Yasir Qadhi – Islam’s Views on LGBTQ – Ask Shaykh YQ #123

			My question was, how do you navigate the waters? When someone asks, What does Islam say about LGBTQ
		

			people? And
		

			107? Me call the league in Laurie Jalan? No, he lay him first Blue Lake Erie in
		

			June?
		

			That's a very good question. Unfortunately, there's no quick, easy 22nd soundbite that will do the
job. Because the person asking the question, generally speaking, has already made up his or her
mind. For them, it is a matter of certainty, almost to that same * and desires are something that
are completely morally permissible. And perhaps the reason they're asking you, frankly, is simply to
find a 22nd sound bite from you that they can use against you. So I would say honestly, that you
take a step back, you should take a step back and say that, you know, for us, Islam is indeed a
package deal. And we believe that our Lord has told us what is good for us and what is not good for
		

			us. And the question I have for you is, do you believe in God? And if you if you do believe in God,
that would you not accept the morality that comes with belief in God? So I think me personally, I
would always ask them to take a step back. And obviously, if you know your history of ethics, and
philosophy, if you know a little bit more about this type of stuff, you can get to the very, very
early question that Plato himself asked in his famous treaties, is it timaeus? Or forgot the
treaties, but Plato himself asked Is that what exactly is good? And what exactly is evil? Who gets
to decide what is good and evil? So you can begin from that political philosophy, philosophical
		

			premise as well? Who defines good and who defines evil? Where does the notion of good and evil come
from? Because for us, good and evil is something that we cannot decide on our own because we
ourselves are biased? It's like we're choosing for us what's good and evil. And there's this this
circular notion, how can I choose what's good and evil for me, when I'm the one benefiting or being
harmed by my own decisions? So we firmly believe that social conditioning, that's another key phrase
you can use plays a huge role in deciding what is good and what is evil. If an entire society is
doing a particular customer habit, it's almost impossible for them to think that it is evil. And the
		

			classic example is slavery, that for all of human history, and especially here in America, nobody
even thought slavery was wrong. Another example is, is racial discrimination, that for 400 years,
people argued intelligent people, the founding fathers of this country, Abraham Lincoln, as you
should all be aware, did not believe that blacks and whites were equal, not at all, he firmly
believed that his race was superior, morally and intellectually than the other race. And he was
Abraham Lincoln. Why? Because of social conditioning. So we firmly believe that we need a source of
ethics and laws that transcends the human experience, we firmly believe that there has to be a
		

			higher power. And that's what the Koran says. Yeah, lemon hada. isn't the one who created you? Isn't
he more knowledgeable for you than anyone else? Oh, yeah. And the woman Hold up, the one who created
is the one who has the right to tell us so we can go down this philosophical tangent, but as you've
already seen, there's no 22nd clip. And in reality, we have to just take a step back and we say, I
believe certain things are good, because my Lord told me so. And I believe other things are not
good, because my Lord told me so do you want to know why I believe that Allah is my Lord, that the
Quran is my book, that the process is my profit, then you change the conversation from LGBT and
		

			morality, to belief in God to the Quran, to the Prophet sallallahu sallam, that's our fortress, we
can fight and defend far more easier our notions of God in the Koran in this era, that's where we
will win our battles. As for the LGBT, the person coming to you 99.9% of the times, they have
already reached certainty in their minds, if they don't believe in God, they're not going to come to
the conclusion that certain, you know, lifestyle preferences are not morally correct. So we take
them to the bigger question of life and the purpose of life and the existence of God and the
revelation of the Koran, and we argue from there, and then once we win that argument, then we can
		

			proceed to talk about morality and ethics and Allah knows best