UN to Iran: There Are No Excuses for Denying LGBT People Their Human Rights

From The Huffington Post - November 28, 2011

By Hossein Alizadehand Cary Alan Johnson

"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad boldly declared to a public gathering in 2007. He continued his disparagement in September 2011 when he told a group of American journalists that homosexuality is a "despicable act ... dirty and harmful to humanity."

The Iranian government, to soften the rhetoric when violating human rights, relies on a spurious excuse: cultural difference. According to its logic, human rights standards are irrelevant to countries like Iran, whose ancient civilizations and cultural norms are rooted in religion or tradition. This argument posits that human rights are by definition a Western priority and cannot be considered universal. But a West-bashing argument just doesn't hold up. From the Quran to the Bible, from the Torah to the ancient texts of Buddhism, Hinduism and other Eastern philosophies and faiths, the call for respect of life and human dignity is universal.

Iranian authorities have long tried to justify the mistreatment of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) individuals under the ruse of cultural relativism. Under the Islamic Penal Code of Iran, sexual activity between people of the same gender is a crime punishable by death. The method of enforcing these laws is equally grotesque. According to documentation gathered by the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, individuals are forced to confess to same-sex relations under conditions that amount to torture. Those targeted may be members of the political opposition falsely accused by the government, or they may be individuals who are assumed to be guilty simply by virtue of their sexual identity or self-expression.

Iranians suspected of being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender are targets of systematic discrimination by the government. Iranian authorities -- including the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, the Office of Book Licensing, and the Monitoring Board of the Press -- have banned publication of material related to homosexuality. The ban extends to facts about sexual orientation and gender identity, safe sex and the history of homosexuality in Iran. Websites containing such information are summarily shut down; individuals who produce the website or simply visit are threatened with arrest. Public demonstration for LGBT rights is an impossible fantasy, and even private social events like birthday parties can be raided by the morality police, who arrest and charge attendees with criminal acts. Some Iranians are left with no choice but to leave their native country and embark on the arduous and often futile task of seeking asylum abroad.

The United Nations Human Rights Committee, meeting in Geneva earlier this month, refused to condone the language of Ahmadinejad. And, such theories and justifications of abuse rarely hold water at the United Nations. The truth is that human rights obligations are defined by UN treaties that States themselves ratify, including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). This treaty has been ratified by 167 states around the world, including Iran. All nations who have joined such treaties have an obligation to protect the rights preserved within them.

Tehran has so much confidence in its justification for state-sponsored homophobia that it takes this stance even before human rights authorities. In a letter submitted to the U.N. Human Rights Committee, the body of independent experts that monitors state compliance with the treaty, the Iranian government refused to answer the Committee's questions regarding capital punishment for homosexual acts and severe punishments for related, so-called "moral" crimes. Though the Committee has addressed LGBT rights since at least 1994, Iran audaciously argued that the Committee's questions were "beyond the mandate and subject matter of the Covenant on Civil and Political Rights."

Iranian authorities have long ignored their obligations to honor human rights.

Eighteen years ago they submitted an alleged State report on human rights. Since that time they have stonewalled on their commitment to comply with the treaty, refusing to submit a required State report on the status of human rights in Iran. Finally, during the 103rd session of the U.N. Human Rights Committee, with a submitted report in hand, the Committee was able to sit face-to-face with the Iranian delegation. Despite questions directly related to sexual orientation and gender identity from members of the Committee, the Iranian delegation repeatedly refused to engage in dialogue on the topic.

While Ahmadinejad may continue to sidestep the issue, the international community has taken notice. In their Concluding Observations the U.N. Human Rights Committee expressed deep concern with the systematic mistreatment of Iranians based on sexual orientation or gender identity by officials. It specifically asked the government of Iran to "repeal or amend all legislation which provides for or could result in the discrimination, prosecution and punishment of people because of their sexual orientation or gender identity." The Committee made apparent that the government couldn't prosecute people "solely on account of freely and mutually agreed sexual activities or sexual orientation."

The message is loud and clear: when it comes to human rights, there is no excuse for any nation to punish individuals for their sexual orientation, gender identity, consensual sexual conduct, and/or gender expression. The U.N. Human Rights Committee has called on Iran to immediately address the long-standing, grave human rights violations it has committed against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and to finally recognize that human rights are for everyone, everywhere.

Iranian Spared from Execution

Makvan Mouloodzadeh

Iranian spared from execution

21-year-old had been scheduled to hang for ‘crimes’ committed at age 13

By Mike Stuckey
Senior news editor
MSNBC

Amid international criticism ignited by a crusading journalist, Iran’s chief justice has spared the life of a young man who had been sentenced to be executed as the result of a cousin’s accusations of homosexual acts years earlier.

Ayatollah Seyed Mahmoud Hashemi Sharudi nullified the imminent death sentence of Makvan Mouloodzadeh, 21, for violations of Iranian law and Islamic teachings, Saeid Eghbali, the defendant’s attorney, told msnbc.com this week.

Had Sharudi not intervened, Mouloodzadeh would have joined hundreds of his fellow Iranians, some of them just children when they committed their alleged crimes, who are hanged each year in jail yards and public squares. The executions are often carried out via a method designed to enhance and prolong their suffering: A rope is placed around the condemned person’s neck and he or she is hoisted from the ground with an industrial crane.

“This is a stunning victory for human rights and a reminder of the power of global protest,” said Paula Ettelbrick, executive director of the New York-based International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, which worked to draw attention to Mouloodzadeh’s case.

With overtones of homophobia, suspicions of political retaliation and a conviction based on activities that allegedly occurred eight years earlier, when Mouloodzadeh was just 13, his case captured the attention of a number of international groups that are trying to pressure Iran into improving human rights for women, gays and children.

The groups charge that Iran has increasingly used the death penalty for people convicted of crimes that occurred when they were children or teens.

“Iran leads the world in executing children,” Human Rights Watch said in a summer press release that charged the nation with putting to death at least 17 juvenile offenders since the beginning of 2004, “eight times more than in any other country in the world.”

By comparison, according to statistics compiled by Amnesty International, Sudan executed two juvenile offenders in the same time period, while China, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia executed one each. The United States last executed a person for crimes committed as a juvenile in 2003, but is second only to Iran in such killings since 1989, having put 19 juvenile offenders to death to Iran’s 24 in that 18-year period.

Mouloodzadeh’s case came to light through the reporting of Mitra Khalatbari, a 21-year-old journalist who works for a Tehran newspaper and publishes a Persian-language blog called “Scream of Silence.”

It is a stark reminder of the differences between Western justice systems and those of Islamic nations, which consider adultery and homosexuality to be capital crimes, mandate precise numbers of whip lashes for certain offenses, allow relatives of a murder victim to decide whether the killer is to be put to death or pay them blood money, and place a higher value on the lives of Muslim men than non-Muslims and women.

In a telephone interview with msnbc.com that was translated by Hossein Alizadeh, a spokesman for the gay and lesbian rights group, Khalatbari said Mouloodzadeh’s trial “took place behind closed doors” in June. Because of her reputation for previously covering such cases, she learned about Mouloodzadeh’s death sentence afterward from his uncle, who lives in Germany.

Through interviews with family members and others, Khalatbari learned that Mouloodzadeh, from Kermanshah province in the north of Iran, was arrested without warning in September of last year. Mouloodzadeh, who at first believed that he had violated prohibitions against smoking or something else during the holy month of Ramadan, had his head shaved and was paraded through town on a donkey, a state-sanctioned humiliation ritual.

Mouloodzadeh’s family was later informed that he had been accused of numerous acts of rape and sodomy, which allegedly occurred when he was 13. The allegations were made to authorities in a letter from Mouloodzadeh’s cousin.

Attorney: No victims until police rounded them up

“That was the statement, in that letter, that triggered the whole arrest,” said Eghbali, whose interview with msnbc.com also was translated by Alizadeh. Even with the letter, the attorney said, there were no alleged victims until the police went out, arrested some men and coerced them into saying that they had committed sodomy with Mouloodzadeh as youngsters.

Even though none of the men ever alleged that Mouloodzadeh raped them and all eventually recanted their stories that any sexual contact had occurred, a local magistrate used a legal maneuver called “knowledge of the judge” to find Mouloodzadeh guilty anyway and sentence him to death, a fate upheld by Iran’s Supreme Court, Eghbali said.

“This is a scandal, a judicial scandal, because they just decided on the basis of pretrial information to pass the sentence,” said Eghbali, who noted numerous other procedural errors in a 10-page appeal to Ayatollah Sharudi.

Although the Islamic Penal Code, which is the law of the land in Iran, mandates the death penalty for homosexual acts, it also establishes an elaborate procedure to prove such cases. “If you want to follow the letter of the law, it is next to impossible to sentence someone to death based upon sexual crimes,” Eghbali said.

The case simply didn’t add up to Eghbali, who would not comment on suspicions raised elsewhere that Mouloodzadeh may have been singled out because he had relatives who have opposed Iran’s rulers politically. “What I can tell you as a lawyer is that Makvan was not tried as an innocent person until proven guilty,” Eghbali said. “From the get-go, they decided to build a case around his personality and introduce him as someone who is nothing but trouble.”

In New York, a spokesman with the Iranian Mission to the United Nations would not comment on Mouloodzadeh’s case.

Now that the death sentence has been commuted, the case will be returned to the local court for retrial, Eghbali said, although the timetable is unclear. Eghbali said he had not spoken with Mouloodzadeh since the young man learned of his reprieve but planned to travel soon to the Kermanshah jail to discuss the case with his client.

Alizadeh, of the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, said Mouloodzadeh was fortunate that journalist Khalatbari was able to write about his case.

“The only reason this young man managed to escape is that he had a relative in Germany that knew someone in Iran and that someone was a reporter and she was brave enough to make a fuss about it,” he said. “I’m sure there are many people like him who die because there was no one to hear their story.”

Many of those people, Alizadeh said, are gay, women, religious minorities or ethnic minorities. Mouloodzadeh, for instance, is Kurdish, the ethnic group that faces more discrimination than any other in Iran, said Alizadeh, himself a native of the country.

Khalatbari said she was “100 percent certain” that attention on the case swayed the ayatollah. “The judiciary and government is very sensitive to pressure, especially international pressure,” she said. “Sometimes, when a reporter finds out and starts making a fuss, they cancel the executions.”

Internal conflicts

The case also highlights the Islamic republic’s internal conflicts on how to deal with homosexuality.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad garnered headlines on a recent visit to the United States when he skirted a question on the execution of gays in Iran, declaring, "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country." But this week, the Times of London quoted Mohsen Yahyavi, a member of the Iranian Parliament, as saying that gays should be executed or tortured.

Alizadeh says the government often tries to avoid appearing as if it is executing citizens just for being gay by adding other criminal charges, such as drug trafficking or rape.

Some observers remain convinced that such was the case with Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, whose 2005 public hangings while they were still teenagers sparked worldwide outrage. While the pair was convicted of rape in addition to homosexual acts, some gay rights activists believe the youths were executed merely for engaging in consensual sex. Other rights groups have chosen to focus on the fact that the hangings violate international treaties prohibiting the execution of minors, which Iran has signed.

The Culture War Descends on Columbia

From the Nation

by ESTHER KAPLAN

[posted online on October 26, 2007]

In the past few years, the students and faculty of Columbia University have found themselves in the midst of a culture war. They've seen their Middle East Studies department targeted as "anti-Israel" by one right-wing organization, the David Project. Two assistant professors, Joseph Massad and Nadia Abu El-Haj, were publicly smeared by another right-wing outfit, Campus Watch, as they underwent tenure review (see "The New McCarthyism" by Larry Cohler-Esses). And at the start of this school year their own president, Lee Bollinger, seemed to pander to this right-wing pressure by slamming Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the name of "the modern civilized world."

This week they've got David Horowitz, of the modestly named David Horowitz Freedom Center, best known in recent years for his ads in campus papers opposing slavery reparations, in which he argued that there is no evidence that the legacy of slavery has harmed any living African-American and demanded "the gratitude of black America" for the white Christians who "created" the antislavery movement. Now he's here to teach them about "Islamofascism."

His "Islamofascism Awareness Week" descended this week on dozens of college campuses across the country (he claims more than 100) with vigils here, sit-ins there and scattered forums featuring "aware" individuals such as former Senator Rick Santorum. But Columbia has been showered with special largesse: an entire week of activities, kicked off by a candlelight vigil on Monday, where a dozen or so College Republicans remembered "the untold millions who suffer under tyrannical Islamic regimes" and closing on Friday at noon with a speech by Horowitz himself (Columbia College class of '59).

"I had thought, probably stupidly, that the David Project had accomplished its purpose when they hit us so hard a few years ago," says Bruce Robbins, a professor of English and an organizer of a recent initiative to end Columbia's investment in companies that do business with the Israeli military. "But our academic freedom has not been extremely well defended in the past, so we've been shown to be rather vulnerable in that way."

At Wednesday night's Oppression Panel, some eighty students and assorted gadflies had the chance to see a self-satisfied panel of Ibn Warraq (Why I Am Not a Muslim), Phyllis Chesler (The Death of Feminism; The New-Anti-Semitism) and the American Enterprise Institute's Christina Hoff Sommers (Who Stole Feminism?) apply Horowitz's patented PC-bashing technique. "I encourage [conservatives] to use the language that the left has deployed so effectively in behalf of its own agendas," he wrote in 2003. "Radical professors have created a 'hostile learning environment' for conservative students. There is a lack of 'intellectual diversity' on college faculties and in academic classrooms. The conservative viewpoint is 'under-represented.'"

Thus we had Warraq telling us that it was Edward Said, by means of his book Orientalism, who "encouraged Islamic fundamentalism" by teaching "an entire generation the art of self-pity." It was Said--not, say, Campus Watch, with its hit list of faculty labeled as apologists for suicide bombings and militant Islam--who created a "climate of fear in academia" and whose "aggressive tone" was tantamount to "academic terrorism." We had Chesler declaiming perversely that the right to free speech "belongs also to those of us who are pro-American and pro-Israel, and not only to those who demonize the West." College campuses, she said, have been "Stalinized," "Palestinized." And we had Becky Dunnan, class of '08, spokesperson for the Columbia University College Republicans, sponsors of the event, gamely tell a reporter, "We really have to take back academic freedom for the minority viewpoint on campus--and that's the conservative view."

Of course, as Elizabeth Castelli, chair of Barnard's religion department, said to me before the festivities, Islamofascim Awareness Week is "not about academic freedom at all." She calls Islamofascism a "made-up term" designed to "close off debate, impose a particular position and set of arguments, and invite the harassment of individuals who hold alternative positions. It casts the world situation in a clash-of-civilizations mode--and places any critic in the position of being anti-Western, or even treasonous."

That these self-annointed opponents of Islamofascism claim to speak on behalf of women, gay people and Jews only deepens the Horowitzian irony. Chesler, bravely surmounting the constraints on her speech (the chief one being, as far as I could tell, that Barnard's women's studies department had declined to co-sponsor the panel), sounded an alarm against an "epidemic of homosexual pederasty in the Muslim world," called for a Jewish right of return to "Judenrein" Arab states and warned that if the jihadists win, they'll impose a Muslim caliphate on the United States and we will all become veiled "sex slaves." This, she said, would be "the end of civilization as we know it." Is it mere coincidence that her words echo exactly the phrase that conservative evangelical deployers of the term "Islamofascism," such as Family Research Council founder Gary Bauer, have used to characterize the threat of gay marriage? Homosexuality, as Castelli points out, has become both a marker of the
destruction of our way of life and, in our battle against Islamofascism, a stand-in for Western civilization itself.

It would all be a lot funnier if it weren't for the fact that Horowitz's campus experiment is serving the cause of a larger ideological campaign to expand the "war on terror." "Islamofascism," notes David Judd, Columbia class of '08, "[is] a term of demonization invented so we can justify attacking almost any country in the Middle East." Texas pastor John Hagee deployed the term "Islamofascism" in July when he brought some 4,000 members of his new Christian Zionist organization to Washington to lobby hundreds of members of Congress for militant support for Israel--and military action against Iran. Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee pulled the phrase out just last week in the Republican presidential debate, where he called Islamofascism "the greatest threat this country's ever faced." "We've got an enemy that wants to kill every last one of us," he went on. "We cannot be soft. We must be strong." And in an e-mail alert to his followers last week, Bauer declared "Islamofascism" a
core "values issue."

Even inside the elite precincts of Columbia's campus, the term seems to have stirred up some bellicosity. Judd, a member of Columbia Coalition Against the War, points out that in the weeks leading up to Horowitz's "awareness week," messages of hate cropped up in graffiti on campus--a swastika in one location; "towel head" in another--and a noose appeared on the office door of an African-American professor. Mahira Chishty, a graduate student in the School of Social Work and a practicing Muslim, says she's felt unsafe in recent days. "There have been insinuations in my direction that I can say are the result of the divisive climate on campus," she says. "One student came right up to me and said, 'Happy Islamofascism Week!' For a split second I thought, 'OK, I should go back to my room now.'"

Chishty and Judd have helped to organize a Friday morning protest of Islamofascism Awareness Week, and the Columbia University College Democrats planned an alternative forum to educate students more fully about Islam, set for Friday at noon--the exact time when Horowitz was scheduled to speak.

But is it up to students themselves to counter Horowitz and Co.'s attacks on academic freedom? Robbins doesn't think so. "What we need when untenured faculty are targeted by conservative activists or public officials," he says, "is for the administration to back people up."

Esther Kaplan is author of With God on Their Side: George Bush and the Christian Right, now out in paperback from the New Press.

Ahmadinejad Says Comments About Gays Were Misunderstood

From Fox News

Ahmadinejad Says Comments About Gays Were Misunderstood

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Are there gays in Iran?

Maybe. Maybe not.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, asked about the issue of homosexuality in his country during his controversial appearance at Columbia University two weeks ago, said there aren't.

Or maybe he said there are. It's hard to tell.

The Iranian leader, through a spokesman, sought Wednesday to clarify his remarks, which generated both anger and laughter during his visit to New York.

Two weeks ago, when asked if there were gay people in his country, Ahmadinejad said, through an interpreter:

"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country. We don't have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have it."

On Wednesday, Ahmadinejad's media adviser, Mohammad Kalhor, told Reuters what the president really meant to say was that the United States had a larger gay population than Iran. He said Ahmadinejad was simply misunderstood by Western media.

"What Ahmadinejad said was not a political answer," Kalhor told Reuters. "He said that, compared to American society, we don't have many homosexuals."

So, as they say in New York ... Let's go to the videotape.

FOXNews.com has reviewed a video copy of the speech through a Farsi interpreter.

When asked about gays in the Islamic Republic, Ahmadinejad replied:

"In Iran, firstly, we do not have homosexuals like you have here [in this country]. In our country, such a thing does not exist."

Kalhor told Reuters that Ahmadinejad did not intend to imply that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Rather, he said, the president wanted to say that homosexuality is not as common as it is in the West because of cultural and religious differences.

Homosexuality is punishable by death in the Islamic Republic.

Human rights groups have posted pictures of homosexuals purportedly being hanged in Iraq.

FOXNews.com's Adelle Nazarian contributed to this report.

Ahmadinejad's Gay Denial Must Occasion Caution

From Gay City News

By: KOUROSH SHEMIRANI
10/04/2007

Following the recent trip of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the US and his remarks at Columbia University where he denied the existence of homosexuals in Iran, the issue of Iranian gays is now in international public view.

Whether this newly gained global visibility marks a step in favor of improving the situation of gays in Iran or leads to a deepening of their plight has as much to do with internal Iranian society as with the actions of the international community. There are dangers and possibilities in this incredible turn of events that Western gay activists have to consider carefully.

No matter what anyone thinks of Iran, its regime, or its president, the fact is that Ahmadinejad's trip was a conscious change in policy by the Iranian government aimed at reaching out to the US and the American people. The Bush administration and the mainstream media have downplayed this fact and have even increased the same rhetoric that they developed before the invasion of Iraq - WMDs, state-sponsored terrorism, etc.

None of us can know what the outcome of these diplomatic maneuvers will be. But now that the issue of gays in Iran has become front and center, there is little doubt that it will work into the propaganda wars of both the Bush and the Ahmadinejad administrations.

In Iran, the president's comments denying the presence of homosexuals have been generally ignored or censored in the mainstream media; however the issue is debated and discussed publicly and on the Internet. It remains to be seen if activists and progressives in Iran will make any inroads in gaining greater public visibility and support as a result of this discussion.

This issue could easily become a major ideological and political test for a regime that rests on the basic notion that Iran is a proud independent nation resisting Western and especially US imperialism. The idea that homosexuality is a Western phenomenon is, of course, the main government line on the issue, and if the movement for gay rights is seen as a Western agenda, or a part of Western imposition on Iran, it will make it that much harder for the many brave gay activists inside Iran to continue their struggle for visibility and acceptance.

In the US, on the other hand, Ahmadinejad's comments regarding gays have been blown up and discussed ad nauseum to the point of becoming one of the primary ways that he is being increasingly discredited and vilified. And here is the danger that we in the West can easily fall into - if this issue is used to further antagonize Iran, it could mean a disaster for the situation of gays in Iran.

The sudden emergence of sympathy, even love, for gays by the likes of Fox News is not just cynical, it is dangerous. If left in the hands of those who couldn't care less about gay rights, the situation of Iranian gays will become a part of American war propaganda that aims to create justifications for military intervention and deepen the idea inside Iran that gays are a dangerous fifth column.

For the many well-meaning gay activists in the US who have been facing great challenges and setbacks here under the Bush administration, the idea that the LGBT community can have influence on public policy - especially foreign policy - seems farfetched. But what we say and how we relate to this moment can have repercussions beyond our own struggling community. I hope this essay will serve as a beginning of a constructive dialogue that helps us think and take proper action regarding the situation of gays and all sexual minorities in Iran.

Kourosh Shemirani lives in New York City and is a member of QIAM, the Queer Iranian Alliance. Contact him at: qiam2006@yahoo.com.

Queer Iranians and Mr. Ahmadinejad in the Press

Queer Iranians and Mr. Ahmadinejad in the Press

By Arsham Parsi

October 1, 2007

Cheraq Magazine, No 33

Translated by Ava

On Monday September 24th, Mr. Ahmadinejad gave a talk at New York's Columbia University. The President of Columbia, under great pressure for having invited Mr. Ahmadinejad, tried to compensate by creating a favourable atmosphere for himself, an atmosphere which did not materialize until the question about homosexuality was raised. A question was asked about the situation of homosexuals in Iran and in response Mr. Ahmadinejad replied: "In our country we don't have homosexuals like in your country. This does not exist in our country. I don't know who has told you that we have this." This response elicited laughter and booing from the crowd in attendance.

Continued in English...

Full article in Farsi...

Op-Ed: Iran, Sexuality, and Intercultural Dialogue

From the Columbia Spectator

By OMAR SARWAR
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 26, 2007

During his speech on Monday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad parried many of our direct questions concerning his denial of the Holocaust, his desire to destroy the state of Israel, and his government’s pursuit of nuclear technology. However, he spoke clearly, if rather inaccurately, about the issue of homosexuality: “In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon.” His remarks evoked laughter in the audience. But our amusement pointed to a lack of reflection on whether such a response is underpinned by certain cultural assumptions with which we in the West have yet to fully grapple.

Of course, it is plainly untrue that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Though part of a minority, some Iranians view themselves as queer, have advanced the cause of gay rights, and have consequently had to endure the persecution of their government. The Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO) is one manifestation of the efforts of queer Iranians to promote social justice under the banner of international human and gay rights. What we seem to have neglected are the historical significance and cultural specificity of our use of the terms “homosexual” and “queer” in describing same-sex desire and practice. What does it mean to posit that homosexuality has persisted throughout human history? With respect to Iran, do all or most Iranians who experience same-sex desire consider themselves “gay?” Does a history of sexuality in Persia reveal a “gay” identity as we understand it in modern times, one which is at once defended in the name of privacy and publicly expressed through a variety of symbols, images, and accouterments? Our own Professor Joseph Massad would reply in the negative. In his recent book, Desiring Arabs, Massad argues that civilizational worth and sexual desire have been closely interconnected in Orientalist thought, that the category of the “homosexual” is part of the culturally specific vocabulary of international gay rights organizations (the “Gay International”), and that nationalist and Islamist Arab intellectuals have assimilated distinctly European conceptions of the human since the nineteenth century.

Although Massad concentrates on the interface between Europe and the Arab world, his remains a broad commentary on the manner in which a particular penetrative Western discourse has interlaced sexuality, gay rights, human rights, Orientalist convictions, and social Darwinism in confronting the question of same-sex desire and practice in the non-Western world. He avers that “it is the very discourse of the Gay International, which both produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist.” For Massad, this discourse is oppressive because it brands those who pursue same-sex practices but resist universalist terminology as “homophobic” and because it rigidifies a heterosexual-homosexual binary, a potent tool for state repression.

I mention Massad’s work to underscore the possibility that many Iranians (and many non-Westerners in general) might conceive of sexuality in non-identitarian, non-universalist terms. These conceptions may take a range of forms, some of which betoken a dialectic between religious revivalism and Western norms, particularly in the context of the history of the modern Middle East. A denial of “homosexuality,” then, may indicate not an irrational refusal to accept the fact of same-sex desire and practice but rather a repudiation of a homogenizing albeit culturally distinct discourse on sexuality. I am not suggesting that Ahmadinejad’s curt answer to the question of the persecution of homosexuals evinces such complex considerations. And I personally do not endorse punishing or killing people for their sexual desires and practices irrespective of the historicity and multiplicity of the language employed to articulate these things. Nonetheless, President Ahmadinejad is not the sole representative or arbiter of the aspirations of the Iranian people, with whom we must engage in constructive dialogue on questions of sexuality. It will not suffice to presuppose that Iranians already conduct their sexuality in identitarian, universalist language or that, if they do not, they can somehow be benevolently (or peremptorily) taught how to do so. It is only by maintaining open lines of communication with the Iranians (and other peoples) that we can begin to understand what we share as human beings and what differentiates us. This will be the least we can do if we claim to be more tolerant and compassionate than the present Iranian government.

The author is a history Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

NPR Story: Homosexuality in Muslim World Shrouded in Secrecy

Homosexuality in Muslim World Shrouded in Secrecy

Talk about homosexuality and Islam on "Blog of the Nation."

Talk of the Nation, October 2, 2007 · In an address to an audience at Columbia University last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that homosexuality does not exist in Iran. The comment prompted derisive laughter from his audience and put a spotlight on the hostile treatment of gays and lesbians in the Muslim world.

Parvez Sharma, the filmmaker behind the documentary A Jihad for Love, discusses the underground world of homosexuality in Muslim countries. Filmed in 12 countries and nine languages, the documentary profiles men and women who struggle daily against persecution, danger and social isolation.

Op-Eds: Ahmadinejad’s homosexual-free Iran; Islamic Bigotry: The Slaughter of 4,000 Gays

Ahmadinejad’s homosexual-free Iran

By PAUL SCHNEIDEREIT

IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, I think it’s fair to say, has a slight credibility problem.

During his recent, much-publicized speech at New York’s Columbia University, Ahmadinejad couldn’t have appeared any more foolish, even if he had insisted the moon was made of cheese or that babies came from storks, than when he denied that homosexuality existed in his country.

But is the man merely ignorant, or did his position reflect a subtext of menace?

Certainly, Ahmadinejad is broadly seen as an intellectual featherweight among Iranians. The writer of one Iranian blog, Adventures of Mr. Behi, applies the Persian proverb "This coat is too big for you," (meaning a person isn’t up to the job) to the Iranian president, who has made a number of bizarre statements during his two years in office. Remember the "rim of light" Ahmadinejad claimed surrounded him when he spoke at the UN in 2006? Another Iranian blogger, who authors View from Iran, notes they’ve encountered others in the country who believe no gays exist there, so perhaps Ahmadinejad really believes such nonsense.

Continued...

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Islamic Bigotry: The Slaughter of 4,000 Gays

By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | Tuesday, October 02, 2007

At Columbia University on Monday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared: “We don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. We don’t have this phenomenon; I don’t know who’s told you we have it.”

Continued...

Saturday Night Live Parody - Ahmadinejad Love Song

The Queerest Denial - Op-Ed from the Wall Street Journal

From the Wall Street Journal

Ahmadinejad says there are no gays in Iran.

BY BRET STEPHENS
Tuesday, October 2, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT

The Islamic Republic of Iran has been doing a brisk business in harassing, entrapping, lashing, imprisoning and executing homosexuals since nearly the moment it came to power in 1979, with little notice in the West beyond the occasional human-rights report. So when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the startling claim at Columbia University last week that "we do not have homosexuals in Iran like you do in your country," it offered what could have been a learning opportunity to those who think Iran is just another misunderstood regime with an equally misunderstood president.

Such wishful thinking. The Democratic Party's presidential hopefuls spent a fair bit of time Wednesday night debating what to do about Iran, without once mentioning Ahmadinejad's peculiar world view. These are the same debaters who in August went before a gay audience to denounce Bush administration policies as "demeaning" and "degrading" toward gays. In the Nation--a magazine that excoriated Ronald Reagan upon his passing for his "inaction and bigotry against gays"--editor Katrina vanden Heuvel has nothing to say about the subject either. Instead, she devotes her latest column to denouncing last week's symbolic Senate vote to designate Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps as a terrorist organization.

In the Guardian, another crusading voice from the left on gay rights, foreign-affairs columnist Martin Woollacott lambastes Columbia's president Lee Bollinger for his "mean-spirited" remarks to the Iranian president, which he takes as an indication that "it is still difficult to suggest that Iran has arguments and interests worth considering on their merits." But again, no mention of Mr. Ahmadinejad's attitude toward gays, much less its "merits." And on "progressive" Web sites like Democratic Underground, there are earnest debates about exactly what Mr. Ahmadinejad meant by the word "like," as if he were merely making an academic cultural comparison rather than denying the existence of an entire category of his own citizens.

Long gone are the days when people spoke of the love that dare not speak its name. We are now living in the era of the hate-that-dare-not-be-spoken-about--lest disingenuous neocons use Mr. Ahmadinejad's unfortunate pronouncements to cut off dialogue and beat the drums for war. But if one side of the political spectrum is not to be trusted to discuss the subject, and the other side simply won't, who will?

For that, turn to a revealing and moving documentary by Indian-born journalist Parvez Sharma called "A Jihad for Love," which he describes as a "discussion about Islam through its most unlikely storytellers." Mr. Sharma (who is very far from being a conservative of any kind) spent six years filming his subjects on four continents: They include a gay imam in South Africa, a lesbian couple in Istanbul, an Egyptian who spent a year in prison for being gay before fleeing to Paris, and four young men who fled Iran for their lives and now live as political refugees in Canada.

The documentary is notable for its depiction of the tenacity with which its subjects hold on to their faith despite the wall of bigotry, often homicidal, that confronts them. Nowhere is that seen more vividly than in the plight of the Iranians. Take Arsham Parsi, 27, a subject of Mr. Sharma's who now runs the Iranian Queer Organization (irqo.net) from Toronto. In 2001, he says in a phone interview, "two of my close friends committed suicide because of the bad situation for queer people." Their deaths galvanized him to begin a gay and lesbian support group, conducted furtively and electronically, consisting largely of articles on gay-related subjects from English language sources. The enterprise grew to include six separate electronic magazines. "We used to think we were alone in the world," Mr. Parsi says. "With these magazines, we knew we were not."

In fact, homosexuality has a particularly rich history in Iran--the Qajar dynasty's Nasseruddin Shah, a contemporary of Queen Victoria and ruler of Iran for nearly 50 years, took a Kurdish boy named Malijak as his lifelong lover. It is hardly less present in contemporary Iran, not just in the parks of Tehran but the seminaries of Qom. But Mr. Parsi's activism put him at particular risk. "The police use the Internet to make undercover arrests," he says. "They'll write to say 'I am looking for a partner,' entrap someone, and use their correspondence as evidence." That was the fate of friends of Mr. Parsi, who in 2003 were sentenced to 100 lashes in the space of an hour, and it would have been his, too, had he not fled Iran on word he was about to be arrested.

From Toronto, Mr. Parsi works on asylum cases and continues to publish a newsletter called Cheraq ("Light"), which reaches about 3,000 readers in Iran. Yesterday, it published a selection of letters to Mr. Ahmadinejad by gay Iranians.

"I pray that some false note in the divine composition has you fathering a gay offspring so that the hammer that you've raised over our heads comes down on your very own," writes one. "I recommend you partake in the first Iranian gay Pride parade so you can see for yourself that it will be more glorious and more populated than your Quds day or annual revolution commemoration day parades," writes another, adding that a gay parade would be attended voluntarily, in contrast to "a bunch of schoolchildren and innocent peasants who have been forced to show up to punch the 'world oppressors' in the mouth."

All of this ought to be evidence that, when it comes to the Iranian regime, the gap between bad neocons and pure-of-heart progressives ought to be no more than tactical: This is, ultimately, a regime that needs to go. Not so. Mr. Sharma, for instance, rails in the Huffington Post against the "the Good-vs.-Evil caricature" that he says prevails in Western attitudes toward Iran.

Mr. Sharma is a gifted filmmaker, but his politics remind me of the Socratic observation that poets are poor judges of their own work. Or how else is one supposed to view the scene he captures of Mr. Parsi at last arriving in Toronto and weeping both for the freedom he has gained and his friends still trapped in Islamist captivity? Is it a testament that there is no meaningful difference between free and unfree, Bushworld and Ahmadinejadland? Take that view seriously, and you wind up taking the notion of gay rights, and human rights, too lightly for anyone's good.

Mr. Stephens is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board. His column appears in the Journal Tuesdays.

NPR Story: Homosexuality in Muslim World Shrouded in Secrecy

Talk about homosexuality and Islam on "Blog of the Nation."

Talk of the Nation, October 2, 2007 · In an address to an audience at Columbia University last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that homosexuality does not exist in Iran. The comment prompted derisive laughter from his audience and put a spotlight on the hostile treatment of gays and lesbians in the Muslim world.

Parvez Sharma, the filmmaker behind the documentary A Jihad for Love, discusses the underground world of homosexuality in Muslim countries. Filmed in 12 countries and nine languages, the documentary profiles men and women who struggle daily against persecution, danger and social isolation.

Parvez Sharma Blogs About the Ahmadenijad Controversey

Ahmadinejad and the Homosexuality He Seeks to Deny

Posted September 27, 2007

---

Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad, the "humble" former mayor of Tehran, has now been thrust on the international stage and if most of the media in the West is to be believed, he is positively Hitlerian.

Not particularly blessed with the dashing good looks I associate with so many Iranian men, the president's refusal to wear the illegal tie (that great symbol of Western imperialism) with his suits gives him at least that "air of debonair," as an Iranian homosexual friend of mine pointed out (Being particularly randy, my friend admits to having a secret crush on the president. I look at him speechlessly, and blame it on the Iranian national condition of taarof).

Continued...

My Jihad, in America and Beyond (by Parvez Sharma)

My Jihad, in America and Beyond - by Parvez Sharma

"Ah! Daneshju Park! The smells that waft from across the street! And the forbidden delights that await inside!"

Talking about a life left behind in Iran, my friend had tears in his eyes. But also a steely resolve that one day he would be back. He also reminded me that a Basij -- a member of the volunteer force of religious vigilantes or guardians of morality, thoughtfully supplied by the powers that are -- had openly expressed a desire to be with him and they had gone home together, not too far from Vali Asr Avenue, and spent a night of passion, the likes of which he has never had since, in each other's arms.

Given the national obsession with Hafez and his poetry, whose homoeroticism many have claimed and studied, I have always felt that the young gentleman who found passion in the park speaks to me in beautiful Farsi, almost in haiku. His language gives him the facility to always sound like he is speaking in poetry. I also assume that President Ahmadi Nejad has probably not wandered into those dark corners of Daneshju Park, a park not that different from the Rambles in the heart of New York, or Nehru Park in Delhi, where I grew up. All of these hidden spaces have been the dark and often depressing settings for so many of us seeking to meet others like us: "homosexuals," in any of the contexts we have existed in.

Many that speak about Ahmadi Nejad and his histrionics have unfortunately not studied Iran's complex, post-1979 history. Vali Asr, a religiously appropriate name chosen for the longest avenue in all of Iran, used to be called Pahlavi Avenue. It was renamed as quickly as the despotic Pahlavi family, Iran's ill-fated ruling dynasty of the time, was consigned to the dustbin of history. This expeditious renaming continued for a generation as the Islamic Republic we know today came to be. On that fateful day of February 1st, 1979, the Ayatollah with the penetrating eyes, the marja al-taqlid (source of imitation) arrived on a plane. He, like the British, the Russians and indeed many before them, laid claim to the soul of an ancient civilization that had been coveted by so many, for so long. This latest invader, however, came from within.

Continued...

Despite Denials, Gays Insist They Exist, if Quietly, in Iran

From the New York Times
September 30, 2007

Despite Denials, Gays Insist They Exist, if Quietly, in Iran
By NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN, Sept. 29 — When Reza, a 29-year-old Iranian, heard that his president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, had denied in New York that homosexuals were in Iran, he was shocked but not surprised. Reza knows the truth. He is gay.

Leaning back in his black leather desk chair at home in Tehran, he said there were, in fact, plenty of gay men and women in Iran. The difference between their lives and those of gays in Europe and North America is one of recognition and legitimacy.

“You can have a secret gay life as long you don’t become an activist and start demanding rights,” he said, speaking on the condition that his family name not be used because he feared retribution.

Reza, who shaves his head and often wears an earring in his left ear, has lived in Europe extensively. Gay life in Iran, he said, “is just complicated in the same way that it is for other groups, like workers and feminists, who don’t have many rights.”

Since Mr. Ahmadinejad uttered his words at Columbia University last Monday, discussion of homosexuality has been stifled here. Sociologists and other analysts normally willing to discuss such issues on the record with a reporter suddenly were not.

But, speaking anonymously, several said that the president had clearly been caught off guard by the question because no one at an Iranian university would have dared to ask him such a thing. They also argued that it was probably better for Iranian gays that Mr. Ahmadinejad denied their existence since that made it likelier that they would be ignored and let alone.

For a country that is said to have no homosexuality, Iran goes to great lengths to ban it. Gays are punished by lashing or death if it is proved that they have had homosexual relations. Two gay teenagers were executed in 2005 in Mashad, a northeastern city.

Fear of persecution is so strong that some gay men and lesbians have sought and received asylum in Western countries.

The Iranian Student News Agency reported in 2005 that a lesbian had been killed in prison by other inmates whom, it was alleged, she had forced to have sex with her. Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, said in May in an interview on state-run television that the police were looking for men who dressed and looked like homosexuals.

But Iran has also taken the unusual step of encouraging sex change operations for those with homosexual tendencies. While religious authorities here view homosexuality a clear sin, transsexuals are considered ill and in need of the help that such an operation can provide.

Muhammad Mehdi Kariminia, a midranking cleric and university professor at Mam Khomeini University in Qum, who wrote his doctoral thesis on transsexuals in Iran, said Muslim clerics could not show leniency or forgiveness for homosexuals because the Koran explicitly labels sodomy sinful.

“There is a thick wall between homosexuals and transsexuals,” Mr. Kariminia said. “Transsexuals are sick because they are not happy with their sexuality, and so they should be treated. But homosexuality is considered a deviant act.”

But the gays interviewed said that they did not believe the wall was that thick.

Reza said he knew of gay men who had changed their sex so that they could be recognized by the government as transsexual and mingle with men more easily.

The Internet has made socializing easier for gays in the past several years, according to those interviewed, who said they had found many gay friends online.

There are dozens of gay and lesbian Web sites and chat rooms, which the authorities monitor and block. But ways around the bans are found, and new Web sites are opened. Hamjens.com invites gays to find their “Iranian dream date.”

Gays say the key to living in Iran without government interference, even as couples, is keeping a low profile. Some have been arrested for looking “too feminine” but are generally fined and released.

Tehran has several famous areas, like Karim-Khan Street, or Mellat, Laleh and Daneshjoo parks, where gays meet and where gay prostitutes seek customers. “It does not take them even 10 minutes to get picked up,” said Amir, 24, a graphic designer who is gay. “There are men from every class,” he said. “Some of them are bisexual and call it being naughty.”

But most gays are driven underground also for fear of being shunned or rejected by relatives.

Shahin, 27, a chemist, has kept his gay life secret from his parents. “I don’t want to upset them,” he said. “Maybe they will consider me sick and feel sorry for me.”

Shahin said a gay friend was disowned when his family learned of his sexual orientation. He said he had many friends who married as a cover for their gay lives.

Op-Ed: I'm Here, President Ahmadinejad; Gay Iranian in Tehran Speaks Out

From the Washington Post

I'm Here, President Ahmadinejad

By Amir
Sunday, September 30, 2007; B02

TEHRAN

I'm one of those people Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says don't exist. I'm a 25-year-old Iranian, and I'm gay.

I live in Tehran with my parents and younger brother and am studying to be a computer software engineer. I've known that I was different from my brother and other boys for as long as I can remember.

I was born in 1982, two years after the start of the Iran-Iraq War, and when I was growing up, most boys loved to play with toy guns, pretending to be soldiers in the war. I liked painting, and playing with dolls. My brother preferred to play with the other boys, so most of the time I was lonely.

I was 16 when I first realized that I was sexually attracted to some of the boys in my high school classes. I had no idea what I could do with that feeling. All I knew about homosexuals were the jokes and negative stories that people told about them. I thought a homosexual was someone who sexually abused children -- until I saw the word "homosexual" for the first time in an English encyclopedia, and found a definition of myself.

After that, I started searching the Internet for information about homosexuality. Eventually I came across two Iranian Web sites where I could communicate with other gays. I was 17. At first, I didn't want to give anyone my e-mail address because I was afraid that I could be abused or that my parents might find out, or that people on the site could be government spies. But I finally decided to exchange e-mails with one person, and after some correspondence, we spoke on the phone. I'll never forget the first time I heard the voice of another gay man. We arranged to meet at the home of a friend of his, and the three of us talked for hours. I felt so comfortable with them. The next day I learned that the friend was interested in me. His name was Omid, and we became boyfriends.

I also became interested in the gay social movement that started in 2000. Around that time, Iranian society became more open under President Mohammad Khatami's reformist government. The Internet became common, and everybody started talking about issues they couldn't even have thought about before.

Until then, the gay world had been underground and secret. Under the Islamic Republic, gays could face the death penalty; they could also lose their jobs and family support. Meetings and parties took place only in the most trusted private homes. Heterosexuals were almost never seen at these gatherings. Even fellow gays were only slowly accepted. It could take years for a homosexual to become known and trusted. Most older gays were married and even had children, and their family and friends had no idea of their sexuality.

There was a handful of gathering places for outcast homosexuals in Tehran, people who couldn't hide their sexuality and had lost their jobs, or people whose families had disowned them, and who had turned to selling sex for money. Those places were always being attacked by the paramilitaries.

My generation was the first to start the coming-out process. I decided to come out when I was 20. I thought that if I just talked to my parents about it, they would accept my reasoning. I was totally wrong. Their reaction was horrible. They started to restrict me -- I couldn't use the phone or invite any of my friends over, and they cut back on financial support. Part of their reaction was religious; part was their concern that I couldn't survive as a homosexual in Iran. They were also ashamed to tell the rest of our family and wanted to see me married to a woman.

We argued constantly; they insisted that I wasn't gay, that I only thought I was. It took me years to calm them down, but over time, they lost any hope of changing me, and they started to change themselves. Now they accept that I'm gay, but they're not happy about it.

Meanwhile, the gay community has worked to educate people via Web sites and dialogue with our friends and families. But we've found that the most effective way of changing people's minds is coming out. When people see us as reasonable humans, their negative views of homosexuality are shattered. I can honestly say there's been a change in the way Iranians view us now. Gay life in Iran isn't as underground as it used to be. We have gay parties with heterosexual guests -- and even our parents! We have places where we can congregate -- in coffee shops, special park areas and even certain offices. Many more homosexuals are willing to come out these days. Activists estimate that .5 percent of the Iranian population is homosexual, bisexual or transsexual.

But we weren't surprised by Ahmadinejad's comments about gays at Columbia University. What else could he say? We stone homosexuals in Iran because that's what God wants? It was a joke, but he gave the only answer he could.

I wish our president could learn to respect gays instead of denying us. But I'm not holding my breath. In the meantime, my only response to his remarks is this: Whatever he says, Ahmadinejad can't change the fact that we exist.

Amir is an activist in Tehran whose name is being withheld for his safety.

Gay Iranians have hidden lives

From United Press International

Published: Sept. 29, 2007 at 10:02 PM

TEHRAN, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- Gay Iranians simply hope to be left alone in a country where homosexuality can be punished by death, The New York Times reported Saturday.

“You can have a secret gay life as long you don’t become an activist and start demanding rights,” a Tehran resident named Reza, who did not want his full name used, told the newspaper.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at Columbia University in New York this week, provoked laughter in the audience when he asserted there are no homosexuals in Iran. Gays willing to talk to the Times said they were relieved by his denial since it might mean they will be left alone.

The law making homosexuality punishable by death or a lashing is no dead letter. Two teenagers were executed in 2005 in Mashad.

While Iran may be tough on homosexuality, the country is comparatively gentle toward transgender people, regarding them as sick. The government encourages sex-change operations.

© Copyright United Press International. All Rights Reserved.
This material may not be reproduced, redistributed, or manipulated in any form.

Face of homosexuality is veiled but real in Iran

From the St. Petersburg Time

Face of homosexuality is veiled but real in Iran

By SUSAN TAYLOR MARTIN, Times Senior Correspondent
Published September 30, 2007

Several years ago in Jordan, I met a young man who had briefly left his poor home country to work in oil-rich Qatar. He got a good job selling Mercedes - only to quit after male customers began propositioning him for sex.

Yes, there is homosexuality in the Middle East despite the now-famous claim by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that his country is free of what was once known - how ironic! - as "the Persian vice."

"In Iran, we don't have homosexuals like in your country," he told an audience at New York's Columbia University last week. "In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don't know who's told you that we have it."

Ahmadinejad's remarks drew jeers and laughter, but they might not have been as ridiculous as commonly suggested. Knowing that nuance is sometimes lost in translation, one could give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he meant that Iran doesn't have the kind of overt gay culture found in the West with its gay bars, gay celebrities, gay parades and so on.

In fact, "there has been a recent phenomenon of Western-style gay culture in Iran, but it is very new, largely limited to the upper classes and likely not known to President Ahmadinejad, whose social milieu is the middle and lower middle class," writes William O. Beeman, a University of Minnesota anthropologist.

Beeman, who has spent 30 years conducting research in Iran, also notes that the Western idea of homosexuality is quite different from that in Arab and Mediterranean cultures.

"In Iran, same-sex behavior is classified rigidly into active and passive roles," Beeman says on the New American Media Web site. "Active partners do not consider themselves to be homosexual" while passive partners "can carry a life-long stigma if their sexual role is known."

Of course Ahmadinejad might really think there are no gays in Iran because he has never met one, or at least never one who publicly acknowledged sexual orientation. There's a good reason for that: As in Saudi Arabia and some other conservative Muslim countries, homosexuality in Iran is a crime punishable by death.

In 2005, two teenage boys - one 16, the other 18 - were publicly executed for raping a younger boy, according to the U.S. State Department's annual report on human rights. Though the lack of transparency in Iran's court system makes it hard to know for certain, outside groups claimed the real reason the youths were executed was because of homosexual activity.

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Iranian government reportedly has executed more than 4,000 people charged with homosexual acts. But reliable figures are almost impossible to come by, and it is not known if other crimes were involved.

Muslims generally consider homosexuality a sin, based on the handful of passages in the Koran that seem to address the subject. Among them: "For ye practice your lust on men in preference to women; ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds."

But at various times in its history, Islam has shown a more open attitude toward same-sex relations. A 12th century Muslim poet waxed suggestively over the sight of a "slim young man, beautiful as the rising moon" - a sight beheld in a mosque during Friday prayers, no less.

In one of those coincidences that invite comparisons, Ahmadinejad made his "no homosexuals" comment the very week that U.S. Sen. Larry Craig began legal efforts to show he is not gay even though he appeared to be trolling for sex in an airport men's room. Homosexuality remains enough of a taboo even for many Americans that Craig's fellow Republicans turned on him faster than you can say "homophobic."

It's also interesting to note that while Iran bans homosexuality, it takes a surprisingly enlightened view toward transsexuals. None other than the Ayatollah Khomeini, the revolutionary leader, ruled that sex-change operations are permissible for those whose self-image is at odds with their gender at birth.

Hundreds of Iranians have since undergone such surgery. And you have to wonder what the late ayatollah would have thought about the flap in this country over Steve Stanton's decision to become Susan.

Susan Taylor Martin can be contacted at susan@sptimes.com.

"When evil men plot..." - The Vilification of Ahmadenijad

September 28, 2007

“When evil men plot…” – The Vilification of Ahmadinejad

By Faisal Alam

“When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind. When evil men shout ugly words of hatred, good men must commit themselves to the glories of love. Where evil men would seek to perpetuate an unjust status quo, good men must seek to bring into being a real order of justice.”
- Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968)

“Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding.” – Albert Einstein

Not long ago most Americans did not even know how to pronounce President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s name, let alone who he might be. Today, with the help of media conglomerates, no one seems to be able to stop talking about him.

Ahmadinejad is no stranger to controversy. Already condemned for his denial that the Holocaust ever happened and for his statements calling for Israel to be wiped “off the face of the map” the grim mood was set even before Ahmadinejad arrived. Adding fuel to the fire he was invited to speak at Columbia University as part of their world leaders’ lecture series. If that wasn’t enough to get everyone’s blood boiling, Ahmadinejad requested to visit the site of the World Trade Center to offer a prayer and lay a wreath.

Ahmadenijad’s visit to New York was not the first time that he has visited the United States. He has come twice before, both times to attend and speak at the opening session of the General Assembly of the United Nations. But this diplomatic visit caused an uproar that few anticipated. Jewish organizations took out full page ads condemning his visit and thousands of people attended protests outside the United Nations and Columbia University. Signs calling for him to “go to hell” and comparing him to Hitler were distributed amongst the crowds.

Media networks were already buzzing about his controversial visit, but his speech at Columbia University was the stroke that broke the camel’s back. Demonized and disparaged by the President of Columbia University who called him a “petty and cruel dictator,” Ahmadinejad set out to redeem himself in front of the 700 faculty and students. After a long-winded speech beginning with many verses from the Quran and concluding with his passion for new scientific endeavors and his wish to promote world peace, Ahmadinejad was confronted with a series of questions about his beliefs and the political ambitions of Iran.

When questioned about his countries abysmal human rights record and the execution of many men suspected of being gay, Ahmadinejad’s response would become headlines around the world. Through a translator Ahmadinejad stated that “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country. We don’t have that in our country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I do not know who has told you that we have it.” The audience burst out in laughter, which was followed by a handful of “boos” denouncing his declaration that no queer people existed in Iran. The statement caused such a ruckus that even before Ahmadinejad had ended his talk, those few words spread like wildfire across the blogosphere.

Queer groups were quick to condemn his statement reminding Mr. Ahmadinejad of the many cases of men arrested, tortured and even executed for conducting “liwat” or homosexual activities. Many were simply appalled and mystified that as a leader of a nation he could be in such denial about a segment of Iran that is persecuted under his regime.

The roots of Ahmadinejad’s denigration are clear to any one who can step back from the raw emotions expressed this week. There are four things that are most unsettling and most disturbing.

Firstly, the way the media monopoly manipulated and fed the story to the American people is shocking. Hundreds of newspapers around the world ran the same articles, sent by a handful of news wires including Reuters, the Associated Press and United Press International. This is a clear illustration of the power of media and the control of information that is communicated to the American public.

While the world was quick to snicker and joke about his assertion, within 48 hours bloggers discovered that perhaps his words were mistranslated. After careful analysis of the original Farsi, some discovered that perhaps what he meant to say was that “no (openly gay) people existed in Iran; these people only exist in your country.” In spite of the recognition that the meaning and context of Ahmadinejad’s response were possibly misconstrued, not one major television network or newspaper has reprted anything about this new revelation.

Let’s also not forget that Iran is a “sponsor of terrorism” fueling Islamic radicalism and anti-Americanism across the Muslim world. This only added to the already impassioned assault on President Ahmadinejad. But as much as President Bush and his cohorts would like us all to be “with us or against us,” the world we live in is much more complex.

John F. Kennedy once said that “the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie: deliberate, continued, and dishonest; but the myth: persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.” It is simply easier and more convenient for us to condemn a man whose viewpoints seem bizarre, silly and sometimes fanatical – without any objective or independent analysis.

Secondly, the laughter from the audience that immediately followed Ahmadinejad’s claim that no homosexuals existed in Iran is a case in point where the topic of homosexuality became the fodder for comedy. College campuses across this country can attest to the rising homophobia and conservative viewpoints that more and more students are displaying every day. Homophobia reared its ugly head this week at Columbia University.

Thirdly, our ego and pride have blurred our view of the world around us. Do we really think that the rest of the world thinks and acts the same way we do? Has ethnocentrism rooted itself so deeply in our psyche that we have no room to understand the lives of others on this planet? Do we really live in such a bubble that we have no concept of what cultural relativism is or how and why the lived experiences of a person from another culture or religion might differ from our own?

To many, it may come as a surprise to learn about Ahmadinejad’s personal background and his upbringing. Born into a family of blacksmiths, Ahmadinejad has lived most of his life as a religious and frugal man. As the director of the Center for Persian Studies at the University of Maryland stated to the Washington Post, “he is a premodern man in a postmodern world.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad’s views on both the holocaust and the gay people are most likely the result of his economic status and educational upbringing.

As someone who grew up abroad, I can attest to not learning about the atrocious acts committed against the Jewish people until my mother recounted in my early teens the horror she witnessed in touring the remnants of a concentration camp in Germany. It was only in college where I learned that Hitler not only set out to eradicate Jews but also other marginalized and oppressed communities of the time (including LGBT people).

Just as Mr. Ahmadinejad may not have been taught about the holocaust, the majority of Americans probably know very little about the Cambodian genocide in the 1970s in which 21% of the country’s population (1.7 million people) lost their lives. Similarly the people of Malawi or Iceland probably know little if anything of the genocide committed in this country against Native Americans. While ignorance is no excuse and while we must hold Mr. Ahmadinejad accountable for his anti-Semitic beliefs, disparaging him is not the answer.

The last troubling fact was the unprecedented outcry at Ahmadinejad's request to visit the site of the World Trade Center attack. A popularly elected leader of more than 71 million people wanted to pay his respects to the tragedy that our country endured. Presidential candidates were in uproar and New York city officials were horrified. Senator Joe Leiberman even declared that Ahmadinejad comes to New York “literally with blood on his hands.” The outrage was so intense that one would have thought Osama bin Laden had released another video, announcing his emergence from the mountains of Afghanistan and requesting a personal tour of ground zero! Do we now think that Iran was involved in the attacks? Or has the Bush administration succeeded in making us all delusional?

American foreign policy in the 21st century is riddled with hypocrisy and double-standards. A friend can become a foe as quickly as a foe can become a friend. This was demonstrated clearly in April of this year when Rep. Nancy Pelosi paid a visit to Syria and met with President Bashar Al-Assad. It was only in November 2001 that President Bush infamously branded Syria as a member of the “axis of evil” together with Iran and North Korea. But with hidden pretense Syria overnight has become a potential ally in our “war on terrorism.” And North Korea will soon enjoy the economic benefits of opening its nuclear facilities to inspection and succumbing to the “new world order” where the United States is the only remaining superpower. While we are now quick to condemn Iran, mysteriously countries including Egypt and Uzbekistan (who are some of the worst state-sanctioned human rights’ abusers) continue to be closely allied to the United States. But for how long? We are as quick to sleep with the enemy as we are to kick them out of our beds.

I am continuously appalled at how easily our society succumbs to tactics that perpetuate terror and fear by those that seek to further cultivate corporate greed, poverty, environmental degradation, empire-building, militarization, and the privatization of natural resources. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, author and advocate of peace articulated once that “in order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us.” Unfortunately for President Ahmadinejad, he was just another pawn in this scheming plot.

It is unfortunate that we lost another chance at opening dialogue and creating peace with Ahmadinejad and with Iran. Instead of assailing Ahmadinejad and further alienating the Iranian people, we should have invited him to visit the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC and see for himself the death and destruction caused against the Jewish people; or attend a dinner with survivors of the holocaust who can describe first-hand their miraculous escape. And while we’re at it, Mr. Ahmadinejad should also meet with some of the gay men and lesbian women who have fled their homeland due to his country’s ongoing persecution of sexual minorities.

While the Bush administration increases its war-mongering against Iran and continues its unending war in Iraq and Afghanistan, we must all work together harder than ever to fight back and ensure that our country become a source of peace and stability instead of our current path of “shock and awe” matched with death and destruction.

Mr. Ahmadinejad's visit to New York this year was a missed opportunity, but we can still look to the future to engage those that we have traditionally denounced. The future also presents us prospects for us to continue fighting homophobia, ethnocentrism and xenophobia that has permeated our society. And together we will get there.

Martin Luther King Jr. once stated that “I’ve looked over, and I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you, but I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land.”

I hope President Ahmadinejad's next visit to New York will be an opening to facilitate cross-cultural dialogue, mutual understanding and an opening to a world where we can achieve true peace.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Faisal Alam is a queer Muslim activist of Pakistani descent. As the founder of Al-Fatiha, an organization dedicated to supporting and empowering LGBT Muslims, Faisal managed the organization as a volunteer director from 1998-2005. Contrary to what many may think after reading this article he is not a supporter of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or George W. Bush. :-)

Active in the struggle to promote peace and justice, Faisal currently resides in Atlanta, GA. His blogs and other writings can be found at http://queermuslimrevolution.blogspot.com and at http://myqueerificworld.blogspot.com. He can also be reached by email at FaisalAlam@aol.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Aljazeera Report on Ahmadinejad Lecture at Columbia University