Contrasting the difference between how homosexuality is viewed in Europe and America versus the Muslim world.
Luongo — who details his adventures in Afghanistan, where he attends a “gay party” — agrees with Sharma, saying that while in Europe and America “homosexual desire and acts become the very definition of a person,” in the Muslim world, “homosexual desire and acts are simply one aspect amongst others, something people do but not something that defines a person above all things.” Thus many of the Muslim men the writers encounter do not identify themselves as gay, and ask the latter why they don’t have wives, causing deep confusion, and in the case of Richard Ammon, offence.
Via Kawdess tweets.
plimfix 1:37 pm on February 5, 2010 Permalink |
To my knowledge, this analysis concurs with what the research literature says about Islam and homosexuality in some parts of the Muslim world and for some Muslims, but sexuality within the Muslim world does sometimes parallel Western identity models. Cf: Boellstorff, T. (2005) The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton: Princeton University Press) ; Massad, J. (2007) Desiring Arabs (University Of Chicago Press) ; Murray, S, and Roscoe, W. (1997) Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History and Literature (New York: New York University Press) .