LGBTQ and Islam- Our Approach

LGBTQ and Islam: Our Approach

By Imam Zaid Shakir

Introduction: Setting the Context

It's all good, just here to share, explore, examine, have a little fun, shed a few tears. It's all good at the end of the day. I'm going to read the write-up that I got from the session to kind of explain the approach.

The write-up was thus, which I'm sure many of you have read: expand on Islam's stance on the LGBTQ issue, go over our limits as Muslims in regards to the LGBTQ community, address how Muslim youth should interact with the LGBT community, including when their own friends identify as LGBTQ. So, it's confusing, but why? This is a very serious topic, but this is a Ramana session. This is not Islam, nor MSA.

And so I think we should try to deal with those issues as they've been framed in a way that would be palatable to someone who is of Ramana age, Muslim youth of North America. So I'd like to just start by mentioning something relevant for those of us who are Muslim, and I'm not assuming every single individual in this room is Muslim, and I'm also assuming, I am assuming that some people who might identify themselves as part of the LGBTQ community are here. So what I'd like to start with is the idea of Muslims.

The Purpose of Our Creation: Servitude and Humility

As Muslims were told clearly in the Quran:

"I've only created the jinn and the humans, that they worship me."

And we could translate that as they serve me, because 'abd is a servant. Even in some contexts, 'abd might be translated as a slave, but servant is a better word in the context of worship.

So we are to be servants of Allah عِبَادُ الرَّحْمَنِ and I think the most critical component of servitude is humility. And in fact, these two ideas are brought together by Allah in the Quran when Allah mentions:

"And the servants of the All-Merciful are those who walk upon the earth humbly."

So the spirit of worship must involve humility, it must involve humbling ourselves before our Lord, or trusting in divine guidance, trusting that our Creator who created us, did not create ourselves, this auditorium did not create itself.

The Argument from Design: Evidence of a Creator

Recently I saw a debate online where the person who was arguing for the existence of God, my phone isn't up here, but there is a phone, just held up his cell phone and said, can you conceive of this phone creating itself?

And obviously the person first tried to skirt around it because in the context of the argument, an argument not just screaming argument, the effort to prove a certain point, premises and extrapolating from those premises certain conclusions understood, once they acknowledged the phone couldn't create itself, they were trapped. In any case, and then he went on to say, okay, you have to acknowledge that, you can't say this phone just took the components, plastic, rubber, bits of metal, shards, not even metal, or that was the unrefined metal in the ground, in the dirt, it just refined itself, processed itself into wires and the silicon that was brought from the Congo or wherever, just made itself into a chip that had the capability of storing information on it that can then be retrieved, well, impossible. He said, is the universe more complex than this cell phone? Is the human being more complex than this cell phone? This cell phone has a camera.

Our eye is a camera. The memory in this camera has a limit. The memory in this camera has no limit.

The distance that this camera can record from has a limit. This is far, far, can see things and distinguish things at a far greater range. And we get frustrated when we see something beautiful way over there, and we're trying to get it, and then we look at it, and I can't post that on Facebook.

So what's more complex? This camera, when this phone goes kaput in 2.7 years, planned obsolescence, so whatever iPhone this is, you get the new one, because this one goes kaput, that camera's kaput. This camera can last a hundred years, never changing a film, never needing a new memory chip, never exhausting its memory.

So in any case, we have a creator, just as this phone has a creator.

Trusting the Divine Manual

And just as the maker of this phone has given us an instruction manual as to how best and most productively operate this phone, the maker of humanity has given us an instruction manual as to how best to function and most productively function as human beings. And so it comes down, in many instances, do we trust the manual that the maker has given us, through prophets and through scripture that has been sent for our guidance, or do we trust ourselves, or do we trust people who totally, unequivocally reject not only the instruction manual, reject the existence of a creator altogether. So who do we trust? And so when we commit ourselves to worshipping our Lord, we're saying, I trust my Lord, and I humble my judgment before the judgment of my Lord.

That's really the essence of worship. Now, saying that, worship challenges us, and it doesn't just challenge us in ways that, say, classical understandings of Islam might challenge someone who is a member of the LGBTQ community, and they're also trying to reconcile that with being a Muslim. It challenges people heterosexual.

Worship Challenges Everyone: The Test of Restraint

So a person who doesn't have the wherewithal to get married, heterosexual, can that person just say, you know, I don't get it, I don't have a job, I'm homeless right now, I sleep under a bridge, but it's cool, I have some good friends under there. Actually, some of them are really sharp. They have interesting conversations.

But I met this beautiful woman. This is a man speaking. And man, I have to have her, you know.

I know Islam says A, B, C, and D, but, you know. So that person is challenged. That person cannot act on their desires.

That person cannot fulfill their passions because they don't have the wherewithal. And so every teaching in the religion would say that person is forbidden for that person to get married. It's forbidden for that person to have relations with that woman.

It's forbidden for that man to have relations with that woman. That person is challenged. Some people might be challenged.

They might have a propensity, perhaps better described as a proclivity for kleptomania. When they go into a store and they see something they really want, their fingers start itching and their neck starts craning. And then there's a problem.

That's why we have a word called kleptomania. They love stealing things. Especially things that they find very attractive or potentially beneficial.

Can they take it? They can't take it. They're challenged. They're challenged in terms of their nature.

And they might argue, God gave me this nature. And indeed, that's the case. That's true.

Same-Sex Attraction as Part of the Broader Test

And so to go back to the topic here, there might be a same-sex attraction in a person. And I know that doesn't cover the full spectrum of LGBTQ, but just to use that as the most prominent category. There might be a same-sex attraction in a person.

And God created it in the person. Just as there might be an overwhelming heterosexual attraction in a person. And God created that.

Or there might be a propensity towards kleptomania. And God created that. Or there might be a propensity towards a lot of things.

There might be a person who says, and this theory is debatable. This is all what I've mentioned so far is debatable. I'll present evidence, inshallah, among us who do that.

I lost my train of thought on the last sentence. But just to move on.

The Divine Origin of Desires and Lusts

God Almighty, Allah, says:

"Made alluring to people is the love of their lusts—for women, for children, heaped up treasures of gold and silver, branded steeds, cattle, and cultivated fields. All of this is the enjoyment of this worldly life. And with Allah is the greatest return."

زُيِّنَ لِلنَّاسِ - Not just their lust, the love. حُبُّ الشَّهَوَاتِ - The love of their lust. For women, for men. Or for women, for children. For money. Heaped up treasures of gold and silver. Branded steed and cattle. Cultivated fields. All

of this is the enjoyment of this worldly life.

And with Allah is the greatest return. The greatest source of repose. And so Allah is telling us there are lusts that have been made appealing to us.

And it tells in very powerful terms. زُيِّنَ لِلنَّاسِ - So it's beyond our control. It has been made. We haven't done it ourselves. زُيِّنَ لِلنَّاسِ حُبُّ الشَّهَوَاتِ - It's made alluring to people. The love of their lust.

Not just their lust. The love of their lust. So the actor is Allah.

For a goal, for an image and all that. And so those things are in there. The test for a person becomes whether it's in the realm of the topic, whether it's in the realm of other realms where people have very powerful urges and drives, is who do we love? Do we love ourselves? Do we love our lusts? Or do we love Allah? That's the question.

The Hierarchy of Love: What Do We Love Most?

Another verse of Allah says:

"Say, if your parents, your children, your siblings, your spouses, your kinfolks, the wealth you have earned, the business you fear declining, the dwellings you delight in, are more beloved to you than Allah and His Messenger and striving in His cause, then wait until Allah brings His command. And Allah does not guide the defiantly disobedient people."

A hafidh meaning you can love all that stuff. And we're supposed to love it. We're supposed to love our parents. We're supposed to love our children. We're supposed to love our siblings.

We're supposed to love our spouses. Allah says, the man and the woman:

"And among His signs is that He created for you spouses from among yourselves in order that you live together with them in peace and tranquility. And He's made between you love and mercy. Verily, in that are signs for people who reflect."

وَجَعَلَ بَيْنَكُم مَّوَدَّةً وَرَحْمَةً - So He's saying, He has good love. So, we're supposed to love all of that.

Allah bless you with a beautiful house. وَمَسَاكِنُ تَرْضَوْنَهَا - Say Alhamdulillah, I love my house. Thank you, Allah. مِن فَضْلِ رَبِّي - Right over the door. It's from the grace of my Lord. That's good.

أَحَبَّ إِلَيْكُم مِّنَ اللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِ - Than Allah and His Messenger. Meaning, that because of all of that, I will rebel or sin against my Lord. And so, the question is not love. The question is, Who do we love more? Who do we love? And if we love Allah, then we give priority to what Allah desires over what we desire.

Divine Guidance is Not Oppression

And it's not, Allah is not trying to oppress us. One of the calamities of modernity or now post-modernity is that the Divine has been moved, removed from most of our life transactions and calculations.

We've extracted the Divine. And by so doing, we limit our understanding of justice to this world, this material world. And so, in this context, a lot of people, I'll speak about it in a heterosexual context.

Just to kind of contextualize it. That's some kind of rhetorical device. I'll consider Romeo and Juliet.

I really loved Juliet. And her parents got in the way of my love. Her parents oppressed me because they would not allow me to fulfill my full humanity by uniting with Juliet, this Romeo and Juliet.

And God isn't there because it's God's universe. God isn't there. Allah says in Quran:

"Allah doesn't want to oppress anyone in this earth."

He says in Hadith Qudsi:

(Sahih Muslim)

"O My servants, I've made oppression forbidden for Myself and I've forbidden it for you, so do not oppress one another."

So, if we limit it to the world, we could make an argument that Almighty God has oppressed Romeo by not allowing him to fulfill his love.

Our Existence Transcends This World

But if we expand it beyond this world, and as humans, our affair transcends this world. The affair of this podium is limited to this world. One day this is going to be splinters in a junkyard.

Maybe it will be a lump of coal. It will be in a place, Allah forbid, it's not this place, that catches fire and it burns, and then there's just some charcoal left of this podium. But that's it for this podium.

And when we say post-modernity, removing God from the equation, a lot of people, this one of the atheist arguments, say we are no different than this podium. We just caught a lucky gene that allowed us to talk and think and be able to reason and to ration. But, essentially, we're no different than this. Therefore, our destiny is no different than this. And this is what some of the ancient Arabs argued:

"They said: Who's going to revive these crumbling bones that are dried out?"

And just crush them to powder, when they're dust? That's it.

We decay physically. Our destiny is different, just as our existence is different. Our existence is different from all other animals.

The Uniqueness of Human Existence

Our existence is different than the apes. I was listening to KGO, some of you are from California, you know KGO, one of the largest radio stations west of the Mississippi. They were discussing evolution, and a guy was, as many of us do, right? Listening to talk radio.

Two minutes. I'm just in the introduction. Let me finish the KGO story.

So, they're talking about that he's going down the highway in a car that human beings make, 70 miles an hour, participating in the discussion. And so the guy in the car says, you know, I'm just a monkey, I'm just an ape. That's all I am.

And the host of the show, he said, you might believe you're just a monkey, but I never saw a monkey that could make a car that can propel you through space along a road, 60 miles an hour, talking on a cell phone via an invisible beam that's bouncing off a satellite in geocentric Earth orbit, talking to someone 500 miles away. I never saw a monkey that could do that. Our existence is unique.

Our destiny is unique. And some of the time left, let me go back to the point I was developing, developing to know there's a whole lot that's going to get skipped. And I apologize that this topic isn't getting the justice it deserves.

Restraining the Soul and the Promise of Paradise

So we were talking about the oppression of limiting the fulfillment or the cycling of the passions, love, lust, desires to this world. To make an argument, what is the argument when Allah says, okay, I created these things within you.

The whole range that we mentioned, LGBTQ, heterosexual, kleptomania, whatever it might be. As Allah says:

"As for one who fears the time they will stand before their Lord and denies their soul the things it inclines towards, Paradise will be their final abode."

And some say the meaning of that, the station of their Lord, the awesome station of their Lord. And they deny their souls the things it inclines towards. In many instances, it's not true. Paradise will be their final abode.

And paradise, we're not talking 20 years in this world. We're not talking 30, 40 years. We're not talking the average 72-year lifespan. We're not talking the exceptional 100 years that a person might have in this world. We're talking eternity. That for their effort to restrain themselves, not from feelings that might be impossible to restrain, but from actions that are deemed to be forbidden.

And we mentioned an array of actions. That effort is rewarded with eternal bliss, eternal happiness, that will make the life of this world, in terms of its duration and in terms of its significance, imperceptible on the greater scale of things. And so I would say that indeed there are challenges people have. But we are challenged by our Lord to try to overcome and or restrain ourselves. And that's one part of the conversation. So implicitly I'm

saying, if you feel these powerful urges that might place you in the context of this talk, and let's forget the heterosexual kleptomania, in the context of LGBTQ community, and you work against that, your reward is eternal happiness.

Greater Struggle, Greater Reward

Now someone might say, and I'll stop here, that's easy for you to say. You're not dealing with those challenges.

Everyone has challenges they're dealing with of different types, and that might well be true.

And so that challenge for you might be exponentially more difficult than it is for me. We have a principle in our religion: The reward we receive from our Lord for obeying our Lord is commensurate with the difficulty and the struggle that's involved in obeying. And so the more difficult the struggle, the greater the reward.

And that difficulty is recompensed in ways it's not in the world. I can really, really, really, really, really love this woman. And she's not reciprocating my love, which really pains me deeply.

There's no reciprocity. But our love for Allah, for sincere is always reciprocated. And so as believers, one of the things we try to do, and this is intricately connected with what we've been talking about, is to make the love of Allah our highest love.

The Journey of the Soul: From Carnal Appetites to Divine Love

And those who are able to do that, so we talk about a spiritual growth from a nafs al-ammarah bi al-su' shahwaniyya to a soul that's chained to its physical carnal appetites and lusts, to a nafs al-lawwamah, the soul that begins to question those lusts. And through that questioning process it becomes content with Allah. And nafs al-mutma'innah.

And that contentment leads to pleasure with