Mustafa Umar – Islam and Homosexualityawing the Lines
AI: Summary ©
AI: Transcript ©
Alright.
And did I just got ignored or everyone
was busy talking?
Alright. Alhamdulillah.
Bismillah Alhamdulillah, wa salaat wa salaamu ala Rasulillah
wabad.
So before we begin,
one disclaimer and one question. So first the
disclaimer is, if there's any children here, or
anyone under the age of 12,
or maybe 13,
this talk is gonna get a little bit
graphic
in some cases. So
if, you know, you're a parent and your
child is here, and you think that, you
know, you're not comfortable with the child being
here, I would probably recommend
no one under the age of 13, like
the 2 who just walked in right now,
I would recommend
that they probably not attend this talk unless
you talk about these type of issues with
them regularly.
If you've already introduced it, you've sat down,
you've had the talk, you know, they've attended
the the the class at school,
should be okay.
Otherwise,
usually when I give a talk like this,
and I talk about certain things which may
be a little bit more graphic or words
that may be a little bit more direct,
I have some parents coming to me and
telling me that, you know what? How could
you use those type of words? We can't
address a topic like this without using certain
words and using, you know, describing certain
actions.
So, if you're uncomfortable with that,
you know, please,
it's better that you're not there.
What happened? We lost the we lost the
computer screen? Okay.
Can you help with that? So, alright. Thank
you. So so that's what I recommend insha'Allah.
So that's just the disclaimer there.
If you're comfortable though, if you talk to
your 7 year old, you know, and you're
open with them about it, that's perfectly fine
insha Allah. Second thing is,
normally
in Islam,
we're supposed to use more reserved terms. You
know, when Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala in the
Quran talks about, you know, * and things
like that, he uses terms like
entrance,
and coming together, and touching, and these these
these words. So normally, it's a it's a
good part of our culture to use more
reserved words,
but because this is the,
this is a presentation
specifically on the topic,
we're not gonna be using reserved words all
the time. So I'm just letting you know,
this is we shouldn't always talk like this,
but we're gonna talk like this because of
the issue that we're discussing today. Okay? So
before we begin, quick question. How many of
you are pretty clear
on your
understanding
of homosexuality?
You pretty you pretty have a good understanding,
you're pretty confident about your own perception and
your understanding. Just raise your hand, please.
Okay. How many of you are kind of
a little bit confused, you're really not sure,
you've not made up your mind exactly on
how to look at this issue, and you're
kind of trying to figure it out? Raise
your hand, please.
Okay.
Alright. So for the online viewers, just so
you know, that was like about
85%,
they got it, and 15%
or so. Maybe 90 10 or 85 15
are are are still interested in trying to
figure out, trying to work things through. Okay.
So, inshallah, bismillah ar Rahmanir Rahim. So the
topic,
the title actually of this talk,
that I had given a few years ago
was Islam and Homosexuality,
Drawing the Lines. And what I mean by
drawing the lines, and lines plural specifically,
is because on this topic we have certain
things which are clear cut in Islam, and
certain things which are
scholarly
understandings.
They're not 100% clear cut. And it's very
important to draw the lines in terms of
what is 100%
clear cut? What is right and wrong per
se? And what is an explanation or an
interpretation or there's some flexibility in certain aspects?
So that's the, technically, the title of the
talk, and that's why I call this talk
drawing the lines.
What are we gonna cover? First of all,
we're gonna cover why this issue is important.
We're gonna talk about the gay rights movement,
how it affects us, what the Quran really
says about this issue, whether it is a
choice or not, is it a private issue
or should it be, you know, should the
public interfere in these type of things,
discrimination that takes place and reverse discrimination,
and can someone be a Muslim and gay
at the same time, and then some conclusionary
notes, and then we'll open it up for
questions.
K. And I'll just remind you now and
remind you again, when it's question time,
questions do mean questions. So we don't wanna
have, like, people giving, like, talks or speeches
during question and answer time. You know, comments
can be done to me personally after the
program, inshallah.
Alright. So why is this issue important? So,
first of all,
there's a generation gap
in the way that the issue of homosexuality
has has been has
has traditionally been understood. This is what's happening
right now. So
the way that things work is that for
most people,
most of their framework about the world and
the way in which they understand the world,
it usually gets shaped when they're young, when
they're going to school. When they're going to
high school, when they're going to college. That's
the vast majority of people's education. And after
that,
some people read books here and there, some
people watch some movies, they get influenced by
media a little bit, but most ideas about
the world are usually shaped in those formative
years. So if you grew up in the
eighties
or before that,
Okay? Seventies or sixties or whatever it may
be. Think about what type of world you
were growing up in when it comes to
homosexuality.
First of all, you were not growing up
seeing any movies
or any TV shows that show gay people
in a positive light. You're not seeing relationships
where, you know, there's a gay couple
and, you know, they're just,
you know, they're they're the heroes of the
story or something like that. You don't find
that taking
place. You find that the majority of people
around you, their perception
of homosexuality
was that it's gross.
That it's a perversion of nature.
You grow up
with some statistics.
56%
of Americans when surveyed in 1977
said that homosexuality
is something which is acquired
through either social conditioning or through the environment
in which you live versus 13%
who said that this is the way people
are born, and the rest said we don't
know. Right? So we're talking about people whose
understanding of the issue was that this is
something that people are choosing or they're
being conditioned to become in a certain way,
and that flips
in the next generation.
Okay?
We're talking about a generation where
according to
the APA, the American, you know, psychiatric association,
they have they have listed in their DSM
1 and DSM 2,
homosexuality as a mental illness.
So imagine growing up in this generation.
And for this generation,
that group of people growing up in the
eighties, or you could even say nineties and
prior to that,
for them, for Muslims,
this was something that's clear cut haram. There
is no debate. There is no discussion. There
will not be a single article that is
written where someone actually says, Well, I beg
to differ. You know, I think we should
need to relook at the Quran. We need
to reinterpret certain things. That's
one generation of people who grew up like
that.
How many of you would describe yourself, say,
Yeah, that pretty much describes the way that
I I grew up.
Okay. Then we got
people growing up in the 21st century. And
in the 21st century, things are very different.
So the what's being presented is that the
moral framework of a relationship is as long
as you have 2 adults that are consenting,
the relationship is fine. It's moral.
As long as the relationship doesn't harm anyone
directly,
the relationship is moral.
The understanding that when it comes to homosexuality,
people should not be ashamed to be able
to express their sexual preferences and their sexual
feelings in public is something that they're growing
up with. The idea of what's called born
this way. Right? The Lady Gaga song and,
you know, all of the other ideas that
come along with that. This is something that
people are growing up listening to on a
regular basis in the songs and in the
movies that they're listening that they're hearing.
And on a regular basis, you have celebrities
coming out of the closet and they're seen
as heroes and they're portrayed in the media.
Right? They Why? Because they've broke the stigma
that's associated with homosexuality
and they're congratulated.
The president or some, you know, important politician
will call them and congratulate them and say,
you know, you've done a great job by
coming out. So imagine
growing up, the people who grew up in
this era and the people who grew up
in this era.
Their perception of this issue is shaped by
the way that they grew up. It's shaped
by the media experiences, the educational experiences, the
social experiences that they have. And that's why
my personal opinion on this is this is
something when it comes to the Muslim community
that parents and their kids, they're not seeing
eye to eye on.
They have a very different way of understanding
things. Even if they both understand even if
they both say, okay. At the end of
the day, okay. We're gonna accept the same
thing. But their way of dealing with this
issue, their way of understanding this issue is
different because of the environment in which they
grew up. And it's very important to understand
that before we even start to approach this.
Because you're gonna find that people who grew
up in the 21st century, this generation, you
know, the younger generation,
their
understanding is shaped by their environment, and likewise,
the previous generation is shaped by their environment.
So that's something from the beginning. Time Magazine
wrote an article a few years back. This
is old, actually. I'm putting all this old
stuff out there. They said, Islamic orthodoxy and
traditionalism
is being challenged on the issue of LGBT
inclusion.
LGBT means lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. That's
become the term, but we're specifically talking about
LG here. Alright?
Not, the technology brand. Alright. So
so,
okay. HP is trying to invade our space
here. Alright. So LGBT inclusion. A progressive Muslim
movement
is forcing Muslim debate and discussion on the
limits
of tolerance and inclusion.
And so this is something
that non Muslims are writing about several years
back, saying that, hey, Muslims
Muslims are being pressured now. They need to
start, you know, thinking about how they're gonna
approach this issue and how it's gonna affect
other people. So the reality is, what's going
on here is that
wow. HP, masha'Allah, they're persistent. Alright. Alhamdulillah.
So
this is not an issue like pork.
Okay. Rarely, rarely would you ever find
the Muslim community saying, you know what? When
it comes to pork,
you know, we should re we should take
a look and see whether pork is really
prohibited in Islam. Why did Allah prohibit this,
what's the wisdom and the reasoning behind it.
Most Muslims have a clear understanding, we don't
eat pork.
That's just the way it is. That's the
way you grow up, you check your ingredients
for gelatin, you check-in, you know, you make
sure that there's no pork in your food.
That's that's pretty clear cut.
But that this issue
is not like that issue. Right?
Pork is one thing. This issue
is an issue that's similar to marijuana
and similar to the hijab.
You will find debates
in many Muslim communities, specifically in California, because
we happen to be a little bit more
of a liberal state.
In California specifically, you find debates on marijuana
where you find people from younger generation and
others
saying that no. We think that we can
somehow look at Islam and make a case
for smoking marijuana is not is is not
a problem in Islam.
And likewise, many people they look at the
Quran, they say, well, hijab, it's not really,
you know, clear cut in the Quran, and
we're not sure if it's a man it's
mandatory or not mandatory and all of that.
So this is not one of those clear
cut things. And that's why it's a very
important issue. It's an important issue to discuss.
It's an important issue to dialogue about. It's
an important issue to debate sometimes.
It's important to talk about it, and it's
a real issue. And the reason why I'm
talking about this is because many people who
grew up in the eighties and before that,
whenever I give a talk about this, they
say, What is what a what a useless
topic. What a waste of time. Why would
you even talk about this? Why don't you
talk about like taqwa, or how to connect
to the Quran, or something that's that's more
important. This is a non issue. There's no
point of talking about it. So I'm trying
to explain that people who came from that
generation,
they don't think this is important because for
them it's not important.
But what they don't realize and they have
to realize
is that for people who grew up in
this other generation, it's a very important topic.
It's a very serious topic, and they have
a lot of questions
about this. So
it's not a waste of time. We need
to we need to understand that off the
bat. Okay?
So when it comes to this challenge, we
have this
challenge taking place. What is the limits of
tolerance and the limits of inclusion when it
comes to homosexuality?
So many Muslims are confused.
Not the ones in this room, only 15%
raised their hand and said that they're kind
of trying to figure it out. But many
people have a lot of questions about this.
So whenever we have a question in Islam
about something,
where do we go? We go to our
primary sources.
Our primary sources and our number one source
in Islam is the Quran. So when we
go back to the Quran, we should that's
the first thing we should do. We should
go back and we should look how what
verses in the Quran talk about homosexuality.
So what we find is the verses specifically
are the verses from the story of prophet
Lut, of prophet Lut.
Now if you do a search, I did
a quick search,
to tally it,
there's about 105
verses in the Quran about prophet
Lut, k, throughout different surahs in the Quran.
The ones which are most relevant to the
topic at hand are these ones which I've
chosen, which is from Surat Al-'Araf, chapter 7
verses 80 to 82. So what does Allah
say? We'll go through them in detail. It
says,
What does that mean? It means, and we
sent loot,
we sent we sent lut. Right? And he
said to his people,
do you commit the shameful act,
al fahisha,
in which nobody in the world has ever
preceded you? Alright. So what is happening here,
there's a story of Lut. I can't go
through the whole story, but like other prophets,
prophet Lut was sent to his people in
order to correct their belief in associating partners
with God, in order to correct other immoralities
that they were committing. So Allah subhanahu wa
ta'ala, the God in the Quran is telling
Lut,
telling people remember the story of Lut when
he went to his people. This is the
way in which he, you know, tells the
story.
He went to his people and Lot told
his people,
are you committing the fahesha?
Right? You are actually coming to people in
a shameful way in which nobody in the
world has ever preceded you. Meaning as a
people.
This doesn't mean that there's not been a
single person who's ever done this in history
prior to lut. Means as a people, as
a group of people who practiced it on
a, you know, openly
on a regular basis, this is what it's
talking about. K. The next
verse.
It says, you come to men lustfully instead
of women. Know you are a people who
cross the limits.
Means people who take it too far, go
extreme. It's a level of extremism there. Right?
And then the next verse, it says,
The answer of his people was no other
than to say, expel them from your town.
They are a people
who feign or pretend too much purity.
So their response was sarcastic.
Let's get rid of these people. Let's get
rid of Lut and his followers because of
what they're telling us.
These people are they're too pure for us.
Let's just get rid of them. That that
was kind of like their sarcastic response. They
say, if what we're doing is wrong, then
you're pure. So, look, I'm gonna kick you
out.
So now here's the thing.
The Quran is talking about this,
and what we find is we find articles
coming out on different,
you know,
websites,
sometimes different magazines,
saying
that
we need to relook at the Quran
because whatever traditional classical Muslim scholars have said.
Right. If you look at every single tafsir
that's ever been written, as far as my
knowledge
goes, for the last, you know, 13, you
know, 1st 1300 years after the prophet Muhammad,
peace and blessings be upon him, the way
in which the story of prophet Lut is
interpreted,
and these verses specifically the way in which
it's interpreted,
it's saying
that the people of Lut, one of their
sins and one of their crimes was openly
practicing
homosexuality.
But what's happening is you find a group
of Muslims
who are saying,
intellectuals or whatever you wanna call them, they're
writing and they're saying
this interpretation
of the scholars is their interpretation.
We need to go back and we need
to reinterpret
the verses or relook at the verses to
see whether
that's really the case or did they because
they grew up in that generation. Right. These
Muslim scholars forget the eighties. They grew up
in a totally different generation. So what the
claim that's being made is that they had
their own
cultural baggage.
And in their tafsir, in their exegesis or
the explanation of the Quran,
they're projecting that cultural baggage into their own
interpretations of the Quran.
So that's the argument that's being made. There's
even been a book written about this. I'm
not gonna promote the book, so I won't
tell you the name of the book. I
don't really want to promote it, but, you
can buy it if you want.
There are several articles written about it. There
are websites. There are, you know, groups.
There are many people who are making this
claim.
So I don't wanna
I can spend, you know, an hour, you
know, breaking all of this down and, you
know, explaining this, but just basically,
what we need to understand is a few
things. First of all is the word fahisha.
Right. So the Arabic word, which I'll highlight
here, is here, fahisha.
It means a shameful act. Right. The word
fahisha is negative.
It it's not something that can be reconstrued
as being something somehow neutral
or being positive. So the context doesn't really
warrant a reinterpretation of the word fahesha
to somehow mean something
that is non negative. Right? So that's really
not open. The second part
is that the one of the claims that's
being made is that
this,
this
the behavior of the people of Ruth, their
crime, or what they were doing wrong
has to do with the fact
that there was no mutual consent. So we
talked about the idea of mutually consenting adults.
So one of the arguments that's been made
is that the reason why
Lut was upset or not upset, but, like,
warning his people and saying you're doing something
immoral
is because
they were not
engaging in consensual *,
basically. This is the argument that has been
made. And the way in which the argument
has been justified
is because at the end of the story
of prophet Lut,
there are these angels that come in the
form of human beings. And these angels
are basically, you know, people are coming and
pounding on their door and they're basically taken
away and they go and engage in homosexuality.
Not not by willingly, but kind of like
it's forced on them. So because the end
of the story talks about an incident
of kind of, like, pressure, it doesn't say
specifically force, but someone was kind of pressured
into doing this and lut was trying to
stop this, the rest of the story
is trying to be reinterpreted
as saying that this has to do with
*,
has to do with non consensual
sexual relations, and that was the crime of
the people.
The problem with that is that if you
look at only those verses,
and you don't look at these verses, and
you don't look at the entire story as
a whole,
there's an inconsistency
in that type of reasoning,
which is why nobody throughout history has really
given an interpretation like this. So we have
to come back and ask ourselves the question.
The question is, when we're trying to understand
or reinterpret the Quran,
Are we trying to reinterpret the Quran
with the intention of trying to figure out
what God really meant?
It was called intentionality.
What was the intention of God in the
story?
Or is the intention
to try to read in our own understanding
of the world or our own values, our
own perspectives? And what you'll find this is
interesting what you'll find is that these are
2
legally
recognized
forms of interpretation when it comes to secular
law. So when it comes to the US
constitution,
there are 2 madhhabs.
There are 2 schools of thoughts. Right? The
2 schools of thoughts are do we care
about the intention
of the framers of the United States constitution
when we're looking at what they're saying and
we're trying to interpret it?
Or do we not care and say this
is the language that we've agreed to follow
and it doesn't matter what the founding fathers
had originally intended. We don't care about their
intention. We don't care about what they had
originally planned. We like these
statements.
Right? Freedom of whatever religion, freedom of this,
you know, all of that. Right to bear
arms and all of that. But we're gonna
interpret it the way that we wanna interpret
it. It doesn't matter what their intention was.
So this is something that's
recognized legally
in the field of law.
But the question is, should we apply
that framework
to the Quran as well? To religion as
well? If we do,
it's somewhat problematic because then to what extent
are you saying that this book is from
God and I'm trying to figure out what
God is saying, if you're saying, no. I'm
just gonna go and read in whatever makes
sense to me or whatever I think is
gonna be right. So this is something that
we need to, you know, understand at the
root. So the root cause of sin, what
did it have to do with *? Did
it have to do with consent?
This is an issue that's actually being debated
seriously today. And it could be further debated.
We could have an entire presentation on this.
We could have made the whole presentation on
this,
but, you know, I wanna talk about other
things as well. How many of you have
come across this argument? Real quick, with a
raise of hands. Who's come across this argument?
Okay. Who actually read the entire article when
you came across the argument?
Outside of just randomly coming across, you actually
read through it.
Okay. Alright. So about 5 people. Alright.
The second
second argument you read through it?
Oh, I thought I saw another hand here.
Did I see another hand? Go. Okay. Fine.
Alright. So the second
argument is that circumstances have changed today.
Right? Is that homosexuality
was a problem in the past. It was
something, you know, bad in the past, but
now circumstances have changed.
Who's heard this argument before? Anyone
heard this argument? Okay. So the question is,
what has changed exactly?
Right. So when circumstances
change,
the only way in which a reinterpretation
of the Quran
is gonna happen is that it's not the
Quran is not being reinterpreted. The word of
God is not reinterpreted,
but it's reapplied.
Right. So in Islam, you have
what God is saying to us. Right. This
is the Quran. You have what the prophet
is saying to us. This is the hadith.
Alright. Peace be upon him. But how you
apply this in a society will change with
time and place.
And that's something that's established
according to, you know, all Muslim scholars.
But the the thing here is, how do
you
how do you change the application
of something which is defining what is moral
and immoral?
Right? So that's why this is not,
something that I really understand where it's coming
from. People are saying things have changed, but
what has
what what do things that have changed, how
does that affect the interpretation
of what is considered to be moral and
immoral, and how has that changed? Maybe if
you have a suggestion, we can bring it
up during the q and a session. So
these are the two main arguments that I've
come across right now. So when it comes
to that, we have to understand that
this is the part in Islam
that is clear cut.
What's clear cut is basically if we understand
this part and we understand the rest of
the story of prophet Lut, we understand
without overstretching the meanings or anything like that,
that what the Quran is saying, what Allah
is saying, is that
the idea of engaging
in sexual relations with the same gender is
considered to be sinful.
It's considered to be something immoral.
That's the part that is clear cut.
Now the rest of it
is what's called ijtihad.
Ijtihad
means that scholars apply their best understanding
of trying to understand the rest of all
of these things. So we're gonna talk about
why.
Why is it considered sinful? And we're gonna
talk about, is it natural? And if it's
natural, then why is this still sinful? And
if it's not natural, then what if it
is it acquired? And to what extent is
it acquired versus all? All of that stuff
is ijtihad.
And ijtihad means that scholars trying to exert
their best understanding to, you know, understand the
wisdom behind these things. Right? So that's
that's the part that's clear cut. The part
that I'm presenting now is
my understanding of the issue and the understanding
of many scholars. So if there's a mistake
there, you can fault me. You cannot fault,
you know, Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala for that.
So that's why I say drawing the lines.
K. There's a few different lines that need
to be drawn. This is the first line
that needs to be drawn.
When it comes to Islam, when it comes
to the Quran, the issue
on the sinfulness
or the morality
of engaging
in the practice
of homosexuality
is clear cut to be prohibited and immoral.
That's the framework of Islam. The rest is
gonna come now. So now,
first question is, is it a choice?
Right. This is something
that
is a significant source of debate
and confusion among people. Like I said, people
who are growing up in the eighties and
prior to that, their understanding was this is
something which is acquired.
And now if you ask most people, they
will say, this is something that
is,
you know, you're born. You're basically born with
it. It's not it's not a choice. You
don't have the ability, you know, to it's
something that you can't deal with. It's just
you have you have no you you didn't
determine this for yourself. So the this comes
back down to the idea of what is
natural.
Now people say, for example, that if homosexuality
is sinful and if it's immoral,
also sometimes the word it's unnatural is thrown
out.
So when you use the word unnatural
and someone says, but this is the way
I grew up. I've had these feelings
ever since
I can ever remember.
And what did I do? Like, can you
specify for me what exactly did I do
that, you know, caused me to become like
this and have this type of attraction?
That actually influences
the way in which people perceive the issue
of homosexuality,
and I'm gonna tell you why. Okay. So
first of all, the idea of, is it
natural? Right? The idea of if you if
you feel this way. So the word natural
is used incorrectly.
So one of the arguments
that comes out,
that a lot of people make, is that,
look,
there are even animals
that exhibit gay behavior, gay tendencies.
So they engage in homosexual, you know, acts.
So you see, if there's animals that do
that, then what about human beings? Right?
The problem with that are who's heard this
argument? I'm just trying to make sure. Okay.
You've heard this argument. K. The the problem
with that argument is it doesn't really relate
to what we're talking about, Number 1. But
the other problem with the argument
is that other
animals exhibit different type of behaviors.
A black widow
and a praying mantis
will actually eat the male
after mating.
So if someone says, well, look, it's natural.
It's found in nature. That doesn't mean it's
moral.
Right? I wanna make that clear, you know,
to the sisters. After mating with your husband,
you should not eat
eat him. Okay?
Don't kill him. Don't eat him. Right? Just
because you have other people in the natural
kingdom, you know,
doing that. Right? That doesn't make it right.
It doesn't make it justified.
So bringing the idea of animals doing something
doesn't justify something else. Right? We're talking about
human beings. And this is actually important. The
reason why it's important is because the way
in which Islam looks at things,
the way that it looks at the world,
is that the human being is considered to
be something special and distinct.
Whereas other people
look at the world from a different way,
they say the human being is not something
special.
So, for example, there are many people who
do not eat meat,
and they say, we do not eat meat
not because of animal cruelty and all of
that stuff. We don't eat meat because an
animal is a living creature, just like a
human being. Would you kill a human being
and just eat it? No. Obviously not. Would
you would you kill a cow? They say,
well, a cow is a living being. It
feels pain.
So, therefore,
people who are eating meat, this is immoral.
They're killing these animals, and the animals are
feeling some type of pain. Or if they're
not feeling pain, let's say they feel no
pain whatsoever,
you've taken away their lifespan.
So you could eat a hamburger.
Right? So that
perspective of the world is very different from
the perspective of what Islam is saying. Islam
is saying that
certain rules, regulations,
morality, all of these things, they apply to
human beings because God defined these things and
gave a special status
to human beings. So it's a very different
perception of the world and this perception of
the world influences the way in which we're
gonna view this issue as well. Okay. So
why does it matter? Right? Why does the
question about whether
being gay is a choice
really matter?
It matters because it frames an argument
for the gay movement.
K. And the argument is this, is that
if someone is born gay,
then that sexual orientation that they have is
an innate characteristic
like someone's race. You're born with a race.
You were born darker. You were born lighter.
You're born black skin, white skin, brown skin,
whatever it is, that's the way you are.
Unless you wanna go and get, like, you
know, Michael Jackson surgery or something like that,
you you're stuck like this, basically. Right? That's
what's what's gonna happen. So you're gonna have
to deal with all the consequences
of what you are because you were born
that way. So what ends up happening now
is that if that argument
is
conclusive,
it's easier to politically
make a case to equate
racism
with discrimination
on the basis of sexual preference or sexual
orientation.
So that's that's why it's so important
to understand these things. This is not you
know, I'm gonna talk about how clear cut
and all of that stuff is. But
1977
surveys in America said 56% of people, they
thought this is not something you're born with.
13% of people said this is something you're
born with. What changed?
Afterwards,
2000,
37%
of Americans said it's your upbringing in your
environment.
42%
said, no. People who are born gay, they're
born at birth, and that's the way they
are, and they cannot adjust.
And this is old statistic, and now it's
changed even more. And the percentage continues to
rise and rise, the idea of it's not
a choice, it's something that you're born with.
Why is it important? It's important for two
reasons. 1, like I said, for political reasons.
Because it's gonna play a role in
the idea of what is discrimination
and what is not discrimination.
Now it plays a religious role as well.
And the religious role it plays is
is that the argument is if somebody
is born this way
and they have these tendencies and they have
these feelings and these desires,
then
why is it sinful
for them to act upon them? If it
is and God created them this way, then
there's an injustice taking place. And I'm gonna
answer this question. But that's why it's important.
I want you to understand why this question
is important. Some people think it doesn't matter.
Just leave it. It's not a it's not
a issue. No. It's an issue, and we
need to understand
why
it's viewed as an important issue for two
reasons. So I like I said, one is
the religious reason
because what you'll happen is anyone who says
that this behavior is sinful,
then if it's
natural or quote unquote whatever you wanna call
it, then it's unjust.
The classifying it as a sin
is injustice
on God's part.
So that's 1. And 2 is the political
thing about discrimination that I mentioned. Right? So
so
in the past,
there has been many articles in the news
and media
about the gay gene that was discovered.
Anyone came across that
article? Do you remember reading that and all
of that? So
this this happened I forgot when it happened,
but it happened a long time ago. Alright?
What happens with media
is that when something comes in the media
and it turns out to be wrong and
it's debunked,
the correction
does not make the same type of headline
as the original thing that comes in the
in the meeting. This is exactly what happened
with the first
time it was discovered that there was a
gay gene. The experiment could not be reproduced.
Right? So they realized that the person who
was conducting it was actually secretly
a practicing homosexual himself who was actually conducting
the research. They tried to redo the redo
the experiment. They were not able to get
the same results. But that was long time
ago.
But the test but peoples in their mind,
they thought this is something that already came
out. It's clear. It's conclusive. It's proven. So
many people had that understanding, but they did
not see the retraction of that. Research continued
and continued for many, many, many years.
The latest research came out of UC Santa
Barbara.
It's considered to be a liberal school. If
you guys are in California, you know that
it's like a party school and all that.
So, UC sorry for the guys who go
there. So UC Santa Barbara recently came out
with the latest, and they said, we cannot
conclusively say that there is such thing as
a gauging. We cannot identify it, we cannot
know for sure. If this is the case,
we leave it at, we're not sure.
That is the official position at the moment,
is that we're not sure. The American Psychological
Association
is very clear on this. They say that
there is no consensus I have the quote
here somewhere. There we go. They said there
is no consensus
among scientists about the exact reasons that an
individual
develops a heterosexual,
bisexual,
gay, or lesbian orientation.
And this is, as far as I know,
up to date.
Right. It has not changed. Right. So this
is the standard position.
But what I wanna emphasize
is that this
medical scientific position
is not the position that's in the minds
of many people.
Right? For in the minds of many people,
they think that this is a decided issue.
Research has already come out. It's clear cut.
It's, you know what, people have said that
they feel this way, and this is the
reality of things.
What's happening is there's a movement within the
gay community
that is saying the opposite.
And they're saying that we
were not born this way. We chose to
be this way,
and it was a conscious decision that we
made, and we're very happy with our decision.
What has happened to those people who made
the statement?
Ostracized.
Criticized.
Why? Openly shamed.
Because
that statement in and of itself
is
detrimental
for the gay rights movement on a political
spectrum,
politically,
for the reasons that I explain why, the
whole discrimination thing and all of that. So
there is
I I want I want us to understand
this very clearly.
There is a scientific perspective,
there is a religious perspective,
and then there's a political perspective.
And if we don't see these 3 different
perspectives on this issue, we're gonna be very,
very confused.
And the political perspective
influences
people's perception of what the scientific perspective actually
is. So we have to understand all of
these things, and and and in turn,
it influences
the religious perspective and and vice versa all
around. So it's important to understand that. K.
Again,
the American Psychiatric Association,
I I mentioned this part already. In 1973,
they removed,
they removed homosexuality as a mental disorder from
the DSM 2. It didn't make it into
DSM 3. They had
a
a paper
explaining the reasons
for why they removed it.
And in that paper,
they mentioned the exact same thing that that
we did not remove it because we think
that our research has somehow concluded that this
is something that people are naturally born with.
And you can read the paper. The paper
is there. Right. So it's important to understand
kind of the history of how things have
changed, how things are classified versus declassified, and
all of these things. Okay. Now that's one
side. Now coming back from an Islamic perspective,
right,
from an Islamic perspective,
even if
people are born with the tendency to do
something,
what does Islam say about it? What about
watching *?
Okay. Watching *
is not something that's allowed in Islam.
If you didn't know that, I just want
to clarify that. It's not something that's allowed
in Islam.
But is it natural?
Is it something that people are naturally attracted
to? That they're naturally inclined to?
Absolutely.
Men specifically,
like I mentioned in the khutba, right, spend
1,000,000,000 of dollars
looking at pictures and videos of women who
wear very little clothing. That's how you sell
products.
That's something that people aren't just naturally inclined
to. It's natural. But does that mean
I mean, does that mean that because you're
naturally inclined towards it, you do it? No.
So the Islamic perspective
is that is that you may be naturally
inclined towards drinking. Someone who's been a drunk,
and let's say they're a drunk they're a
drug addict, for example, then they accept Islam,
and they're told you're not supposed to do
drugs anymore.
You say, well, you know what? I'm already
I'm already addicted to it. What am I
supposed to do? You're supposed to resist.
You're supposed to stop yourself.
Now there are many other things as well,
which I'm I'll come to, but let's see
if I'm coming to them. I'll just mention
it now. There are many other things that
we
we
we don't,
we don't like to talk about.
We don't specifically
bring up, but we have to bring them
up. K? So our culture affects the way
we view things.
There are 2 things specifically
that are still generally viewed by most people
as being
gross, quote unquote, or being immoral to an
extent.
One of them is *.
K? So * means
having a relationship with your close family member,
your sister or your brother,
your mother or your father.
Right? These type of * ancestral relationships,
right, are generally considered by a lot of
people to still be kind of off limits.
Shouldn't be done for so such and such
reasons.
But it's it's changing.
The perception is changing. And I'm telling you,
it probably won't be a decade or 2
before I have to give a whole presentation
again on Islam and *,
the wisdom behind why, and all of that
stuff, even though it's still prohibited in many
countries.
But the second one I wanna bring up
is *.
K?
Beast and I I gave the warning, by
the way. So for the young kids that
are here, I gave the disclaimer in the
beginning that we're gonna talk about some things.
Okay? I know there's a new term for
it. Right? Actually, no. I just wanna point
out that
the results of * is actually catastrophic
for the family genetics. Thank you.
Ciao. What's up? Do it. Thank you. Alright.
So so we have, so beast so *
basically means having * with animals.
K?
And there's a new term for it. Anyone
remind me what the new term is? Zoo
something?
* or something like that?
Does anyone know?
I guess it's good that you don't know.
Okay. I'm gonna alright. So, anyway, this is
this is the I'm I'm using the non
politically correct term. There's a politically correct term.
What you have to understand is
that
the majority of European Western European countries have
outlawed *,
and the latest one to do it was
in 2015.
I believe it was Denmark,
or one of those right next to it.
The reason why it was outlawed
is be what happened was, this was the
last country that did not outlaw *.
So what ended up happening is that this
became a place
for * tourists
to actually go to farms
to engage in this behavior. I'm not not
making this up.
Right? And you'd be surprised at how prevalent
the behavior is.
Right? It's very prevalent. This happens on a
very large scale, and this is not a
new thing.
This is historical.
You do some research on it, and you
find that this has been happening in many
civilizations throughout history. This is a reality.
Again, when we look at that issue,
and we look at this issue,
it's very important to understand whenever we're talking
about
sexual desires,
we're so used to the word orientation and
we're used to, you know, certain frame framework
that we have to think through. We're talking
about sexual desires and how they get manifested.
Are these things natural or they're not natural?
Right? Is *
natural or it's not natural?
Depends on how you define it. Right?
It's it's not an easy question to answer.
It's not a black or white question. Because
sexual desires are natural.
But engaging in a relationship with an animal
is not a natural
manifestation
of that desire.
And what happens is,
that you have and I've done I've been
doing a lot of research the whole week
on this. You have very little research
on the phenomenon of * in the medical
community, in the psych psych in this psychiatric
community. You have very little research
being done on this. And there's complaints. They
say, why aren't we studying this phenomenon
in more detail? Because it's something that it's
it's, you know, something that's there to fill
you. Right? So it's something that needs to
be looked at. So from the Islamic perspective,
there if you look at books of Islamic
law, it's called books of fiqh,
you have Muslim scholars saying in there,
that if you, male,
are attracted
to beautiful young boys
with smooth faces,
because they have some feminine characteristics,
you need to control your desires.
It's not something new. This is something that's
been spoken about for a very very long
time.
So is the is the attraction,
can it be natural?
From the sexual perspective, yes.
Is it considered a normal or what's whatever
you however you wanna define morally normal
manifestation of that? No.
And there's a reason behind that. So that's
why when we talk about terminology, we're talking
about words, it's very important for we define
and we understand things like, what does the
word normal mean, and what does the word
natural mean, and what do we mean by
these terms? We have to define these terms
in detail. So this is a very important
aspect of things. Alright.
So from the perspective of Islam.
Alright. From the perspective of Islam, whether it's
a choice or it's not a choice,
is
not
100%
relevant.
The reason why it's not relevant is because
oftentimes,
we have inclinations
to do some things,
we have desires to do things, and that's
simply part of our test in life.
I you know, you can desire
your best friend's wife because she's very beautiful,
or or vice versa, or whatever.
Just because you have that attraction or that
desire to that person, doesn't mean that you
can engage in that desire. Doesn't mean that
it's good. There's a problem with that. Right?
So this is the reality in Islam is
that when it comes to the idea of
normal versus natural,
even if Allah has created us with certain
desires,
that is part of the test
to be able to control and resist those
desires. And people have different tests.
People
are born in war zones
and they grow up under oppressive regimes.
That's their test in life.
So the idea,
the framework of saying, if you're born like
that, then why is it just
or unjust for God to test you with
that?
That is a purely secular framework
of determining what is moral and immoral.
But from an Islamic framework, life is a
test.
And there is nothing wrong
with Allah giving us different types of tests
and different types of inclinations and then saying,
now you need to restrict yourself from engaging
in these things.
That's the Islamic perspective on the issue. And
what Allah says, you know, what the prophet
peace be upon him, he said, if somebody
intended to do a bad deed and he
didn't do that bad deed, Allah will write
one full good deed for that person because
they stopped that thing from happening. Right. So
this is the perspective there. Moving on.
Is it a private issue?
Okay? So this is an important aspect of
things. Is
is homosexuality
a private issue, or is it a public
issue? What should Muslims' perspective
be in terms of, you know, the idea
of
welcoming this or promoting this in society? And
that's the reason why we bring this up
is because there are many Muslims who are,
what's the right way to frame it,
Who are promoters of the gay rights movement.
And they say, we should be part and
parcel of this.
Right? So that's why this issue comes up,
of whether it's private versus public. There are
certain issues which are public which affect us.
You can walk around naked in your house,
but you can't walk around naked in public.
On certain beaches, you can. In many restaurants,
you cannot. Why? Because it's a public issue.
Can you display * in public
in America?
You cannot.
But in Europe, you can.
So this is if you haven't been to
Europe, you walk into a gas station,
right, and you will see
those adult, quote, unquote, adult *
magazines. They're right there on display, and they're
not behind.
They're literally on display in the front. So
you walk in with your 5 year old
to go and pay for your gas, your
your
patrol or whatever they call it there, and
they will your your son will just your
daughter or someone will just look at the
magazine. It's right there open in display.
Many many European countries.
Right? That's just the way it is. Right?
They have casinos
and slot machines
inside of grocery stores. So you imagine, you
walk in your Vons, your Albertsons,
before you even get there, you look over
there and you see a slot machine. People
go to the slot machine, and the money
they had for groceries, they'll gamble it away,
and they're not getting any food because they
just spent it all. It's a different it's
that's that's the way it's perceived. Right? So
there are issues
that are moral issues,
but what's happening is from,
from the secular perspective,
moral issues are seen as something that's private.
You know, you practice your religion, I practice
my religion, he doesn't practice any religion. Our
morality
is whatever you do on a private level.
But there's a public sphere,
and morality affects the public sphere. The same
way *
affects the public sphere, * affect affects the
public sphere, gambling affects the public sphere. All
of these things affect.
So if you had to vote and have
to decide, should we legalize prostitution or should
we criminalize prostitution?
Do we have is prostitution legalized in Orange
County? Can you just is it like a
red light district or something like that? No.
If there was a law
that was being passed to legalize
prostitution.
And someone said, hey,
this is their right. You should not interfere
in your right. You cannot force your moral
vision of the world onto other people who
do not see anything immoral with that. You
go to Amsterdam,
and there's red light districts all over the
place.
You walk by. You know, I remember when
I was 16 year old. I don't know
why. I somehow ended up in Amsterdam.
It was a flight. We got stuck, basically.
So walking by, and you see someone in
a, you know, you know, people sell you
products, like,
there's display windows when you're walking by. There
are women in the display windows while you're
walking down the street, and they're, like,
calling you. That's the culture over there. You
could talk about the harms and the benefits
or whatever of that financial independence and all
of that, but the point is that moral
issues play a role
in the public sphere.
And that's why
the idea of
supporting gay marriage and not supporting gay I
know it's too late now. It's already done.
But, in retrospect,
the idea of Muslims taking a stance
or making a decision
on what type of society they would like
to see plays a major role and many
muslims are,
confused about that. They don't know exactly what
what to think about that. So that's where
we come to the idea of pluralism.
K. Let me say one thing on this.
So
when it comes to these type of issues,
it is not a haram halal issue.
It's not a haram halal issue.
So let me give you an example like
pork.
K.
If the United States of America
had a law about to be voted
whether
to outlaw and ban pork, or whether to
keep it legal,
do are Muslims legally or Islamically obliged to
vote
that pork needs to be banned?
Some people would think yes.
Right? But the answer is no.
The answer is no
because this does not affect
the common this does not affect the public.
And that's why
in
Muslim societies in the past,
real Islamic states in the past, right, what
used to happen is that Christians who were
living as minorities
under Muslim rule or even as majorities under
Muslim rule, they were allowed to have their
pigs.
And they would slaughter their pigs, and they
would eat their pork.
And they were allowed to have their alcohol
for their religious ceremonies,
and they could go and do the communion
with the wine drinking and stuff like that,
because it's not affecting the public good. It's
not gonna be tempting other people.
And when it comes to public issues, there's
something else. Right? So that's the idea of
pluralism that we need to understand.
Who's heard the word pluralism before?
Okay. So pluralism,
in a nutshell, basically, is a framework
on how we can
live with other people and deal with other
people, basically. It means that we're kind of
agreeing to disagree and respect each other and,
you know, you do your thing, and I
do my thing, and I won't infringe on
what you're doing. You don't infringe on what
I'm doing. So you got, let's say, a
Muslim, Jew, Christian, and atheist, and they're all
sitting there, and, you know, he says, look.
You don't wanna believe in God? Okay. I'm
fine with that. And the the the Jew
looks at the Muslims, says, you wanna believe
in prophet Muhammad? Okay. I'm fine with that.
You can believe in that? I don't believe
in that. The Christian says the same thing
to everyone else. And they all live together,
and they kind of come to a common
framework and say, what can we agree upon?
What kind of society would we like to
live? What kind of laws should we have
in our own society that we kind of
generally agree upon and we think is good
for all of us? That's pluralist.
Different from relativism.
Relativism or moral relativism is where the atheist
says, look. I don't believe in God, but
I
believe in Islam as well. And then the
Muslim goes, you know what? I don't believe
that Jesus is God, but I also accept
the trinity that you're believing. And the Jew
looks at both of them and says, I
also believe in Jesus and Muhammad,
although
technically I don't believe that they're prophets, but
I accept them.
It's something is wrong with that framework. There's
a difference between
pluralism in the sense that you maintain your
truth,
you're understanding your concept of truth,
but you're willing to deal with other people
in certain ways. That's what pluralism is. And
that's what this idea of the gay marriage
and, you know,
transgender
bathrooms and all of these things, it all
comes back down to how should pluralism be
defined.
Right? To what extent
or
what level
do we want to regulate what's there in
the public,
and how is that gonna affect our society?
How is it gonna affect our family? How
is it gonna affect our culture? How is
it gonna affect our city? All of these
things we need to understand. Okay? There's no
need to spy on people. If they're doing
something privately in their home, they can do
whatever they want. Right. But in the public
sphere, it's gonna affect everyone else. So that's
where it comes back into.
So when it comes to this issue, like
I said, it's not black or white.
It's not black or white. So there have
been some Muslim scholars,
very few but some, who actually
said that we can make a case
for Muslims
supporting gay marriage.
How?
Right? Someone will think, how? How can they
say something like that? Well, what they're saying
is
this. They're saying this is an issue of
the public good, what's called maslaha.
So the maslaha for them was
that right now
the idea of 1 man marrying 1 woman
is a Christian conception of marriage.
And what that's gonna do is if you
look at what's going on with the, you
know, Republican party and, you know,
really, you know, far right conservatives,
they're not being the most responsible when it
comes to other issues.
Right. So we see there's a problem there.
So what he's saying is
by actually
overturning the idea,
the conservative
Christian idea
of what marriage is, and by removing government's
interference
into what marriage is supposed to be,
we will actually be able to secure
more religious freedom for minority groups.
So he's saying that's a framework.
And of course, the counter response to that
is,
is that
there's actually potentially more harm that can result
from that. Because what's gonna happen is, it
will normalize the behavior on an even greater
level,
on educational
level, on a discrimination
level and all of that, and now people's
right
to free speech to say that they do
not approve of this behavior
is gonna be more and more restricted
with that type of thing. So that's the
argument.
The vote is not there anymore, so it's
done anyways, but that's the framework. That's the
way that it was happening. So that's the
idea of gay marriage, common good, all of
that stuff, private issue. Well, keep in mind,
when I say gay marriage, I'm not talking
about between Muslims. So when it comes to
when it comes to Islam,
marriage is not allowed between people of the
same gender.
So
it's not gonna happen
where someone comes into
where's Sheikh Fakih?
I know he's hiding here somewhere. Alright. He's
he was there. He's not gonna come to
his office and say, look, you know, Muhammad
and Ali would like to get married. Can
you perform the nikah ceremony? Right. He he
cannot do it. He's not able to do
it. Right. But what's very important is he
needs to maintain the right
to be able to say no
without getting a discrimination lawsuit against them?
Because there have been people who've been had
lawsuits against them say, you have no right
to discriminate against me because you're technically violating
the law of California, which says you're discriminating
on the basis of sexual orientation. But, of
course, a private institution, so at the moment,
they're protected, but it may not be
in a in a year or 2 years
or something like that. So that's where it
comes from. Right? So that I wanted to
make that point clear. Let's move on. Discrimination.
How do you,
deal with discrimination?
Alright.
So people who are from the eighties
and prior to that,
there is discrimination
against people who exhibit homosexual tendencies,
regardless of whether they practice or they don't
practice. Right?
The question is, is that justified in Islam?
Is that something that should be happening?
So let's let's take an example. Someone is
a prostitute.
You believe prostitution is immoral. In Islam, prostitution
is immoral.
So you own a grocery store.
Can that person, if they walk in and
you identify that woman, or that man, or
whatever as a prostitute,
should you deny them
the groceries that you're selling?
There's no basis for doing that. Right? Because
regardless of whatever
immorality they're engaging or sin they're engaging them,
you not selling them groceries is not really
gonna help them to stop doing that.
And they're human beings at the end of
the day. You can sell to whoever.
But this became an American issue
when Chick Fil A, you guys heard about,
said, we don't wanna sell to people who
are gay.
And then they would protest and counter protest
and all of these things.
This is not something that's there in Islam.
So what we have to understand I wanna
really make you understand this, is that this
whole debate in America between,
you know, between
one side and the other, between conservatives and
liberals on homosexuality,
it's
it's not so much our debate in the
sense of Muslims. We're kind of in the
middle somewhere.
You have people like this saying, we're not
even gonna sell you our products. And on
the flip side, you have the opposite. And
they're saying, you know what?
We should, you know,
we should we should be able to have
gay marriage. We should be able to sue
you for discrimination. We should be able to
do all of these things. So this is
not an issue from that perspective. Okay? That's
the first point. The second point is when
it comes to Muslims,
we're not supposed to go and abuse and
insult people
who are engaging in something that we consider
to be sinful. So we're not supposed to
because they can change. They can maybe become
better than you. Right? So insulting people, looking
down upon them, all of that, it's not
supposed to be there in Islam. That's discrimination.
And you can work with people
who happen to be engaging in whatever behavior,
whether it's alcoholic or someone is drinking alcohol
or doing whatever it is, you can engage
with them on issues that you agree with,
and there's nothing wrong with that. K. So
I wanted to make that very clear. There's
also something
of,
let's see. There's also reverse discrimination.
So this is a problem as well. So
discrimination is a problem,
but reverse discrimination is a problem as well.
So if you wanted to bake a cake,
you're you're a baker, and someone invites you
and say, I want you to make a
cake, and I want you to put,
you know,
Mary
and Aisha on the cake together, because they're
both getting married. Right? So you say, okay.
Well, this kind of violates my religious belief
because
I feel that this is immoral, and now
I'm promoting a certain type of behavior. It's
not that I'm not selling you groceries,
but I'm promoting a certain type of thing.
You want me to cater to your wedding?
I don't feel comfortable catering to this wedding.
Now you have discrimination
suit against you.
That's one case.
Firefox.
Who uses Firefox browser?
No one uses the Firefox browser?
You use Chrome nowadays?
Okay. So
alright. I I use all 4, so that's
fine. Alhamdulillah.
So Firefox is a is a browser. It
used to be Netscape, Navigator, and all that.
So back in the days, right, when you
only had 2 choices.
This is a company called Mozilla.
The CEO of Mozilla
was forced to resign from his company in
2014.
Why?
He didn't make a single statement against homosexuality.
He didn't make a single statement against homosexuals,
but he donated
to a cause
which was supporting
the prevention of the gay marriage law in
California.
And because of that, he was basically pressured
so much
to resign from his position,
and that's a type of reverse discrimination.
You cannot even say,
unfortunately, you cannot even say that, you know
what, I I would like to support this
law, or I support, you know, the idea
of family or whatever it is, whatever my
definition happens to be. That's a problem. So
reverse discrimination is also a problem. They're both
problems. Alright.
And lastly, there's a difference between
accepting a person
and accepting
the practice of a person. Right? So I
don't wanna keep going in this. I'll need
to move move on. Alright.
Can I be a Muslim and gay?
I want you to understand,
I worded this question specifically
like this.
Alright?
Can I be Muslim and gay?
Alright. So the thing is,
it's yes.
And the reason why it's yes is because
when someone
if someone let me explain 2 things to
you. There is something called same * attraction.
Someone is attracted to someone of the same
*, same gender,
And there's
engaging in the practice
of homosexuality.
Okay? These are 2 separate things,
but what we need to understand is these
2 separate things,
right,
one of them is considered to be sinful.
The other one is not sinful.
SSA, same * attraction,
having the feeling is not sinful unless you
act upon it.
Acting upon it is sinful,
but it's not kufr.
It's not disbelief.
The person still remains a Muslim.
This is something that's important to understand. So
it doesn't make a person a disbeliever.
Alright.
But when someone says, can I be Muslim
and can I be gay? If you mean,
is it alright and it's not sinful and
there's nothing wrong with engaging in the practice
of homosexuality,
then no. Then you're talking about something else.
That's why you have to be very careful
about the warning.
Because many people, they've asked the question to
different scholars and say, is there a place
for gay Muslims
in the masjid?
So what what do you mean by that?
Is there a place for them?
Right. It can mean 2 things.
Meaning that
our people who identify as that, engage in
that, are happy with that, they went and
performed a marriage or whatever it is, can
they be part of the Muslim community? Can
they pray? Can they attend FFN? Can they
attend, you know, our archery event tomorrow? Can
they do all of these things?
Yes.
Can
they come in
and propagate their views and say, you know
what? You have to accept that, you know,
I have this legitimate
opinion and everything else. No. So there's a
difference between making a space and acceptance.
Acceptance as a person versus acceptance of the
act needs to be differentiated between that. Alright.
So that's important.
Lastly, I know I'm running out on time,
so I wanna make sure there's time for,
open queue. So I'm gonna cut this short.
We probably need a longer 3 hour seminar
on this topic to really do it justice.
But to finish up, we need support groups.
I wanna be very very clear with you.
I get people every month
emailing me
and saying,
look, Sheikh,
I have these same desires,
and I have the same * attraction,
and I don't know what to do about
it, and I don't know when it started,
and I don't choose it, and it's driving
me crazy, and I'm not trying to, you
know, reinterpret the Quran. I'm not trying to
do anything else, but I don't know what's
gonna happen to me. And I'm not talking
about 1 or 2 or 3 people.
I'm talking dozens of people
reaching out.
I talked to Sheikh Omar Suleiman, same thing's
happening to him. Shaykh Yasser Qadi, same thing's
happening to him. We're getting tons of people
asking us these questions. This is a very
serious issue.
And one of the things which exacerbates the
issue, it makes it worse, is they say,
I tried to bring up the topic
in my youth group,
and all the Muslims just started making fun
of me, and they started laughing, and they
shut me down.
And what ends up happening is, like, now
I'm struggling with my faith. I don't even
know whether I could be part of the
community or not anymore.
This is a problem.
It's not just a problem that they're going
through. It's a problem for the whole community
because of the way people are responding to
this. And I wanna make it very clear,
is that regardless of what's going on or
whether it's social environment, conditional, and all of
that stuff, There are practicing Muslims who pray
5 times a day. Their prayer, the khushuah,
the concentration in their prayer is greater than
mine and yours combined.
And they're struggling with this issue.
So it's a serious thing.
It's not something that should be taken lightly.
And it's not something that should just be
joked off.
Right? So we need to be very careful
about this. And we really need support groups
for people, Muslims specifically, who are going through
this because they don't know how to deal
with it.
And most imams don't know how to deal
with it. I don't know exactly know how
to deal with it. I'm learning a little
bit as I go along, but we don't
exactly know how to deal with this case.
But there needs to be some advice. These
people are still Muslim. These people are still
praying. These people still read the Quran. There
are people who memorize the entire Quran and
they're dealing with this. Some people think, No.
It can't be. How can someone memorize We
have really weird conceptions of things. How can
someone memorize the Quran and somehow be dealing
with this? This is the reality. If you
think something's wrong with that, then something is
wrong with your understanding.
I just need to throw these things out
there to clarify.
You can have someone who went and studied
10 years of sharia, and they're gonna be
dealing with this issue.
It's the reality.
Right. So it's important to understand that, and
it's important to learn how to deal with
these things. First thing you can do is
be supportive and not shut people down,
especially when they're struggling. When they're trying to
convince you
to change
what Islam says, that's a whole different ballgame.
When someone is struggling with this and they're
saying, I need to know what to do
with this and what am I supposed to
do, that's totally different thing. So it's very
important to understand that point. There was a
one of the companions of the prophet one
of the sahaba,
he used to be a drinker, and he
used to drink a lot. And one time
he got drunk and fine, and he used
to drink a lot. So one time he
got drunk,
and the sahaba, the other sahaba, they brought
him in,
and they started cursing this guy.
And the prophet shalallahu alaihi wa sallam stopped
them and said, don't curse him. He loves
Allah and his messenger.
So this guy has a drinking problem. Yes.
We're not justifying his drinking problem.
He's got a problem, but that doesn't negate
everything else. And our job is to support
people like this. So
we need to adjust our attitude when it
comes to this. Alright? Conclusion, and then I'll
open up to questions. This is a very
serious issue.
Take it seriously.
Number 2. We need education on this issue.
Because if I'm speaking to a more elder
generation. If you think that because you grew
up a certain way, then all of a
sudden your kids are automatically gonna become that
way, it's simply not gonna happen for all
the reasons that I mentioned at the beginning.
It's a different generation. It's a different,
influx
of information that is being presented. It's a
different culture.
There needs to be proper education and discussions
on this. Like I said, support is needed,
and a few things we need to start
practicing
from the prophet salallahu alaihi wasalam. Because, again,
we don't know exactly
for sure how this happens,
but we know that there are certain measures
that we're recommended to do, which we're generally
not doing. So here's some advice I wanna
give you. Alright.
The prophet, peace be upon him, said, order
your children to pray when they're 7, discipline
them when they reach the age of 10
for prayer,
and separate their beds.
Now prayer is very very important at a
young age because it helps establish strong faith.
But separating their beds
at this age is basically saying that you
don't leave
them in the same bed. They have a
separate
bed. Now we can reflect upon this for
a long time. Think about the wisdom behind
that, and you'll see that this plays into
what we're talking about here. The prophet
said, young men, whoever is able to should
get married, and whoever cannot should fast, and
that will be a protection for him. So
the idea of fasting and learning to control
our desires, we live in a society where
we act upon our desires as quickly as
possible. You have Tinder app and you keep
flipping through different people, you know, looking. I
know you guys are I know you guys
are laughing because you do it. Right?
People are doing it. Right? You have people,
they want a different flavor. They want a
different phone. They wanna upgrade something. They feel
like they have to have something right now.
So when desires are out of control, it
affects all the type of desires that you
have that are out of control. And lastly,
Allah teaches us in the Quran, do not
ascribe purity to yourselves. Walatu zaku and fusaku.
People are struggling with this issue. They're dealing
with it. Don't think that you're better than
somebody else. In the sight of Allah subhanahu
wa ta'ala, someone who struggles with this may
be much higher than you because you don't
struggle with the same thing. InshaAllah. We're gonna
open it up for questions, inshaAllah. We have
some microphones.
We have our youth, alhamdulillah, on the microphone.
I want to
help and encourage the youth
to do what we generally do during question
time. So we really need only questions.
Only questions. If I don't see a question
coming, I'm gonna have to stop you, and
I'm gonna help the people who have the
microphone to be able to take the microphone
away from you. Because I know people who
are elder, they're gonna be like, this young
person, they can't get the microphone away from
me. I got your back. Don't worry. Go
ahead.
So just to clarify,
you brought up the example of, you know,
Ali and Omar, I believe it was. If
they go to a sheikh, they cannot get
married. However,
say they chose to get married in the
state of California,
California would recognize them as a married couple.
Does that mean that they would no longer
be considered Muslim?
No.
No. I'll repeat that for the I don't
does, the question go on the livestream or
no?
Okay. So the question was,
Ali and Umar,
go to the masjid and the imam says
they cannot get married, so they go to
the state of California. They get married,
from the state of California, are they not
Muslim anymore? The answer is no.
I have a question about,
what you said with voting,
you know, or sending signing petitions and things.
Because I know the LGBT community supported
Muslims during the Muslim bans. You know, they
they spoke up against that. So we get
things you know, we're getting all these petitions
now.
Something like today, I got one with Trump,
and he banned
transgender, I believe, in the military. So asking
you to sign that. As a Muslim, should
you sign that or not?
So the sign the petition for what? Different
petitions. Like, today, one came through saying
to say Okay. So so let me so
so to understand your question, your question is
basically
because the,
gay community
supports Muslims on Muslim issues, like the Muslim
ban, should we support them on their issues?
Is that your question? If they're being discriminated
against. If they're being discriminated against. Okay. So
there's nuance to the answer. So the question
is,
if someone
is being discriminated against
along the lines of what I mentioned in
terms of not being sold products or being
denied certain basic human rights, then yes. Absolutely.
We should definitely
support them.
When it comes to,
other issues in terms of promoting
their moral values,
that's an issue that's gonna be on a
case by case basis. Because sometimes
discrimination
is is,
claimed,
but while combating it, you're actually promoting certain
moral values. And we have to be careful
about publicly promoting moral values that conflict with
our moral values
unless they're really not a problem for the
society at large.
Next question.
Right here.
My simple question. The $1,000,000
question here. Mhmm. Is it or is it
not forbidden in Islam?
Alright. I'll give
you the $1,000,000,000 answer. I don't get it
anymore. This is confusing. I'll give you the
$1,000,000,000 answer. I can't wait. Same * attraction
is not unlawful in Islam. Practicing
homosexuality
is unlawful in Islam.
So
homosexuality is forbidden in Islam like pork, like
eating pork. K. So when you say homosexuality,
it can mean 2 things. It can mean
same * attraction,
or it can mean engaging in the act.
So the attraction is not prohibited.
The act is prohibited.
Does that make sense?
Wow.
Who understood that answer? Just raise your hand.
So
I'm not I'm not going crazy.
Next.
Down.
Is it off?
Okay. Go ahead. Speak louder.
What does it mean in a as a
Muslim to be an ally to the LGB?
LGBT community. Yeah. Yeah. So what does it
mean as a Muslim to be an ally
to the LGBT
movement or IQ or keeps going.
So what it means is when you when
you're an ally, you need to define what
you mean by being an ally. Right? Does
that mean that you're gonna support every single
cause
that that group promotes?
Right? And if that's the case, then it
can be very problematic because you're promoting
certain moral values which are actually probably gonna
affect you
as a person and affect your family or
affect the society as a whole. So some
things are gonna be fine,
and some things are not gonna be fine.
So it's on a case by case basis.
That's why when we ally with people, we
should not ally with them
in general. Like, we don't say, we're gonna
ally with Christians
on every Christian cause.
That's not the case. Right? If a Christian
is being discriminated against, if a Christian is,
you know, going through poverty or something like
that, we can ally with them on that.
We should never ally with any group
on all of their causes as a group.
And that's very, very important. It should be
on a case by case basis, on a
specific incident by incident basis. John.
Okay. You said,
at, I mean, same * attraction is
is okay.
And acting is haram. Okay. That's what I
hear, I think. Okay. Let's say, verse, you
selling,
whiskey is haram, or drinking whiskey is haram?
Can you,
please make
clear explanation?
I'll take your example. Okay?
Being attracted to whiskey
is halal,
and drinking whiskey is haram.
You said selling?
Oh, selling whiskey.
Okay.
I don't I don't understand the exact I'm
not understanding the example. What does selling whiskey
have to do with,
right. But are are you talking about whiskey
or are you talking about homosexuality? Are you
are you making an example?
Yeah. But I'm not understanding
we're selling
somehow.
Right. Right. So you're you're saying selling whiskey
is like same * attraction?
Yes.
Yes. K. But how I don't I don't
understand how.
Yeah. It's haram. You should not sell whiskey.
Yeah.
Okay. Let me ask you, is is being
being addicted to whiskey, but not drinking it,
is it haram?
Is it haram to be addicted? You're craving
it, but you don't drink it. Is it
haram?
It's not.
That's the same issue.
Next question.
Assalamu alaikum.
This is more of a hypothetical question, but,
what is the main difference between
punishing somebody and the criteria for punish and
the criteria for punishing somebody for committing zina
and the punishment for somebody committing a homosexual
act in Islamic law. Okay. So, what is
the criteria
for,
punishing someone committing adultery versus someone
committing
a homosexual act. So scholars have actually differed
on this. And the main difference is,
many scholars have said it's like adultery. So
engaging in something outside of the realm of
marriage, it's the same punishment as fornication or
adultery.
Imam Abu Hanifa
and ibn Hazm and others,
their opinion is that this is not the
same. It's actually a lesser of a penalty
because it's not considered to be *,
technically. So they viewed it as something different
than *. So the penalty is just a
discretionary
punishment, whatever. You know? It could be a
a slap on the wrist or a glance
or a look or something like that. So
it's actually less. So there's a difference of
opinion on that. Last question. I'm sorry. We're
they're waiting to pray. Okay. So we we
this has to be I'll stick around if
anyone wants to ask me questions afterwards. I'll
stick around after the prayer inshallah.
No
sisters?
No sisters that haven't asked any questions yet?
There's a ton of brothers, so
okay.
So when you said, in Islamic perspective, is
homosexuality
a choice or not?
You said that it's it depends?
So I said in in Islam, is homosexuality
a choice? It's not clear cut. It's ijtihad.
Ijtihad of whether or not it's a choice.
We don't know for sure. Right. So having
the desire is not a sinful act, but
doing the act is a sinful act. That
means it is a choice of a person
to do that act or not. So to
me, according to Islam, it is a choice
then. What I meant by I meant same
* attraction,
whether that's a choice or not.
Does that
Even doing the act Right. To me, it
seems like that it is a choice of
a person. If if I have the desire,
then that's great. But if I do the
act, it is my choice to do the
act or not. No. No. You're right. Doing
the act is a choice. What I meant
was, is same * attraction a choice
or not a choice? Does that make is
that clear? Yeah.
Sorry. That's it. We gotta end. Okay. Insha'Allah.
So we ask Allah subhanahu wa ta'ala to
give us a deeper understanding of this issue
and to purify our hearts. Ameen
Part 2? Part 2? Yes. Raise your hand.
Okay. Alright. Anyone interested in a
a discussion on transgender?