On my pile of things to blog about has long sat a pamphlet by Robert Spencer, The Islamic Jihad Against Gays: Why isn’t the Muslim Students Association speaking out? Published by the conservative David Horowitz Freedom Center, the pamphlet addresses an issue which most (but fortunately not all) liberal groups and gay organizations care to consider, the plight of our fellows in Islamofascist nations like Iran.
Now, another one of David’s media enterprises is addressing anti-gay attitudes among Islamic scholars, an issue to which many gay organizations seem blind. On yesterday’s Front Page Magazine, straight blogger Eric Golub reported on a “lecture last week at the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies (CNES)” where Joseph Massad, associate professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, offered some theories which, if offered by a conservative would raise the hackles of gay organizations from coast to coast.
Golub calls the talk “anti-gay,” but from his report, it sounded just plain bizarre to me:
Massad . . . explained that “Queer is about resistance to Islam.” Similarly, he said that “There is no Arabic transliteration of queer. It is a judgmental notice of deviance.” In a particularly striking claim, Massad insisted that, for Muslims, concepts like “hate and sexuality are only translatable to English-speaking people.” Muslim honor killings, presumably, are only a figment of non-Muslims imagination.
Massad also used the occasion to present a novel – and decidedly homophobic – conspiracy theory. “Queer is an imperialist term,” he announced. “It is part of the Anglo-American gay agenda.” Indeed, according to Massad, “queer is an example of cultural imperialism.”
Now, I’m not particularly partial to the term “queer,” but wouldn’t even consider calling it an “imperialist” term.
It’s good to see mainstream conservative organizations addressing the plight of gays in Iran and confronting the prejudiced attitude certain Islamic scholars have toward people like us. It would be nice if our home-grown gay organizations also took note of these prejudices.
I just did a search at the Huffington Post, and searched on “islam ucla massad”.
To my surprise, the search did not match any documents. Anyone care to speculate as to why a conservative blog is showing more concern than an arguably liberal one?
There are ways in which a couple of Massad’s statements are true:
Indirectly… yes. The word “Islam” means “submission”. Submission to what? To a morally collectivist, heterosexist and sexually puritan philosophy and social/legal authority that are embodied in Koran and the authority structures of the Islamic religion, among other times and places. Obviously, not many gays are in conscious opposition to Islam specifically. Still, to assert a homosexual identity is to defy the underlying philosophy of authoritarian Islam.
Obviously untrue; even silly.
Tautologically true. (A subset of Anglo-American gays adopted the word “queer” specifically to push their political and cultural agenda.)
Partly true; I should have said it was an example of the marketplace of ideas. Ideas and cultures compete. Over time, one may push out another. Insofar as the Western culture of individual freedom is more attractive to people than Massad’s preferred culture of authoritarian moral collectivism and gets people to switch, it may be viewed as gaining domination in a cultural fight, i.e., as imperialistic. What Massad leaves out is that his version of Islam is even more a form of “cultural imperialism”; it was originally spread by the sword, i.e., by literally killing people. And Islamists are still trying to spread it that way.
Because left-liberal gays are the true self-hating fags.
This is a big topic, that goes into the self-hating nature of leftism in general (not just gay leftism). Real briefly, leftists i.e. socialists tend on average to be entranced by brutal authoritarians and willing to overlook “excesses” (e.g. their worship of Che, Castro, Mao, Chavez; their earlier/original worship of Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler). And as collectivists, they hate people and civilizations who are into property rights, individual freedom and self-ownership, etc.
If you could shove the brutal evidence of gay-hating Islam into their faces long and hard enough, they would eventually come around. As, for example, they came around eventually (not right away) in opposing Hitler and agreeing Hitler was a bad guy. But their initial instinct is usually to minimize or ignore the next brutal authoritarian regime ignore, whatever it is – especially if it’s non-Western. So, when Islamism has killed enough gays, left-wing gays will eventually come around to hating Islamism; but we have a while to go, yet.
I guess you wouldn’t realize from reading this post, or these comments, or the FrontPage piece that Massad is not a Muslim – he is a Christian. There is a hell of a lot else that you would never realize, like anything about what the man actually believes.
Why are you relying on a blogger for such an extremist, tendentious site like FrontPage – where you just know that their only mission is to cram whatever reality they encounter into a standard victimization whine – to inform you on what an academic’s ideas on sexuality are?
I don’t claim to know much about Massad’s thought, but what Golub offers is such an obvious cartoon. In fact, my sense of Massad is that his arguments pretty much take a similar line as those that Dan himself advanced in his post – “Was the Emperor Hadrian “Gay”? ” from a few days ago. Dan wrote of the difficulty of applying modern concepts to the ancients – Massad seems to be focusing on how the concepts that have emerged from Western experience – like “queer” – and have meanings that are rooted in the Western political dynamic, may be irrelevant to the experiences of a different culture. To insist on analyzing that culture using Western concepts is what he probably means by “cultural imperialism”.
He seems to think that Westerners have a narrow and restrictive categorization of sexuality, and that this conceptual system is being applied to Arab life in a manner that obscures its reality. Strikes me as a fascinating concept.
For Golub to claim that this is somehow akin to Ahmadinejad’s claim that there are no gays in Iran is just so patently ridiculous – but it seems quite consistent with the general tenor of the article – a collection of very short snippets obviously taken out of any context, and weaved together around a standard FrontPage-type anti-intellectual broadside.
‘Anyone care to speculate as to why a conservative blog is showing more concern than an arguably liberal one?”
Because the conservative blog doesn’t bother its silly little head with actually making an effort to see if the truth of the situation is anything like it is portrayed at FrontPage?
Or of course, its because liberal gays are all Hitler-loving, self-hating fags, if you really want to get all intellectual about it….
Tano, here is something written by Joseph Massad that may interest you:
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/968/op12.htm
Others may wish to take a look as well. Massad is a piece of work.
I guess you wouldn’t realize from reading this post, or these comments, or the FrontPage piece that Massad is not a Muslim – he is a Christian.
Oh, is that the latest meme of the left?
Actually Massad is a Palestinian-Arab of Christian descent; he describes himself as a secularist.
Your problem is, Tano, that once again your need to oppose and smear everything that GPW says has led you to defend an anti-Jewish racist idiot.
Then again, given that the views he expresses are mainstream in the Obama Party, perhaps you don’t see the problem.
Heliotrope,
Now thats pretty funny. Half of this guys thoughts seem entirely consistent with the opinions one reads around here. He seems closer to you guys than to me on matters regarding Obama.
Not that I saw anything there that was relevant to the issues under discussion here…
Neither Tano nor most of us here in the free world have any idea how gays are treated in Islamic countries, Arab or not.
We learn from some news that gets out about defenstration: the throwing off of three and four story buildings so the person doesn’t necessarily die right away. That way the folks on the street can kick and spit on them as they lay there dying for however long it takes. (News reports were that Hamas did this to men they accused -no trials, no evidence, no proofs – of being gay.
We also learn that gay men have been ”honor killed,” most recently in Turkey.
And we learn that, in Iran, suspected gay youths are hung….slowly so they strangle to death over long minutes.
When Ahmadinejad was at Columbia he claimed there were no homosexuals at all in Iran.
Even his Lefty audience couldn’t restrain themselves from laughing out loud at him.
When you look at HIV rates at the World Fact Book you see that, in Islamic lands, an HIV positive test is tantamount to confessing to being a homosexual, laying one open to imprisonment, whipping or a death penalty.
But I’m sure the only reason Professor Massad wrote what he did was to rile up the Left.
“But I’m sure the only reason Professor Massad wrote what he did was to rile up the Left.”
What exactly do you think he actually wrote?
“Conservative Confronts Islamic Prejudices Against Gays ”
Ah yes, lets get back to the title of this thread.
Wouldn’t it be cool if someday there was a headline:
“Conservative Confronts Republican Prejudices Against Gays”
I am getting the distinct impression that this post is really nothing more than a diversion from the fact that we see playing out before us, yet another long-fought, hard-fought victory for gay advocacy in this country – the final end of discrimination against gays in the military is upon us – and once again, the conservatives are the final obstacle. and, once again, the gays who support conservatives feel the need to change the subject.
If y’all are against discrimination against gays, then why don’t you stand up and denounce those here at home who discriminate against gays? Instead of getting in bed with them, and joining them in (indeed, taking a leadership position in) denouncing your fellow gays who happen to be fighting for your liberation, and winning.
Problem is, Tano, you support and endorse the party and President who put DADT in place.
So why not denounce Bill Clinton and the Obama Party congresspersons who voted overwhelmingly for it as homphobes and bigots?
Oh, that’s right; you can’t because you’re a hypocrite.
Wouldn’t it be cool if someday there was a headline:
“HRC FINALLY Gives a Damn About Human Rights”
or
“Gay Left FINALLY Notices Homophobia of Their Candidates”
or
“Gay Left FINALLY Stops Idolizing Gay Murderer Guevara”
or
“Gay Left FINALLY Notices Anti-Semitism, Homophobia of Pro-Palestine Groups”
or
“Gay Left Tells FIST to Go Fist Themselves”
or
“Gay Left Realizes No Meaningful Support from Obama, Table Scraps Instead”
This is fun. I could go on all day.
Heh 🙂
Says who? There will be scores of gays claiming they were run harder, passed over, assigned to crap duty, etc. because they are gay and there a bunch of homophobes out to get them.
Do I think a homophobe might be tough on a gay. Of course. Do I think a weak gay might whimper about discrimination as an excuse. Of course. Do I think that discrimination will end. No. Do I think charges of discrimination will be the first defense of cowardly gays? Darn straight. (You can have the pun and then some.)