One Muslim leader in Australia has offered an explanation for the silence of his community: they do not want to offend leftists and thereby lose their support.
On ABC’s The Drum, Ali Kadri, spokesman for the Islamic Council of Queensland and the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said his community had the choice of offending leftist allies or siding with critics, and the result had been silence.
“Unfortunately, in the current climate, the right and conservative side has attacked Muslims as terrorists and extremists, and naturally the left side has been allies in defending us for a long period of time,” he said.
“We are afraid if we come out with our opinion then the left may abandon us for going against their view and we can’t be friendly with the conservatives because they have been bashing us for 15, 20 years every chance they get … and that includes some Christian sects as well.”
What is called lavat (sodomy) is a capital offence in many Islamic countries and people are frequently executed for it. In Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Yemen and Mauritania, sodomy is punishable by death.
Among other Arab countries, the penalty in Algeria, Bahrain, Kuwait, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, Somalia, Tunisia and Syria is imprisonment, sometimes for up to ten years.
In Iraq attacking “un-manly” men was the norm, sometimes killing them slowly by injecting glue into the anus.
Advocates for homosexual marriages and opposition legislation on the grounds of faith has come from Christian leaders, particularly from the Anglican and Catholic Churches. But all the countries where the death penalty for sodomy still applies justify it on the basis of Islamic law.
Kadri said Muslims were deeply concerned about the possible impact of any legislative changes concerning same-sex marriages on Islamic education.
“A lot of Muslim community are concerned that religious rights will be trampled in Islamic schools [and that they] will have to follow a national curriculum that will teach things [regading same-sex marriages] that go against the fundamentals of their religion, so they are concerned about it,” he said.
So far, no one has attempted to hold a Gay Pride parade in an Arab country. There are almost no gay-friendly mosques and a very few openly gay imams – Moegsien Hendricks in South Africa is a rare example.
Australia’s first — and only — openly gay imam, Melbourne’s Nur Warsame, received death threats for trying to promote an LGBT friendly mosque.
In Britain in 2007, the Muslim Council of Britain reluctantly supported LGBT rights advocates of the Sexual Orientation Regulations to please leftists. The law mainly intended to prevent businesses from discriminating against gay people.