http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-040302halekon,0,4713236,full.story?coll=la-home-todays-timesThe

Los Angeles Times
April 3, 2002

Kandahar's Lightly Veiled Homosexual Habits

Society: Restrictions on relations with women lead to greater prevalence of liaisons between men, a professor says.

By MAURA REYNOLDS

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan

In his 29 years, Mohammed Daud has seen the faces of perhaps 200 women. A few dozen were family members. The rest were glimpses stolen when he should not have been looking and the women were caught without their face-shrouding burkas.

"How can you fall in love with a girl if you can't see her face?" he asks.

Daud is unmarried and has sex only with men and boys. But he does not consider himself homosexual, at least not in the Western sense. "I like boys, but I like girls better," he says. "It's just that we can't see the women to see if they are beautiful. But we can see the boys, and so we can tell which of them is beautiful."

Daud, a motorbike repairman who asked that only his two first names and not his family name be used, has a youthful face, a jaunty black mustache and a post-Taliban cleanshaven chin. As he talks, his knee bounces up and down, an involuntary sign of his embarrassment.

"These are hard questions you are asking," he says. "We don't usually talk about such things."
Though rarely acknowledged, the prevalence of sex between Afghan men is an open secret, one most observant visitors quickly surmise. Ironically, it is especially true here in Kandahar, which was the heartland of the puritanical Taliban movement.

It might seem odd to a Westerner that such a sexually repressive society is marked by heightened homosexual activity. But Justin Richardson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, says such thinking is backward--it is precisely the extreme restrictions on sexual relations with women that lead to greater prevalence of the behavior.
"In some Muslim societies where the prohibition against premarital heterosexual intercourse is extremely high--higher than that against sex between men--you will find men having sex with other males not because they find them most attractive of all but because they find them most attractive of the limited options available to them," Richardson says.

In other words, sex between men can be seen as the flip side of the segregation of women. And perhaps because the ethnic Pushtuns who dominate Kandahar are the most religiously conservative of Afghanistan's major ethnic groups, they have, by most accounts, a higher incidence of homosexual relations.
Visitors might think they see the signs. For one thing, Afghan men tend to be more intimate with other men in public than is common in the West. They will kiss, hold hands and drape their arms around each other while drinking tea or talking.

Moreover, there is a strong streak of dandyism among Pushtun males. Many line their eyes with kohl, stain their fingernails with henna or walk about town in clumsy, high-heeled sandals.

The love by men for younger, beautiful males, who are called halekon, is even enshrined in Pushtun literature. A popular poem by Syed Abdul Khaliq Agha, who died last year, notes Kandahar's special reputation. "Kandahar has beautiful halekon," the poem goes. "They have black eyes and white cheeks."

But a visitor who comments on such things is likely to be told they are not signs of homosexuality. Hugging doesn't mean sex, locals insist. Men who use kohl and henna are simply "uneducated." Regardless, when asked directly, few deny that a significant percentage of men in this region have sex with men and boys. Just ask Mullah Mohammed Ibrahim, a local cleric.

"Ninety percent of men have the desire to commit this sin," the mullah says. "But most are right with God and exercise control. Only 20 to 50% of those who want to do this actually do it."
Following the mullah's math, this suggests that between 18% and 45% of men here engage in homosexual sex--significantly higher than the 3% to 7% of American men who, according to studies, identify themselves as homosexual.

That is a large number to defy the strict version of Islam practiced in these parts, which denounces sex between men as taboo. Muslims seeking council from religious elders on the topic will find them unsympathetic.
"Every person has a devil inside him," says Ibrahim. "If a person commits this sin, it is the work of the devil."
The Koran mandates "hard punishment" for offenders, the mullah explains. By tradition there are three penalties: being burned at the stake, pushed over the edge of a cliff or crushed by a toppled wall.

During its reign in Kandahar, the Taliban implemented the latter. In February 1998, it used a tank to push a brick wall on top of three men, two accused of sodomy and the third of homosexual rape. The first two died; the third spent a week in the hospital and, under the assumption that God had spared him, was sent to prison. He served six months and fled to Pakistan.

Apparently to discourage post-Taliban visitors, the owners of a nearby house have begun rebuilding on the site.
"A lot of foreigners came and started interviewing people," says Abdul Baser, a 24-year-old neighbor, who points out the trench where the men were crushed. "Since then they have rebuilt the wall."

But many accuse the Taliban of hypocrisy on the issue of homosexuality. "The Taliban had halekon, but they kept it secret," says one anti-Taliban commander, who is rumored to keep two halekon. "They hid their halekon in their madrasas," or religious schools.

It's not only religious authorities who describe homosexual sex as common among the Pushtun. Dr. Mohammed Nasem Zafar, a professor at Kandahar Medical College, estimates that about 50% of the city's male residents have sex with men or boys at some point in their lives. He says the prime age at which boys are attractive to men is from 12 to 16--before their beards grow in. The adolescents sometimes develop medical problems, which he sees in his practice, such as sexually transmitted diseases and sphincter incontinence. So far, the doctor said, AIDS does not seem to be a problem in Afghanistan, probably because the country is so isolated.

"Sometimes when the halekon grow up, the older men actually try to keep them in the family by marrying them off to their daughters," the doctor says. Zafar cites a local mullah whom he caught once using the examination table in the doctor's one-room clinic for sex with a younger man. "If this is our mullah, what can you say for the rest?" Zafar asks.

Richardson, the psychiatry professor, says it would be wrong to call Afghan men homosexual, since their decision to have sex with men is not a reflection of what Westerners call gender identity. Instead, he compares them to prison inmates: They have sex with men primarily because they find themselves in a situation where men are more available as sex partners than are women. "It is something they do," he notes, "not something they are."

Daud, the motorbike repairman, would concur that the segregation of women lies at the heart of the matter.
Daud says his first sexual experience with a man occurred when he was 20, about the time he realized that he would have difficulty marrying. In Pushtun culture, the man has to pay for his wedding and for gifts and clothes for the bride and her family. For many men, the bill tops $5,000--such an exorbitant sum in this impoverished country that some men, including Daud, are dissuaded from even trying.

"I would like to get married, but the economic situation in our country makes it hard," Daud says.
Daud talked about his sex life only in private and after being assured that no photos would be taken.
"I have relations with different boys--some for six months, some for one month. Some are with me for six years," he says. "The problem is also money. If you want to have a relationship with a boy, you have to buy things for him. That's why it's not bad for the boy. Some relationships need a lot of money, some not so much. Sometimes I fix a motorbike and give it to him as a present."

It is not easy to conduct homosexual affairs, he admits. Home is out of the question. "If my father were to find me, he'd kick me out of the house," Daud says. "If you want to have sex, you have to find a secret place. Some go to the mountains or the desert."

Opinions differ as to whether homosexual practices in Kandahar are becoming more open or more closed since the Taliban was defeated. For instance, after anti-Taliban forces arrived in the city in early December, some Westerners reported seeing commanders going about town openly with their halekon. But that has changed in recent weeks since Kandahar's new governor, Gul Agha Shirzai, issued an order banning boys under 18 from living with troops. Officially, the ban is aimed at ending the practice of using children as soldiers.

"It is not that way," says one of the governor's top aides, Engineer Yusuf Pashtun, objecting to the insinuation that the boys may have been used for sex. The governor's order said only that "no boys should be recruited in the army before the age of 18," he adds.

Still, the anti-Taliban commander, who is close to Shirzai, acknowledged that one goal of the order was to keep halekon out of the barracks. The move simply drove the practice underground, he says.

Zafar, the doctor, says that in the community at large the Taliban frightened many men into abstinence. "Under the Taliban, no more than 10% practiced homosexual sex," he says. "But now the government isn't paying attention, so it may go back up to 50%."

But Daud thinks the opposite may happen. If coeducation returns and the dress code for women eases, men will have fewer reasons to seek solace in the beds--or fields or storage rooms--of other men.

"As for me, if I find someone and see she is beautiful, I will send my mother over to her" to ask for her hand in marriage, Daud says. "I'm just waiting to see her."

wow... interesting...

I'm not going to even entertain this post because according to President Ahmadinejad, there are no homosexuals in his Muslim country of Iran. According to him, homosexuality is only an "American phenomenon".

Am I being ridiculous? I think not. According to quite a few anti-war folk, Presidnt Ahmadinejad has no intentions of developing nuclear weapons and GW is just being a war monger at the notion of taking care of Iran.

So, if we are to believe everything he says, he has no gays in the country and since it's only an American problem, no gays in the entire middle east.

My comments:

Conservative Islam is quite strict when it comes to the segregation of men and women. The apparent reason for this is to discourage illicit sexual relations between the two sexes. However, I suspect that Mohammed may have may have had homosexual tendencies and saw this segregation as an indirect means to promote and encourage homoerotica between men. After all, what could be a better way to force someone to engage in homosexual acts than to minimize interaction with women and maximize interaction with other males? It is no different than being in a prison full of males.

I am not sure what is considered worse in Islam: homosexuality or illicit heterosexuality. If the former is worse, then it would stand to reason that segregation between men and women should be eliminated and sexual promiscuity between a male and female should be encouraged in order to eliminate or at least suppress any trace of homosexual passions.

It would be interesting to know how the Wahhabis in Saudi Arabia are handling this issue. I have heard of an old story about Osama Bin Laden who came calling on half-brother, Yeslam bin Laden and inadvertently saw his sister-in-law (Carmen Bin Laden) fully unveiled and he angrily turned away from and told her to cover herself. I wonder if Osama could be the equivalent of a bull homosexual that are found in prisons? His dislike for women certainly fits the profile.

I'm not going to even entertain this post because according to President Ahmadinejad, there are no homosexuals in his Muslim country of Iran. According to him, homosexuality is only an "American phenomenon".

Ahmedinejad was correct. There are indeed no homosexuals in Iran, in the Western sense.

From the article:

But he does not consider himself homosexual, at least not in the Western sense. "I like boys, but I like girls better," he says. "It's just that we can't see the women to see if they are beautiful. But we can see the boys, and so we can tell which of them is beautiful."

I believe Ahmedinejad was referring to American homosexuals as those who continue to be homosexual despite having 24/7 access to Bada Bing!

One more article (not copied here due to length):

The Kingdom in the Closet (http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200705/gay-saudi-arabia) (The Atlantic Magazine)

The most important excerpt from the article that supports the theory that conservative Islam promotes homosexuality:

In Saudi Arabia, “It’s easier to be a lesbian [than a heterosexual]. There’s an overwhelming number of people who turn to lesbianism,” Yasmin said, adding that the number of men in the kingdom who turn to gay sex is even greater. “They’re not really homosexual,” she said. “They’re like cell mates in prison.”

This analogy came up again and again during my conversations. As Radwan, the Saudi American, put it, “Some Saudi [men] can’t have sex with women, so they have sex with guys. When the sexes are so strictly segregated”—men are allowed little contact with women outside their families, in order to protect women’s purity—“how do they have a chance to have sex with a woman and not get into trouble?” Tariq, a 24-year-old in the travel industry, explains that many “tops” are simply hard up for sex, looking to break their abstinence in whatever way they can. Francis, a 34-year-old beauty queen from the Philippines (in 2003 he won a gay beauty pageant held in a private house in Jeddah by a group of Filipinos), reported that he’s had sex with Saudi men whose wives were pregnant or menstruating; when those circumstances changed, most of the men stopped calling. “If they can’t use their wives,” Francis said, “they have this option with gays.”

Gay courting in the kingdom is often overt—in fact, the preferred mode is cruising. “When I was new here, I was worried when six or seven cars would follow me as I walked down the street,” Jamie, a 31-year-old Filipino florist living in Jeddah, told me. “Especially if you’re pretty like me, they won’t stop chasing you.” John Bradley, the author of Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (2005), says that most male Western expatriates here, gay or not, have been propositioned by Saudi men driving by “at any time of the day or night, quite openly and usually very, very persistently.”

Many gay expatriates say they feel more at home in the kingdom than in their native lands. Jason, a South African educator who has lived in Jeddah since 2002, notes that although South Africa allows gay marriage, “it’s as though there are more gays here.” For Talal, Riyadh became an escape. When he was 17 and living in Dalmaslcus, his father walked in on him having sex with a male friend. He hit Talal and grounded him for two months, letting him out of the house only after he swore he was no longer attracted to men. Talal’s pale face flushed crimson as he recalled his shame at disappointing his family. Eager to escape the weight of their expectations, he took a job in Riyadh. When he announced that he would be moving, his father responded, “You know all Saudis like boys, and you are white. Take care.” Talal was pleased to find a measure of truth in his father’s warning—his fair skin made him a hit among the locals.

What does this have anything to with Islam??? Why the general spectrum?

Islamic world is bigger then Afganistan and Saudi Arabia, etc... and they do not represent in any way,shape or form the rest of us. So maybe before you post something in such a large spectrum, you should find a common ground in all countries where Islam is the popular religion.

As for the article, as long as they are consenting adults, who cares. But if there is minors involved, then throw them in jail for a long time and get them the help they need.

What does this have anything to with Islam??? Why the general spectrum?

Islamic world is bigger then Afganistan and Saudi Arabia, etc... and they do not represent in any way,shape or form the rest of us. So maybe before you post something in such a large spectrum, you should find a common ground in all countries where Islam is the popular religion.

As for the article, as long as they are consenting adults, who cares. But if there is minors involved, then throw them in jail for a long time and get them the help they need.

Don't get your knickers in a twist!
I'm guessing that all of this is news to a lot of people (like me) and once they've had a chance to think about it, there may be some interesting observations.

Who knows... Maybe so... just as homosexuality is very common in prisons when men are denied women …

But even if the segregation of the sexes encourages homosexuality ... in countries like Iran they hang homosexuals.

uh oh he better watch what he says or else he'll find himself dead one of these days....

I've heard it said from more than a few friends/family/coworkers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan that the general attitude of Muslim men is that 'women are for making babies, men are for fun'.

Don't get your knickers in a twist!

I would feel agitated. Because based on this observation, we can easily say that all prisoners are homesexuals as well as all priests. And because those conclusions would be completely wrong and offensive, maybe you can understand while I feel agitated when broad spectrums are used


I'm guessing that all of this is news to a lot of people (like me) and once they've had a chance to think about it, there may be some interesting observations.
Maybe you should read a bit more if this is news to you especially on closed, tribalistic societies.

What does this have anything to with Islam??? Why the general spectrum?

Islamic world is bigger then Afganistan and Saudi Arabia, etc... and they do not represent in any way,shape or form the rest of us. So maybe before you post something in such a large spectrum, you should find a common ground in all countries where Islam is the popular religion.

As for the article, as long as they are consenting adults, who cares. But if there is minors involved, then throw them in jail for a long time and get them the help they need.

I doubt he meant to offend by wording it as though it was a result of the religion... But rather the article focuses on the effect that strict, conservative Islamic practive may have on men and women... Not saying that Islam promotes it, but rather that in practicing it in its strictest sense (fully covered women, always separated unless accompanied by family, ect) a rise can be seen on alternative (ie "homosexual" behaviors)... It wouldnt be restricted to Islam by teachings or anything, if you were to follow a sect of Christianity that kept woman isolated from men it would have similar results...

It is an interesting idea though...

I've heard it said from more than a few friends/family/coworkers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan that the general attitude of Muslim men is that 'women are for making babies, men are for fun'.

You mean Afgani and Iraqi men right Radish? And I am sure your friends/family and coworkers were all behavioral sociologists/psychologists with degrees. I forgot that we were in Afganistan and Iraq for social studies.

So I am guessing this is a good representation of people from Alabama (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF_vk3fs7tQ)

Or this is true for all the Irish (http://bebo.com/FlashBox.jsp?FlashBoxId=2244242844)

Lets look at things in perspective shall we..

My Aunt, who lived there for about 15 years, told me about this a few years back. This seems to be true especially for the younger males in their teens. If they can't be with females then the old saying about any port in a storm cums into play.

I've heard it said from more than a few friends/family/coworkers coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan that the general attitude of Muslim men is that 'women are for making babies, men are for fun'.

If they think about it in the literal sense, then nothing can change that. I think the western hemisphere use the term "homosexulality" as a very offensive term, seemingly to provoke the other side.

In Saudi Arabia, “It’s easier to be a lesbian [than a heterosexual]. There’s an overwhelming number of people who turn to lesbianism,” Yasmin said, adding that the number of men in the kingdom who turn to gay sex is even greater. “They’re not really homosexual,” she said. “They’re like cell mates in prison.”


Interesting information there. That was the reference i was gonna be using too, but someone go there first ^_^

I doubt he meant to offend by wording it as though it was a result of the religion... But rather the article focuses on the effect that strict, conservative Islamic practive may have on men and women... Not saying that Islam promotes it, but rather that in practicing it in its strictest sense (fully covered women, always separated unless accompanied by family, ect) a rise can be seen on alternative (ie "homosexual" behaviors)... It wouldnt be restricted to Islam by teachings or anything, if you were to follow a sect of Christianity that kept woman isolated from men it would have similar results...

It is an interesting idea though...

In my opinion, the name of the topic is too generalized. Maybe if it was, does seperating men and women push them to homesexual relations would be more valid and I have no problem with that. However I think the title is just unfortunate.

But if the topic is what I thought it should be (seperating men and women push them to homosexuals relations) then I agree. We can see examples of this everyday. We can discuss this in a seperate thread or when the purpose of this thread is clearly defined.

What does this have anything to with Islam??? Why the general spectrum?

Not Islam in general but the puritanical version of Islam in particular and the practices of shariah as it pertains to the extreme segregation of the sexes. From a strictly clinical point of view, it is interesting to note that the extreme segregation in puritanical Islamic societies is so similar to that of a prison and the results are strikingly similar as well. This finding also applies to all other religions and societies that practice a similar form of involuntary puritanical segregation.

Islamic world is bigger then Afganistan and Saudi Arabia, etc... and they do not represent in any way,shape or form the rest of us.

Agreed. However, I was looking at Islam clinically to understand what would happen if its teachings in segregation of male and females were taken to their logical conclusion. Saudi Arabia and Taliban Afghanistan represent the societies where Islam shariah is taken to its logical conclusion.

As for the article, as long as they are consenting adults, who cares.

But they were consenting adults precisely because of the environment around them. I believe it is related to the psychology of the Stockholm Syndrome whilst a hostage becomes close to a kidnapper. Likewise, an otherwise heterosexual male that is raised in an extremely segregated society would engage in homosexuality whereas the same male raised in a non-segregated society would not have even thought about engaging in such acts. So that is why I was wondering whether Islam in its strictest form promotes homosexual behavior, whether intentionally or not.

In my opinion, the name of the topic is too generalized. Maybe if it was, does seperating men and women push them to homesexual relations would be more valid and I have no problem with that. However I think the title is just unfortunate.

But if the topic is what I thought it should be (seperating men and women push them to homosexuals relations) then I agree. We can see examples of this everyday. We can discuss this in a seperate thread or when the purpose of this thread is clearly defined.

OK, I changed the title slightly to reflect your concerns.

OK, I changed the title slightly to reflect your concerns.

Thank you Kharvel

Any kind of extremes from my point of view will force and effect on the population. If I remember correctly, I once read an article where in Afganistan, it was common for men to belly dance instead of women. I find that bizarre.

I have no clue about Saudi culture except I know that they are extremely tribalistic and are very puritan (which I dont agree with).

I do have limited knowledge about both cultures.

The same concept would apply to non-islamic societies as well. For example prisons and priests. My hypothesis would be that priests who have molested children have done this as a result of sexual isolation in most cases. Maybe if they chose a different profession, they would have never done that in the first place. Or in prison, inmates would not have homesexual tendendies if they were deprived of a womans touch.

That is my hypothesis but as I said before, any kind of extremes will have an effect on the population no matter what kind of extreme (religious, national or idealistic) it is.

But they were consenting adults precisely because of the environment around them. I believe it is related to the psychology of the Stockholm Syndrome whilst a hostage becomes close to a kidnapper. Likewise, an otherwise heterosexual male that is raised in an extremely segregated society would engage in homosexuality whereas the same male raised in a non-segregated society would not have even thought about engaging in such acts. So that is why I was wondering whether Islam in its strictest form promotes homosexual behavior, whether intentionally or not.

This kind of goes together with what I am describing above. For example, most child molester have been molested in the past.

what is this the modern version of ancient Greece?

what is this the modern version of ancient Greece?

The difference is that ancient Greece did not prescribe death by stoning for those who engage in homoerotica.

wow... interesting...

:iagree: interesting...

interesting way to put it:

But Daud thinks the opposite may happen. If coeducation returns and the dress code for women eases, men will have fewer reasons to seek solace in the beds--or fields or rectums--of other men.

My Aunt, who lived there for about 15 years, told me about this a few years back. This seems to be true especially for the younger males in their teens. If they can't be with females then the old saying about any port in a storm cums into play.

It's the always devastating argument my anecdote. Plainly, this article is yet further proof of what we all already knew -- Islam is inferior to Christianity. Our God is bigger than than theirs. Jesus wants us to hate them

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46614

16 Muslims reportedly rape Christian girl
Pakistani pre-teen refused to renounce faith during assault

The alleged offence occurred at Rawlpindi, bordering Pakistans capital city of Islamabad.

According to a news release from the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA), Sara Tabasum escaped two weeks later while she was being transported to a new location. APMA reported Tabasum managed to jump out of the vehicle and escape while it was on a busy road. Although the youngster was pursued, she still managed to reach her family.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46614 (http://slickdeals.net/?sduid=16556&t=660602&u2=http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=46614)

16 Muslims reportedly rape Christian girl
Pakistani pre-teen refused to renounce faith during assault

The alleged offence occurred at Rawlpindi, bordering Pakistans capital city of Islamabad.

According to a news release from the All Pakistan Minorities Alliance (APMA), Sara Tabasum escaped two weeks later while she was being transported to a new location. APMA reported Tabasum managed to jump out of the vehicle and escape while it was on a busy road. Although the youngster was pursued, she still managed to reach her family.Posted: October 2, 2005

Do you have any more reputable news sources for this incident? WND does not have a great reputation.

How was it resolved? Were the assailants brought to justice?

The following article provides a very good description of the "love" lives of young Saudi men. This type of life encourages homosexuality in young Saudi Muslims due to the fact that all males are forced to be with each other nearly 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Without exposure to females, it stands to reason that young Saudi Muslims would develop the mentality of prison inmates and start developing homoerotic tendencies towards each other. The article provides a good insight into the intensive male-male bonding prevalent within Wahabbi Muslim communities that leads to homosexuality.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/12/world/middleeast/12saudi.html?pagewanted=all
May 12, 2008
Generation Faithful
Love’s Rules Vex and Entrance Young Saudis
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Nader al-Mutairi stiffened his shoulders, clenched his fists and said, “Let’s do our mission.” Then the young man stepped into the cool, empty lobby of a dental clinic, intent on getting the phone number of one of the young women working as a receptionist.

Asking a woman for her number can cause a young man anxiety anywhere. But in Saudi Arabia, getting caught with an unrelated woman can mean arrest, a possible flogging and dishonor, the worst penalty of all in a society where preserving a family’s reputation depends on faithful adherence to a strict code of separation between the sexes.

Above all, Nader feared that his cousin Enad al-Mutairi would find out that he was breaking the rules. Nader is engaged to Enad’s 17-year-old sister, Sarah. “Please don’t talk to Enad about this,” he said. “He will kill me.”

The sun was already low in the sky as Nader entered the clinic. Almost instantly, his resolve faded. His shoulders drooped, his hands unclenched and his voice began to quiver. “I am not lucky today; let’s leave,” he said.

It was a flash of rebellion, almost instantly quelled. In the West, youth is typically a time to challenge authority. But what stood out in dozens of interviews with young men and women here was how completely they have accepted the religious and cultural demands of the Muslim world’s most conservative society.

They may chafe against the rules, even at times try to evade them, but they can be merciless in their condemnation of those who flout them too brazenly. And they are committed to perpetuating the rules with their own children.

That suggests that Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islam, largely uncontested at home by the next generation and spread abroad by Saudi money in a time of religious revival, will increasingly shape how Muslims around the world will live their faith. Young men like Nader and Enad are taught that they are the guardians of the family’s reputation, expected to shield their female relatives from shame and avoid dishonoring their families by their own behavior. It is a classic example of how the Saudis have melded their faith with their desert tribal traditions.

“One of the most important Arab traditions is honor,” Enad said. “If my sister goes in the street and someone assaults her, she won’t be able to protect herself. The nature of men is that men are more rational. Women are not rational. With one or two or three words, a man can get what he wants from a woman. If I call someone and a girl answers, I have to apologize. It’s a huge deal. It is a violation of the house.”

Enad is the alpha male, a 20-year-old police officer with an explosive temper and a fondness for teasing. Nader, 22, is soft-spoken, with a gentle smile and an inclination to follow rather than lead.

They are more than cousins; they are lifelong friends and confidants. That is often the case in Saudi Arabia, where families are frequently large and insular.

Enad and Nader are among several dozen Mutairi cousins who since childhood have spent virtually all their free time together: Boys learning to be boys, and now men, together.

They are average young Saudi men, not wealthy, not poor, not from the more liberal south or east, but residents of the nation’s conservative heartland, Riyadh. It is a flat, clean city of five million people that gleams with oil wealth, two glass skyscrapers and roads clogged with oversize S.U.V.’s. It offers young men very little in the way of entertainment, with no movie theaters and few sports facilities. If they are unmarried, they cannot even enter the malls where women shop.

Guardians of Propriety

Nader sank deep into a cushioned chair in a hotel cafe, sipping fresh orange juice, fiddling with his cellphone. If there is one accessory that allows a bit of self-expression for Saudi men, it is their cellphones. Nader’s is filled with pictures of pretty women taken from the Internet, tight face shots of singers and actresses. His ring tone is a love song in Arabic (one of the most popular ring tones among his cousins is the theme song to “Titanic”).

“I’m very romantic,” Nader said. “I don’t like action movies. I like romance. ‘Titanic’ is No. 1. I like ‘Head Over Heels.’ Romance is love.”

Three days later, in a nearby restaurant, Nader and Enad were concentrating on eating with utensils, feeling a bit awkward since they normally eat with their right hands.

Suddenly, the young men stopped focusing on their food. A woman had entered the restaurant, alone. She was completely draped in a black abaya, her face covered by a black veil, her hair and ears covered by a black cloth pulled tight.

“Look at the batman,” Nader said derisively, snickering.

Enad pretended to toss his burning cigarette at the woman, who by now had been seated at a table. The glaring young men unnerved her, as though her parents had caught her doing something wrong.

“She is alone, without a man,” Enad said, explaining why they were disgusted, not just with her, but with her male relatives, too, wherever they were.

When a man joined her at the table — someone they assumed was her husband — she removed her face veil, which fueled Enad and Nader’s hostility. They continued to make mocking hand gestures and comments until the couple changed tables. Even then, the woman was so flustered she held the cloth self-consciously over her face throughout her meal.

“Thank God our women are at home,” Enad said.

Nader and Enad pray five times a day, often stopping whatever they are doing to traipse off with their cousins to the nearest mosque.

Prayer is mandatory in the kingdom, and the religious police force all shops to shut during prayer times. But it is also casual, as routine for Nader and Enad as taking a coffee break.

To Nader and Enad, prayer is essential. In Enad’s view, jihad is, too, not the more moderate approach that emphasizes doing good deeds, but the idea of picking up a weapon and fighting in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Jihad is not a crime; it is a duty,” Enad said in casual conversation.

“If someone comes into your house, will you stand there or will you fight them?” Enad said, leaning forward, his short, thick hands resting on his knees. “Arab or Muslim lands are like one house.”

Would he go fight?

“I would need permission from my parents,” he said.

Nader, though, said, “Don’t ask me. I am afraid of the government.”

The concept is such a fundamental principle, so embedded in their psyches, that they do not see any conflict between their belief in armed jihad and their work as security agents of the state. As a police officer, Enad helps conduct raids on suspected terrorist hideouts. Nader works in the military as a communications officer.

Each earns about 4,000 riyals a month, about $1,200, not nearly enough to become independent from their parents. But that is not a huge concern, because fathers are expected to provide for even their grown children, to ensure that they have a place to live and the means to get married.

To many parents, providing money is seen as more central to their duty — their honor — than ensuring that their children get an education.

Each young man has the requisite mustache and goatee, and most of the time dresses in a traditional robe. Nader prefers the white thobe, an ankle-length gown; Enad prefers beige.

But on weekends, they opt for the wild and crazy guy look, often wearing running pants, tight short-sleeved shirts, bright colors, stripes and plaids together, lots of Velcro and elastic on their shoes. In Western-style clothes, they both seem smaller, and a touch on the pudgy side. Nader says softly, “I don’t exercise.”

Family Life

There are eight other children in the house where Enad lives with his father, his mother and his father’s second wife. The apartment has little furniture, with nothing on the walls. The men and boys gather in a living room off the main hall, sitting on soiled beige wall-to-wall carpeting, watching a television propped up on a crooked cabinet. The women have a similar living room, nearly identical, behind closed doors.

The house remains a haven for Enad and his cousins, who often spend their free time sleeping, watching Dr. Phil and Oprah with subtitles on television, drinking cardamom coffee and sweet tea — and smoking.

Enad and Nader were always close, but their relationship changed when Nader and Sarah became engaged. Enad’s father agreed to let Nader marry one of his four daughters. Nader picked Sarah, though she is not the oldest, in part, he said, because he actually saw her face when she was a child and recalled that she was pretty.

They quickly signed a wedding contract, making them legally married, but by tradition they do not consider themselves so until the wedding party, set for this spring. During the intervening months, they are not allowed to see each other or spend any time together.

Nader said he expected to see his new wife for the first time after their wedding ceremony — which would also be segregated by sex — when they are photographed as husband and wife.

“If you want to know what your wife looks like, look at her brother,” Nader said in defending the practice of marrying someone he had seen only once, briefly, as a child. That is the traditional Nader, who at times conflicts with the romantic Nader.

Soon his cellphone beeped, signaling a text message. Nader blushed, stuck his tongue out and turned slightly away to read the message, which came from “My Love.” He sneaks secret phone calls and messages with Sarah. When she calls, or writes a message, his phone flashes “My Love” over two interlocked red hearts. “I have a connection,” he said, quietly, as he read, explaining how Sarah manages to communicate with him.

His connection is Enad, who secretly slipped Sarah a cellphone that Nader had bought for her. These conversations are taboo and could cause a dispute between two families. So their talks were clandestine, like sneaking out for a date after the parents go to bed. Enad keeps the secret, but it adds to an underlying tension between the two, as Nader tries to develop his own identity as a future head of household, as a man.

Enad teases Nader, saying, “In a year you will find my sister with a mustache and him in the kitchen.”

“Not true,” Nader said, mustering as much defiance as he could. “I am a man.”

Another flashpoint: The honeymoon. Nader is planning to take Sarah to Malaysia, and Enad wants to go. He suggests that Nader owes him. “Yes, take me,” Enad says, with a touch of mischief in his voice. Nader cannot seem to tell whether he is kidding. “You know, he can be crazy,” Nader said. “He’s always angry. No, he is not coming. It is not a good idea.”

Back in the Village

Nader grew up in Riyadh, and his parents, like Enad’s, are first cousins. Enad says his way of thinking was forged in the village of Najkh, 350 miles west of Riyadh, where he lived until he was 14 with his grandfather. It is where he still feels most comfortable.

When he can, he has a cousin drive him to his grandfather’s home, a one-story cement box in the desert, four miles from the nearest house. There is a walled-in yard of sand with piles of wood used to heat the house in the cold desert winters.

Inside there is no furniture, just a few cushions on the floor and a prayer rug pointing in the direction of Mecca. Enad and his cousins absentmindedly toss trash out the kitchen window, and around the yard, expecting that the “houseboy,” a man named Nasreddin from India, will clean up after them — and he does.

Enad is quiet and hides his cigarettes when his grandfather comes through. He would never tell his father or grandfather that he smokes. Enad remains stone-faced when a cousin mentions that another of his cousins, a woman named Al Atti, 22, is interested in him. The topic came up because another cousin, Raed, had asked Al Atti to marry him, and she refused.

The conflict and flirtation touched on so many issues — manhood, love, family relations — that it sparked a flurry of whispering, and even Enad was drawn in.

Al Atti had let her sisters know that she liked Enad, but made it clear that she could never admit that publicly. So she asked a sister to spread the word from cousin to cousin, and ultimately to Enad. “It’s forbidden to announce your love. It is impossible,” she said.

Word finally reached Enad, who tried to stay cool but was clearly interested, and flattered. At that point Enad was himself whispering about Al Atti, trying to figure out a way to communicate with her without actually talking to her himself. He asked a female visitor to arrange a call, and then pass along a message of interest.

Enad said it was never his idea to pursue her, but that a man — a real man — could not reject a woman who wanted him. To get his cousin Raed out of the picture, he suggested that Al Atti’s brother take Raed to hear Al Atti’s refusal in person, at her house.

“From behind a wall,” Enad said.

“Love is dangerous,” Al Atti said as she sat with her sisters in the house. “It can ruin your reputation.”

A Question of Romance

It was a short visit, two days in the village, and then Enad was back to Riyadh for work. In Riyadh he seemed to be both excited and tormented by Al Atti’s interest.

That weekend, he and Nader went out to the desert, just outside of Riyadh, where young men go to drive Jeeps in the sand and to relax, free from the oversight of the religious police and neighbors. They sat beside each other on a blanket.

Nader began.

“I am a romantic person,” he said. “There is no romance.”

What Nader meant was that Saudi traditions do not allow for romance between young, unmarried couples. There are many stories of young men and women secretly dating, falling in love, but being unable to tell their parents because they could never explain how they knew each other in the first place. One young couple said that after two years of secret dating they hired a matchmaker to arrange a phony introduction so their parents would think that was how they had met.

Now, in the desert, Nader’s candor set Enad off.

“He thinks that there is no romance. How is there no romance?” Enad said, his eyes bulging as he grew angry. “When you get married, be romantic with your wife. You want to meet a woman on the street so you can be romantic?”

Nader was intimidated, and frightened. “No, no,” he said.

“Convince me then that you’re right,” Enad shot back.

“I am saying there is no romance,” Nader said, trying to push back.

Enad did not relent, berating his cousin.

Under his breath, Nader said, “Enad knows everything.”

Then he folded. “Fine, there is romance,” he said, and got up and walked away, flushed and embarrassed.

Mona el-Naggar contributed reporting.

Afghanistan = 31 million
Saudi = 27 million

~1.2 Billion Muslims around the world

~5% of the Muslim population is covered by your two articles...

Anything else?

What does this have anything to with Islam??? Why the general spectrum?

Presumably the reference to the burka in the first line

Afghanistan = 31 million
Saudi = 27 million

~1.2 Billion Muslims around the world

~5% of the Muslim population is covered by your two articles...

Anything else?

Yeah, what is your point? This thread is about puritanical Islam found in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan and how it promotes and encourages homosexuality.

Yeah, what is your point? This thread is about puritanical Islam found in Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan and how it promotes and encourages homosexuality.


What's your point? This is a fairly minute portion of the population of Muslims. There are other people who might consider themselves puritanical, but you stated this is it and only it.

Just because people seek other means to fulfill their conceived notions of satisfaction does not mean the society encourages or promotes these things.

Just because people seek other means to fulfill their conceived notions of satisfaction does not mean the society encourages or promotes these things.

The laws of unintended consequences apply here.

The laws of unintended consequences apply here.

Unintended consequences is a far cry from promoting something. Along with that is your speculation about OBL and the revered Prophet in Islam, Muhammad (pbuh) is nothing more than speculation (and there's historical context on the Prophet's side of things to negate that).

Does puritanical Islam promote homosexuality and sodomy?


So it's not just Catholic priests and Baptist ministers? Who'd a guessed.

So it's not just Catholic priests and Baptist ministers? Who'd a guessed.
You forgot Republican Senators :lol:

Unintended consequences is a far cry from promoting something. Along with that is your speculation about OBL and the revered Prophet in Islam, Muhammad (pbuh) is nothing more than speculation (and there's historical context on the Prophet's side of things to negate that).

The speculation is based on logic. Logic: if a religion prohibits interaction between men and women and institutes a prison-like segregation of sexes, then it is promoting and encouraging homosexual behavior even if that is not the intention. Put large groups of male population together for a long time with extremely limited access to females and you will get phenomena such as "halekons", male belly dancers, male drag queens, homoerotic fantasies among men, bull homosexuals, etc. All of these phenomena are observed in the prison system and for all intents and purposes, the Wahabbi Islamic society IS a prison, as demonstrated by the article.

In Carmen Bin Laden's book about the bin Laden family, she talks about the rampant homoerotica and lesbianism among the female members of the bin Laden family due to their lack of access to males.

How do we know Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri are not packing fudge with each other? Let's face it - these two men have been together in tight confines for so long without any female contact that one can only suspect some type of homosexual relationship between these two. Perhaps not physical but more likely emotional.

Look, if you were a homosexual, you would love nothing better than to live in a society where all males are forced to interact with each other 99% of the time, with limited access to women. Why would Mohammed want such a society that is fertile ground for homoerotica and that provides great cover for homosexual activities?

Homosexuality has always been rampant in Islamic countries … but it is something which has not been talked openly about… under fundamentalist Islamic regimes like iran and afghanistan they have been especially hard on homosexuality… naturally they blame the corrupting influence of the west for the widespread “perversion” of homosexuality.

US troops are followed around regularly by teenage boys, in Afghanastan for example, who quite openly express their desire to service our servicemen. Not a few of our soldiers have been taken aback by the boldness of some of these kids. Western homosexuals have long known that Morroco Turkey and Algeria are hotbeds of gay sex and that the authorities usually look the other way as long as discretion is used.

You forgot Republican Senators :lol:

You're right. My bad.

The speculation is based on logic. Logic: if a religion prohibits interaction between men and women and institutes a prison-like segregation of sexes, then it is promoting and encouraging homosexual behavior even if that is not the intention. Put large groups of male population together for a long time with extremely limited access to females and you will get phenomena such as "halekons", male belly dancers, male drag queens, homoerotic fantasies among men, bull homosexuals, etc. All of these phenomena are observed in the prison system and for all intents and purposes, the Wahabbi Islamic society IS a prison, as demonstrated by the article.

In Carmen Bin Laden's book about the bin Laden family, she talks about the rampant homoerotica and lesbianism among the female members of the bin Laden family due to their lack of access to males.

How do we know Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahri are not packing fudge with each other? Let's face it - these two men have been together in tight confines for so long without any female contact that one can only suspect some type of homosexual relationship between these two. Perhaps not physical but more likely emotional.

Look, if you were a homosexual, you would love nothing better than to live in a society where all males are forced to interact with each other 99% of the time, with limited access to women. Why would Mohammed want such a society that is fertile ground for homoerotica and that provides great cover for homosexual activities?


illogical: You extrapolate practices of 5% of Muslims to cover the basis of the religion. You claim it to be "puritanical" in the OP, but then claim it to be part of the basis, when the historians show norms of society then does not reflect how Afghanis and Saudis carry themselves.
illogical: You attribute Carmen Bin Laden's book as something to merit, while I see it as something of an opportunistic means to make an easy buck. It probably has a decent amount of factual info, but I know many Saudi families, and this isn't as normal as you make it to be based on the book. If she said good things about her ex and his family, she wouldn't be getting so much attention.

illogical: You extrapolate practices of 5% of Muslims to cover the basis of the religion.

I was covering the basis of the Saudi Wahabbi religion only and the logic still stands in that respect. I never extrapolated the practices of the Wahabbi Islamists to cover all Islamists in general. You are seeing an extrapolation that is not there.

You claim it to be "puritanical" in the OP, but then claim it to be part of the basis

I claimed it was part of the basis of the puritanical Wahabbi religion in particular not of Islam in general.

when the historians show norms of society then does not reflect how Afghanis and Saudis carry themselves.

Do you deny that the Wahabbi Islamists carry themselves as described in the article and that their concept of a puritanical society promotes and encourages homosexual activity?

illogical: You attribute Carmen Bin Laden's book as something to merit, while I see it as something of an opportunistic means to make an easy buck. It probably has a decent amount of factual info, but I know many Saudi families, and this isn't as normal as you make it to be based on the book. If she said good things about her ex and his family, she wouldn't be getting so much attention.

Be that it may be, Carmen bin Laden's anecdotal evidence of lesbianism within the bin Laden household which she claimed was a result of the boredom and lack of male contact experienced by the females in the household, simply drives home my point that a prison-like religious society that segregates the two sexes to an extreme CAN and WILL lead to homosexual activities.

You associated it with the most significant figure of the religion, hence extrapolating it to everyone who follows the religion.

Do unintended consequences = promoting something? I think not.

In the USA, we support "freedom", but we still discourage people from becoming pregnant if they are not in a position to be a care taker for a child. Do we "promote" people to become parents at a point in their lives when it's obvious they're not ready for it? No, it's an "unintended consequence" because of how we define freedom today.

Plenty of other societies have some form of normal segregation between the sexes and don't have these problems.

Western homosexuals have long known that Morroco Turkey and Algeria are hotbeds of gay sex and that the authorities usually look the other way as long as discretion is used.

Kelly you wanna back this up? Please do provide proof of what you are saying is true.

Turkey is one of the more liberal countries even in EU when it comes to dealing with same sex relations. It is not banned, nor it is seen as an evil. Your reception may vary as you go eastward but putting Turkey to the same category as other countries is just ludicrous.

Here is the women's side of the story on puritanical Islam in Saudi Arabia:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/world/middleeast/13girls.html?pagewanted=all

May 13, 2008

Generation Faithful
Love on Girls’ Side of the Saudi Divide
By KATHERINE ZOEPF

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The dance party in Atheer Jassem al-Othman’s living room was in full swing. The guests — about two dozen girls in their late teens — had arrived, and Ms. Othman and her mother were passing around cups of sweet tea and dishes of dates.

About half the girls were swaying and gyrating, without the slightest self-consciousness, among overstuffed sofas, heavy draperies, tables larded with figurines and ornately-covered tissue boxes. Their head-to-toe abayas, balled up and tossed onto chairs, looked like black cloth puddles.

Suddenly, the music stopped, and an 18-year-old named Alia tottered forward.

“Girls? I have something to tell you,” Alia faltered, appearing to sway slightly on her high heels. She paused anxiously, and the next words came out in a rush. “I’ve gotten engaged!” There was a chorus of shrieks at the surprise announcement and Alia burst into tears, as did several of the other girls.

Ms. Othman’s mother smiled knowingly and left the room, leaving the girls to their moment of emotion. The group has been friends since they were of middle-school age, and Alia would be the first of them to marry.

A cellphone picture of Alia’s fiancé — a 25-year-old military man named Badr — was passed around, and the girls began pestering Alia for the details of her showfa. A showfa — literally, a “viewing” — usually occurs on the day that a Saudi girl is engaged.

A girl’s suitor, when he comes to ask her father for her hand in marriage, has the right to see her dressed without her abaya.

In some families, he may have a supervised conversation with her. Ideally, many Saudis say, her showfa will be the only time in a girl’s life that she is seen this way by a man outside her family.

The separation between the sexes in Saudi Arabia is so extreme that it is difficult to overstate. Saudi women may not drive, and they must wear black abayas and head coverings in public at all times. They are spirited around the city in cars with tinted windows, attend girls-only schools and university departments, and eat in special “family” sections of cafes and restaurants, which are carefully partitioned from the sections used by single male diners.

Special women-only gyms, women-only boutiques and travel agencies, even a women-only shopping mall, have been established in Riyadh in recent years to serve women who did not previously have access to such places unless they were chaperoned by a male relative.

Playful as they are, girls like Ms. Othman and her friends are well aware of the limits that their conservative society places on their behavior. And, for the most part, they say that they do not seriously question those limits.

Most of the girls say their faith, in the strict interpretation of Islam espoused by the Wahhabi religious establishment here, runs very deep. They argue a bit among themselves about the details — whether it is acceptable to have men on your Facebook friend list, or whether a male first cousin should ever be able to see you without your face covered — and they peppered this reporter with questions about what the young Saudi men she had met were thinking about and talking about.

But they seem to regard the idea of having a conversation with a man before their showfas and subsequent engagements with very real horror. When they do talk about girls who chat with men online or who somehow find their own fiancés, these stories have something of the quality of urban legends about them: fuzzy in their particulars, told about friends of friends, or “someone in my sister’s class.”

Well-brought-up unmarried young women here are so isolated from boys and men that when they talk about them, it sometimes sounds as if they are discussing a different species.

Questions for the Fiancé

Later that evening, over fava bean stew, salad, and meat-filled pastries, Alia revealed that she was to be allowed to speak to her fiancé on the phone. Their first phone conversation was scheduled for the following day, she said, and she was so worried about what to say to Badr that she was compiling a list of questions.

“Ask him whether he likes his work,” one of her friends suggested. “Men are supposed to love talking about their work.”

“Ask him what kind of cellphone he has, and what kind of car,” suggested another. “That way you’ll be able to find out how he spends his money, whether he’s free with it or whether he’s stingy.”

Alia nodded earnestly, dark ringlets bouncing, and took notes. She had been so racked with nerves during her showfa that she had almost dropped the tray of juice her father had asked her to bring in to her fiancé, and she could hardly remember a thing he had said. She was to learn a bit more about him during this next conversation.

According to about 30 Saudi girls and women between ages 15 and 25, all interviewed during December, January and February, it is becoming more and more socially acceptable for young engaged women to speak to their fiancés on the phone, though more conservative families still forbid all contact between engaged couples.

It is considered embarrassing to admit to much strong feeling for a fiancé before the wedding and, before their engagements, any kind of contact with a man is out of the question. Even so, young women here sometimes resort to clandestine activities to chat with or to meet men, or simply to catch a rare glimpse into the men’s world.

Though it is as near to hand as the offices they pass each morning on the way to college, or the majlis, a traditional home reception room, where their fathers and brothers entertain friends, the men’s world is so remote from them that some Saudi girls resort to disguise in order to venture into it.

At Prince Sultan University, where Atheer Jassem al-Othman, 18, is a first-year law student, a pair of second-year students recently spent a mid-morning break between classes showing off photographs of themselves dressed as boys.

In the pictures, the girls wore thobes, the ankle-length white garments traditionally worn by Saudi men, and had covered their hair with the male headdresses called shmaghs. One of the girls had used an eyeliner pencil to give herself a grayish, stubble-like mist along her jaw line. Displayed on the screens of the two girls’ cellphones, the photographs evoked little exclamations of congratulation as they were passed around.

“A lot of girls do it,” said an 18-year-old named Sara al-Tukhaifi who explained that a girl and her friends might cross-dress, sneaking thobes out of a brother’s closet, then challenge each other to enter the Saudi male sphere in various ways, by walking nonchalantly up to the men-only counter in a McDonalds, say, or even by driving.

“It’s just a game,” Ms. Tukhaifi said, although detention by the religious police is always a possibility. “I haven’t done it myself, but those two are really good at it. They went into a store and pretended to be looking at another girl — they even got her to turn her face away.”

Grinning, Ms. Tukhaifi mimicked the gesture, pressing her face into the corner of her hijab with exaggerated pretend modesty while her classmate Shaden giggled. Saudi newspapers often lament the rise of rebellious behavior among young Saudis. There are reports of a recent spate of ugly confrontations between youths and the religious police, and of a supposed increase in same-sex love affairs among young people frustrated at the strict division between the genders.

And certainly, practices like “numbering” — where a group of young men in a car chase another car they believe to contain young women, and try to give the women their phone number via Bluetooth, or by holding a written number up to the window — have become a very visible part of Saudi urban life.

Flirting by Phone

A woman can’t switch her phone’s Bluetooth feature on in a public place without receiving a barrage of the love poems and photos of flowers and small children which many Saudi men keep stored on their phones for purposes of flirtation. And last year, Al Arabiya television reported that some young Saudis have started buying special “electronic belts,” which use Bluetooth technology to discreetly beam the wearer’s cellphone number and e-mail address at passing members of the opposite sex.

Ms. Tukhaifi and Shaden know of girls in their college who have passionate friendships, possibly even love affairs, with other girls but they say that this, like the cross-dressing, is just a “game” born of frustration, something that will inevitably end when the girls in question become engaged. And they and their friends say that they find the experience of being chased by boys in cars to be frightening, and insist that they do not know any girl who has actually spoken to a boy who contacted her via Bluetooth.

“If your family found out you were talking to a man online, that’s not quite as bad as talking to him on the phone,” Ms. Tukhaifi explained. “With the phone, everyone can agree that is forbidden, because Islam forbids a stranger to hear your voice. Online he only sees your writing, so that’s slightly more open to interpretation.

“One test is that if you’re ashamed to tell your family something, then you know for sure it’s wrong,” Ms. Tukhaifi continued. “For a while I had Facebook friends who were boys — I didn’t e-mail with them or anything, but they asked me to “friend” them and so I did. But then I thought about my family and I took them off the list.”

Ms. Tukhaifi and Shaden both spoke admiringly of the religious police, whom they see as the guardians of perfectly normal Saudi social values, and Shaden boasted lightly about an older brother who has become multazim, very strict in his faith, and who has been seeing to it that all her family members become more punctilious in their religious observance. “Praise be to God, he became multazim when he was in ninth grade,” Shaden recalled, fondly. “I remember how he started to grow his beard — it was so wispy when it started — and to wear a shorter thobe.” Saudi men often grow their beards long and wear their thobes cut above the ankles as signals of their religious devotion.

“I always go to him when I have problems,” said Shaden who, like many of the young Saudi women interviewed for this article, spoke on the condition that her last name be omitted. “And he’s not too strict — he still listens to music sometimes. I asked him once, ‘You do everything right and yet you’re listening to music?’ He said, ‘I know music is haram, and inshallah, with time I will be able to stop listening to music too.’ ” Haram means forbidden, and inshallah means “God willing.”

She added, “I told him, ‘I want a husband like you.’ ”

Separated From Cousins

Shaden lives in a large walled compound in a prosperous Riyadh suburb; her father’s brothers live with their families in separate houses within the compound, and the families share a common garden and pool. Shaden and several of her male cousins grew up playing together constantly, tearing around the pool together during the summer, and enjoying shared vacations.

Now that, at 17, she is considered an adult Saudi woman and must confine herself to the female sphere, she sometimes misses their company.

“Until I was in 9th or 10th grade, we used to put a carpet on the lawn and we would take hot milk and sit there with my boy cousins,” Shaden recalled, at home one February evening, in front of the television. She was serving a few female guests a party dip of her own invention, a concoction of yogurt, mayonnaise and thyme.

“But my mom and their mom got uncomfortable with it, and so we stopped,” she said. “Now we sometimes talk on MSN, or on the phone, but they shouldn’t ever see my face.”

“My sister and I sometimes ask my mom, ‘Why didn’t you breast-feed our boy cousins, too?’ ” Shaden continued.

She was referring to a practice called milk kinship that predates Islam and is still common in the Persian Gulf countries. A woman does not have to veil herself in front of a man she nursed as an infant, and neither do her biological children. The woman’s biological children and the children she has nursed are considered “milk siblings” and are prohibited from marrying.

“If my mom had breast-fed my cousins, we could sit with them, and it would all be much easier,” Shaden said. She turned back to the stack of DVDs she had been rifling through, and held up a copy of Pride and Prejudice, the version with Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet, a film she says she has seen dozens of times.

“It’s a bit like our society, I think,” Shaden said of late Georgian England. “It’s dignified, and a bit strict. Doesn’t it remind you a little bit of Saudi Arabia? It’s my favorite DVD.”

Shaden sighed, deeply. “When Darcy comes to Elizabeth and says ‘I love you’ — that’s exactly the kind of love I want.”

From the article above, the most relevant quotes as they pertain to the promotion and encouragement of homosexuality are as follows:

Well-brought-up unmarried young women here are so isolated from boys and men that when they talk about them, it sometimes sounds as if they are discussing a different species.

There are reports of a recent spate of ugly confrontations between youths and the religious police, and of a supposed increase in same-sex love affairs among young people frustrated at the strict division between the genders.

Even the newspapers in Saudi Arabia acknowledge the extreme segregation of the sexes as the primary cause behind the prevalence of homosexuality in the society.

Ms. Tukhaifi and Shaden know of girls in their college who have passionate friendships, possibly even love affairs, with other girls but they say that this, like the cross-dressing, is just a “game” born of frustration

The key words are "possibly" and "supposed".

No one denies complete isolation causes problems, but you're still grasping at straws to suggest it PROMOTES homosexuality.

Kelly you wanna back this up? Please do provide proof of what you are saying is true.

Turkey is one of the more liberal countries even in EU when it comes to dealing with same sex relations. It is not banned, nor it is seen as an evil. Your reception may vary as you go eastward but putting Turkey to the same category as other countries is just ludicrous.

If you reread my post, I was saying that turkey is one of the more liberal (for lack of a better word) islamic countries when it comes to same sex relationships vangolu -- I think you misunderstood me... compared to Iran, the former Afghanstan, and the puritanical hardline islamic countries with fundamentalist regimes and semi fundamentalist regimes.

Turkey is one of the most dynamic islamic countries which exists and while homosexuality may be frowned upon by some Turks, I think Turkey far preferable and more culturally dynamic than states like Iran etc. etc. who literally hang people who engage in same sex relationships.

The western world can learn a few things from countries like turkey, it's a very dynamic and interesting country... but I don't think we have much to learn from Modern Iran... it is a shame because Iran was on its way to becoming like Turkey before the hardline religious people took over. Turkey is a model for what many places in the islamic world could become which I personally think would greatly benefit many islamic countries. A good blend of the modern, greater freedom, while not at all forsaking its religious heritage. A much calmer, more beautiful, kinder, happier, less fanatical islam... more in keeping with the prophet I would think.

If you reread my post, I was saying that turkey is one of the more liberal (for lack of a better word) islamic countries when it comes to same sex relationships vangolu -- I think you misunderstood me... compared to Iran, the former Afghanstan, and the puritanical hardline islamic countries with fundamentalist regimes and semi fundamentalist regimes.

Turkey is one of the most dynamic islamic countries which exists and while homosexuality may be frowned upon by some Turks, I think Turkey far preferable and more culturally dynamic than states like Iran etc. etc. who literally hang people who engage in same sex relationships.

The western world can learn a few things from countries like turkey, it's a very dynamic and interesting country... but I don't think we have much to learn from Modern Iran... it is a shame because Iran was on its way to becoming like Turkey before the hardline religious people took over. Turkey is a model for what many places in the islamic world could become which I personally think would greatly benefit many islamic countries. A good blend of the modern, greater freedom, while not at all forsaking its religious heritage. A much calmer, more beautiful, kinder, happier, less fanatical islam... more in keeping with the prophet I would think.

Well maybe I did misunderstand. Thanx for the clarification.

However I wouldnt count Turkey as a hot bed of gay sex.I heard there are clubs that serve only a certain clientelle but I dont think they are any different than the clubs in US.

I agree that Muslim countries needs to face facts. At every nation in world there will be same sex relations, to deny that they exist is just not real. However I dont think saying that limiting the interactions between males and females will increase same sex relations by a large percent. At the end of the day both in Afganistan and Saudi Arabia, people get married as early as 12-13 so access is available to the other sex.

Well maybe I did misunderstand. Thanx for the clarification.

However I wouldnt count Turkey as a hot bed of gay sex.I heard there are clubs that serve only a certain clientelle but I dont think they are any different than the clubs in US.

I agree that Muslim countries needs to face facts. At every nation in world there will be same sex relations, to deny that they exist is just not real. However I dont think saying that limiting the interactions between males and females will increase same sex relations by a large percent. At the end of the day both in Afganistan and Saudi Arabia, people get married as early as 12-13 so access is available to the other sex.

It's not that different than the US ...

islam, like judaism and christianity tends to take a hard line against homosexuality... These three religions are struggling with their identities in the modern world … and the homosexual to some of them represents a breakdown of the moral order and the social contract... hence he is persecuted.

Equating Puritanism with Islam somewhat insults Puritans.

Equating Puritanism with Islam somewhat insults Puritans.

It depends on the brand of Islam xnarg ... Muhammeds message has probably been twisted and abused by men who seek self aggrandisement and power into something diametrically opposed to the wishes of the prophet.

It is a similar story with christainity... there are few greater cases of world historical irony than what men have done with the teachings of jesus christ.

But when islam turns ugly it gets real ugly... no arguement with you there. Don't get me started on the ass aching puritans. :)

By far the most comprehensive and powerful look into the promotion and encouragement of homosexuality in puritanical Islamic societies:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200705/gay-saudi-arabia
May 2007 Atlantic Monthly

Sodomy is punishable by death in Saudi Arabia, but gay life flourishes there. Why it is “easier to be gay than straight” in a society where everyone, homosexual and otherwise, lives in the closet

by Nadya Labi
The Kingdom in the Closet

Yasser, a 26-year-old artist, was taking me on an impromptu tour of his hometown of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on a sweltering September afternoon. The air conditioner of his dusty Honda battled the heat, prayer beads dangled from the rearview mirror, and the smell of the cigarette he’d just smoked wafted toward me as he stopped to show me a barbershop that his friends frequent. Officially, men in Saudi Arabia aren’t allowed to wear their hair long or to display jewelry—such vanities are usually deemed to violate an Islamic instruction that the sexes must not be too similar in appearance. But Yasser wears a silver necklace, a silver bracelet, and a sparkly red stud in his left ear, and his hair is shaggy. Yasser is homosexual, or so we would describe him in the West, and the barbershop we visited caters to gay men. Business is brisk.

Leaving the barbershop, we drove onto Tahlia Street, a broad avenue framed by palm trees, then went past a succession of sleek malls and slowed in front of a glass-and-steel shopping center. Men congregated outside and in nearby cafés. Whereas most such establishments have a family section, two of this area’s cafés allow only men; not surprisingly, they are popular among men who prefer one another’s company. Yasser gestured to a parking lot across from the shopping center, explaining that after midnight it would be “full of men picking up men.” These days, he said, “you see gay people everywhere.”

Yasser turned onto a side street, then braked suddenly. “Oh shit, it’s a checkpoint,” he said, inclining his head toward some traffic cops in brown uniforms. “Do you have your ID?” he asked me. He wasn’t worried about the gay-themed nature of his tour—he didn’t want to be caught alone with a woman. I rummaged through my purse, realizing that I’d left my passport in the hotel for safekeeping. Yasser looked behind him to see if he could reverse the car, but had no choice except to proceed. To his relief, the cops nodded us through. “God, they freaked me out,” Yasser said. As he resumed his narration, I recalled something he had told me earlier. “It’s a lot easier to be gay than straight here,” he had said. “If you go out with a girl, people will start to ask her questions. But if I have a date upstairs and my family is downstairs, they won’t even come up.”

Notorious for its adherence to Wahhabism, a puritanical strain of Islam, and as the birthplace of most of the 9/11 hijackers, Saudi Arabia is the only Arab country that claims sharia, or Islamic law, as its sole legal code. The list of prohibitions is long: It’s haram—forbidden—to smoke, drink, go to discos, or mix with an unrelated person of the opposite gender. The rules are enforced by the mutawwa'in, religious authorities employed by the government’s Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

The kingdom is dominated by mosques and malls, which the mutawwa'in patrol in leather sandals and shortened versions of the thawb, the traditional ankle-length white robe that many Saudis wear. Some mutawwa'in even bear marks of their devotion on their faces; they bow to God so adamantly that pressing their foreheads against the ground leaves a visible dent. The mutawwa'in prod shoppers to say their devotions when the shops close for prayer, several times daily. If they catch a boy and a girl on a date, they might haul the couple to the police station. They make sure that single men steer clear of the malls, which are family-only zones for the most part, unless they are with a female relative. Though the power of the mutawwa'in has been curtailed recently, their presence still inspires fear.

In Saudi Arabia, sodomy is punishable by death. Though that penalty is seldom applied, just this February a man in the Mecca region was executed for having sex with a boy, among other crimes. (For this reason, the names of most people in this story have been changed.) Ask many Saudis about homosexuality, and they’ll wince with repugnance. “I disapprove,” Rania, a 32-year-old human-resources manager, told me firmly. “Women weren’t meant to be with women, and men aren’t supposed to be with men.”

This legal and public condemnation notwithstanding, the kingdom leaves considerable space for homosexual behavior. As long as gays and lesbians maintain a public front of obeisance to Wahhabist norms, they are left to do what they want in private. Vibrant communities of men who enjoy sex with other men can be found in cosmopolitan cities like Jeddah and Riyadh. They meet in schools, in cafés, in the streets, and on the Internet. “You can be cruised anywhere in Saudi Arabia, any time of the day,” said Radwan, a 42-year-old gay Saudi American who grew up in various Western cities and now lives in Jeddah. “They’re quite shameless about it.” Talal, a Syrian who moved to Riyadh in 2000, calls the Saudi capital a “gay heaven.”

This is surprising enough. But what seems more startling, at least from a Western perspective, is that some of the men having sex with other men don’t consider themselves gay. For many Saudis, the fact that a man has sex with another man has little to do with “gayness.” The act may fulfill a desire or a need, but it doesn’t constitute an identity. Nor does it strip a man of his masculinity, as long as he is in the “top,” or active, role. This attitude gives Saudi men who engage in homosexual behavior a degree of freedom. But as a more Westernized notion of gayness—a notion that stresses orientation over acts—takes hold in the country, will this delicate balance survive?

‘They will seduce you’

When Yasser hit puberty, he grew attracted to his male cousins. Like many gay and lesbian teenagers everywhere, he felt isolated. “I used to have the feeling that I was the queerest in the country,” he recalled. “But then I went to high school and discovered there are others like me. Then I find out, it’s a whole society.”

This society thrives just below the surface. During the afternoon, traffic cops patrol outside girls’ schools as classes end, in part to keep boys away. But they exert little control over what goes on inside. A few years ago, a Jeddah- based newspaper ran a story on lesbianism in high schools, reporting that girls were having sex in the bathrooms. Yasmin, a 21-year-old student in Riyadh who’d had a brief sexual relationship with a girlfriend (and was the only Saudi woman who’d had a lesbian relationship who was willing to speak with me for this story), told me that one of the department buildings at her college is known as a lesbian enclave. The building has large bathroom stalls, which provide privacy, and walls covered with graffiti offering romantic and religious advice; tips include “she doesn’t really love you no matter what she tells you” and “before you engage in anything with [her] remember: God is watching you.” In Saudi Arabia, “It’s easier to be a lesbian [than a heterosexual]. There’s an overwhelming number of people who turn to lesbianism,” Yasmin said, adding that the number of men in the kingdom who turn to gay sex is even greater. “They’re not really homosexual,” she said. “They’re like cell mates in prison.”

This analogy came up again and again during my conversations. As Radwan, the Saudi American, put it, “Some Saudi [men] can’t have sex with women, so they have sex with guys. When the sexes are so strictly segregated”—men are allowed little contact with women outside their families, in order to protect women’s purity—“how do they have a chance to have sex with a woman and not get into trouble?” Tariq, a 24-year-old in the travel industry, explains that many “tops” are simply hard up for sex, looking to break their abstinence in whatever way they can. Francis, a 34-year-old beauty queen from the Philippines (in 2003 he won a gay beauty pageant held in a private house in Jeddah by a group of Filipinos), reported that he’s had sex with Saudi men whose wives were pregnant or menstruating; when those circumstances changed, most of the men stopped calling. “If they can’t use their wives,” Francis said, “they have this option with gays.”

Gay courting in the kingdom is often overt—in fact, the preferred mode is cruising. “When I was new here, I was worried when six or seven cars would follow me as I walked down the street,” Jamie, a 31-year-old Filipino florist living in Jeddah, told me. “Especially if you’re pretty like me, they won’t stop chasing you.” John Bradley, the author of Saudi Arabia Exposed: Inside a Kingdom in Crisis (2005), says that most male Western expatriates here, gay or not, have been propositioned by Saudi men driving by “at any time of the day or night, quite openly and usually very, very persistently.”

Many gay expatriates say they feel more at home in the kingdom than in their native lands. Jason, a South African educator who has lived in Jeddah since 2002, notes that although South Africa allows gay marriage, “it’s as though there are more gays here.” For Talal, Riyadh became an escape. When he was 17 and living in Dalmaslcus, his father walked in on him having sex with a male friend. He hit Talal and grounded him for two months, letting him out of the house only after he swore he was no longer attracted to men. Talal’s pale face flushed crimson as he recalled his shame at disappointing his family. Eager to escape the weight of their expectations, he took a job in Riyadh. When he announced that he would be moving, his father responded, “You know all Saudis like boys, and you are white. Take care.” Talal was pleased to find a measure of truth in his father’s warning—his fair skin made him a hit among the locals.

Marcos, a 41-year-old from the Philippines, was arrested in 1996 for attending a party featuring a drag show. He spent nine months in prison, where he got 200 lashes, before being deported. Still, he opted to return; he loves his work in fashion, which pays decently, and the social opportunities are an added bonus. “Guys romp around and parade in front of you,” he told me. “They will seduce you. It’s up to you how many you want, every day.”

‘Gulf Arab Love’

One evening in Jeddah after a sandstorm, I sat in the glass rotunda of a café on Tahlia Street. I’d spent many nights there, interviewing men who were too nervous about being caught with a woman to invite me to their apartments. In a country with no cinemas or clubs or bars, the family sections of cafés and restaurants are popular dating haunts, and during my time in Saudi Arabia, I saw many heterosexual couples talking quietly together, while the girl’s cover—her girlfriends—sat nearby.

On this occasion, I was accompanied by Misfir, 34, who was showing me how to navigate Paltalk, a Web site similar to the one where he met his boyfriend three and a half years ago. Misfir told me that “bottoms”—men willing to be penetrated—are in short supply, and he advised me that if I wanted to generate responses to my postings, I should come up with a screen name that hinted at such willingness. We settled on “jedbut,” and I logged on to the “Gulf Arab Love” chat room, introducing myself as a bottom.

Within minutes, I had more admirers than I could handle. They dispensed with small talk, asking for my “ASL”—age, size, and location—without preamble. “Jeddah_bythesea” cited his private dimensions and sent electronic “nudges” when I was slow to respond. “Jedbuilt” pressed me to continue the conversation by phone, but I was distracted by the flirty attentions of jed-to-heart.” However, jed-to-heart’s tone changed when I revealed I was a journalist:

JED-TO-HEART: I lie

jedbut: who do you lie to?

JED-TO-HEART: I lie in my work

JED-TO-HEART: with my family

JED-TO-HEART: but I’m gay

JED-TO-HEART: I can’t say I’m gay

jedbut: is that hard? to lie? do you tell people you like women?

JED-TO-HEART: that why I lie

jedbut: what do you think your family will do if they find out?

JED-TO-HEART: yes

jedbut: are you married?

JED-TO-HEART: ohhhhhhhhhhhhh I think I will kill myselif

He went on to write that he kept his sexual preference a secret from just about everyone, including his wife of five years.

Back in Gulf Arab Love the next day, I encountered “Anajedtop,” who said he liked both men and women; he too was married. I told him I was a journalist, and we chatted for a bit. I asked him if we could meet. He was hesitant, but he seemed curious to find out whether I was for real. We arranged to get together that evening at the Starbucks on Tahlia Street. I waited for him in the family section, which opens out onto the mall and is surrounded by a screen of plants. A mall guard patrolled just outside. At first, Anajedtop avoided my eyes, directing his comments to my male interpreter. “I went in [the chat room] to get an idea of the bad people in those rooms so that God will keep me away from those kinds of things,” he said, his leg jiggling nervously. He abandoned this weak cover story as our conversation progressed.

He claimed to prefer women, though he admitted that few women frequent the Gulf Arab Love chat room. In the absence of women, he said, he’d “go with” a guy. “I go in and put up an offer,” he said. “I set the tone. I’m in control.” To be in control, for Anajedtop, meant to be on top. “It’s not in my nature to be a bottom,” he said. I asked him whether he was gay, and he responded, “No! A gay is against the norm. Anybody can be a top, but only a gay can be a bottom.” He added, “The worst thing is to be a bottom.”

The call to prayer sounded over a loudspeaker, and his leg began shaking more insistently; he put a hand on his knee in a futile attempt to still it. The guard hovered. “I’m worried the mutawwa'in might come,” Anajedtop said, and rushed off to catch the evening prayer.

What is ‘gay’?

In The History of Sexuality, a multivolume work published in the 1970s and ’80s, Michel Foucault proposed his famous thesis that Western academic, medical, and political discourse of the 18th and 19th centuries had produced the idea of the homosexual as a deviant type: In Western society, homosexuality changed from being a behavior (what you do) to an identity (who you are).

In the Middle East, however, homosexual behavior remained just that—an act, not an orientation. That is not to say that Middle Eastern men who had sex with other men were freely tolerated. But they were not automatically labeled deviant. The taxonomy revolved around the roles of top and bottom, with little stigma attaching to the top. “‘Sexuality’ is distinguished not between ‘homosexual’ and ‘heterosexual’ but between taking pleasure and submitting to someone (being used for pleasure),” the sociologist Stephen O. Murray explains in the 1997 compilation Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature. Being a bottom was shameful because it meant playing a woman’s role. A bottom was not locked into his inferior status, however; he could, and was expected to, leave the role behind as he grew older. “There may be a man, and he likes boys. The Saudis just look at this as, ‘He doesn’t like football,’” Dave, a gay American teacher who first moved to Saudi Arabia in 1978, told me. “It’s assumed that he is, as it were, the dominant partner, playing the man’s role, and there is no shame attached to it.” Nor is the dominant partner considered gay.

However much this may seem like sophistry, it is in keeping with a long-standing Muslim tradition of accommodating homosexual impulses, if not homosexual identity. In 19th-century Iran, a young beardless adolescent was considered an object of beauty—desired by men—who would grow naturally into an older bearded man who desired youthful males. There, as in much of the Islamic world, sexual practices were “not considered fixed into lifelong patterns of sexual orientation,” as Afsaneh Najmabadi demonstrates in her 2005 book, Women With Mustaches and Men Without Beards: Gender and Sexual Anxieties of Iranian Modernity. A man was expected to marry, and as long as he fulfilled his procreative obligations, the community didn’t probe his extracurricular activities.

A magazine editor in Jeddah told me that many boys in Mecca, where he grew up, have sexual relations with men, but they don’t see themselves as gay. Abubaker Bagader, a human-rights activist based in Jeddah, explained that homosexuality can be viewed as a phase. “Homosexuality is considered something one might pass by,” he said. “It’s to be understood as a stage of life, particularly at youth.” This view of sexual behavior, in combination with the strict segregation of the sexes, serves to foster homosexual acts, shifting the stigma onto bottoms and allowing older men to excuse their younger behavior—their time as bottoms—as mere youthful transgressions.

In Islamic Homosexualities, the anthropologist Will Roscoe shows that this “status-differentiated pattern”— whereby it’s OK to be a top but not a bottom—has its roots in Greco-Roman culture, and he emphasizes that the top-bottom power dynamic is commonly expressed in relations between older men and younger boys. Yasmin, the student who told me about the lesbian enclave at her college, said that her 16-year-old brother, along with many boys his age, has been targeted by his male elders as a sexual object. “It’s the land of sand and sodomites,” she said. “The older men take advantage of the little boys.” Dave, the American educator, puts it this way: “Let’s say there’s a group of men sitting around in a café. If a smooth-faced boy walks by, they all stop and make approving comments. They’re just noting, ‘That’s a hot little number.’”

The People of Lot

Yet a paradox exists at the heart of Saudi conceptions of gay sex and sexual identity: Despite their seemingly flexible view of sexuality, most of the Saudis I interviewed, including those men who identify themselves as gay, consider sodomy a grave sin. During Ramadan, my Jeddah tour guide, Yasser, abstains from sex. His sense of propriety is widely shared: Few gay parties occur in the country during the holy month. Faith is a “huge confusion” for gay Muslims, Yasser and others told me. “My religion says it’s forbidden, and to practice this kind of activity, you’ll end up in hell,” he explains. But Yasser places hope in God’s merciful nature. “God forgives you if, from the inside, you are very pure,” he said. “If you have guilt all the time while you’re doing this stuff, maybe God might forgive you. If you practice something forbidden and keep it quiet, God might forgive you.” Zahar, a 41-year-old Saudi who has traveled widely throughout the world, urged me not to write about Islam and homosexuality; to do so, he said, is to cut off debate, because “it’s always the religion that holds people back.” He added, “The original points of Islam can never be changed.” Years ago, Zahar went to the library to ascertain just what those points are. What he found surprised him. “Strange enough, there is no certain condemnation for that [homosexual] act in Islam. On the other hand, to have illegal sex between a man and a woman, there are very clear rules and sub-rules.”

Indeed, the Koran does not contain rules about homosexuality, says Everett K. Rowson, a professor at New York University who is working on a book about homosexuality in medieval Islamic society. “The only passages that deal with the subject unambiguously appear in the passages dealing with Lot.”

The story of Lot is rendered in the Koran much as it is in the Old Testament. The men of Lot’s town lust after male angels under his protection, and he begs them to have sex with his virgin daughters instead:

Do ye commit lewdness / such as no people / in creation (ever) committed / before you? For ye practice your lusts / on men in preference / to women: ye are indeed / a people transgressing beyond / bounds.

The men refuse to heed him and are punished by a shower of brimstone. Their defiance survives linguistically: In Arabic, the “top” sodomite is luti, meaning “of [the people of] Lot.”

This surely suggests that sodomy is considered sinful, but the Koran’s treatment of the practice contrasts with its discussions of zina—sexual relations between a man and a woman who are not married to each other. Zina is explicitly condemned:

Nor come nigh to adultery: / for it is a shameful (deed) / and an evil, opening to the road / (to other evils).

The punishment for it is later spelled out: 100 lashes for each party. The Koran does not offer such direct guidance on what to do about sodomy. Many Islamic scholars analogize the act to zina to determine a punishment, and some go so far as to say the two sins are the same.

Two other key verses deal with sexual transgression. The first instructs:

If any of your women / are guilty of lewdness, / take the evidence of four / (reliable) witnesses from amongst / you/ against them; and if they testify, / confine [the women] to houses until / death do claim them, / or God ordain them / some (other) way.

But what is this “lewdness”? Is it zina or lesbianism? It is hard to say. The second verse is also ambiguous:

If two men among you / are guilty of lewdness, / punish them both. / If they repent and amend, / leave them alone …

In Arabic, the masculine “dual pronoun” can refer to two men or to a man and a woman. So again—sodomy, or zina?

For many centuries, Rowson says, these verses were widely thought to pertain to zina, but since the early 20th century, they have been largely assumed to proscribe homosexual behavior. He and most other scholars in the field believe that at about that time, Middle Eastern attitudes toward homosexuality fundamentally shifted. Though same-sex practices were considered taboo, and shameful for the bottom, same-sex desire had long been understood as a natural inclination. For example, Abu Nuwas—a famous eighth-century poet from Baghdad—and his literary successors devoted much ink to the charms of attractive boys. At the turn of the century, Islamic society began to express revulsion at the concept of homosexuality, even if it was confined only to lustful thoughts, and this distaste became more pronounced with the influx of Western media. “Many attitudes with regard to sexual morality that are thought to be identical to Islam owe a lot more to Queen Victoria” than to the Koran, Rowson told me. “People don’t know—or they try to keep it under the carpet—that 200 years ago, highly respected religious scholars in the Middle East were writing poems about beautiful boys.”

Even Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab—the 18th- century religious scholar who founded Wahhabism—seems to draw a distinction between homosexual desires and homosexual acts, according to Natana DeLong-Bas, the author of Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (2004). The closest Abd al-Wahhab came to touching upon the topic of homosexuality was in a description of an effeminate man who is interested in other men at a wedding banquet. His tone here is tolerant rather than condemnatory; as long as the man controls his urges, no one in the community has the right to police him.

Religious scholars have turned to the hadith—the sayings and doings of the Prophet Muhammad—to supplement the Koran’s scant teachings about sodomy and decide on a punishment. There are six canonical collections of hadith, the earliest recorded two centuries after Muhammad’s death. The two most authoritative collections, Rowson says, don’t mention sodomy. In the remaining four, the most important citation reads: “Those whom you find performing the act of the people of Lot, kill both the active and the passive partner.” Though some legal schools reject this hadith as unreliable, most scholars of Hanbalism, the school of legal thought that underpins the official law of the Saudi kingdom, accept it. It may have provided the authority for the execution this February. (Judges will go out of their way to avoid finding that an act of sodomy has occurred, however.)

‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’

The gay men I interviewed in Jeddah and Riyadh laughed when I asked them if they worried about being executed. Although they do fear the mutawwa'in to some degree, they believe the House of Saud isn’t interested in a widespread hunt of homosexuals. For one thing, such an effort might expose members of the royal family to awkward scrutiny. “If they wanted to arrest all the gay people in Saudi Arabia,” Misfir, my chat-room guide, told me—repeating what he says was a police officer’s comment—“they’d have to put a fence around the whole country.”

In addition, the power of the mutawwa'in is limited by the Koran, which frowns upon those who intrude on the privacy of others in order to catch them in sinful acts. The mandate of the Committee on the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice is specifically to regulate behavior in the public realm. What occurs behind closed doors is between a believer and God.

This seems to be the way of the kingdom: essentially, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Private misbehavior is fine, as long as public decorum is observed. Cinemas are forbidden, but people watch pirated DVDs. Drinking is illegal, but alcohol flows at parties. Women wrap their bodies and faces in layers of black, but pornography flourishes. Gay men thrive in this atmosphere. “We really have a very comfortable life,” said Zahar, the Saudi who asked me not to write about homosexuality and Islam. “The only thing is the outward showing. I can be flamboyant in my house, but not outside.”

This strikes many Saudis as a reasonable accommodation. Court records in Saudi Arabia are generally closed, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the mutawwa'in are most likely to punish men who are overtly effeminate— those whose public behavior advertises a gayness that others keep private.

Filipinos, who have little influence and less familiarity with the demands of a double life, seem to be especially vulnerable. When I asked Jamie, the Filipino who says he gets followed down the street by Saudi men, whether he was gay, he answered, with a high giggle, “Obviously!” But he has paid a price for his flamboyant manner. He used to wear his thick black hair down to his shoulders, concealing it with a baseball cap in public, until recently, when he ran into a man in a shortened thawb at a coffee shop. The mutawwa asked for his work permit. Even though he produced one, Jamie was shoved into an SUV and driven to a police station.

“Are you gay?” a police officer asked after pulling off Jamie’s cap and seeing his long hair. “Of course not,” Jamie said. He challenged the cop to find a violation, and the officer confirmed the mutawwa’s report that Jamie was wearing makeup, dressing like a woman, and flirting. After spending a night in jail, Jamie was taken to mutawwa'in headquarters in Jeddah, and a mutawwa interrogated him again. When he tried to defend himself, the mutawwa asked him to walk, and Jamie strode across the room in what he considered a manly fashion. He was eventually allowed to call his boss, who secured his release. Jamie cut his hair—not out of fear, he says, but because he didn’t want to bother his boss a second time.

Jamie laughed as he told me of his attempts at dissimulation; though the stakes can be high, efforts to stamp out homosexuality here often do seem farcical. The mutawwa'in get to play the heavies, the government goes through the motions, and the perps play innocent—Me? Gay? Few people in the kingdom, other than the mutawwa'in, seem to take the process seriously. When the mutawwa'in busted the party that led to Marcos’s deportation, they separated the “showgirls” wearing drag from the rest of the partygoers, and then asked everyone but the drag queens to line up against the wall for the dawn prayer. At the first of the three ensuing trials, Marcos and the 23 other Filipinos who’d been detained were confronted with the evidence from the party: plastic bags full of makeup, shoes, wigs, and pictures of the defendants dressed like women. When the Filipinos were returned to their cells, they began arguing about who had looked the hottest in the photos. And even after his punishment and deportation, Marcos was unfazed; when he returned to Jeddah, it was under the same name.

The threat of a crackdown always looms, however. In March 2005, the police crashed what they identified as a “gay wedding” in a rented hall near Jeddah; according to some sources, the gathering was only a birthday party. (Similar busts have occurred in Riyadh.) Most of the partylgoers were reportedly released without having to do jail time, but the arrests rattled the gay community; at the time of my visit, party organizers were sticking to more-intimate gatherings and monitoring guest lists closely.

The Closeted Kingdom

To be gay in Saudi Arabia is to live a contradiction—to have license without rights, and to enjoy broad tolerance without the most minimal acceptance. The closet is not a choice; it is a rule of survival.

When I asked Tariq, the 24-year-old in the travel industry, whether his parents suspected he was gay, he responded, “Maybe they feel it, but they have not come up to me and asked me. They don’t want to open the door.” Stephen Murray, the sociologist, has called this sort of denial “the will not to know”—a phrase that perfectly captures Saudi society’s defiant resolve to look the other way. Acknowledging homosexuality would harden a potentially mutable behavior into an identity that contradicts the teachings of Islam, to the extent that Islam deals with the subject. A policy of official denial but tacit acceptance leaves space for change, the possibility that gay men will abandon their sinful ways. Amjad, a gay Palestinian I met in Riyadh, holds out hope that he’ll be “cured” of homosexuality, that when his wife receives her papers to join him in Saudi Arabia, he’ll be able to break off his relationship with his boyfriend. “God knows what I have in my heart,” he said. “I’m trying to do the best I can, obeying the religion. I’m fasting, I’m praying, I’m giving zakat [charity]. All the things that God has asked us to do, if I have the ability, I will do it.”

Amjad cited a parable about two men living in the same house. The upstairs man was devout and had spent his life praying to God. The downstairs man went to parties, drank, and committed zina. One night, the upstairs man had the urge to try what the downstairs man was doing. At the same moment, the downstairs man decided to see what his neighbor was up to. “They died at the stairs,” Amjad said. “The one going down went to hell. The one going up went to heaven.” For Amjad to accept a fixed identity as a gay man would be to forgo the possibility of ever going upstairs.

But as the Western conception of sexual identity has filtered into the kingdom via television and the Internet, it has begun to blur the Saudi view of sexual behavior as distinct from sexual identity. For example, although Yasser is open to the possibility that he will in time grow attracted to women, he considers himself gay. He says that his countrymen are starting to see homosexual behavior as a marker of identity: “Now that people watch TV all the time, they know what gay people look like and what they do,” he explains. “They know if your favorite artist is Madonna and you listen to a lot of music, that means you are gay.” The Jeddah-based magazine editor sees a similar trend. “The whole issue used to be whether that guy was a [top] or a bottom,” he told me. “Now people are getting more into the concept of homosexual and straight.”

But new recognition of this distinction has not brought with it acceptance of homosexuality: Saudis may be tuning in to Oprah, but her tell-all ethic has yet to catch on. Radwan, the Saudi American, came out to his parents only after spending time in the United States—and the experience was so bad that he’s gone back into the closet. His father, a Saudi, threatened to kill himself, then decided that he couldn’t (because suicide is haram), then contemplated killing Radwan instead. “In the end,” Radwan told me, “I said, ‘I’m not gay anymore. I’m straight.’” Most of his gay peers choose to remain silent within their families. Yasser says that if his mother ever found out he’s gay, she would treat him as if he were sick and take him to psychologists to try to find a cure.

Zahar, at 41, has managed the unusual feat of staving off marriage without revealing himself to be gay. Marriage would devastate him, he says, and exposure of his homosexuality would devastate his family. So Zahar has employed an elaborate series of stratagems: a fake girlfriend, a fake engagement to a sympathetic cousin, the breaking off of the engagement. As he put it, “I schemed, and I planned. I don’t like to con people, but I had to do that for my family.”

In the West, we would expect such subterfuge to exact a high psychological cost. But a closet doesn’t feel as lonely when so many others, gay and straight, are in it, too. A double life is the essence of life in the kingdom—everyone has to keep private any deviance from official norms. The expectation that Zahar would maintain a public front at odds with his private self is no greater than the expectations facing his straight peers. Dave, the gay American I met, recalled his surprise when his boyfriend of five years got married, and then asked him to go to the newlyweds’ apartment to “make the bed up the way you make it up,” for the benefit of the bride. “Saudis will get stressed about things that wouldn’t cause us to blink,” Dave said. “But having to live a double life, that’s just a normal thing.”

Most of the gay men I interviewed said that gay rights are beside the point. They view the downsides of life in Saudi Arabia—having to cut your hair, or hide your jewelry, or even spend time in prison for going to a party—as minor aggravations. “When I see a gay parade [in trips to the West], it’s too much of a masquerade for attention,” Zahar said. “You don’t need that. Women’s rights, gay rights—why? Get your rights without being too loud.”

Embracing gay identity, generally viewed in the West as the path to fuller rights, could backfire in Saudi Arabia. The idea of being gay, as opposed to simply acting on sexual urges, may bring with it a deeper sense of shame. “When I first came here, people didn’t seem to have guilt. They were sort of ‘I’ll worry about that on Judgment Day,’” Dave said. “Now, with the Internet and Arabia TV, they have some guilt.” The magazine editor in Jeddah says that when he visits his neighbors these days, they look back at their past sexual encounters with other men regretfully, thinking, “What the hell were we doing? It’s disgusting.”

When Radwan arrived in Jeddah, in 1987, after seeing the gay-rights movement in the United States firsthand, he wanted more than the tacit right to quietly do what he chose. “Invisibility gives you the cover to be gay,” he said. “But the bad part of invisibility is that it’s hard to build a public identity and get people to admit there is such a community and then to give you some rights.” He tried to rally the community and encourage basic rights—like the right not to be imprisoned. But the locals took him aside and warned him to keep his mouth shut. They told him, “You’ve got everything a gay person could ever want.”

Selected quotes from The Atlantic magazine article above that point to the promotion and encouragement of homosexual behavior in puritanical Islamic societies such as Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan:

I recalled something he had told me earlier. “It’s a lot easier to be gay than straight here,” he had said. “If you go out with a girl, people will start to ask her questions. But if I have a date upstairs and my family is downstairs, they won’t even come up.”

In Saudi Arabia, “It’s easier to be a lesbian [than a heterosexual]. There’s an overwhelming number of people who turn to lesbianism,” Yasmin said, adding that the number of men in the kingdom who turn to gay sex is even greater. “They’re not really homosexual,” she said. “They’re like cell mates in prison.”

The above quote validates the theory that puritanical Islamic societies are like prisons that encourage homosexual behavior even if the participants are themselves not homosexual.

As Radwan, the Saudi American, put it, “Some Saudi [men] can’t have sex with women, so they have sex with guys. When the sexes are so strictly segregated”—men are allowed little contact with women outside their families, in order to protect women’s purity—“how do they have a chance to have sex with a woman and not get into trouble?”

Many gay expatriates say they feel more at home in the kingdom than in their native lands. Jason, a South African educator who has lived in Jeddah since 2002, notes that although South Africa allows gay marriage, “it’s as though there are more gays here.”

Even Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab—the 18th- century religious scholar who founded Wahhabism—seems to draw a distinction between homosexual desires and homosexual acts, according to Natana DeLong-Bas, the author of Wahhabi Islam: From Revival and Reform to Global Jihad (2004). The closest Abd al-Wahhab came to touching upon the topic of homosexuality was in a description of an effeminate man who is interested in other men at a wedding banquet. His tone here is tolerant rather than condemnatory; as long as the man controls his urges, no one in the community has the right to police him.

The above quote is the SMOKING GUN. Muhammed Abd al-Wahhab, the founder of Saudi Wahhabi Islam himself is tolerant towards homosexual feelings. Even though al-Wahhab has imposed extremely strict segregation between males and females, he has a tolerant attitude towards homoerotica. This implies that al-Wahhab may have been a closet homosexual himself which would make sense given his dislike of heterosexual activities.

“If they wanted to arrest all the gay people in Saudi Arabia,” Misfir, my chat-room guide, told me—repeating what he says was a police officer’s comment—“they’d have to put a fence around the whole country.”


He tried to rally the community and encourage basic rights—like the right not to be imprisoned. But the locals took him aside and warned him to keep his mouth shut. They told him, “You’ve got everything a gay person could ever want.”

Equating Puritanism with Islam somewhat insults Puritans.

The crazed religious wackos that burned women at stakes because of their evil powers?

Yes, let's not insult them...