Gay Rights In Islam? Are You Serious?

By Tipu Salman Makhdoom

The recent judgment of the US Supreme Court legalizing Gay Marriages has been a sort of blow to all. For Gays and Lesbians it was a blow of jubilations, while for the rest of us, conservatives, it came as a blow hard struck. 

Looks like this judgment has opened the floodgates of the same sex rights. 

Known as LGBT, which stands for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender, they express themselves with a rainbow colour flag.

After the judgment, over 26 million people changed their Facebook Profile Pictures with a rainbow filter; showing solidarity with LGBT. Seems like the conservatives are rightly taking it as a serious issue.

While this judgment is going to effect 14 US States where Gay Marriage was still illegal, there are already two dozen countries in the world where marrying a person of your own sex is legal. These include South Africa, Spain and Brazil.

A very popular argument in support of LGBT is that it's a natural phenomenon and around 1500 animal species practice it.

While looking at Gay Marriage as a mental illness is one way of looking at it, the other way is to look at it as sexual diversity.

I have never done a serious research on LGBT in Islam, but I had an impression that they are unIslamic. Further that this act has been disliked by God Almighty and severe punishment of death has been provided in Quran itself. 

But recently I came across a paper which challenges all these believes. This paper, titled "Is Green a Part of the Rainbow? Sharia, Homosexuality and LGBT Rights in the Muslim World" is apparently a very well researched paper. And is written by a Pakistani scholar Javaid Rehman of Brunel University.

Reading this paper rather disturbed me as it is based on a thorough research and authoritative references from Quran, Hadith of the Holy Prophet (pbuh) and Islamic history.

The thesis of this paper is that punishment for homosexuality is nowhere to be found in Quran or the Sunnah of the Holy Prophet (pbuh). It only started in history, and islamized, from the Khilafat period of Hazrat Abu Bakar Siddiq.

Well, I had never seen it from this angle. But as they say, interpreting without context is like driving a car in an open field; you can take it wherever you want. But interpreting in context, in this case historical context, is like driving in a real life living city; you have to take the actual route! And in this article, it seems, that's what the author has tried to do.

I am in a fix. Can he be right? Can there be Gay rights in Islam? 

REALLY???