gay and female friendly mosque

a popular muslim website "onislam" has written about this bbc radio interview: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22892609

Mixed Gender Mosques Stir UK Uproar

OnIslam & News Agencies

Friday, 14 June 2013 00:00

LONDON – A new initiative by a group of British Muslims supporting the opening of new mosques that allow all genders and sexualities to pray side by side is inviting a storm of condemnations from the Muslim community for running counter against the Islamic teachings.

"The orthodox values of Islam are very clear,” Imam Adnan Rashid, from the London-based Islamic think-tank The Hittin Institute, told the BBC on Friday, June 14.

"Muslims already believe in things that have been established for them for centuries and they are not going change.

"The Qur'an is not going to change, the prophetic position is not going to change. Muslim thinking and practices are not going to change.

"So I don't know what the point of this mosque is."

The new group, dubbed the Inclusive Mosque Initiative (IMI), was set up in November last year.

It encourages opening new mosques that allow women to lead mixed prayers, pray side by side with men and allow gays as well.

"We want to offer Muslims an alternative space in which they can pray and meet,” the IMI UK coordinator Tamsila Tauqir said.

"We will not discriminate against anyone, they can be Sunni or Shia, straight or gay, people with families and people without."

Although they have a small following in the UK, it is part of a growing global network with sites in Srinagar in India and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia.

They also have support networks in the US, Canada, South Africa, Australia and Sweden.

"In some people's view it is controversial. For us what we are trying to do is to create a space that is welcoming,” Tauqir said.

"We want to show the mainstream community that we are not all extremists, we are a variety of people."

The Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), the Mosque and Imams National Advisory Board (MINAB) and Lancashire Council of Mosques, which represents about 60 mosques, did not comment.

Mixed Reactions

The new movement has received a mixed response from Muslim worshippers.

"I think it's not right for men and women to go to the mosque  together,” Mohammed Shahid, a Muslim worshipper standing outside a newly-built mosque in Blackburn, Lancashire, said.

"It can be distracting for men, some are not good with women, so women should pray at home."

His friend, Shazad Khan, agreed.

"I don't think homosexuals should be allowed in to the mosque, they are not Muslims. How can they go for prayers?"

Yet, another Muslim welcomed the controversial idea.

“I think it's a good idea, it promotes equal opportunities especially for the disabled,” Ali Noor sai.

“Provision should have been made for them a long time ago but it hasn't.”

In general, during Muslim prayers, women may not lead men but may lead other women, which is the case of females leading prayers in female-only mosques in China.

In Islam, the majority of jurists maintain that a woman is allowed to lead her fellow sisters in congregational prayer if there is no man to lead the congregation.

Same-sex relationship and marriage are totally prohibited in Islam, Christianity and all divine religions.

Islam teaches that believers should neither do the obscene acts, nor in any way indulge in their propagation.

The Catholic Church teaches that homosexuality is not a sin, but considers homosexual intercourse as sinful.

Link: http://www.onislam.net/english/news/europe/463129-uk-gay-mixed-gender-mosques-stir-uproar.html

the ap picks up the fake story of gay man being executed...

earlier this week, i wrote about how the somali story of a gay man being executed might really be a fake.  check it out; http://bit.ly/WLPjla

last night, i talked to hadiyo jim’ale, who runs the support group “queer somalis,” which has people all over the country and whom all agreed this story is fake. according to the somali press, this took place in baraawe. baraawe is small town about fifty miles from the somali capital, which is one of the only places where al-shabaab have control near mogadishu, and you hear about everything that happens. and this, according to the sources, did not happen. 

in the meantime, the associated press, one of the largest news agencies in the world, has picked up the story of somali young man who has been executed. but it looks like the ap published the story from the story that was already published in somali a week earlier. in other words, the ap writer just picked up this story from "local" (it was never published in print in somali, but only on websites), which in this case only applies to the language.

further, the associated press articles makes things even murkier because it says that a “militant official and a Somali resident say al-Shabab fighters have stoned to death a man for carrying out a homosexual sex act” (guled, 2013, para. 1). 

to spice up the story, and to make it even more sensational, concluded the story with a quote from a conservative religious leader in mogadishu by referencing that one “strict reading of Islamic law, he said, is that a married man who engages in a homosexual act should be killed” (para. 5). 

so, the ap picks up the story of a 13-year-old being raped and his rapist being stoned to death (the ap article doesn’t mention age). but subscribes the story to homosexuality, and even interviews a conservative dude to get that one going.

ladies and gentleman, welcome to the 21st century where the ap has pretty much become a tabloid. 

the real problem with news agencies like the ap today is that they are too large. the ap has over 3000 "journalists" in nearly 300 locations globally. some of these places, like somalia, have no local standards for journalists... because they don't even have functional organizations to control, manage, or reward their journalistic work.

ap story: guled, a. (2013). “Somali Rebels Stone to Death Man for Sexual Act”. retrieved from; http://bit.ly/YtRw0N

what a week to be queer and somali

it all started this past weekend when i heard about the story of a young somali gay guy who was killed in somalia by the extremist islamist group al-shabaab, the taliban-style goons who run part of somalia. this came to me from a gay somali facebook group. i directly asked for more information from the young man who’s running the group, and he gave me a bunch of links where in the somali press it was reported in the preceding 24 hours.

the two things that stood out for me;

1) the somali links all seemed to have been written by the same person (somali “news” websites don’t pay that much attention to copyright, and sometimes they will publish things from another “news” site without even asking permission), which made it difficult to confirm if it was indeed independently verifiable story. 

2) the title was very interesting: “Al-Shabaab oo Xukun Dil ah ku fulisay non la sheegay in uu ku kacay Fal Qoomu Luud ah (Aqriso Magaca Ninka la dilay)”, which literally says “Al-Shabaab has condemned a young man who was guilty of the crime of the People of Lut (Read the Name of the man killed)”. 

the story, which was written by a man named maxamed ganey and published first by “Codka Qaranka” or the “Voice of the Nation” on march 16th, said that a young man named mohamed baashi. who happend to be 18, had been found guilty of raping a 13-year-old named aweys xasan. baashi, according to the article, had confessed to raping the boy once in comparison to the boy’s allegations that baashi had raped him four times. 

maxamed ganey, or most of the somali people, would never write on a mainstream website that a rapist is connected to the people of lut. they believe the people of lut were homosexuals, and that that story in the qur’an is about homosexuality. those of us who are queer muslims and who are believers of islam not being homophobic have been saying that for centuries now, but that's a different story.

of course, this confirmed my suspicion that the story was fake, probably a good gesture meant to discredit the terrorist group al-shabaab, because "aweys xasan", who happens to be the "victim" in the story, is "xasan aweys" backwards (and xasan aweys is the main leader from al-shabaab). it worked because now even the largest gay news magazine in the united states is running the story as a true story. 

the spirit is stronger than our bodies

jack fertig, a wonderful man who passed away around 9:30 pm last night, had a spirit unlike any other i have ever met. i met jack when i was still a young kid, wandering through the shadows of life, and i immediately looked up to him because he had this life that seemed to be bigger than life itself.

we had a special bond-- even though we grew up on two ends of the world, in different generations, and in different cultures-- because i think we had the same type of outlook on the quality of human life. i never met an american white, male, young (he was only forty something when i met him)… who could be so unprivileged in his way of thinking. and i always, always, felt grateful to have had such a person in my life because it allowed to never be racist towards white people. i always knew jack, and it always prevented me from going with the “majority” voice in my circles pointing to the young, male, white… being responsible for all that was wrong in my new country of the united states.

jack, who was jewish, was very much anti-zionist; i, a muslim, had always been pro-jewish.  that was before he converted to islam.  and i could have always discounted his anti-israeli ideas as a man critical of his own culture, as i was.  and it was the same for him. we were equal right there, and i think this gave us a particular bond and respect for one another :) 

but, when he converted to islam, things have shifted to his end :) now, he was part of my culture, too. however, jack still understood my aversion to anti-israeli politics (which always reminded me of anti-jewish hatred i experienced as a young child in somalia, a country that had virtually no connection to judaism and had no understanding of the jewish people outside of the insane hatred perpetuated by the brothers of jews in the arab world). 

and i respected him even more.

despite our differences, jack and i remained close friends. there hasn't been a week when i didn’t talk to him. and he had always made me laugh. never had i talked to him or visited him when he didn’t make me laugh. and he made me laugh even in the most unexpected times. like when i talked to him on the day my mother died, a day i never would have imagined to laugh. or when he made me laugh this past friday, when i last talked to him, even though he was really weak.

that’s the jack i will always remember, the jack who had a spirit much larger than his physical reality, and i look forward to a lasting and eternal friendship on another reality.

ghassan kassisieh: "we're family too"