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The Muslim social commentator, Wajahat Ali, just lately (June 23, 2023) penned an op-ed within the New York Occasions entitled, We Muslims Used to Be the Tradition Struggle Scapegoats. Why Are A few of Us Becoming a member of the L.G.B.T.Q. Pile-On? The essence of his essay, because the title suggests, is that American Muslims, having confronted the ugly and harmful actuality of xenophobic bigotry, epitomized by the political pimping of Shariah by parts of the proper wing within the aftermath of the 9/11 assaults, must be the final folks becoming a member of forces in opposition to the embattled LGBTQ neighborhood with those that have demonized our neighborhood for political achieve.
Ali’s argument hinges largely on a comparability between the beleaguered and bullied Muslim neighborhood post-9/11 to the LGBTQ neighborhood now. A significant downside with this analogy is that the LGBTQ neighborhood is not only the alienated gay coworker, the ostracized trans neighbor, or the bullied lesbian highschool scholar, every deserving of compassion and pastoral care, qualities Ali implies the drafters and signatories of a assertion outlining conventional Muslim gender and sexual ethics lack. Opposite to the picture evoked by the varieties of people talked about above, the LGBTQ neighborhood, collectively, occurs to be one of the vital highly effective and influential political teams on this nation and it’s utilizing that energy to advance a revolutionary socio-political venture. Because the true nature and full implications of that venture turn into clear, many individuals who had been previously silent regarding LGBTQ points are reacting. This consists of many Muslims. Briefly, Muslims are usually not reacting to the political opportunism of the right-wing, as Ali implies, they’re reacting to the shock and revulsion generated by the more and more tyrannical LQBTQ political venture.
Not like the LGBTQ neighborhood, each within the aftermath of the 9/11 assaults and now, Muslims are one of many weakest political communities on this nation. Take into account the next instance: This yr’s “Delight Day” celebrations witnessed 1000’s of LGBTQ people marching by the streets of this nation, a few of them shouting, “We’re right here, we’re queer, we’re coming on your youngsters!” Many within the LGBTQ neighborhood are searching for to distance themselves from this repugnant slogan claiming that it represents the views of a radical fringe of their motion, that it was sordid humor, or that the phrases are being taken out of context. The LGBTQ political venture, nonetheless, will solely succeed if it positive aspects perpetuity. That requires normalizing its existence among the many nation’s youngsters. Therefore, in public colleges and libraries, in addition to in widespread tradition, we more and more see insurance policies that might lead one to consider they’re coming for our kids.
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The power of the LGBTQ neighborhood permits the above-mentioned slogan to be publicly uttered with out censure. It permits vulgar pole dances on mock crucifixions of Christ to be carried out in entrance of church buildings with out rebuke. These public acts are the tip of a a lot darker iceberg. Some will say that queer activists enterprise such actions are solely stretching the boundaries of free speech. Regardless of the case, the power of the LGBTQ neighborhood is such that these acts are typically unchallenged. Then again, the relative weak spot of the Muslim neighborhood is such that we all know what sort of backlash would ensue if 1000’s of Muslims had been to march by the streets shouting, “We’re right here, we’re Muslim, we’re coming on your freedoms,” or some equally ridiculous slogan. That backlash could be fierce and would permit for no justifications primarily based on free speech. These vastly totally different responses illustrate the fallacious nature of the analogy Ali is making an attempt to attract.
Moreover, Muslims are incapable of imposing Islamically-defined meanings of Shari’ah on the kids of this nation. In lots of American states, nonetheless, LGBTQ activists possess the flexibility to impose their literature and curricula on our kids and are doing so with gusto. The implications of that imposition are one thing uncritical Muslim defenders of LGBTQ rights fail to think about. For instance, Ali writes:
“However is it really inclusive and tolerant to sign to L.G.B.T.Q. youngsters or L.G.B.T.Q. dad and mom that merely studying a ebook or studying about their existence is likely to be so threatening and offensive that it requires an opt-out choice in colleges? How would Muslim dad and mom really feel if this had been utilized to youngsters’s books about Ramadan or Hajj?”
The issue with this assertion is its equating books in regards to the devotional practices of a serious world faith to a physique of literature that features, amongst different issues, traumatizing pornographic photos. Books like Gender Queer, It’s Completely Regular, and others are replete with nudity, younger same-sex {couples} bare in mattress collectively, boys performing oral intercourse with every and different revolting photos. Is the affect of studying about Ramadan or Hajj going to be the identical on the hearts and minds of younger youngsters as viewing these photos? Photos of the Kaaba or a scrumptious Iftar meal shall be quickly forgotten by a non-Muslim youngster. A Muslim youngster, or some other for that matter, who views a few of the photos in lots of the LGBTQ books populating our lecture rooms and college libraries can have his or her innocence completely stolen. These books are usually not supposed to show youngsters in regards to the existence of a neighborhood, as Ali claims. They’re designed to indoctrinate youngsters into the acceptance of and doable participation in existence which can be antithetical to Muslim non secular and moral teachings.
Along with imposing foul studying materials on our kids, the political energy of the LGBTQ neighborhood permits lecturers, in some states, to ask elementary college youngsters in the event that they would favor to be a boy or a woman on a given day. Dad and mom can’t decide out of this and different pernicious practices. Everyone knows {that a} Muslim instructor would by no means be allowed to ask a Jewish or Christian scholar if she or he wish to spend the day as a Muslim. Had been that to occur, the instructor could be fired, and the varsity probably set on hearth.
Advocates for the LGBTQ neighborhood readily make use of the language of affection, compassion, pastoral care, equity, and justice. These are great qualities. Do they solely apply, nonetheless, to LGBTQ youngsters and their households? The place is the love for these youngsters, Muslims in addition to others, who’re being traumatized by the pornography? The place is the compassion for these depressed by the widely merciless and crude dismissal of their very own in addition to their dad and mom’ values? The place is the pastoral look after the rising legions of confused first graders who’re threatened with expulsion in the event that they don’t name the boy they knew as Tommy, Tammy, as a result of he now identifies as a woman? The place is the love for the ladies who struggle the urge to urinate till they return dwelling from college as a result of their restrooms are open to organic males? The place is the compassion for the tens of millions of youngsters confused and conflicted as a result of they’re compelled to consider intercourse and gender identification earlier than they even know what the phrases imply? The place is the equity for Payton McNabb, a feminine athlete who suffered a extreme concussion after being hit by a ball spiked by a transgender feminine throughout a highschool volleyball sport? The place is the justice for different feminine athletes who work tirelessly to achieve the top of their chosen sport, solely to see their information shattered by organic males? The place is the love for the rising variety of Muslims who see themselves compelled to uproot their households and migrate to numerous components of the Muslim world with a view to increase their youngsters in a fashion in keeping with their religion? The place is the compassion for the rising variety of workers compelled to put on Delight lapel pins or lose their jobs? Are we Muslims capable of pressure anybody to put on star and crescent pins? The place is the pastoral look after the California dad and mom who face the potential for having their youngsters taken away in the event that they, the dad and mom, don’t affirm their youngsters’s chosen gender identification (pending the passage of Meeting Invoice 957)? The place is the compassion for my neighbor’s male youngster who was undressed by his first-grade instructor, positioned in a pink gown, and advised pink for ladies, blue for boys, and attire and pants don’t imply something? Older college students may need been advised that even the concept of girls and boys is a meaningless social assemble or an oppressive narrative-informed efficiency.
A part of the LGBTQ political venture, following the ideological lead of the likes of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin, Eve Sedgwick, and others, is the destruction of all conventional views regarding gender, intercourse, and sexuality, which they contemplate oppressive socially constructed phenomena. Liberation lies within the deconstruction of conventional views of intercourse, sexuality, and gender, which quantities to the abolition of the household as we’ve got recognized it right here within the West. For these theorists, the normal household is an inconvenient reality that must be abolished earlier than wider societal modifications could be realized. Subsequently, by the use of instance, Sophie Lewis, in a Could 16, 2019, interview in, The Nation, states:
“It sounds scary, emotionally, when some folks hear the phrase “household abolition.” However once we say we need to abolish the household, we’re not speaking about taking away the few relationships and infrastructures of affection that we’ve got on this world. After all, the personal family and the household are the place so many people get the overwhelming majority of nourishment and solace. The query that household abolition is serious about is whether or not that’s adequate, whether or not that’s an excellent factor—that there’s such a shortage concerned. We all know that the nuclear personal family is the place the overwhelming majority of abuse can occur. After which there’s the entire query of what it’s for: coaching us as much as be employees, coaching us to be inhabitants of a binary-gendered and racially stratified system, coaching us to not be queer.”
The household, in Lewis’ view, is in the end dangerous and should be changed by a queer-affirming, surrogate state. This language is echoed by Black Lives Matter (BLM), as a corporation. As a motion, BLM has helped to broaden and deepen a critically necessary dialog across the disproportionate variety of Black people killed by police on this nation. It has additionally been capable of assist provoke lengthy overdue reforms in the best way policing happens in lots of poor black and brown communities. Nevertheless, as a corporation, it advocates a queer-affirming community to disrupt the normal household as a precursor to a radically new social construction. We’ve seen the place radical efforts to restructure the household have led to in locations like Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. The LGBTQ venture, which in the end wishes a societal transformation as radical because the three initiatives I point out right here, has no future if our kids inherit our “heterosexual normality.” Therefore, the frenzied effort to indoctrinate them into the LGBTQ worldview.
Ali questions why a gaggle of Muslim students would unite to talk out in opposition to this venture. He mentions that gun violence, in spite of everything, is the main reason behind demise for American youngsters. Let me emphasize that the demise of 1 youngster by gun violence is one too many. That mentioned, nonetheless, it’s exceedingly uncommon for an Imam or Shaykh to obtain the information that one in all his younger congregants has been killed with a gun. On daily basis, nonetheless, Muslim non secular leaders throughout this nation are being advised of youngsters coming dwelling from college asking their dad and mom if they’re straight or homosexual; inquiring about why the person studying a narrative to them had a gown on; advised that their instructor advised the boys there may be nothing incorrect in the event that they assume they’re ladies, or vice versa; of fogeys planning to maneuver to Florida or depart the nation with a view to save their youngsters; of youngsters informing their dad and mom that they had been compelled to learn a ebook containing “nasty” footage; youngsters coming dwelling saying to their dad and mom that they’ve same-sex boyfriends or girlfriends; and many others.
Therefore, the unified response from the Imams, Shaykhs, professors, and neighborhood leaders who signed the assertion referenced earlier is generated by neither “the present political hysteria,” a newfound affinity for the right-wing, nor a meanspirited homo or transphobia. It’s birthed by the fact on the bottom in most of our communities. It shouldn’t be stunning if that actuality is unifying the neighborhood’s management, or pushing Muslims into an alliance with Christians, conservatives, or others equally appalled by the accelerating indoctrination of our kids into a way of life antithetical to Abrahamic beliefs, values, and tradition.
Nonetheless, defenders of the LGBTQ venture ask, “what’s the large deal?” To start answering that query allow us to return to the problem of youngsters dying of gun violence. In 2021, roughly 3,600 youngsters between the ages of 1-18 died of gunshots. There are 73 million American youngsters in that age demographic. These killed by gun violence signify 0.0049% of our youth. Once more, one pointless demise, because the Qur’an reminds us, is one too many. Then again, the LGBTQ venture, as it’s presently continuing, threatens to have an effect on tens of millions of younger folks, most in damaging methods.
Allow us to start with the consequences of homosexuality on males. Vanderbilt College Medical Heart’s, Program for LGBTQ Well being, mentions ten well being issues for gay males. They’re HIV/AIDS, Anal Papilloma, Hepatitis, Substance Abuse, Melancholy and Nervousness, Sexually Transmitted Illnesses (STDs), Prostate, Testicular, and Colon Most cancers, Alcohol, Tobacco, Physique Picture Issues, and Weight problems. This record is predicated on analysis carried out at one of many nation’s main and most respected universities. It’s evil to reveal youngsters to a type of social engineering that would probably lead tens of millions of them, unnecessarily, into a way of life that poses these well being dangers.
As for transgender people, in response to the Cleveland Clinic (CC), they face very critical well being issues, principally psychological. CC lists amongst them anxiousness and melancholy, bipolar dysfunction, borderline character dysfunction, dissociative identification dysfunction, obsessive-compulsive dysfunction, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective dysfunction. Once more, the LGBTQ venture is making a cultural milieu the place tens of millions of youngsters are being uncovered to situations that result in existence carrying these extraordinarily dangerous penalties.
If we contemplate the startling improve in Fast Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), we once more see the impact of the setting fostered by the LGBTQ venture. An early research of ROGD, Fast Onset Gender Dysphoria: Guardian Reviews on 1655 Attainable Circumstances, reached the next conclusion:
ROGD is believed to be a culture-bound syndrome, which didn’t exist till just lately when transgender points started to draw appreciable cultural consideration. Moreover, ROGD has been hypothesized to be socially contagious. Adolescents who know others with ROGD usually tend to purchase ROGD themselves.
Advocates of the ROGD idea view the dramatic improve in referrals to gender clinics with alarm. They’re involved that adolescents with ROGD are liable to pointless, dangerous, and irreversible psychological and medical interventions.
[Note: This article has been retracted for reasons unrelated to what I highlight here. These conclusions are supported by other research. I quote from this article because of the concise summary of the relevant issues.]
An instance of the abuses ensuing from hasty referrals for gender transitioning surgical procedures, rushed approvals for puberty blockers, and insufficient diagnoses have led to the closure of The UK’s solely devoted gender transitioning clinic. The breakneck pace with which the LGBTQ agenda is being carried out in our colleges and different public establishments makes such abuses inevitable right here.
Different areas of widespread societal hurt are related to exposing youngsters to pornography. The American Faculty of Pediatricians, in an article entitled, The Impression of Pornography on Youngsters, makes the next observations:
Pornography publicity to those younger youngsters usually leads to anxiousness for the kid. Youngsters additionally report emotions of disgust, shock, embarrassment, anger, worry, and disappointment after viewing pornography. These youngsters can undergo the entire signs of tension and melancholy. They could turn into obsessive about performing out grownup sexual acts that they’ve seen, and this may be very disruptive and disturbing to the kid’s friends who witness or are victimized by this conduct. Youngsters who’ve seen pornography usually tend to sexually assault their friends. In sum, youngsters uncovered to pornographic materials are in danger for a broad vary of maladaptive behaviors and psychopathology.
The hazard of pornography being launched to youngsters in our colleges at ever youthful ages is compounded by the truth that a lot of it could possibly be categorized as youngster pornography.
Do LGBTQ activists assume that an overbearing try to normalize sexual acts and orientations not shared by most of society will result in the top of bullying and different damaging conduct in the direction of members of their neighborhood? In the event that they do, they’re sorely mistaken. It’s folly to assume that the unconventional “disruption” of centuries-old practices, cherished traditions, and hallowed beliefs, will produce something aside from social anarchy and an more and more radical resistance that may solely harden and deepen animosity in the direction of their neighborhood. Therefore, the unconventional LGBTQ agenda is prone to create situations antithetical to these it could be desirous of fostering.
There may be a lot extra to be mentioned about this problem. I’ll conclude by responding to one thing not talked about by Ali, however rising superior by defenders of the LGBTQ venture. Specifically, that these opposing that agenda are rallying to the facet of white supremacy. This can be a ridiculous accusation, particularly when levied in opposition to Muslims, an overwhelmingly nonwhite neighborhood. Not solely are Muslims who oppose the LGBTQ socio-political venture prepared to face in solidarity with white Christians or conservatives, in addition they stand in solidarity with a rising array of African American clerics, educators, and politicians. Likewise, they stand in solidarity with the whole lot of the nonwhite Muslim World and all of Africa in opposing a frontal assault on conventional values and religions. How might standing with the Muslim Ummah and Africa to protect non-European understandings of society represent assist for white supremacy?
I might argue from way more strong floor that the hassle of our authorities to pressure the LGBTQ venture upon the nations of Africa and the Muslim World is itself a type of white supremacy. I say this as a result of that agenda is rooted within the considered Foucault, Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin, and Eve Sedgwick, whom we beforehand talked about, in addition to others, all of whom are white. So far as our authorities is anxious, it too is overwhelmingly white. Therefore, you’ve white people making an attempt to impose a Euro-American ideology on black and brown people accusing these opposing it of white supremacy!
The truth that American Muslims had been or nonetheless are vilified by parts of the proper wing on this nation has nothing to do with what is occurring to youngsters in our colleges and public establishments. We’re all reacting to a state of affairs we didn’t create. It’s the shortsighted, heavy-handed overreach of the LGBTQ motion that has created the circumstances producing a counter-movement. The doable emergence of an alliance round this problem between Muslims, the Christian proper, and white conservatives may properly be an instance of politics making unusual bedfellows. It’d, nonetheless, be an instance of what occurs when Hubris awakens Nemesis.
– Imam Zaid Shakir
Associated:
– Sticky Conditions: Serving to Muslim Children Navigate LGBTQ – MuslimMatters.org
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