“Come my love and let us embark on a journey to the land of love. This is the key to happiness. Come let us enter the depth of life, because I have not tasted the taste of happiness except with you. Let me drown in the sight of you, perfume myself in your breaths, in the love of your heart and the warmth of your bosom. There is nothing more special in my life than you, my heart is filled with you, my apologies to others,” a woman named Tamara posted on the Facebook page “Muslim Lesbians”
“I am a young Sudanese woman, 21 years old. I’ve been a lesbian since the age of 15 and a Muslim in my way. And like all the lesbians in our Eastern world, I have no outlet nor a way to meet a group of lesbians like myself with whom I can share our thoughts and problems before we share our love. I, and many lesbians, are hiding as much as possible so that our future and our sexual orientation will be secure. I’m proud of being a lesbian and I hope for the day when I can meet lesbians in my country,” wrote another woman on a different site, asking that her name not be published.
Other women are not afraid to publish their photos, some with romantic partners and others without, and even the ruling of the grand mufti of Egypt, Shawki Allam, that “no one has the right to harm homosexuals or discriminate against them,” appears on the site. That is an important ruling that stirred major controversy when it was published in 2016.
Allam subsequently clarified that homosexuality is forbidden according to Islam, but that “homosexuals are no less valuable human beings than others.” He did not say how great a sin it is or whether it reaches the level of apostasy.
Like many other experts in religious law, the grand mufti of Egypt regards homosexuality as a sickness or the result of confused identity, and therefore “anyone who shows this disgusting tendency should go to an expert doctor to try to treat this ugly sickness.”
Lesbians who visit the site can take no great comfort from the mufti’s statements. Some of them told of their difficult experiences when they revealed their sexual orientation to their families. Others were thrown out of their homes or forced to marry quickly to “heal the perversion,” and the lives of some were put in danger. One woman posted that she had decided to see doctors of her own accord to “heal” herself.
“They took huge sums of money from me. They gave me strange medicines and psychologists whom I went to started to explain to me how to arouse my feelings of sexual attraction to men. I realized that they are bound by the same male and religious thinking that my sexual orientation is a sickness that can and should be healed,” the woman wrote.
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Last year, a Lebanese judge, Rabia Maalouf, dared rule for the striking from the criminal code of a law that calls for a year in prison for anyone whose sexuality differs from the “order of nature.” “Homosexuals and lesbians have the right to have human and romantic relations with anyone they want. That is the basic right of every human being,” Maalouf declared.
He based his ruling on the World Health Organization’s conclusion that homosexuality is not a sickness or a deficiency, and therefore does not require healing, “especially not conversion therapy or what is known as correction treatments.”
Maalouf’s ruling, as expected, stirred stormy responses from the Lebanese council of Islamic clergy, which stated that it “clashes with all laws of all religions, with rational thinking and with accepted custom. This ruling is illegal.”
If homosexuality among secular people in Muslim countries is unbearable, how much more so is it among religious gay people, who find it difficult to resolve the contradiction between religious rulings and their forbidden sexual orientation. Aisha, from Syria, the administrator of the “Muslim Lesbians” Facebook page, explains:
“Religious rulings place homosexuality in contradiction to religion. Thus, when a homosexual cannot give up his sexual orientation, he is forced to leave religion and become an infidel or a person of no religion.” Aisha herself decided to remain in the faith after studying the sources and concluding that Islam does not prohibit homosexuality.
Fatmeh, a Palestinian lesbian and Aisha’s partner in administrating the page, says: “There is not one verse in the Koran that prohibits homosexuality.” According to Fatmeh, religious leaders rely on a verse relating to the sin of Lot and his family. “The sin of Lot’s family was not homosexuality, but the rape of men and highway robbery. That is, the way the sexual act was carried out is prohibited, not the very act itself.”
This original interpretation does not persuade most believers, nor religious leaders, but it allows women like Fatmeh to find a reasonable way to interpret the prohibition and continue to see themselves as faithful believers.
The fortunate lesbians are the ones who have been able to immigrate to a Western country, where they can live a lesbian lifestyle and even marry, and also receive political asylum, if needed, with the rightful claim that being returned to their homeland could cost them their lives.
Miriam hid her sexuality from her strict Muslim parents for years. When she eventually did come out to them, she found it impossible to translate "lesbian" into Punjabi or Urdu. She explains how the conversation put an end to her double life "playing the straight woman" but caused a rift so deep that her father disowned her.
"I always knew I was attracted to the same gender - as young as four or five, when I kissed my best friend in the cloakroom, I knew then.
"But it wasn't until I was in college that I first started exploring. We got the internet at home and there was a dial-up computer in my brother's room - it had a lock on the door.
"I used to go on Yahoo chat, I remember sometimes I pretended I was a man, for the sake of speaking to women. Then from 18, 19, I [thought], 'maybe I need to look for lesbian women'."
Miriam* grew up in a traditional Muslim family in Bristol where her grandfather "ruled the roost", with Islamic sermons and prayers five times a day.
Despite knowing from a young age she was gay, she knew telling her parents would cause a rift that might prove insurmountable. She went to great lengths to hide it but found an outlet in which to explore her sexuality by speaking to women in chat rooms.
It was only when she went to university that she built up the courage to meet other women in person, travelling hundreds of miles so she wouldn't be seen by anyone she knew.
"I went as far as Manchester or Hartlepool, as long as it was a minimum of two hours away.
"I was absolutely [terrified] of having a relationship with someone in the same city as me. These scenarios used to play through my mind - what if someone sees me at the station?"
Fearful as she was of being caught out, these relationships gave Miriam freedom.
"I made sure that my girlfriends didn't visibly mark me, so I didn't come home with [love bites] on my neck. But while I was there, it was thrilling - I thought, 'Oh my god, I'm doing this, I'm having a sexual experience with another woman, this is amazing'.
"At the time, the people I met didn't question the fact it was long distance. One woman in particular I only saw every other month. I used to go up on the train, meet for a few hours, go to a pub, have some food. We were quite open, it felt massively liberating."
Some went on for much longer: for a year she went to Burnley, near Manchester, to visit a Muslim woman who was married with a child.
"I used to stay in the B&B down the road. Her husband worked nights and at 18:30 he would go to work and I'd go through the back door. I'd set an alarm for 05:30 and go out the back door again. It was ridiculous. Her family knew of me but I was a 'friend who was visiting'.
"It didn't occur to them I could have been a sexual partner and her husband never caught me. There was a naivety to it all, I didn't think it was my problem to bear because I was so used to living this closeted life. Even thinking about it now chokes me up, because I think, 'how did I do that?'"
Under the guise of friendship, Miriam did, on one occasion, take her lover home to her parents' house in Bristol.
"She was Muslim - if it was anyone else but her, it would have been difficult. But because she looked Asian it was easier [to explain her presence] than [bringing home] a white girlfriend. She had the cultural and religious understanding - she knew how to behave.
"My room had two beds it, my parents never came in my room anyway so we slept in the same bed. We were exploring this new world, it was amazing and refreshing. In some ways it was so easy, it was almost a relief.
"But it was so whirlwind, she had to leave - her plans were premade for her and she went home to Saudi Arabia. It was heartbreaking, knowing we were so close to something so perfect."
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