This
week’s readings started delving into the history of sexuallity in
relation to Islam, with a strong focus on homosexuality and how it
became defined
In
Murray’s “The Will Not to Know,” he explores many different words that
were used to help make sense of homosexual acts and homoeroticism in
pre-modern societies. He concludes that homosexual roles are still held
within binaries, commonly in the passive/active or one taking
pleasure/one providing pleasure. He sees the terminology of “gay” as a
Western contextualization of homosexual acts that have always been
present in history, verified by the broad usage of vocabulary (bardash,
ubnah, etc.). In conclusion, being gay was not something constructed
within this history. Instead, there was an understanding of men seeking
pleasure and finding it normally by anally penetrating younger boys that
exhibited qualities of femininity. These acts were rarely prosecuted
because they were not explicitly talked about.
Najmabadi
examines the notions of beauty as they related to gender in this time
and area of the world. The often passive subjects that Murray describes
as part of the lover/beloved binary are distinguished by Najmabadi by
their facial hair. While a full beard was a sign of adult manhood and
the arguable inability to be dominated, the first signs of a beard or
beardlessness made a young man an object of desire. Najmabadi also
explores the separate domains of sexual practice and sexual orientation
in pre-modern Islamic societies. Sexual relations between adult men and
adolescents were not “issues to be highlighted,” and were sometimes
attributed to relations of economics, education and alliance.
In “Introduction” of Desiring Arabs,
Massad explores ideas of colonialism and hegemonic sexual Western
forces that redefined culture and civilization by destroying Oriental
subjectivities. The concept of turath, or heritage, is referenced as it
relates to a turathist/contemporary binary. Turath was “heritage” that
was redefined through the lens of colonialism as it began to redefine
sexual acts as sexuality. The representation of these sexual acts and
desires came to be tied to the civilizational worth of the Arab world.
El-Rouayheb
navigates through the essentialist and constructionist theories
regarding homosexuality in modern periods and in the early Ottoman
period. Essentialists feel that the concept of homosexuality has been
around much longer than the term. Constructionists argue that the
concept of homosexuaity is modern and that in pre-modern Arab cultures,
sexuality was determined by the active and passive roles in sexual
relations, not by the gender of each partner. El-Rouayheb’s work
coincides with lots of ideas that Murray brings up, such as
homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic culture lacking a concept of
homosexualiy altogether, moreso operating under a set of concepts
(ubnah, liwat) along with the Western defining of homosexuality being
what ultimately created homophobia. Both writers begin questioning how
gayness and homosexual acts have found their meaning in today’s culture.
In
Ze’evi’s “Dream Interpretation,” the author considers various theories
of dream interpretation and how they pertain to cultural and sexual
unconscious in the Ottoman era. In considering dreams as a look into a
person’s inner psyche, the symbolic meanings of the dream may not
directly linked to the culture, place or time that person is living in.
The five headings exemplify this, which proliferated behaviors into
different categories that had different levels of consequences. Some
were ordained, some were forbidden and others were seen as neither
inherently moral or immoral. Ultimately, the science of dream
interpretation became less prominent; however, it remains significant in
examining at how modern society treats some sexual acts as normal or
deviant.
Worthwhile quotations
“‘On
the one hand, there is a desire to define one’s ethnic and cultural
uniqueness against the pressures of the majority culture and on the
other hand an equally strong, if not stronger, urge to abandon that
uniqueness in order to conform to the hegemonic pressures of the [white]
liberal humanistic culture.’” - Abdul R. JanMohamed, as quoted in Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 by Khaled El-Rouayheb
“...The
trans-Islamic native domain is that ‘sexuality’ is distinguished not
between ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ but between taking pleasure and
submitting to someone (being used for pleasure)” (Murray, 41).
“Every
man in Iran is involved in male-to-male sex sex, because premarital
[heterosexual] sex and sex outside marriage are not a sin, but are also
very difficult [to find]/ But being gay and having a gay identity is a
Western phenomenon. Iranian men act in a very cliche[d] male/female
role. One is either the active or the passive partner, but all men are
involved in male sex.” - Mansour, a Tehran native from Murray’s “Will
Not to Know,” pg. 18.
“Premodern
Islamic literature considered gender irrelevant to love and beauty.
Alternatively, male beauty and male homoeroticism were considered
superior sentiments” (Najmabadi, 17) in “Early Qajar.”
“In
the case of Iran and much of the Islamic world, sexual practices were
generally not considered fixed into lifelong patterns of sexual
orientation” (Najmabadi, 20).
Discussion Questions
1.
In Murray’s “The Will Not to Know,” he discusses the many different
terms in history used to define sexual acts. How does this parallel to
today’s culture and how the meanings of words relating to sexuality are
not always explicit? What are some examples of words and sexual acts
that have a more fluid definition?
2.
Ze’evi ends “Dream Interpretation” noting the “heteronormalization of
love” and how “several sexual choices, especially same-sex intercourse
and pederasty, came to be seen as a deviation from a norm.” How has
popular culture portrayed this alleged hegemonic force? Has pop culture
today begun to break this heteronormalization of love and where do you
think it will go next?
3.
“Unfortunately the literary sources of the period give almost no
information on female attitudes to love and sex” (El-Rouayheb, 10).
“Premodern
Islamic literature considered gender irrelevant to love and beauty.
Alternatively, male beauty and male homoeroticism were considered
superior sentiments” (Najmabadi, 17) in “Early Qajar.”
What does these quotes and observations relate about the hegemony of masculine sexuality in pre-modern Islamic society?
No comments:
Post a Comment