MUST READ: MULTI-CULTURALISM & ISLAM; CIVIL UNIONS & HOMOSEXUALITY

Multiculturalism and Islam; civil unions and homosexuality
by Samir Khalil Samir

Islam has always been merciless on homosexual relations. Yet there is silence in Italy among Muslims on civil unions and homosexuality. There is a kind of manipulation of Islam on the part of liberal progressivism. If Europe and America want to change the concept of “family”, they must take account of universal religious traditions. The second in a series of articles on multiculturalism.

Beirut (AsiaNews) – Multiculturalism is not helping the West to be itself, nor is it helping the Muslims of Europe to integrate better in their new countries. I would like to demonstrate this point by examining the question of homosexuality and the family in the Islamic tradition and in today’s Islamic world.

Muslims in Italy and the debate on civil unions

In Italy, it is the supporters of all-out cultural tolerance who are promoting a law on civil unions. They were preceded by other European countries where the same observation can be made.

Strangely enough, Muslims communities – who receive so much support from progressive liberals – have remained silent on this issue. For example, UCOII – an association of Italian Muslims which claims to represent the majority of Muslims given that it controls (often in financial terms) a large part of mosques in the country – speaks only when it is politically convenient, when it spots the possibility of obtaining a right, a privilege, a prayer hall, a mosque, a reduction in working hours during Ramadan, a vacation for a pilgrimage to Mecca, etc.

But members of UCOII do not weigh into the issues that are being debated in Italy. The problem of the value of the family and of homosexual couples seems to not interest them. This is a sign that they are not carrying forward a project of integration, but of revindication.

It must be said that the question of de facto couples has never been put forward, either in the past (obviously) or in this day and age. Even more than is the case in Christianity, Islam puts the accent on procreation in marriage, and secondly on sexual pleasure, which falls exclusively under the framework of legality, whether in terms of marriage or concubinage. Outside of legal marriage or recognized concubinage, any sexual act is a grave sin, and this according to all Islamic schools of legal thought, whether Sunni or Shi’ite.

Let’s consider therefore what is Islam’s official position (as expressed in the most important schools of law) with regard to homosexuality; then, what is the reality in the Muslim world (yesterday and today) on the question of homosexuality; and lastly, what is the current legislation in various Muslim countries.

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1) Multiculturalism and Islam; civil unions and homosexuality