Being Gay In Muslim Country

The official fiction, Brian Whitaker explains, is that gay people don't exist in the Middle East? They do! And for many of them, the attitudes of family and society are a much bigger problem than the fear of being persecuted.

When the US supreme court rule in favor of same-sex marriage last year, the White House welcomed it with rainbow-coloured lights and many people celebrated by adding a rainbow tint to their Facebook profile.

For the authorities in Saudi Arabia, though, this was cause for alarm rather than celebration, alerting them to a previously unnoticed peril in their midst. The first casualty was the privately run Talaee Al-Noor school in Riyadh, which happened to have a rooftop parapet painted with rainbow stripes. According to the kingdom's religious police, the school was fined 100,000 reals ($26,650) for displaying "the emblem of the homosexuals" on its building, one of its administrators was jailed and the offending parapet was swiftly repainted to match a blue rainbow-free sky.

The case of the gaily painted school shows how progress in one part of the world can have adverse effects elsewhere and serves as a reminder that there are places where the connection between rainbows and LGBT rights is either new or yet to be discovered.

As a homosexuality becomes more common and opens in the United States and Europe, there has been a variety of reactions in Muslim majority communities. In some places, such as Lebanon and Palestine, the tolerance for members of the LGBT community to express themselves was slightly open. But in other places, such as in Turkey, Iran, Nigeria and Malaysia, the reaction among the conservative Muslim even vilify homosexuals.

For Muslims who happened to be a gay, Nigeria, with the current situation, intimidation and persecution, is one of the most unforgiving places in the world. And in the Northern part which is predominantly Muslim, gay people will face some of the most severe punishment, such as death by stoning under Sharia laws.

"This is a reaction to what is happening in the West," said Dorothy Aken'Ova, executive director of Nigeria's International Centre for Reproductive Health and Sexual Rights. "Some people say this is a precaution and they don't want to get like what happens in the West."

According to a report in the Washington Post, the ten countries that impose the death penalty for homosexual acts: Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen, Iran, Mauritania, parts of Nigeria and Somalia, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Qatar. All Islamic countries, or as in the case of Nigeria, the existing law is taken from the legislation of the country which is predominantly Muslim. In some countries, legislation is based on a law from the colonial era of the 19th century.



source:
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