11 The Trial of Homosexuality

Bob Marley Show Episode 11 the trial of homosexuality. This podcast has been brought to you by half our deen.com and Muslim marriage website designed for those who want to find that other half privately because the only people that should know you're looking to get married or people who are looking to get married. Try half our Deen today. Sometimes in our Muslim communities, we think if we don't talk about a certain subject, it's just gonna go away by itself. So we pretend the elephant in the room isn't there, but it's really hard to do because there's an elephant in the room. Well, today's topic is another issue you'll never hear about at Juma homosexuality. Yeah, you know what

time it is is time to talk about the elephant in the room. Easy. Easy. Let's do this.

Cultural Muslims have confused the masses and speakers are forced to be politically correct.

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Hey, man, why you're serious. This is just a podcast.

Talking about certain taboo subjects on this podcast can be challenging. finding people who have the courage to talk about these subjects is even more challenging. Today's guest Sheikh Mustafa Omar is here today to discuss a trial of homosexuality on the Muslim community. Chef Mustafa was born and raised in Orange County, California. He has traveled around the world and has a degree in theology and Islamic law which was taught completely in Arabic By the way, and he has his master's in Islamic Studies. as impressive as his resume is shed. Mustafa has the rare asset of being able to fuse together through traditional Islamic education with the academic experience of both the Arab and

Western worlds all combined with a deep understanding of modern culture. Plus, he's a pretty cool guy that's not afraid to speak the truth. So who else to cover this topic? The shift Mustafa Omar Welcome to the Baba Ali show. Assalamu aleikum wa Alaykum wa Salaam Jazakallah khair chef for coming on board for this episode. This is not an easy topic to cover. So one person in particular contacted me said, Ali, I really like your videos. I like what you're talking about. And I'm interested in becoming Muslim. But I have one question. I'm gay. And I'm wondering what Islam says about homosexuality? This is not usually an easy question to answer. But the way I answered it was that

I'm not gay myself. So I don't know how it is to have those desires. But as a straight person, I can tell you, I have desires myself as well, this slump, it helps tame us from going into those routes. Because there's two paths in life, there is one path of us following our desires, and is that other path of us falling with our Creator has set for us to do so as a straight person, if I just want to follow my desires, I can go that direction and fulfill those desires, but I wouldn't be going after what the Creator has set for us. And same thing for you, you have these desires, which is what not the creator designed for you. Therefore you have to go towards the right path. And that was the best

way I can explain it. Have you ever experienced any type of issue with someone who's battling this or dealt with this and then became Muslim? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I get a lot of these cases. Probably the most interesting one to me was one time I was at a local university. And I was giving a class to non Muslims about Islam. 101, kind of, and there was a girl in the front row who looked like the most interested out of all the people sitting there. And at the end, she asked me a question about homosexuality. And I answered, you know, what is Islam stance on it and all of that, and that's when I noticed that the girl who was sitting next to her, they were holding hands. And so

after, you know, after the program was done, one of the MSA brothers came up to me and he's like that girl, you know, who asked that question? Do you notice something? I'm like, Yeah, I noticed something. She seemed really interested in Islam. But is she gay? He's like, yeah, she's a lesbian. And that's her girlfriend sitting next to her interesting. I remember leaving the University. I'm just like, handling the girl was so interested. But that's like a deal breaker, you know, for a lot of people. So I'm like, okay, nothing's gonna happen there. And lo and behold somebody like maybe two years later, three years later, one of the MSA brothers calls me like, you remember that sister?

I'm like, Yeah, I actually do like, vaguely, I do remember her? Something. I probably wouldn't forget that. She just took her Shahada, like last week. Wow. You know, that's amazing, you know? And I'm like, so How's she doing? You know, are you guys teaching her how to pray? what's what's going on with her? Oh, she's doing amazing. She's doing, you know, five prayers. She's wearing hijab, like better than you know, even then the other sisters at school and all that. I was like, wow, you know, that's pretty good. It's amazing. When are those wants to guide somebody? He guide somebody? Absolutely. Absolutely. But the interesting thing was at some of the people who were talking to her,

they said, What's the most difficult thing that you've encountered while being a Muslim? And she's like, Look

Praying was not a difficult thing, it was easy for me wearing Hijab was easy for me. Giving up pork was easy for me giving up alcohol was easy for me. She said, the most difficult thing I've ever faced in my life was to give up my identity of being homosexual. And I'm doing it for Allah. Mashallah. And, for me, that was so powerful, because I can just imagine, you know, what kind of struggle I can't imagine to be honest with you what kind of struggle you know, that entails, I can somewhat imagine we all have desires, like you said, but that's something that people are dealing with, and people are struggling with on a daily basis in America and other parts of the world. As a

mom, and Chef, you have more exposure to problems of our communities more than an average person may be clueless to. With that said, Have you seen it like an increase in homosexuality issues within the Muslim community? Absolutely. I mean, not only me personally, but every email I talk to around the country. Yeah. Even in Western Europe, and all that. They say that they're dealing with, you know, cases of homosexuality in the Muslim community on a regular basis. You know, so I get the cases, and I get to talk to so many other people. There's a lot of cases coming out, you know, so there's, there's definitely an increase in the Muslim community. There's even some other interesting

developments. Like there's supposedly three gay Moms. I'm not sure if they're really, you know, a moms in terms of scholars, but they lead some kind of community, gay mosques are coming up. There's even people performing gagne gas and all that stuff. Wow. So there's an increase for sure. So where do the moms come with their delille? That this is allowed? Because obviously, we all know that, I mean, the story of Luke explains this, clearly, this is something that's not allowed. Whereas their justification, yeah. So that what they try to do is they try to twist around the verses of the story of Prophet Luke in the Quran, to try to make it seem like it's a modern concept of as long as you're

engaging in consensual relationships, then it's okay, because the consensual part makes it okay. So they're trying to reinterpret the story of Luke saying that, Oh, it was not because of their homosexuality, that they were, you know, being punished by a law, it was because they were not consenting in the relationship, there has never been a scholar in history you ever made that kind of claim, there's no room in the text to even try and read that into the verse. But when your desires want to take you in a certain direction, you'll go ahead and try to justify to yourself, or maybe shaitaan will whisper to you and try and make you justify to yourself while you're doing what you're

doing. And it's not the first time that people change verses to the Quran, or the interpretation of it for the sake of their own desires, we have people that will try to make alcohol hollow, yeah, don't make things that are lost, the panda has made very, very clear halaal into her arm and the haramaty halaal. Unfortunately, this is a trap that a lot of people fall into. And this is one of the things we should all be careful of. As far as the people you've heard, they've been battling with this issue. Is it just brothers or sisters dealing with it as well, then our sisters are definitely dealing with this as well. It's not just the brothers that some people might assume, you

know. So I've actually dealt with cases that sisters are going through the same thing. For me personally, it was a lot less in the sense that most Muslim sisters won't tell me something like this. But when I speak to other Muslim women leaders, they tell me that they get all these cases, because they feel more comfortable telling a Muslim, you know, like a chef, who would like a Muslim female scholar who'd actually studied, a lot of people have this assumption, it's just going to be a guiding kind of like smoking almost, it's assumed to be like a male thing. But we know that it's not limited to males, it's definitely a female issue as well. So it's out there and Muslim sisters also

going through this and actually struggling with it. And to be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if women were actually more prone to homosexuality, because you know, girls tend to be closer to each other. Whereas guy is kind of like a, you know, don't touch me, man, you know, keep your distance, you know, the girls are kind of touchy feely, you know, how can, you know, you know, all that kind of things, because there's less barriers between them, there's potentially more room for designers to kind of get in the way and get twisted around. Yeah, and it'll be hard to detect as well, because as you said, naturally, guys have a certain zone that they don't get into. But girls, their zones

are much closer. And your friends if they're walking really close to each other, it could just be two friends are really close. No matter how close two guys are. They're not usually that close.

It walkie with each other or holding hands or something like that.

In America, in America, some boys Emily's guys hold hands. It's actually part of the culture. Yeah, but if two guys are holding hands at the masjid, that ain't brothers.

There's something going on.

Yeah, so what do you think is leading to this increase in homosexuality today? There's a number of factors. The first one I think probably the most prevalent factor is this a normalization of the behavior in society today. And the reason why there's that normalization is you have a very powerful LGBT lobby.

LGBT, you know, for those of you who are not familiar with it stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender. And they're actually like a lobby, like a political lobby, like the feminist movement, like the Zionist lobby, you know, for Israel and all that they actually have a very strong lobby, where if anyone, you know, tries to say something against homosexuality or against a person or whatever it may be, there's people monitoring that, and then watching that, and all of a sudden, you know, they're going to be targeted and something's going to happen. So what's happened is because of the strength of that movement, that behavior is become normalized. In movies, it's become

normalized. In music, you have a bunch of actors and actresses that came out, claiming that we're coming out of the closet, some celebrity athlete came out, and then President Obama came and called him and congratulated him for having the courage to come out, it's become normalized. So when it becomes normalized, it's automatically going to start increasing, because anyone who has those desires, and they feel that they're like, well, there's nothing wrong with this, right? So why shouldn't I just act on my own desires. So there's that and then we live in a hyper sexualized society, where everything around you is just about, you know, billboards, and then the movies are

like, they're rated PG, but then they're technically are the rated R, they're like rated x.

x or something like that. We live in that kind of society, without divine guidance, without divine moral and family values coming from a law coming from our Creator, people just just act on your desires, just do whatever you feel like, and this is what leads to the increase today. What effect Do you think the whole homosexuality has made on the Muslim community? Well, we can't see all the real effects because most gay Muslims, they kind of wear two masks, and they don't really come out with it. So other Muslims, you know, generally don't know, like Imams, like they're more privy to this information, because people go to them for counseling, maybe a few their friends know, but

usually, they kind of like their family won't even know because they just go out and maybe hang out with non Muslims and only their non Muslim friends know the family never finds out. So the actual effects are hard to determine. But it's definitely going to have a major impact when it starts becoming number one more open. And number two, obviously, this can break apart, families can break apart relationships, it brings a person away from their Creator, from away from the Quran away from Allah, that's one of the worst effects that you can possibly imagine within the Muslim community. I can imagine also could be breaking up marriages as well, if either the wife or the husband is

dealing with this issue. Yes, yes. And that actually does happen. I've gotten several cases like that, you find the spouse supportive for a period of time. But if they find themselves not able to cope with it, or you know, not trying to seek proper treatment, or counseling, or definitely messes up a marriage, especially when there's kids involved, and all of that becomes really, really a mess. May Allah protect us from that? I mean, what is your biggest concern when it comes to homosexuality just becoming just so normal in our society today, I have two main concerns. My first main concern is that as Muslims, we're gonna lose our right to feel that homosexuality is immoral. Let me give an

example. So if you ask the average person, Muslim or non Muslim, right, what do you think about marrying your own mother to be like? Grossman, which we talked about? How can you marry your own mother, right? And if you say, well marry your own sister, that man, you're sick, Dude, what's wrong with you? But you wouldn't be labeled like an insect, or something like that. If you're against the idea of incest, because it's still in society. It's considered that yeah, this is something immoral, almost across the board. People still feel that way. And they're not prevented from expressing those feelings. But what my fear is that we're going to actually as Muslims and other people who don't

agree with this behavior, they're going to be discriminated against. Let me give you an example. The CEO of Mozilla. Mozilla is the company that makes the Firefox web browser. So his name was Brendan Eich. And what he did was he was a CEO. He was the head of the company of Mozilla. This is the guy who invented a computer language called JavaScript, which is used like all over the internet, right? So this guy never made a statement about a homosexual or about homosexuality. All he did was he donated just $1,000, which is nothing for his status, right? He just donated $1,000 to a California prop eight political campaign to help ban gay marriage and keep it banned in the state of

California. So all of a sudden, gay activists from around the world organize a boycott against the Firefox internet browser, and they force this guy to step down as CEO. They can't even be the CEO. He never made a single statement against a gay person or even against homosexuality. Just he just donated because he believes that marriage should be between a male and a female. Shouldn't it be between two of the same gender? Wow. And I have cases where Muslim brothers and sisters, they're in their company and all of a sudden they mentioned something like, you know, I can't believe this homosexuality is spreading among the community and all of that someone goes and tells their boss,

their boss calls them in. Did you make the statement said Well, yeah, I did. I didn't mean it in a bad way or something. said thank you, you can pack your bags and don't let the door hit you on the way out, they see the fire immediately. And this is

Very, very alarming. So my number one concern is that we're going to lose our ability to even express ourselves in terms of what our moral stances on homosexuality, and that's going to cause it to become more normalized in the community. So that's number one, right? My second concern, which is actually my biggest, biggest concern is that it's going to desensitize Muslims to the idea of homosexuality, meaning that homosexuality being immoral, I know Muslim youth, and I meet them on a regular basis, who they're actually fighting for gay rights. Don't get me wrong, you know, there's a difference between, you know, not harassing someone because he's gay, you know, like radical

Christians, they go, and you know, they blow up gay nightclubs. That's, that's wrong. as Muslims, we're not supposed to do those kind of things. But my concern is that Muslim youth, especially those who are very active in the political and, you know, civic engagement, and all of that, they start to equate the gay rights movement with the civil rights movement, or like, this is like a fight for religious freedom, right. And when they do that, this is going to be a danger to Islamic morals. So I get Muslim youth all the time, when they hear me getting asked the question about homosexuality, and I say, you know what, according to Islam, it's unnatural. And it's immoral. Some people actually

come up to me and people I would never imagine as a practicing Muslim, they come up and they're like, you know, I can't believe you're a homophobe. I can't believe you would say something like that. What are you talking about? Man? This is the Islamic stance. This is the position How could you? How could even make a statement like that? So I asked him, I said, Do you believe in the story of Prophet Luke, you know, the straight profit lot in the front? And he's like, Yeah, but that's that was consensual, they try and twist the story around, just like, you know, I was telling you before about the moms and all that, and I'm afraid this is gonna affect Muslim youth at a level,

that's so great, it's gonna be very difficult to backtrack and bring them back to the right path. For the parents listening, what advice for those who have their children or their kids that are coming to them, and they're dealing with these type of desires, it depends on really what age the kids are. I mean, at a young age, we need to prepare our kids, we need to instill the word of Allah into their heart. And we need to teach them to accept the wisdom of law, as it is, without trying to you know, twist it around or something like that. So when they learn the story of profit loss, when they learn about the concept of marriage, they learn about controlling their desires, they're going

to learn all of these things. This is one something that, you know, we need to really focus on prevention before you know we're dealing with crisis management all the time. Yeah, I didn't you know, I never took my my my children. I never taught them how to pray. I never took them for Jamal and never got them involved in the Muslim community. But now all of a sudden, look, he's coming with the boyfriend home. You know, my son came with a boyfriend home and my girl came with a girlfriend home. What do I do now? Yeah, used to be just said, My son came with the girlfriend home. Now you have your daughter?

Exactly, exactly. And the thing is, for parents, they start to panic, all of a sudden, they're like, Okay, this is way too far. Now we have to intervene. I mean, my first thing is they needed to build up that Islamic identity, they need to be taught the importance of praying to a las panatela, studying the Quran, being around good Muslims having good company, it would be less likely they would fall into this. Now, if they're already into this, of course, why don't you can abandon you with no advice, what I would recommend is you need to because this already happened, it's probably better that you bring them to either a chef and a man or a Muslim counselor who has an understanding

of an Islamic worldview, not just any old Muslim counselor, you know, and take them to someone who's specially trained in this field who deals with these cases on a regular basis, I think they would be able to do the best because parents oftentimes they may not know how to deal with this, this is so like way out there for them, they have absolutely no idea how to deal with it, and they may deal with it in the wrong way. So it's actually best to go to your local expert or find an expert on this could actually talk to your your child to son or daughter about this and what it means and about, you know how this happens and about desires and kind of make a plan for what they really want to do.

As for you know, children who are young, and it hasn't happened to them, we just we got to go back to the advice of the Prophet peace be upon him. He said, many people have heard the Hadees before to order your children to pray when they're seven years old. So meaning you teach them how to pray when they're seven, you start disciplining them about the prayers when they're 10, meaning you make sure that they're praying, you give them three years to learn how to pray to love, prayer, and all of that. And then the last part of the Hadees it says and separate their beds. This is the part that many people skip, and separate their beds, meaning Do not let your own kids sleep in the same bed

because now they're reaching the age of maturity, where they start getting interested, they're going through puberty, they're having hormones and all of that. So what that means is take all kinds of precautions not only separating their beds, train your male children to have masculine characteristics, you know, not not chauvinism, but masculine characteristics. Train the female train your daughters to have female characteristics, because when they start hanging around too much of the opposite gender or they start trying to imitate the other gender, they may start feeling like that type of identity and that's when gender identity and sexual

Identity starts to get blurred. And these kind of things start happening. These ideas start popping up in people's minds, their feelings start to change. So we need to be very, very proactive in these things and follow the wisdom that the Quran and the Prophet peace requirements given us. Wow, that's great advice. And I think a lot of parents who are listening, they'll find that as very fruitful advice that they can benefit from. And then for the adults that are listening, the people who know that this is wrong, but they're fighting the desire. Do you have any advice for them? My number one advice is just remember that everybody struggles, Allah subhanho wa Taala test different people with

different things. Some people are tested with drinking, they started off in the wrong path in life, and they're stuck in drinking, doing drugs. Some people they're tested dating, they want to have relationships, they like girls, or they like guys, some people's test is trying to earn a lot of income. They're always around some type of haraam income, something to do with interest, something to do with cheating, or stealing. Some people's test is halaal food, you know, finding cloud food in the community, it can be difficult as well. Everyone has different struggles. What you need to remember is your struggle is valid. It's not that it's not valid. It's not that you've done

something wrong for having the feelings. But what you need to remember is don't try to rationalize your behavior and say, You know what, if I feel this way, then I'm just going to act on my feelings. And that's what I should do. Because there are many people who have many weird feelings, many strange feelings, so many different type of feelings, but you don't act upon them, you're supposed to stop yourself. So don't rationalize your behavior. Don't try to justify it. Don't try to claim that you know, your feelings are an identity for yourself. And always remember that Allah subhanaw taala has promised us that he is not going to test anyone with more than they can handle. So

whatever test you're going through, whatever you know, whatever you're feeling at the time, this is a test that Allah knows you can handle it. So just remember, you can handle it. And the greater the test, the more reward, that's really what my advice would be, is just hang in there. And also, you know, try to get help, try to speak to people who can understand this issue and kind of give you advice on it. Just be very careful of going to a secular counselor. Because if you go to a just a counselor who has been trained in like Freudian psychology or something like that, they also believe it's normalized and that it's justified and there's nothing wrong with it. So they're going to just

try to convince you that hey, it's okay. You feel this way, whatever it is, be very cautious about seeking those people who don't counsel based upon divine guidance from Allah, I would say see an islamically trained counselor or see a chef who deals with these issues, who's qualified and knowledgeable about how to deal with these issues and inshallah with the help of a law with constant prayer with constant with patients and sub you will get through this inshallah every single time I do an episode, I always learn something and hamdulillah I've again, learned some very good knowledge ahamed Allah, may Allah allow us to implement this knowledge and keep us all strong. So can you

please let our listeners know how we can find you or any of the programs you're currently working on? Yeah, I actually run a school called the College of Islamic Studies. And I recommend everyone try to enroll in some courses. This will really develop your foundation in Islam so that you can have a solid foundation of understanding Islam so you can navigate all the issues that you deal with in life as a Muslim. So the website for that is college islam.com. Simple as that college islam.com. And my personal email address is public. It's been a problem. If anyone has any questions about anything, please feel free to email me My email address is Muslim, and USDA [email protected]. And I'll be

more than glad to answer any questions that come along or take any comments just Sokoloff. And with that said, I'd like to thank my guest chef Mustapha Omar for joining us today to discuss this taboo issue judoka for all the listeners supporting this podcast, and for all the positive feedback. If you enjoyed this series, please go to iTunes and subscribe. And if you guys can leave me a review on iTunes. That'd be amazing. JazakAllah fair for everyone. You stayed all the way to the very end of this podcast again, go to Baba Ali show.com the links of all my guests, including today's guests will be there so you don't have to memorize anything. And this is Bobby Lee reminding you just in

case you forgot. I said I'm on a camera today.