Abstract
In this chapter, Shah builds upon the previous chapter’s insights by looking more closely at the influences of Islamic socialisation on whether his participants forged a specifically ‘gay Muslim’ identity. He suggests that their understandings were significantly shaped by three big factors—the ways in which their families, schools, peers and state authorities approached Islam and homosexuality; their own immediate circumstances and networks; and the presence (or absence) of groups that promoted a discernible ‘gay Muslim’ identity. He then demonstrates how they creatively avoided, subverted or even challenged conventional Islamic authorities by reclaiming religion as a ‘cultural resource’ to mould their own multi-layered expressions of Islam.
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Notes
- 1.
Although this teaching is widespread in Malaysia, it has no basis in the Qur’an—it appears as a hadith reported in Al Kabair (The Major Sins), a work by the fourteenth-century historian from the Shafi ‘i school, Adz-Dzahabi (2007, pp. 299–300). The former Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia dismissed it as a fabrication (The Permanent Committee for Scholarly Research and Ifta’ 2017).
- 2.
Sufism is ‘long established and well developed’ in Somalia, where the majority of Muslims adhere to the Shafi ‘i school of jurisprudence in Sunni Islam (I. M. Lewis 1998, p. 8). According to Ioan Lewis (1998, p. 14), it is usual in Somalia for the founders of local Sufi Orders and congregations to be venerated and sanctified after their death. Their tombs often become shrines tended by followers and family members and are scattered all over Somalia, with many apparently honouring ‘pre-Islamic figures who have been assimilated in Islam’ (I. M. Lewis 1998, p. 15).
- 3.
Nonny’s anecdote tallies with what was reported in the press. In 2009, Ako was charged and sentenced to a fine and three months in jail for khalwat (illicit proximity) by the Syariah court. Ako paid the fine but successfully appealed against the jail term (Star 2011).
- 4.
She was referring to occasional news reports about young people who accidentally fall to their deaths during anti-vice raids in condominium complexes and hotels (Mohd Fadly 2013).
- 5.
For many Imaan members, putting on the hijab or niqab was also a strong endorsement of religious diversity in a ‘gay’ space.
- 6.
The exact wording of Article 28 of the SCOA , applicable in the Federal Territories, is ‘Any male person who, in any public place, wears a woman’s attire and poses as a woman for immoral purposes shall be guilty of an offence and shall on conviction be liable to a fine not exceeding one thousand ringgit [equivalent to approximately £200 or US$230] or to imprisonment for a term not exceeding one year or to both’ (Malaysia 1997, p. 17). Similar provisions exist in the SCOE in the other States.
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Shah, S. (2018). Gay Expressions of Islam. In: The Making of a Gay Muslim. Palgrave Studies in Lived Religion and Societal Challenges. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63130-1_6
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