Lysis

Angelus Novus, who unfortunately has paused his blog for a while, took the trouble to translate the text „With Islamophobia against Homophobia?“ (originally German) into his native English. I‘m really grateful for that! Here is a short extract:

In classical Arabic there is no word for a „gay,“ and nonetheless it is not an exaggeration to state that almost half of all classical Arab love poems were composed by male authors for persons of the same sex. This was not even viewed as objectionable by pietists — although they considered anal sex a grave sin. When the Morrocan scholar Muhammad al-Saffar visited Paris in the 1840s, he noted with wonder: „Flirtation, romance, and courtship for them take place only with women, for they are not inclined to boys or young men. Rather, that is extremely disgraceful to them.“

Viewed from this standpoint, it would seem to be an irony of history that Arab and Turkish Muslims of all people have to be the ones to suffer in order to allow Europeans to represent themselves as tolerant advocates on behalf of the very „homosexuals“ whom they have brought about and sorted out as a distinct „minority“ through a centuries-long process of normalization in the first place.