elevate and validate one over the other is to praise the left eye over the right eye. But simple and superstitious scribes of these faiths have written reams of florid, passionate and volcanic verses that embrace an artificial dichotomy of homo-and-hetero sexual and emotional orientation. Had they consulted the sentient beings in their tribes instead of magical and mystical oracles, burning bushes or delusional visionaries, the scribes might well have written more humane and precise books. Homoerotic affections, legends and myths run deep into the human heart and far back into the haze of history.

Besides its natural occurrence in our genes and neurons, another reason homosexual behavior and desire has not been stamped out by every conceivable type of secular cure and sacred persecution is that homosexuality serves both religion and culture well. It is perhaps one of the great anthropological paradoxes (if not hypocrisies) that the history and behavior of homosexuality has been carried down through fifteen centuries by gender-segregated Muslim cultures and, as well, by male Christian monastic confederations. (Does anyone seriously believe that sexual favors between altar boys and clerics began in the 20th century?) Men serving men is as old as the species and is found in many sacred and secular societies from the ancient Egyptians and Chinese to the sportive and warrior ranks of Greeks and Romans.

A thoughtful reader who engages in cross-cultural studies will not get far before they discover what many western lesbigay people already know about the indigenous and hidden homosexual tradition practiced, in local varieties, by countless unmarried and married men in Arab/Muslim countries.

In these cultures, homosexual activity serves as a temporary (yet valid and important) proxy stage of growth between puberty and marriage. Since there is varying but distinct social separation of the genders in these Muslim states, teen/young adult men develop special friendships and informal partnerships with other males, some older, some younger.

Within these dyads most adolescents have their first sexual experiences as they ‘practice’ on each other. Usually the younger partner takes the passive role and the older one the active role. Eventually, in their twenties and early thirties, most go on to exclusive heterosexual marriage. Others, to be sure, go on to marriage but maintain secret sexual liaisons with other men. Often these are men (and women) who are more truly attracted to their own gender but would not dare to reveal it.
Social Sexual Studies

In 1997, an important book was published on this matter. ‘Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature’ in which Stephen O. Murray and Will Roscoe, along with eight other authors, analyze the sexual shadows of Islam. One reviewer, Daniel Pipes of the Middle East Forum in Philadelphia wrote the following appraisal of the book:

"As with so much else in the sexual realm, Islamic norms differ profoundly from Western ones. The authors establish several points: (1) Islam treats homosexuality far less harshly than does Judaism or Christianity. (2) Sex between men results in part from the segregation of women and in part from the poetic and folk heritage holding that the penetration of a pretty boy is the ultimate in sexual delight. (3) Sex between men is "frowned upon, but accepted" so long as the participants also marry and have children; and also if they keep quiet about this activity. (4) The key distinction is not hetero vs. homosexual but active vs. passive; men are expected to seek penetration (with wives, prostitutes, other males, animals); the only real shame is attached to serving in the female role. (5) Youths usually serve in the female role and can leave behind this shame by graduating to the male role. (6) The great Muslim emphasis on family life renders homosexuality far less threatening to Muslim societies than to Western ones (Muslim men seeking formally to marry each other remains unimaginable).

"Dominant Sex with Boys

As if, coincidentally, to prove the validity of the Murray and Roscoe book, three recent stories about sexual practices in Afghanistan--usually a subject too sensitive for public discussion--came boldly from the 'Times of London', the 'New York Times' and the 'Los Angeles Times'. Each report portrays a custom of social/sexual behavior that stretches back into the thin pages of history.

As seen through today’s more politically-correct-sexually-sensitive-Judeo-Christian-western lens, the articles describe a sexual practice that falls outside most standards of acceptable behavior. This is, for some, an unsettling account describing the ‘taking’ of teen/young adult boys by strong-willed men--born into and hardened by the harsh conditions of war, deprivation, bloodshed and death--for the purposes of sexual pleasure and trophy gloating.

Nevertheless, these male-to-male conjunctions generally follow along old Arabic traditions. In most modern Islamic ‘cultural’ (premarital) homosexual behavior there is a mute understanding that sex is mutually consensual, temporary and that it’s a form of companionship, if not affection, among peers.
But an apparent distinction seems evident in this particular Kandahar variation as reported in the newspaper articles quoted below. The dating and courtship appears more coercive, more opportunistic and seems to take advantage of younger guys who almost have no other choice than to accept the money or gifts from bigger and more powerful 'commanders' whose bit of authority is bestowed by their gang-member status, their guns and the shattered legal/police system. The news reporters report did not (and could not) probe into the thoughts of these youthful men as they submit to these older 'patrons'.
A young native of Kandahar now living in Kabul was recently asked about these arangements. He replied that the older guys throw lavish parties where they "marry" their boytoys, showering them with gifts, especially weapons! Generally one guy is 15-20 years older than the other. The relationships can sometimes be very intense, and tend to last 5-6 years until the boy grows up and marries a woman.
(To be sure, there are many Kandaharis who oppose the practice. But poverty and power have always played crucial roles in shaping cultural behavior.)
Whether the activity is mutual or forceful, there is an almost universal attitude in these eastern cultures that such sexual indulgence is not ‘gay’, that is, it's not sex or love between two men who identify as homosexuals. (In Afghanistan it's common for the older participants to be married with kids.) Rather, in a collective mental shell game the meaning of sex is re-framed: heterosexual men engage in homosexual behavior in which the younger guy is not a ‘fem’ but obedient and passive and the older one is not a ‘butch queer’ but assertive and active.
What eventually happens to these Kandahar relationships? Some fade away, some stop when one partner marries or moves away, and some continue for years. In other other Muslim countries, the roles eventually change. As the older ones marry, the younger ones mature and become the dominant partner to a younger submissive friend. Or, as the reporter from the Los angels Times wrote, "sometimes when the halekon grow up, the older men actually try to keep them in the family by marrying them off to their daughters."
(To many western 'gay culture' observers, all this seems at first glance to be denial and self-deception. It stirs up, again, intriguing issues of homosexual identity vs homosexual behavior: does behavior define identity or is identity separate from behavior--and how do behavior and identity interface with sexual orientation...?)
Islamic ‘Human Rights’Framing all this role-playing and sexuality is another important facet of the Islamic prism to keep in mind as the 'Times' story is read. Despite the man-in-the-street assertion that Islam preaches love and peace among neighbors and strangers alike, Islamic governments over the course of history have often proven to be harsh and authoritarian. Little value has been put upon the dignity and rights of the individual. Expressions of protest, legal recourse and fairness, and gender equality have been poorly served by many of the domineering male-ruled governments under the flag of Islam. (Indeed, the Christian west is hardly free of its share of oppressive rulers and statutes as well.)

In another one of many recent books about Islam, Ann Elizabeth Mayer has written ‘Islam and Human Rights: Tradition and Politics’ (1998), in which she compares Islamic law with international human rights laws and concludes that these two are not compatible. This she attributes to the belief that Islam is divinely commanded from God and criticizing it is considered blasphemous.

The author goes on to make an unsettling observation: "Islamic ‘human rights’ can offer no means for protecting the individual against state-approved Islamic laws and policies that violate international human rights laws." Thus, Muslim theocratic states exist by asserting Islamic law over secular humanitarian law at the cost of freedoms of their citizens, female and male. The result is that violations of international human rights, especially for women and gays, are justified by oppressive governments using the ‘higher’ Koranic dictates.