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I. Introduction
Islam, like other major world religions (with the very recent exception of certain liberal denominations in the West), prohibits categorically all forms of same-sex erotic behavior.[1] Scholars have differed over questions of how particular same-sex acts should be technically categorized and/or punished, but have never differed over the fact of their prohibition. The full and unbroken Islamic consensus on this issue embraces all recorded legal schools, theological persuasions, and historically documented sectarian divisions.
The evidentiary basis underlying Islam's categorical prohibition of liwāṭ (sodomy) and other same-sex behaviors lies in explicit proscriptive statements of the Qurʾān and Ḥadīth, the transmitted consensus of the Prophet's Companions and Successors, and the documented unanimity of the Islamic legal tradition throughout the ages. Notwithstanding, the past decade and a half has witnessed the rise of Muslim reformist voices, primarily in the West, challenging Islam's proscription of homosexual activity and calling for the religious affirmation of same-gender sexual expression, relationships, and identities. This challenge has consisted not only in a questioning of the probative value of the relevant ḥadīth evidence and a disregard for juristic and wider community consensus, but also in the assertion that the Qurʾān itself does not prohibit same-sex relations per se, but only homosexual rape motivated by inhospitality with intent to dishonor. It has been further argued that the Qurʾān should not be taken to prohibit same-sex behaviors categorically since it does not specifically address the abstract modern concept of “homosexuality” as an orientation or, for that matter, the notion of “sexual identity” more broadly.
The present article attends to such revisionist readings of the Qurʾān, particularly as pertains to revisionist efforts to accommodate homoerotic behavior as religiously permissible in Islam. Although a fair amount of research and effort have gone into addressing the Islamic tradition's treatment of homoerotic behavior, analysis has often centered on juridical discussions concerning punishment,[2] medieval poetry,[3] and exegetical texts.[4] The only sustained attempt to argue for the permissibility of same-sex acts in Islam to date has come from Scott Kugle in both his contribution to the 2003 anthology Progressive Muslims: On Justice, Gender, and Pluralism, entitled “Sexuality, Diversity, and Ethics in the Agenda of Progressive Muslims,” and his later book Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims (2010). Though this article will address both simultaneously, Kugle refers the reader in Homosexuality in Islam back to his previously published piece in Progressive Muslims for his full argument on certain points. Accordingly, Kugle's Progressive Muslims piece will constitute the focus of this study, with Homosexuality in Islam serving as a point of departure for additional arguments not contained in, or altered since, the earlier piece.
The current article begins by evaluating the conceptual basis for Kugle's Qurʾānic revisionism. This includes his deployment of the notion of “sexuality,” Islam's purported “sex positivity,” and the Qurʾān's celebration of diversity, to which Kugle attempts to assimilate a diversity in sexual orientations and related practices. After evaluating this foundation, we proceed to review Kugle's critique of the tafsīr tradition, and in particular the interpretation of the Lot[5] narratives recorded in the work of the famous early exegete Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923). From this, we transition into Kugle's proposed revisionist hermeneutic, which makes use of both what he calls a “semantic analysis” and a “thematic analysis,” evaluating the sources used to develop both heuristics. Finally, we review the contributions of the distinguished Andalusian jurist and belletrist Ibn Ḥazm of Cordoba (d. 456/1064), whose approach and literalist methodology Kugle claims to endorse. The reader should note that the present article follows Kugle's own order of presentation (particularly in his 2003 piece), which contains a number of preliminary discussions prior to taking up the question of the people of Lot in the Qurʾān. Accordingly, roughly the first half of this article attends to Kugle's conceptual, terminological, and other preliminaries, while the second half (as of “IV. Kugle and the Qurʾān” below) analyzes his attempted rereading of the Lot narrative.
II. Sexual Orientation, Homosexuality, and Sexuality as Categories
In his Progressive Muslims chapter, Kugle begins by articulating the “integral relationship between spirituality and sexuality,”[6] later positing Islam as a “sex-positive”[7] religion, particularly when compared to other, ostensibly more repressive and prudish, faiths. Kugle buttresses this view of a purportedly sex-positive Islam on the basis of several considerations, including: (1) the intersectionality of sexuality and spirituality in Islam; (2) the Qurʾān's treatment of the Adamic fall as resulting from a shared failing of both Adam and Eve, rather than from sex or sexual desire per se; and (3) the Qurʾān's affirmation of “diversity” as part of God's signs, a diversity which Kugle will argue should be extended to diverse sexual orientations and related erotic practices.
Kugle proceeds to affirm sexuality as “an indicator of our core being, a sexuality which interweaves thoughts, desires, motivations, acts and psychological and mental well-being,” a definition borrowed from Momin Rahman's Sexuality and Democracy.[8] Kugle later points to the historical and cultural contingency of homosexuality as a category, engaging with essentialist and constructionist responses to the homo/hetero binary and suggesting “queer” (in the 2003 piece) as a superior neologism for describing “sexual orientations and practices”[9] that are distinct from the more common heteronormative sexuality.[10] A similar argument appears in Homosexuality in Islam, where Kugle remarks (correctly) that the Islamic tradition never expressed a conception of “sexuality” that exactly parallels modern psycho-social categories, in which one's sexuality is interpreted as a psychological marker and a central part of one's being.[11]
Kugle uncritically endorses contemporary terms and categories related to sex and sexual identities[12] that stand at the core of his entire argument. Yet the willingness to approach such categories from a critical perspective is an unavoidable prerequisite for any serious discussion of the relationship between the Sharīʿa and same-sex acts in Islam. Kugle is correct to note that the homo/hetero binary is a recent one and can be accounted for as a product of modernity. In this regard, one in fact finds a layer of complexity when addressing the enterprise of “sexuality” in the pre-modern tradition (both Islamic and otherwise) that is considerably more nuanced than the contemporary Western notions of “sexuality” and “queer” that Kugle endorses. In both the notions of “sexuality” and “queer,” there is an undifferentiated conglomeration of desires, motivations, psychological well-being and, crucially, acts. These definitions elide any meaningful distinction between inclinations and behavior—the very distinction which is, however, most relevant to the discourse and moral valuation of the Sharīʿa. In addition, Kugle treats sexuality and sexual orientation as predetermined, essential, and immutable, a claim disputed even in contemporary queer studies circles.[13] Though the exact date of the emergence of the homo/hetero binary is difficult to pinpoint, historians tend to agree that it emerged sometime in the late 19th century.[14] Some constructionist scholars have further argued that the conceptual categories of “gay” and “straight” were developed in order more clearly to locate sexual irregularity as a distinct psychological condition.[15]
Though not the main focus of this paper, it is important to distinguish between the constructionist and essentialist approaches precisely because of the way in which Kugle employs the contested essentialist conception of homosexuality in service of his project, a conceptualization that can only anachronistically be applied to the Islamic tradition.[16] Although Kugle acknowledges debates over the historical and cultural contingency of the term “homosexuality” and the corresponding conceptual category, he ultimately endorses “homosexuality” and “heterosexuality” as adequate categories for conceptualizing the psychological makeup of human beings in the sexual and affective realms. Homosexuality is presented as natural and fundamentally innate to one's makeup. Accordingly, just as God created all human beings with definable characteristics that are celebrated as part of this God-given diversity (e.g., variation in color, gender, etc.), so too should homosexuality—though not, conspicuously, bisexuality[17]—be celebrated as yet another discrete trait demonstrative of human diversity. Moreover, because homosexuality is presented as an entrenched psychic state that lies “deep in the core of the human personality,”[18] critiquing it as “un-Islamic” would, for Kugle, be akin to denouncing a person's skin color or gender as un-Islamic: just as one cannot select one's biological sex or the pigmentation of one's skin, one does not choose his or her sexual disposition.
In evaluating this set of claims, we must begin by asking what is meant by Kugle's description of homosexuality as innate or natural. If by natural Kugle is referring to the popular claim of genetic substantiation (he alludes vaguely to the claimed findings of modern science without, however, citing any particular studies),[19] it should be noted that there exists no proven definitive epigenetic marking that correlates to same-sex attraction or that supports the notion of straightforward biological determinism for sexual orientation.[20] Even if research were to appear at some point identifying a genetic marker that corresponds to same-sex attraction, it is unclear by what principle such a correspondence could be used as a moral justification for acting upon said genetic predispositions in Islamic Law. A recent study claims, in fact, that human males have a “genetic, evolutionary impulse to cheat.”[21] Should Islam—or any other ethical system for that matter—therefore permit adulterous relations on the basis of this finding? Commenting on this study, Daniel Haqiqatjou asks, “Based on this, would there be a need to categorize people into identity groups or communities based on that [i.e., a genetic propensity for cheating]? For example, would those with a greater pull to cheat self-identify as “extrasexuals” with everyone else identifying as “intrasexuals”? Would there be “extrasexual pride parades” and an “extrasexual rights movement” that would demand that Islamic and Catholic schools make space for “alternative (read, 'adulterous') lifestyles” and give voice to loud and proud cheaters? Would refusal by these institutions then be stigmatized as “extraphobia”?”[22]
Alternatively, if what is meant by the claim that homosexuality is natural or innate is that people with same-sex attractions experience those feelings outside of their personal election and control, then it can readily be conceded that people do not generally choose their dominant sexual attraction. However, feelings that arise independent of one's conscious choice are not immediately deemed “natural” in many other instances, and if they are, it is certainly not, for that reason, automatically deemed morally valid that they be acted upon. In fact, the Islamic tradition often speaks of temptation as stemming from the self (nafs)—an ingrained part of one's being if there ever was one—and the overtures of the self are characterized as requiring discipline and control. For example, God states in the Qurʾān that man was created “anxious” (halūʿ)[23] and “weak” (ḍaʿīf).[24] Elsewhere, He says that man is a creature made “of haste” (min ʿajal).[25] And in a ḥadīth, the Prophet (pbuh) is reported to have stated that the Fire is surrounded by temptation and desires (ḥuffat al-nār bi'l-shahawāt).[26] According to another ḥadīth, the Angel Gabriel was commanded to look at the Fire, after which he said to God, “By Thy Honor, none shall enter it.” God then ordered that the Fire be surrounded by pleasures and instructed the Angel to look at it once more. Upon seeing the temptation and pleasures surrounding the Fire, Gabriel remarked, “By Thy Honor, I fear none shall be saved from it but that all shall enter it.”[27] Despite constituting part of our human disposition, temptations, the overtures of the nafs, and our inherent impatience and anxiety are not things that we may use as an excuse to succumb to sin. Opposite-sex attraction, for example, is experienced by most men and women, but its presence does not legitimate casual intimacy, kissing, or even hugging, for that matter, outside of an Islamically valid legal relationship. Additionally, the impulse to lie, steal, or cheat may strike regularly and without consultation. All such impulses may be conceived of in some way as “natural” (and they certainly befall us absent any conscious choice), yet acting on them is nonetheless prohibited. As such, individuals struggling with same-sex desires may take comfort in knowing that they are not unique in being burdened with powerful drives that nonetheless must be disciplined and restrained.
In addition, we must recognize the cultural and historical contingency of the concept of “homosexuality” as a modern Western development. Did pre-modern peoples ever conceive of themselves as “heterosexual” or “homosexual”? Did sexual proclivities ever enter into their conception of self? If we take what has been registered in historical record seriously, then the answer to both questions is “no.” This is not to say that pre-modern persons did not write about love or possess sexual inclinations (even ones directed to the same sex), but rather to say that the presence of those desires was never viewed as constitutive of one's very identity. By contrast, modern Western societies pigeonhole individuals at a young age into one of two (or more) sexual “orientations” that they must self-identify as at the risk of being “inauthentic” to the very “core of who they are.”
Muslims societies also differ from the modern West in that, in a great many times and places, they seem not to have found the presence of (at least certain kinds of) homoerotic desires particularly exceptional, and often versified their pervasiveness and allure in medieval poetry—a reality Kugle acknowledges when he states, “When one looks through the historical and literary records of Islamic civilization, one finds a rich archive of same-sex sexual desires and expressions, written by or reported about respected members of society.”[28] Such attractions generally took the form of adult male infatuation with a “beardless youth,” or amrad (pl., murd / murdān), who had not yet outgrown the finer physique and smooth skin of a male not yet fully matured.[29] (Adult male-male sexual desire and expression are, by comparison, relatively marginal in this same literature.) A critical distinction Kugle fails to mention, however, is that Muslim scholars never affirmed homoerotic behavior—as clear and distinct from homoerotic attractions—to be anything other than rigorously prohibited (ḥarām) from a normative religious perspective. Indeed, the very figure that Kugle references in his citations, Muḥammad b. Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī (d. 297/909), son of the eponymous founder of the Ẓāhirī legal school who wrote the Kitāb al-Zahra and later confessed unrequited feelings of love for a young male companion of his, never acted on the desires he possessed. Instead, the Kitāb al-Zahra insists on the importance of governing one's sexual desires through pious restraint and speaks of the “martyrdom of chastity.”[30] In a very real sense, Ibn Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī may present an early paragon for many Muslims struggling with same-sex attraction today as he conceded his own affection for another male yet, despite those propulsions, maintained God-consciousness (taqwā) and remained morally upright by refusing to express such feelings in the form of prohibited acts of physical consummation. This conduct in the face of moral struggle is often noted in al-Ẓāhirī's biographies as a point of praise, with some citing a contested tradition of the Prophet Muḥammad (pbuh) that states, “Whoever loves passionately (ʿashiqa) but remains chaste, patient, and keeps his love a secret and dies, dies as a martyr,”[31] a tradition that al-Ẓāhirī would recount on his death bed.[32]
Like Ibn Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī, Ibn Ḥazm, a fellow member of the Ẓāhirī school, wrote his own belletristic work on the topic of love entitled Ṭawq al-ḥamāma, or The Ring of the Dove. In this work, Ibn Ḥazm attends not only to male-female sexual attraction, but to male-male and male-boy attraction as well, a fact that Kugle adduces as part of his revisionist argument in Homosexuality in Islam. The presence of this content in Ṭawq al-ḥamāma has led to speculation on the part of some Western scholars that Ibn Ḥazm was himself a “homosexual” insofar as his dominant sexual attractions were concerned.[33] Be that as it may, Ibn Ḥazm was unwavering in his commitment to the categorical Qurʾānic prohibition of same-sex behaviors affirmed by the consensus view of Muslim scholarship, as noted by Lois A. Giffen in “Ibn Hazm and the Tawq al-Hamama,” where she says:
Ibn Hazm, in dealing with cases of love, makes no essential difference between instances of passionate attachment—man for man (or youth), boy for girl, man for woman (or maiden), or vice versa. (Homoerotic attachments between women are not a subject of discussion.) As long as a story reveals some aspect of the nature of love and the psychology of lovers, it is most valuable grist for his mill. Whether the behaviour [emphasis mine] of the lover or the lovers has his approval, sympathy, pity or condemnation is quite another thing.[34]
Camilla Adang reaches much the same conclusion as Giffen in her review of Ṭawq al-ḥamāma, where she states that Ibn Ḥazm held that the only “lawful form of intercourse for a man is within wedlock, or with a slave-woman he owns. For a woman, only intercourse with her husband is lawful.”[35] Of note is not simply that Ibn Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī and Ibn Ḥazm maintained this consensus view on licit and illicit sexual behaviors in Islam, but that neither of them seem to have viewed homoerotic—and specifically pederastic—sentiments as particularly aberrant in and of themselves. On the contrary, both were only too aware of their presence, but were concerned more pointedly with maintaining the behavioral standards of sexual conduct established by revelation, which calls for chastity as a rule and which permits sexual relations only within explicitly delineated, legally defined relationships between a male and a female. We will revisit Ibn Ḥazm in a forthcoming section, as his view that male-male anal intercourse (liwāṭ)—though categorically prohibited—does not constitute a ḥadd crime figures prominently in Kugle's argumentation in Homosexuality in Islam.
III. Sexuality in the Islamic Discursive Tradition
As discussed in the preceding section, the conceptual framework of the Sharīʿa presents an understanding of sexual desire and conduct that diverges considerably from essentialist notions of orientation and disposition currently popular in the West. Far from being predetermined or immutable, sexual predilections are conceived within a framework that accounts for their general heterogeneity vis-à-vis human experience. Indeed, any individual may feel attraction toward another, and the presence of that desire is not essentialized into any defining identity. Rather, ethical valuations focus on what remains within the purview and concern of the Sacred Law, namely, governable actions. Such actions, however, include actions of the heart and mind (aʿmāl al-qalb), since one's thoughts are essential to internalizing proper conduct as they influence both a person's actions and his soul. It is in this regard that Muslim scholars have emphasized the importance of self-consciously aligning one's thoughts with the Will of God. Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) states in his famous tract on happiness, “The aim of moral discipline is to purify the heart from the rust of passion and resentment, till, like a clear mirror, it reflects the light of God.”[36] In a ḥadīth reported in multiple collections, the Prophet (pbuh) is reported to have specified how God adjudicates the deeds of man: intending a good deed and performing it earns manifold rewards, intending a good deed but not being able to carry it out earns a single reward, intending to sin but then refraining for the sake of God earns a single reward, while intending to sin and following through with it earns a single punishment.[37] In commenting on this ḥadīth, Ibn Rajab al-Ḥanbalī (d. 795/1393) remarks that the reward for one intending a sin that he does not carry out is exclusively for the one who abandons this sin for the sake of God.[38] He further delineates that the intent behind abandoning the sin could itself constitute a sinful deed, even with no accompanying act of the limbs, such as when a person leaves a sin merely for fear of what people might think.[39] Moreover, even one who intends to sin and allows that intention to settle in his heart such that it becomes a firm resolution but later abandons that intent without reason may be considered sinful, for allowing the sin to settle constitutes an act of the heart. Ibn Rajab registers divergent views among the scholars on this issue.[40] But scholars did not stop at simply cautioning against sinful thoughts; they stressed the importance of praiseworthy ones as well. Accordingly, having a good opinion of God (ḥusn al-ẓann bi'Llāh) was something the Prophet (pbuh) urged upon believers, instructing us to be confident in God's response to our prayers[41] and never to lose hope in God's Mercy.[42] Thoughts and internal musings, therefore, are hardly without consequence, and though one may not necessarily have complete jurisdiction over his or her thoughts, the decision to fixate upon those thoughts or to dispel them is, in principle, amenable to control. This ongoing process of self-regulation and cognitive evaluation is central to the Islamic moral and spiritual tradition, where the practice of spiritual maturation focuses on shepherding people to a place where they come to conceive of the world in a way that coincides with the demands of faith and the pleasure of God Almighty.
To be clear, I am not suggesting that someone can simply “think” himself out of spontaneous same-sex desires, but instead positing that the potency and frequency of those desires can be attenuated to make the moral and spiritual struggle a more manageable one. When, however, one accepts “homosexuality” not only as a substantive conceptual category but as a central marker of one's very identity, then the need to regulate or somehow temper one's same-sex desires will inevitably be conceived of, and internalized as, living with a “double consciousness” or “being unfaithful to one's true self,” if not downright “oppressive.” But if we dispense with the contingent category of an essentializing homosexuality, then individuals spontaneously experiencing same-sex attraction can more readily situate their own struggle within the context of similar struggles, and not conceive of it as an exceptional condition calling either for especial stigmatization, on the one hand, or full embrace and “validation” on pain of being “untrue to one's core self,” on the other. For this reason, Muslims should reject the essentializing and confining category of “homosexuality” (and its many cognates) altogether—particularly when touted as the basis of a personal “gay” or “queer” identity (as opposed to being strictly descriptive of one's sexual inclinations)—and instead remain faithful to the more flexible, and truer, conceptual categories underlying Islam's own discursive approach to sexuality.
Unlike contemporary Western notions of sexual orientation, the taxonomy of the Qurʾān and Sunna reflects not a particular set of contingent, historically and socially bound sensibilities, but rather establishes an independent, divinely instituted conceptual and normative framework for guiding Muslims' approach to questions of gender and sexuality in any age. Terms such as shahwa (desire), fāḥisha (iniquity, gross indecency), farj (sexual organs), buḍʿ (genitalia; intercourse), liwāṭ (sodomy), maʾbūn (the receptive partner in homosexual sodomy), ḥarth (tillage), nikāḥ (marriage), nasl (family lineage), ʿiffa (continence, chastity), and other terms are all indigenous to the Islamic discursive tradition as based on revelation and, therefore, rightly determine the frame of reference in terms of which Muslims have always navigated questions of desire, sexual acts (same-sex or otherwise), chastity, and related matters. Kugle protests the use of the terms liwāṭ ('sodomy') and lūṭī ('sodomite') in Islamic legal literature as running contrary to a literal commitment to the Qurʾān. Although he is correct that the Qurʾān does not employ the specific nouns liwāṭ or lūṭī, let alone contain a specific term directly corresponding to “homosexuality” as a modern social construct understood to reflect the “core of one's identity,” this argument is little more than a red herring. The Qurʾān also contains no terms that exactly render contemporary notions of “rape,” “consent,” and “sexual assault,” but surely Kugle would reject the allegation that any talk of a normative Qurʾānic perspective on these topics amounts to no more than an illegitimate projection onto the text that runs contrary to a commitment to the “literal specificity of the Qur'an as revelation.”[43] The fact that the Qurʾān does not use specific terms corresponding directly to modern-day “homosexuality” and “sexual orientation” does not, therefore, mean that it contains no normative doctrine related to the substantive content implicit in these terms.
More to the point, Kugle nowhere justifies how the abstract, subjective, and culturally contingent notion of “sexual identity” can justifiably be wielded to override an explicit textual prohibition of discrete sexual acts that Muslims consider to be divinely revealed (and hence objective, absolute, and unchanging). The fact of the matter is that the Islamic tradition employs no term for distinguishing persons exclusively on the basis of internal sexual desire or “orientation.” Persons are not branded as fornicators merely on account of their desire to fornicate. Likewise, persons who experience same-sex attractions are not branded with any unique label, singled out from all other types of persons—whether, as we have stated, for the purposes of pathologization and stigmatization or for those of celebration and “affirmation.” Although the comparison between fornication and homosexual behavior may be perceived as offensive to current Western sensibilities, Islamic norms and sensibilities consider all forms of misdirected attraction as undesirable. Additionally, because revelation and the Sharīʿa based on it are exclusively preoccupied with objective acts and not with vague, subjective notions of orientation or disposition, the predomination of certain desires over others is immaterial in determining the legal qualification (ḥukm) assigned to objective discrete acts. Indeed, in the realm of sexuality, the cardinal legal axiom (qāʿida fiqhiyya) regarding sexual behavior in Islamic Law is: al-aṣl fī al-abḍāʿ al-taḥrīm, that is, all sexual acts are prohibited by default except those explicitly permitted by Sacred Law.[44] Accordingly, even persons who experience unelected and exclusive same-sex attractions—such that marriage, for instance, may not be a viable option for them given their lack of any erotic attraction to the opposite sex—are nevertheless subject to the objective parameters of the Law and required to observe abstinence if necessary. The prospect of abstinence has been characterized by some revisionists as unduly onerous—even prejudicially burdensome—on persons who experience same-sex desires and attractions, but in reality the situation of such persons is not categorically different from the requirement of celibacy that applies to multitudes of people who are unable to marry for any number of reasons. Not every desire has a permissible outlet, and there are many circumstances that may prevent individuals from being able to regularize sexual relationships even in opposite-sex contexts (poverty, disease, looks, happenstance, etc.). To mention an example that has received some attention as of late, Muslim women living in the West have lamented a number of factors that have contributed to the recent emergence of spinsterhood: unsupportive parents, a rapidly closing window for fertility, and few eligible Muslim bachelors.[45] Given these circumstances, should Muslims abandon the juristic consensus prohibiting Muslim women from marrying outside the faith? The answer is “no.” Like persons experiencing same-sex attractions, such persons fall under the obligation to preserve their chastity, abide by the dictates of the Sacred Law, and observe abstinence.
Additionally, because Kugle is concerned with subjective notions of disposition and orientation, he fails to account for the myriad terms indigenous to the Islamic tradition that are used in reference to acts that today would be referred to as “homosexual,” including ʿamal qawm Lūṭ ('the act of the people of Lot'), liwāṭ ('sodomy'), mulāwaṭa (synonym of liwāṭ), and other such variants that correlate the sexual indiscretions of Sodom to those that resembled them afterwards, namely, homosexual intercourse between men. One would, in effect, have to dismiss the entire corpus of Islamic scholarship if each and every term employed therein required explicit specification in the Qurʾān with no latitude for alternatives. “Uṣūl,” “sunna,” “ḥadīth,” “fiqh,” and numerous other technical terms indigenous to the Islamic sciences are not mentioned in their widely known technical senses in the Qurʾān, yet no one would doubt their legitimacy and appropriateness for conceptualizing and naming central aspects of Islamic religious discourse. Terms such as “liwāṭ” and “lūṭī” are no exception.
Kugle objects that the terms liwāṭ/lūṭī were popularized “in later times,”[46] but how much later? In one ḥadīth, the Prophet (pbuh) is reported to have said, “God has cursed whoever carries out the actions of Lot's people (man ʿamila ʿamal qawm Lūṭ).”[47] It is difficult to date with precision when this term was first employed, but the phrase “ʿamal qawm Lūṭ” is used in the exegetical work of al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923), appears in several early ḥadīth reports, and is employed in juristic works discussing whether or not male-male anal intercourse is subject to a divinely stipulated punishment (ḥadd), and if so, on what grounds. The term liwāṭ appears later in Ibn Manẓūr's (d. 711/1311-12) famous dictionary Lisān al-ʿArab,[48] which was written in the seventh/eighth century hijra, and numerous works thereafter, though of course the terms liwāṭ/lūṭī do not represent any departure from the phrase “ʿamal qawm Lūṭ” but are merely derivatives thereof and are not employed in any categorically different sense. In a ḥadīth attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās reported in the canonical collection of Abū Dāwūd, Ibn ʿAbbās uses the term “lūṭiyya” to refer to sodomy.[49] In another report largely graded as weak (ḍaʿīf) found in the collection of Ibn Mājah, the Prophet (pbuh) is reported to have cautioned against directing the term lūṭī toward another man on pain of receiving twenty lashes.[50] The authenticity of these specific traditions is less important here than the fact of their dating to at least the early third century of the hijra. Even if one were to dismiss them as fabrications, the inclusion of both traditions in works collected in the early third century establishes the existence of the term lūṭī in this early period, though it should be mentioned that “ʿamal qawm Lūṭ” as a term signifying sodomy figures more prominently in the earliest juristic works. The point here is that although scholars have employed varying terms when discussing same-sex acts, the substance and meaning of the terms were always used unambiguously in reference to one and the same act. This is no different than, say, the fact that the science of Islamic theological beliefs is referred to alternatively as “ʿaqīda,” “uṣūl al-dīn,” “ʿilm al-tawḥīd,” and other terms—none of which are mentioned in the Qurʾān or reported on the authority of the Prophet (pbuh), all of which were “innovated” at a later date, yet all of which refer to one and the same essential reality that no one would deny is part and parcel of the Islamic religion. Kugle's quibble with the mere terminology at play is, therefore, entirely irrelevant to the discussion of the status of same-sex acts in Islam.
Kugle also presents the lack of explicit punishment in the Qurʾān for sexual acts between two men or two women as further proof for their permissibility. We must note, however, that the Qurʾān also does not stipulate an explicit punishment for rape, incest, bestiality, necrophilia, and a host of other sexual acts agreed upon by consensus to be immoral and prohibited. Can one therefore assume the Qurʾān's endorsement, or even tacit permission, of these acts as well?
It is also here that we arrive at another problematic aspect of Kugle's framing: one may concede that the Islamic tradition may be read as “sex positive,” as Kugle avers, but that positivity must be qualified in concrete terms. What does it mean to be a “sex-positive” faith? The pursuit of sexual pleasure in Islam is, in fact, viewed as laudable only within the confines of very specifically delineated circumstances[51] (all of which are invariably male-female), outside of which sexual activity—particularly penetrative intercourse—constitutes an offense that actually figures among the most serious that one can commit in the faith. This is a critical distinction that Kugle goes out of his way to disregard, frequently translating and representing ḥadīth reports, statements of scholars, and verses from the Qurʾān as advocating sexual release and celebrating sexual pleasure in their own right, irrespective of the context or avenue through which such release occurs, or of the gender or legal relationship between the persons involved—both of which considerations are, however, critical to the religion's own delineation of licit and illicit sexual acts.
Take, for example, the introductory passage that Kugle quotes from Madelain Farah's translation of al-Ghazālī's “Book on the Etiquette of Marriage” from his Revival of the Religious Sciences. Kugle reproduces the passage faithfully from Farah's translation (with the exception of a few minor editorial changes), with one notable exception: the original phrase “subjecting creatures to desire through which He drove them to tillage (ḥirātha) [emphasis mine]”[52] has been altered by Kugle into “subjecting creatures to desire through which God[53] impelled them toward sexual intercourse [emphasis mine].”[54] What is lost in this “emendation” is the direct implication and meaning of the term ḥirātha, which linguistically denotes cultivation or tillage (used as a metaphor for sexual intercourse) and, as such, can only refer to a (lawful) sexual relationship between a male and a female (i.e., the only type of relationship that can possibly constitute an act of “cultivation” or “tillage,” namely, through the possibility of conception). In his Companion to the Qur'an, W. M. Watt explains ḥirātha as “a development of the primitive metaphor which compares sexual intercourse with the sowing of seed, and speaks of children as the fruit of the womb.”[55] This point is absolutely essential, as cultivating land and tilling soil directly evoke imagery of what a land can potentially yield. Although Islamic Law allows certain methods of contraception to avoid pregnancy,[56] just as it does not restrict legitimate sexual enjoyment between lawful male and female partners to penetrative intercourse alone, the message here is quite clear that sexual relations are only lawful and praiseworthy when they occur within a paradigmatically procreative[57] (and therefore necessarily opposite-sex) context. The importance of progeny and lineage is further expounded upon by al-Ghazālī in the sentences immediately following the excerpt cited by Kugle:
Then He glorified the matter of lineage, ascribed to it great importance, forbade on its account illegitimacy[58] and strongly denounced it through restrictions and reprimands, making the commission thereof an outlandish crime and a serious matter, and encouraging marriage through desire and command.[59]
Later al-Ghazālī states, “The first advantage—that is, procreation—is the prime cause, and on its account marriage was instituted [emphasis mine]. The aim is to sustain lineage so that the world would not want for humankind.”[60] It should be noted here that despite the “sex positive” moniker Kugle applies to Islam, the Islamic tradition is resolute in its absolute and uncompromising denunciation of sexual relations in any context not expressly permitted by Sacred Law. Chastity is a chief attribute of belief and virtue, while licentiousness is reproached and censured.[61] Illicit sexual intercourse (zinā) is one of the few religious prohibitions for which God has mandated a ḥadd penalty, indicating that sexual activity falling outside of the sanctioned parameters is not only spiritually deleterious but socially damaging to the moral fabric of the community as well.
The fact that Islam limits its positive appraisal of the sexual life to discrete divinely sanctioned acts that occur within a paradigmatically procreative context is further elucidated in the ḥadīth of the Prophet (pbuh), in which he states, “And in intercourse (buḍʿ)[62] there is [the reward of] charity.” Upon hearing this the Companions were stunned and inquired how such a reward was possible when all one did was satisfy his desires (shahwa), to which the Prophet (pbuh) responded by explaining that had one satisfied his desires in an illicit manner, he would have been sinful; therefore, by satisfying one's desires in a sanctioned manner, one is rewarded.[63] In another ḥadīth, the Prophet (pbuh) is reported to have said, “Whoever guarantees me what is between his two jaws and what is between his two legs, I shall guarantee him Paradise (man yaḍman lī mā bayna laḥyayhi wa mā bayna rijlayhi aḍman lahu al-janna).”[64] In multiple places in the Qurʾān, God praises the one who guards his or her private parts, even including this in one verse among the principal characteristics of belief for which Paradise is rewarded as an inheritance.[65] Elsewhere, He instructs believing men and women to lower their gaze as a precautionary measure against sexual misconduct.[66] The implication of these teachings is quite clear: chastity is a difficult (but essential) virtue to uphold and restraint a challenging (but likewise essential) ethical imperative to enact. When one is able, through Divine Grace (tawfīq), to realize such a virtue successfully, he is rewarded by God generously in the Hereafter with Paradise. Toward this end, Ibn Ḥazm remarks in Ṭawq al-ḥamāma, in a chapter entitled “Of the Virtue of Continence”:
The finest quality that a man can display in love is continence: to abstain from sin and all indecency. For so he will prove himself to be not indifferent to the heavenly reward, that eternal bliss reserved by God for those who dwell in His everlasting kingdom, neither will he disobey his Master Who has been so gracious to him, in appointing him to be a creature worthy to receive His commandments and prohibitions, Who sent unto him His Messengers, and caused His Word to be immovably established with him—all this as a mark of His care for us, and His benevolence towards us.
The man whose heart is distraught and his mind preoccupied, whose yearning waxes so violent that it overmasters him, whose passion desires to conquer his reason, and whose lust would vanquish his religion; such a man, if he sets up self-reproach to be his strong tower of defense, is aware that the soul indeed “commands unto evil” (Qur'an XII 53). […]
How then shall it be with a man whose breast enfolds a passion hotter than blazing tamarisk, whose flanks convulse with a rage keener than the edge of a sword, who has swallowed the draughts of patience more bitter than colocynth and converted his soul by force from grasping at the things it desired and was sure it could reach, for which it was well prepared, and there was no obstacle preventing its attainment of them? Surely he is worthy to rejoice tomorrow on the Day of Resurrection and to stand among those brought near to God's throne in the abode of recompense and the world of everlasting life; surely he has a right to be secure from the terrors of the Great Uprising, and the awful dread of the Last Judgement, and that Allah shall compensate him on the Day of Resurrection with peace, for the anguish he suffers here below![67]
With respect to the Qurʾān's treatment of “diversity” (ikhtilāf), Kugle's disquisitions on homosexuality fail to account for fairly obvious qualitative differences between the types of diversity celebrated in the Qurʾān, such as variant tribal, ethnic, and national groupings on the one hand, and homosexual inclinations-cum-practices on the other—the former of which bear no relevance to belief or action, whereas the latter, particularly where same-sex desires are translated into acts, fall under the direct scrutiny of religious valuation. One may legitimately affirm the existence of sexual “diversity,” just as Muslim scholars of the past did, as a trait present across an array of people, fully acknowledging that some people's sexual impulses may predominate in one form or another (same-sex, opposite-sex, pederastic, etc.), but only with the all-important caveat that all are required to abide by God's Law and to abstain from sexual acts that He has made illicit. Kugle goes to great lengths to demonstrate the Qurʾān's recognition of disparate sexual dispositions, including his mentioning of Q. (al-Nūr) 24:30 that speaks of “men who are not in need of women,”[68] but that recognition in no way renders same-gender sexual activity permissible. Rather, it only substantiates, if anything, the point that a recognition of “sexual diversity” can indeed, as has been the consensus of Muslims throughout history, coexist with an absolute prohibition of any sexual act that occurs outside the context of legally sanctioned—invariably male-female—relationships.
IV. Kugle and the Qurʾān
Having set the conceptual basis for his revisionism, what then follows is an elaborate attempt by Kugle to proffer an interpretation of the Qurʾānic discourse on the people of Lot (qawm Lūṭ) accommodative of homosexual practice. The Lot narrative appears in the Qurʾān on nine separate occasions. The relevant citations and passages have been provided below in the Appendix, along with accompanying synopses that briefly explain the verses in light of the exegetical tradition.
Of the nine passages cited, six make mention of male-male sexual acts either explicitly with words such as “you come unto men / males (taʾtūna al-rijāl / al-dhukrān) instead of women,” or implicitly by referring to the context of Lot confronting his people outside his home, entreating them to fear God and to consider his daughters who, on account of their female gender, are “purer” for them as mates (see Appendix, passages a, b, c, e, f, and g). The three passages that do not mention male-male sexual acts are brief, typically referencing Lot's station as a pious messenger of God as well as his people's disobedience in general terms (see Appendix, d, h, and i). Of the six passages that do make mention of male-male sexual acts, only the passage in Sūrat al-ʿAnkabūt mentions the additional indiscretions of “cutting off the road” and “practicing evil deeds in your assemblies” (see Appendix, g). The remaining five passages speak only about male-male sexual acts to the exclusion of any other wrongdoing, reinforcing the notion that although the people of Lot may have had several charges to their account, it is homosexual intercourse between men that remains their emblematic crime. Passages in Sūrat al-Aʿrāf, Sūrat al-Shuʿarāʾ, and Sūrat al-Naml make explicit mention of “coming / coming with desire unto men instead of women” (see Appendix, a, e, and f), whereas the passages in Sūrat Hūd and Sūrat al-Ḥijr recount Lot's pleading with the people of Sodom to take “his daughters” (often understood as the women of the tribe[69]) as mates instead of Lot's male visitors (see Appendix, b and c).
It is also clear, when all these verses are taken together, that it is specifically and exclusively the same-gender aspect of the sexual practices of the people of Lot that is being condemned in them. No mention is made—even by implication—of coercion, dishonoring, or any other factor. The Qurʾān employs a rich vocabulary of terms for indicating force and aggression, yet none of these terms appear anywhere in the numerous passages that address the sexual practices of the people of Lot. By contrast, the only words that are used in this regard—and repeatedly at that—relate directly to “sexual desire” (shahwa) practiced by men on other men instead of on women, making it unequivocal that the men of Sodom's incrimination for sexual malfeasance was specifically predicated on the gender sameness of their chosen sex partners. The plain sense of these verses is so clear and unequivocal that no exegetes have differed over their interpretation in that regard.
In arguing for a reinterpretation of the Lot narratives indulgent of consensual same-sex relations, Kugle calls for an adherence to the “literal specificity”[70] of the Qurʾān, accusing medieval jurists and theologians of interpolating their own prejudices into exegetical and legal texts. Kugle rests his Qurʾānic hermeneutic on two interpretive methods, which he refers to as a “semantic analysis” and a “thematic analysis.”[71] It is after performing an investigation within these two analytical contexts that he then attempts to drive home his conclusion. I will here attempt to engage Kugle's hermeneutic on its own terms and to interrogate both analytical frameworks, as well as Kugle's employment of them as part of his interpretive revisionism. In the final section of the article, I will address Kugle's use of the figure of Ibn Ḥazm as part of his revisionist project.
Kugle and al-Ṭabarī's Method of “Definition and Substitution”
Kugle sets the stage for his semantic analysis by reviewing the famous exegetical work of Muḥammad b. Jarīr al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) as an example of a tendentious “heteronormative” reading of the Qurʾān. Kugle evaluates al-Ṭabarī's treatment of Q. (al-Aʿrāf) 7:80-81, which reads: “(80) And (mention) Lot, when he said to his people, 'Do you commit iniquity (fāḥisha) such as none in creation have committed before you? (81) For you come with desire unto men instead of women. Nay, you are a people transgressing (beyond bounds).'” Kugle cites selectively from al-Ṭabarī's work, accusing him of the curious charge of “definition and substitution” in which al-Ṭabarī allegedly defines the nature of iniquity (fāḥisha) mentioned in the verse on his own whim and then substitutes that subjective definition into his exegesis of the Qurʾān.[72] Kugle translates al-Ṭabarī's commentary of Q. 7:80-81 as follows:
The transgression [fahisha] that they approach, for which they were punished by Allah, is “penetrating males sexually” [ityan dhukur]. The meaning is this: it is as if Lut were saying “You are, all of you, you nation of people, coming to men in their rears, out of lust, rather than coming to those that Allah has approved for you and made permissible to you from the women. You are a people that approach what Allah has prohibited for you. Therefore you rebel against Allah by that act.” That is what the Qur'an means by going beyond the bounds [israf] when Lut said, You are a people who go beyond all bounds.[73]
A full translation of al-Ṭabarī's commentary, however, renders the following (Qurʾānic verses are set in bolded italics):
When he said to his people – when he said to his people from Sodom, and to them Lot was sent – Do you commit iniquity (fāḥisha) – the iniquity that they approached and for which God punished them is penetrating men sexually – such as none in creation have committed before you? – none had committed this indecency in the world prior to them – Verily you come with desire unto men instead of women. Nay, you are a people transgressing (beyond bounds) – God is informing [us] as to what Lot conveyed to his people, and his reprimanding them for their actions: indeed you all, O people (ayyuhā 'l-qawm), approach men from their rears with desire (shahwatan) rather than coming to those whom God has approved for you and made permissible to you from among women. – You are a people transgressing (beyond bounds) – you are a people that approach what God has prohibited to you, insubordinate in your actions. And that is prodigality (isrāf) in this matter.[74]
Far from Kugle's accusation of a prejudicial or whimsical process of “definition and substitution,” al-Ṭabarī faithfully integrates these verses of the Qurʾān with a simple and straightforward explanation of their meanings—in fact citing none other than the Qurʾān itself in clarification of its own import. Kugle objects to al-Ṭabarī's glossing of the iniquity (fāḥisha) in question as “coming with desire unto men instead of women.” Instead, he urges his reader to understand the term fāḥisha in its most generic and etymologically literal sense, devoid of the very context in which it is found. A full reading of Q. (al-Aʿrāf) 7:80-81, however, shows Lot accusing his people of committing an unprecedented indecency, one which is identified in the very next verse of the Qurʾān itself as “coming with desire unto men instead of women.” Kugle strains in his attempt to decouple these two verses from each other and to divorce them from their immediate context, suggesting that “iniquity” (fāḥisha) here could mean absolutely any type of indecent or unethical behavior and that al-Ṭabarī, like the community of Muslim exegetes and jurists for a millennium after him, made the “mistake” of reading these two verses sequentially (which, Kugle avers, results in a mere “speculative assertion” on their part), and as they appear in multiple places in the Qurʾān. In addition, Kugle's charge of “definition and substitution” makes even less sense when one considers al-Ṭabarī's exegetical method, one that is faithful to the text of the Lot narrative as it appears in the Qurʾān itself, with minimal actual commentary of his own. Far from interpolating his own words and expressions, al-Ṭabarī does nothing but quote from the Qurʾān itself in order to elucidate the meaning of Q. 7:80-81. It is shocking that Kugle dismisses as biased heterosexist interpolation on the part of al-Ṭabarī words and phrases that are, in fact, none other than the words of God Himself drawn from the very same passages which al-Ṭabarī is commenting.
Later, Kugle again cites al-Ṭabarī's method of “definition and substitution,” this time to charge him with asserting that the sole content of Lot's prophetic mission and purpose was to make the act of intercourse between men forbidden—with the implication that the prohibition of this act would somehow be open to question just so long as it can be shown that it was not the only, or even the principal, reason why Lot was sent to his people. Kugle quotes al-Ṭabarī as stating, “This approach [declaring anal sex between men hateful] was the content of Lut's prophetic message [risala]; his purpose was to make this act forbidden.”[75] Unfortunately, this statement appears nowhere in the actual exegetical work of al-Ṭabarī. Instead, al-Ṭabarī remarks when speaking of Q. (al-Aʿrāf) 7:83 (“So We rescued him and his household, save his wife; she was of those who stayed behind”):
When Lot's people rejected him—despite his many reprimands on account of the iniquity they were committing, and his conveying to them the message of his Lord concerning what was forbidden to them—with stubborn insolence, We saved Lot and his believing family except his wife, for she was to Lot a deceiver and in God a disbeliever (kāfira).[76]
Kugle attempts to paint al-Ṭabarī as so fixated on the prohibition of anal intercourse between men that he was incapable of reading the Lot narrative as anything else. And yet there is little evidence that al-Ṭabarī did anything other than render meanings that accord with the direct and obvious import of the verses in question. At no point does al-Ṭabarī suggest that anal sex between men was the sole, or even principal, mission for which Lot was commissioned. That said, even if al-Ṭabarī had asserted that Lot's principal mission was to eradicate the transgression of homosexual sodomy, this would not be an altogether unreasonable conclusion given the Qurʾān's repeated—and usually exclusive—mention of “coming with desire unto men instead of women” within the context of the Lot narrative. All exegetes acknowledged and cataloged the diverse crimes committed by the people of Sodom, but it was indeed same-sex acts between men for which they were most infamous and exegetical commentary on the Lot narrative has, unsurprisingly, never failed to reflect this. That over a thousand years' worth of scholarship after al-Ṭabarī, and the entire community of Muslims prior to him, concurred with and echoed al-Ṭabarī's reading of the Qurʾān on this point is dismissed by Kugle as a simple reflection of how “disempowered” later exegetes were from offering alternative readings of the Lot narrative.
Kugle and Semantic Analysis
It is at this juncture, after having evaluated the purported inadequacies of al-Ṭabarī's classical commentary, that Kugle begins to propose his own hermeneutic, one which starts with a semantic analysis. Kugle describes a semantic analysis as one that “does not trust a simple translation” but demands that words “become enmeshed in a web of relationships to other words” to gain a fuller understanding of terms in their Qurʾānic context.[77] Kugle states about semantic analysis:
This method gives a very “literal” reading of the text. It respects the word of the Qur'an not as defined by human authoritie