Homosexuality

 

 

HOMOSEXUALITY

 

Under the present almost fascistic philosophy and attitude of our times in the West, homosexuality became a taboo in the opposite direction of the taboo it used to be in the past. In the past it was a hushed-up shameful subject, religions condemned it and public opinion expressed itself as disgust. Nowadays the wheel has been made to appear to make a half turn whereby this subject moved from the depth of shame to the top of respectability if not outright pride. Now former closet homosexuals of both sexes are coming out into sunshine, fighting for and winning their ‘rights’ and even making a mockery of holy marriage by ‘marrying’ each other of the same sex under the laws they campaigned for. They are an angry and vituperating minority playing sexual roles like same actors playing a villain and a hero in two separate films. Biological men among them are real men able to father children yet they want to play the sexual role of women by an opposite gate while their women colleagues while perfectly suited for female role all the way to bearing children want to rub into male role. And we are asked not only to approve but even admire this absurd perversion of sexual roles only God knows why. Thanks to their ruthless campaigns and shock tactics of intimidation many people are naturally cowed, because nobody is more disturbing and formidable than a misguided fanatic rearing like a horse in revolt. Even a too angry mouse may scare off a cat; so it is not surprising that the Parliament-investing and red-banners waving crowds of homosexuals could intimidate our governments into granting their demands as the Bolshevik crowds of Lenin could intimidate out of office the democratically elected Kerensky government in Russia.

 

What is homosexuality and why? It is a member of either sex playing the role of a person of the other sex like a male actor, by the way of dress, make-up, posturings and voice flexions of a female and then participate in an act of bodily intercourse in which at least one of the two parties imitates the opposite sex as far as possible, because it is not entirely possible even by a far margin. In fact, in early theatre in Greece and Rome all roles were played by male actors some of whom imitated females to give a credible performance. Despite the modern homosexuals’ claims that their behaviour has a biological basis and therefore innocent, these claims are not borne out by the facts of the cases of the perversion. Few homosexuals have external anatomical features like big breasts or large pelvises in cases of men wanting to behave like women or vice versa, on top of not having the sexual organs peculiar to the imitated sex. Homosexual acts are misguided fancy wish-fulfilment exercise by which each party is so carried away that they feel semi- or pseudo-satisfied: that is why they are so angry when criticised: all who are grossly wrong but reluctant to admit it become angry like hell when criticised. A man who is sure he is right can only pity a critic. The ridiculous fact is that most male homosexuals playing female roles are fully-formed men capable of fathering children, for example; the same with females. We know for sure that sexual biology (both anatomy and physiology) is genetically determined and sex hormones-controlled. Oestrogen is the dominant hormone in females while testosterone is the basis of male characteristics. When these hormones are tampered with so becomes a person’s sexual characteristics. Old women given oestrogen, for example, begin to menstruate. Men wanting to undergo a pseudo sex-change are operated to remove their male organs and artificial female organs are built from remaining flesh which organs being only cosmetic, do not work in any physiological sense.

 

We are leaving out the grey area of hermaphroditic and pseudo-hermaphroditic cases because these make up of a minority of homosexuality cases and often the sufferers do not necessarily end up as practicing homosexuals.

 

What makes some people to end up in such an identity crisis? What persuades some males and females to play roles opposite to their sexual biology or two switch between the two sexual roles in the interest of an unnatural relationship with another member of the same sex?

 

There are both cultural and psychological causes. Most cultures delay marriage beyond puberty with the view of allowing youngsters to have an education and in general grow more in strength and the skills of life before they marry. To a point this is justified but not always essential. With far less social sophistication most mammals outside man begin breeding soon after they produce sperms or release eggs. This of course they can do if they can beat off rivals which is not the case always.

 

In man, young pubescent boys and girls are jealously guarded by their parents and the rest of the adult community lest they engage in early and irresponsible sex. The guards do not always succeed though. In any case it is easier to keep boys away from girls but to put boys away from boys and girls away from girls is both difficult and dangerous: youths need socialisation, each youngster needs most socialisation with members of his or her own sex and less but enough socialisation with the members of the opposite sex. After puberty mixing of the sexes becomes more strictly regulated: even in our so-called liberal Western society male and female toilets are kept separate for example. Enter the wrong toilet and you may find yourself arrested!

 

Now these pubescent years are very problematic: the sex urge is there but bisexual opportunities often are not. As a way out the youngsters, unless they are given intensive moral and especially religious education (which do not work on everybody) they feel they must satisfy their sex urge or they fear they will go mad. Here comes handy masturbation as the lesser evil and homosexuality as the greater. Youths already initiated into homosexuality or homosexual adults come out to take advantage of the ‘virgin’ but sexually tormented youngster: they try to seduce  him into their habit. What is seduction and how it works? It is so ingratiating another person with compliments and promises of pleasure that he or she may lose her self-control and like a drugged or hypnotised subject allows his or her charmer to proceed. The compliments and promises go hand in hand with sexual bodily contacts like caresses and kisses. So, except in the case of the seducer and the seduced being of different sexes, the seduced person yields to either sexual role as insinuated by the seducer. This is the psychological method and works best on vulnerable and confused youngsters who may variously suffer from abuse within the family, from deprivation of love in general (e.g. an unloved, badly treated child). In saner and stronger youngster both being seduced and seducing get help from their wild sexual urges which is able to overrule their any scruples. Once so initiated into the secretive guilty cult often a life long, if sometimes on and off habit of homosexual practices became established. That is why no nation and no generation has been without it, yet the fact is that it is better to be rid of it than indulging in it. It steals the rights of the opposite sex while wasting the powers of the same sex. It is a source of ill-health of various severity simply because sexual organs of one sex are made for the sexual organs of the other sex in which case no health risks arise other than coming across from an already infected organ. No orifices or extrusions of the human body other than the male and female organs are safe for sexual contacts; some parts are routinely filthy and may act as sources of infection to any degree of seriousness. Therefore God banned homosexuality while blessing and encouraging heterosexual contact in the format of heterosexual marriage.

 

In the final analysis it is an unforgivable insult to the Creator to ignore or dismiss His gift to us, namely that most delicious and elevating, in fact spiritually beatifying reward for serving His purpose through forming that bisexual, reproductive and most humanely socialising family setup and instead try to teach Him back how the sex gift should be used for supposedly more fun. Wilful homosexuals shall always carry the stigma of abusing themselves and others as well as having a very large share of responsibility for introducing and spreading a spectrum of serious, some of them catastrophic illnesses of which every year millions are dying from or being crippled by. This responsibility they share with other sexual sinners, namely the adulterers, the promoters of and customers of prostitution. Victims of prostitution are innocent despite being part of the infection chain.

 

May Allah inspire repentance into all sinners (including us who may be guilty of so many other things if not sexual) so that we all can be saved. Amen.

 

23.  TAMING DRAGONS- AND CONVERTING THEM

 

PART ONE: INTRODUCTORY THOUGHTS

 

In the street two men, in an office two colleagues, in a shop the customer and the shop keeper, in the mosque right after the Friday prayers two Muslims are shouting at the top of their voices, throwing abuse at each other, issuing threats and perhaps also beginning to exchange blows. At a supposedly higher civil institution, say a church two monks or at a Sufi convent two disciples are almost coming ‘knife to knife’ if not have already done so. Admittedly such events are not too frequent spectacles but do happen at times. More commonly, in a parliamentary session members made of almost from the cream of the society accuse each other over the parties divide, often the opposition attacking and the government not only defending but also counter attacking. Wherever we go it is quite possible that we will witness men, women, children of the same or opposite sex, as individuals or groups picking up fights quickly enough and proceed with it to any extent, which fights in some thankfully rare instances end up in shedding blood. Why? What is the agent in people, which so easily if not too often can rise in so much anger and inflict punishment on other people? To the agreement of all spiritually-minded people pursuing self-discovery and improvement is the belief that we have in us a sense of a separate and vulnerable self which defines our personal identity and carries a label called a name to that effect. It must not be for nothing that both children and immature adults use the word ‘I’ only too frequently and defend its subject too categorically. Is this agent we call a personal ‘ego’ which is both aggressive and defensive necessary? The answer it nothing is more necessary, but not entirely as this personal ego would like to have it.  Read if you wish:

 

“By the selfhood (nafs, soul) and What arranged it and inspired it its impiety and its piety- indeed (eventually) one who purifies it prospers and one who messes it fails” (91: 7-10)

 

The Arabic original of this verse uses the past tense for the verbs it used but unlike in English past tense in classical Arabic and especially in the Qur’an often stands for present tense. It implies something inevitable which the ‘what happened happened’ ethos of past tense would have it. In other words it implies a ‘foregone conclusion’.

 

Commenting on the verse we may add that it is Allah Who arranged the human soul or selfhood and again it is He Who made it feel what is a humane action which in religious terms is called piety and what is inhuman action which in religious terms again is called impiety.  In other words our creation is nothing more and nothing less than the granting of a selfhood to us by our Creator, a gift and risk not directed to animals and inanimate objects. This selfhood has the sense and ability to know, unlike lower animals, what is morality and what is consequently morally good and what is immorality and what is consequently morally evil. With this ability it is up to us to save ourselves from shame and indignity by purifying our hearts- that interactive interface of our soul with our body- or else to end up buried in shame and reproach by messing up our heart with filthy and guilty thoughts and desires which eventually may trigger evil and shameful acts. Do you know any man who has been rightly and justly shamed and reproached and yet was not the victim of his filthy thoughts and guilty desires?  Thoughts and desires are like seeds; all may not germinate and grow into life but many do, and that is enough to show us in a good or bad light.

 

Allah teaches in His Qur’an that He created and endowed us with His Spirit in order to employ us as His deputies (‘khalifa’, a deputy or successor). How our Creator went about with the role He gave us? The answer is in the verse:

 

“We indeed have presented the Trusteeship (for the potentially possible if partial management of the world) to the heavens and the earth and the mountains but they took fright of it and declined to take it on themselves. (It was) man (who) took it on and has since proven an atrocious wrongdoer and one grossly ignorant. (In the end) Allah will punish the hypocritical men and hypocritical women and idolatrous men and idolatrous women and accept the repentance of believing men and the believing women. Allah has always been mercifully forgiving (33: 72-73)

 

We will use this verse later on to throw light on our relationship with our environment but for the moment we will make do with its message on our place in the order of things.

As far as that is concerned, do not both verses give the same message in respective wordings that could not be more different? They look to speak about different things but converge to one thing when we look deeper. Combined they must mean this: Allah distinguished us and raised us above all His other living creatures, at least potentially and in this His central or pivotal gift to us is the sense and consciousness of a self, a self with a name and a purpose and a destiny. Now to this selfhood He offered a position and a power of trusteeship of the world in and on which man the trustee can gain increasing mastery and enjoy more of the benefits it can offer. This is an exact definition of civilisation, is it not? What is civilisation if not man’s conscious improvement of himself, his society and his environment?

 

As for his improving himself he need recognise his Creator and follow the way of piety he already has a sense of in his deep heart- if he is a decent person to begin with. When the Prophet was preaching Islam a lot of his listeners, despite their opposition to him for various reasons (tribal, mercenary etc.), granted the fairness and nobility of his cause but did not dare to abandon their idolatrous friends and business partners in Muhammad’s favour. We have the evidence of both the Qur’an and hadith to this effect. In Mecca only few dared to take the decisive step e.g. the Umayyad Uthman whose Umayyad clan, a big and prosperous one, were traditional rivals of the Prophet’s Hashimite which was smaller and humbler in means if the noblest of all clans. Then a young and extremely handsome man, Uthman embraced Islam almost the instant it was offered him. At one point another Quraishite, namely Walid b. Mughira, otherwise an enemy as bad as Abh Jahl, was almost won over but it was not to be: he had listened to the Prophet’s recitation of a part of the Qur’an and was overwhelmed by its nobility and sweetness; his stubbornly hostile fellows hardly appreciated his appreciation of Allah’s Book. Unable to break ranks with his similarly proud and dismissive pals he then sank back to his usual hostility. But we are not, thanks Allah, Walids or Abu Jahls; Having been gifted Allah’s Book and His Prophet’s memory and example we can improve ourselves to any level of piety and character nobility by following the two sources with sincerity and serious effort thanks to Allah’s promised help in this matter.  Read if you wish:

 

“Those who struggle to find a way to Us- We will surely guide them to Our ways” (29: 69).

 

Finding a way to Allah is, in practical terms, finding a way to a character and conduct so excellent that anyone who sees such a person automatically remembers Allah and sorts himself out accordingly- if he is a decent person in a basic sense and not a determined devil.  Man’s capacity for self-improvement in a moral and spiritual sense is almost infinite. This is a chance once in a lifetime and missing it must be the single most regrettable mistake in life and the most unforgivable sin with the Creator. Incidentally, our humble Prophet Academy’s main and all-consuming mission is self-improvement for Muslims and all who subsequently can and would see the light of Islam.  It is not mystical euphoria and self-aggrandisement passing as sainthood we pursue; unlike most Sufi movements, we are after the jugular vein of the evil to down it, which jugular vein is that vain sense of an independent and irresponsible ego which misses the boat of salvation for the sake of bestial self-enjoyment or selfish euphoria. Please the readers not misunderstand: All pleasures, physical or mental are for us so long they are not catalogued among the harams (forbidden) by our Wise and Gracious Creator; incidentally the number and kinds of ‘haram’ hardly amount to one per cent of what Allah created for us as ‘halal’ or lawful. Just like we will not eat prunes together with their stones we should have no problem with noticing and eliminating from our menu of actions those few and small items Allah made haram.

 

As for improving his environment this comes in two spheres- social and physical.

 

The social environment rises and falls, in a primary and fundamental sense, on the basis of the quality of national education in the broadest sense. This broadness covers education in family, in school, in the street and in business premises and government offices. In the family equal measures of love and discipline for children with a view to integrate them into the family and into the society at large are necessary and its fundamental ethos need always be increasing affectionate and respectful cooperation and solidarity among the members of the society while curbing selfishness, rudeness and law-breaking. Religious faith and morality must be offered to all citizens of all ages, what they do with them is their responsibility. This inculcation of faith and morality must be practical and results-oriented however the desired results being noble character, high morality and graceful manners and not so much ‘technical’ piety or promotion of ostentation and hypocrisy.

 

If education is correct and is pursued vigorously and supported by reasonable disciplinary methods its products will be higher average quality of the citizens and more success for the society in both material (e.g. economic) and moral senses (i.e. social peace and harmony) although no society under no leader however good and powerful can entirely be made fully peaceful and harmonious. That is a pipe dream by a far margin but whatever may be achieved in this direction is better than less. It is one thing to live in one society with double the level of prosperity and half the level of crime and quite another to live in another society only as half good in these two specimen matters. Too ambitious leaders trying to make their societies perfect as they often erroneously see it end up as tyrants while the society one such rules finds its rescue in either hypocrisy or rebellion. There must be good Divine reasons why man cannot be perfect as the human mind would see it. Human perfect and God perfect are not one and the same thing.

 

As for the physical environment, the least a person can do is investigating and learning more about his environment with a view to pick up more benefits from it and also avoid more harms lurking in it. We must first remember before we proceed further that Islam’s attitude towards science and technology is one of absolute support and encouragement so long we do not abuse our intellects and will-power by trespassing into areas in which our main aim is immorally harming others. For example, if we must have weapons they should not be designed so as to cause cruel traumas and deaths to people fought against but minimal harm commensurate with their pacification followed by a just peace. For example, as a scientist, I wonder why bombs which just inactivate the enemy are not invented and used instead of bombs which tear him to pieces or may even entirely evaporate him. Again, why not convert a defeated enemy into a grateful friend by treating him well and helping him to gain peaceful prosperity with the victors help? The Prophet always avoided doing more harm to his enemies than that neccesary for victory and after victory he chose a peace in which his beaten enemies could prosper alongside the winners. The most recent example of gracefulness in victory was shown to the Japanese by the Americans. General Mc Arthur ruled defeated Japan so well and graciously that the Japanese made almost a god of him and thanks to his helpful attitude they quickly recovered from their ruinous state and within two or three decades became America’s greatest economic rival and a friend as well. Incidentally, I am aware of anti-Americanism which is so pervasive since 1950s (when the giant conspirators the then Soviet Union, out of self-preservation instincts helped, among other actors helped to orchestrate it) and of the danger I am courting by praising America for anything at all but I am neither pro- nor anti-American or anything else but I want and am trying to be pro-Truth, Truth which God also means as reflected in one of His Names, namely ‘al Haqq’. We may say that after all the crimes committed in the Second World War, America did a good job both in Japan and Germany which today are the most powerful nations after USA.

 

In the purely physical field also our environment can be improved to our advantage in virtually infinite ways. After all we are Allah’s deputies on earth and apparently of its environs as well. Among other facilities and comforts, if we are flying in airplanes today it is because over centuries we discovered laws of gravity, of buoyancy, of combustion and of mechanics etc all of which enabled us to build metal and plastic ‘birds’ which are however not propelled by flapping wings but propellers or gas jets etc. In the bellies of our artificial and giant ‘birds’ we comfortably sit while being flown to destinations of our own choice at a tiny fraction of the cost of a travel to the same destinations by sailing ships or camel caravans. You see, we have power over our world, can study, discover and put to use its resources in an advancing sequence of more discoveries and more uses.

 

No other animal can do this. What is more, if we choose to be mad, we can also destroy our world. What better example of this destructive ability in us than the environmental deterioration we are causing in our waters, soils and air? For example, while inventing the aircraft can cause us a lot of good (yet also evil in the form of global warming if we are not careful) when we use it for peaceful and economical travel and transport, our abusing our sexual potential can land us with terrible diseases like AIDS which so easily can turn into crippling and deadly epidemics. It is rumoured that AIDS was an illness peculiar to some apes and monkeys which somehow spread to humans. Had the somehow infected humans and their sexual partners been pious and not sleep around they could only infect their spouses and children and most would soon die out as a source of danger. But because most were not pious they acted promiscuously or even when pious or innocent some were sexually accessed by impious people infected with AIDS and thus began the AIDS epidemic. You see, one single rule of Divine Law makes, by obeying or disobeying it, all the difference between health and illness, suffering in and enjoyment of life!

 

Our attitude towards and treatment of our ecological environment  are improved by true faith Islam and its laws in a fundamental sense- science we discover and technology we invent do the rest. Said the Messenger of Allah “Allah created the cure of every illness- o servants of Allah look for those cures and avail yourselves of them”. This is none other than an encouragement for medical research. In another hadith we find the Prophet withdraw his pious wisdom and come down to the empiricism of common life. The story depicting this as follows. Coming from the entirely commercial town Mecca to the agricultural town of Medina he was not well-informed about agricultural matters. He noticed that at flowering time his Medinese companions climbed their palm threes and stirred their branches. When he asked why was that he was told that it was done to increase the yield. It was a Yamani practice they added. The Prophet piously remarked it was Allah Who decided about that and human interference was unnecessary. That season the yield was quite low. The Prophet was embarrassed. He humbly advised as a result: “For the coming season use the Yamani method for half of your palms and the other leave alone. Whichever method gives the higher yield then use that”.  This is the empirical method of science. The Yamani method won and the Prophet conceded “You know your world better than I”.  He further remarked that his mission and claim was that his followers should take from him and trust the information and instructions on religious matters only, “For the rest” he added “I am like anyone of you”. The only thing which could be added to that was that he was owed obedience also as their political leader and commander-in-chief. His political and military appointees also should be obeyed. So, Islam is entirely science and technological invention-friendly.

 

Lastly we may touch upon another medically and economically and therefore environmentally important commandment of Islam.  Had we heeded Allah’s admonition “Eat and drink but do not waste; Allah does not love the wasteful” (7: 31) we would not have obesity problem nor would we clog up our soils and waters with poisons and similarly pollute the air we have to breathe. Now, what and how much are we eating and drinking, for example, here in the middle of the prosperous West? Apart from the amounts and varieties of food and drink, both healthy (like milk and bread) and unhealthy (like fried foods and alcohol) we also overuse packing and wrapping materials at the expense of our limited natural resources, like converting too much of our trees into paper and too much of our oil into plastics and then waste more energy in plowing them back into the soil as insoluble rubbish or recycling them at the expense of using more fuel, machinery and labour. Why are we being dragged into this situation? Because we are too interested in hedonistic comforts and joys and are planning, through technological discoveries and applications to reduce the time we work and increase the time and varieties of pleasures for indulging our senses,  from the gastronomic to the sexual and from flight in air to fighting from air against our rivals or potential rivals. We can only imagine how much elation Nazis felt when bombing whole towns in England and later an in return how much British and American pilots elated when carpet-bombing German towns like Dresden which was turned into rubble under which tens of thousand civilians were buried. Are not all, for example, accusing the USA in particular and the West in general for fighting the rest of the world on account of the assets they posses and control or may control in future, like petroleum? What is the source of all such ambitions, lusts and mischief? Surely none other than our untamed inner dragon, our bestial level of selfhood!

 

To see examples of this dragon’s disastrous antics we need not always look at the phenomenon on a global scale. Even a look at our neighbourly relations will not make us wait long before we see one silly dispute grow into a criminal event: only recently it was in the news that one neighbour set fire to the home of another over their long dispute over a parking place in their common street. Had at least one of the parties been more mature psychologically and more enlightened spiritually he could find a gracious as well as graceful way of negotiating his way out of the trouble looming in the horizon. Let us see what Allah the Most Wise and Gracious advises:

 

“Respond to evil with good and you will see that the one between you and whom there is hostility will become as if he is a warm friend. None can attain such grace expect the patient, none can attain such grace except those with a big share in spiritual desire and effort” (41: 35)

 

By grace, patience, verbal and emotional bribes many a time we can wriggle out of narrow corners and turn a situation around to our advantage. If necessary we may add to our incentives some material concessions. In the end the gracious person is more the winner despite any occasional appearances to the contrary. This must be the single most effective formula then for social peace, that is to say, to raise and deploy that at least minimum number of mature and noble characters full of the Holy Spirit who will then act as embedded catalysts to spread good and block evil among the community they belong to. To them, initially that section of sincere Muslims among the companions of the Prophet (for there were also plenty of hypocrites and the half-hearted) Allah said:

 

“You are the best community issued to mankind: you encourage what is honourable and discourage what is dishonourable and believe in Allah (i.e., that man has a Power to relate to in order to skyrocket his character and conduct to highest beneficence and nobility)…” (3: 110).

 

Such top quality people are often our best Sufis, like maulana Jalaluddin Rumi used to be, with whom all the best souls East and West are increasingly being fascinated. Both in the past and at the present we have those rare Sufis, rare among even Sufis themselves (who are often as silly as the rest of the Muslims if not more) who constitute a group of Allah’s servants acting as catalysts in the improvement of the moral and spiritual quality of mankind. Their influence is often undetectable to ordinary observation but it is there all the same, only entirely perceived by other equally good Sufis equipped with the required spiritual perceptive powers. A Turkish poet said about us those ignorant of their Divinely implanted noble potential:   “How many fishes are in the ocean, which do not know the ocean!”. True Sufis (read true Muslims as characterised by their deep spirituality and high moral aspiration) are those rather rare fish which are almost infinitely more aware of themselves because they are aware of the Ocean they owe their everything to and are therefore both humble and powerful. Will such a ‘fish’ not say “Although I am nothing compared with this infinite ocean, I may be as much the ocean as I can swim in it, discover its wonders and benefit from its gifts”. That is what Sufism exactly is. Being aware of the Ocean of Divinity underlining and underwriting all created existence the fortunate Sufi is free for and enjoys enormously swimming in that ocean to the contentment of his heart and to the ever-increasing wonderment and enrapturement of his mind.

 

Incidentally, in the context of mentioning maulana Rumi we may briefly touch upon the issue of his gross distortion by ignorant and misguided naives and his commercial exploitation by clever operators.

 

The gross distorters see him as a ‘liberal’ in the modern sense who will allow and pardon anything, quoting his famous couplets:

 

“Come, come! Whoever and whatever you may be, come. Our door is not the door of despair. Even if you repented a thousand times and still went back on your repentance still come!”.  They take this to mean “Drink, gamble, fornicate, kill, steal; by just coming to me I, Rumi will get you forgiven”.  It sounds like the false Christ some Christians are advocating: by just believing in the Christ and that he died for them all their sins will be wiped out and they will be justified (made whole and just good), which is again a misunderstanding.

 

What both the Christ and Rumi are reported and also misunderstood to have said Allah said far better in His Glorious Qur’an:

 

“Say (on My Behalf o Muhammad): O my servants who abused themselves to excess! Do not give up on Allah’s Mercy. Surely Allah forgives all sins simply because He is, by far, the Very Merciful Forgiver” (39: 53).

 

Read in conjunction with many other verses and some hadiths this just means ‘‘repent and do your best if you can do anything to repair the damage and you can trust that Allah will most definitely forgive you via making your victim to forgive you and you ultimately attaining self-forgiveness following forgiveness by Allah.