Nur Warsame is Australia's first openly gay imam, one of just a few worldwide. He has made news in recent weeks, telling his story and advocating for LGBTI Muslims. He hopes to open a gay-friendly mosque, quite a feat, in a country where mosque applications often face fierce resistance from non-Muslim locals.
That is the double bind for gay Muslims, who are mostly rejected by the Muslim community for being gay and stigmatised by the wider community for being Muslim. Many cannot reconcile the two identities and either hide their sexual orientation, or end up leaving the religion.
The difficulty facing Warsame and other observant Muslims like him is in reconciling the universal consensus that has existed among Muslims for over 1400 years that all sexual acts between two members of the same gender are haram (prohibited), and the spirituality they wish to nourish in 21st century Australia; a modern world where homosexuality is increasingly accepted as a natural part of the spectrum of human diversity.
The Muslim community, by and large, tends to have an allergic reaction to any whiff of a gay-rights agenda. Stories of young gay Muslims being beaten or threatened with murder by family and friends are heartbreaking and are, at the very least, unhelpful for a community struggling to combat its negative stereotype as backward and un-Australian. Yet, homosexuality remains for most Muslims as taboo as other Aussies might view incest, bestiality and paedophilia.
The question of whether homosexuality can ever be recognised by Muslims as legitimate boils down to a clash of worldviews. On the one hand there are millennia of religious teachings from Judaism, to Buddhism, to Christianity, to Islam that reject same-sex erotic activity, viewing the course of chaste restraint for those tempted by homosexual desires as the noble path.
On the other, there is the new western individualism that views consent as the only arbiter of moral goodness. In this latter view, the only requirements a person should follow are: 1) being authentic to their own individual identity, and 2) refraining from harming others in the pursuit of their desires.
Holding the latter rather than the former worldview, progressive Muslims believe it is possible to reject traditional interpretations of the religion that proscribe homosexuality. They read Islam through the spectacles of society's modern values, which they see as better than what has gone before. It is not dissimilar to the gay-rights reading of Christian values that has challenged conservative churches.
"For the vast majority of Muslims, being asked to affirm the full spectrum of human sexuality — from homosexuality, to bisexuality, to polyamory, to pansexuality — as naturally good, is a step they simply cannot take."
However, the task is more difficult for Muslims for a number of reasons. These include the nature of scripture. For most Christians the Bible is divinely inspired but not literally the eternally inerrant word of God, as Muslims view the Qur'an. While gay Christians point out that Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, and dismiss Paul as a product of his homophobic times, Muslims do not have the same luxury. The Qur'an — which Muslims believe is God's actual speech — describes homosexual sex as sinful in telling the story of the people of Lot (yes, the same story as the Christian Bible's Sodom and Gomorrah).
'And Lot: He said to his people: "Do you commit immorality such as no-one in creation (ever) committed before you? Indeed, you approach men lustfully instead of women. Nay, you are a people who transgress.'" (Qur'an, 7:80–81).
Progressive Muslims, most notably Scott Kugle in his book Homosexuality in Islam, have attempted to reinterpret the Qur'anic condemnation as rejecting male-male rape (Lot's townsfolk wanted to molest the two angels that had come to visit), but such a reading requires ignoring the plain meaning of the text.
Another problem that Muslims have in trying to reconcile recognition of homosexuality with Islam, is the place that religious law has in Muslim lives. Similar to Jewish Halakha and Catholic canon law, Islamic shari'a is the code of living Muslims follow, based on the text of the Qur'an and the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad. There is not a great deal that Muslims over the centuries have absolutely agreed upon, but one of the few areas is that while human sexuality might be diverse, and human beings might feel sexual desire in all sorts of different ways, the only halal (permissible) sexual act is between a husband and his wife or concubine.
Every other desire needs to be restrained as a part of the spiritual development of the individual — to bring his or her will in conformity with the Divine — and for the stability of society. Indeed, it is the breakdown of the family pattern in society that Muslims consider to be one of the signs of the Day of Judgement.
So, for the vast majority of Muslims, being asked to affirm the full spectrum of human sexuality — from homosexuality, to bisexuality, to polyamory, to pansexuality — as naturally good, is a step they simply cannot take. Nevertheless, I hope the community can listen to Nur Warsame, even if they disagree with him, and stem the tide of depression, alienation, and abuse among gay Muslims. There has to be a better way.
Dr Rachel Woodlock is an expat Australian academic and writer living in Ireland.