Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims.

• Author: Sharlet, Jocelyn
• Position: Book review

Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims. By SCOTT SIRAJ AL-HAQQ KUGLE, Oxford: ONEWORLD, 2010. Pp. x + 335. $90 (cloth); $29.95 (paper).

This book offers an introduction to attitudes toward gay, lesbian, and transgender people in the main Islamic sources of Qur'an, hadith, and figh, as well as drawing on background information in other Islamic sources, including those of Sufism, philosophy, history, and literature. In addition, the book examines how modern Islamic thought is used in support or denial of rights for gay, lesbian, and transgender people--especially in chapter one "Islam on Trial: A Case Study," in chapter five "Reforming Sharica: Islamic Ethics of Same-Sex Marriage," and in chapter six "Reviving Spirit: Islamic Approaches to Transgender Experience." Throughout the author attempts to demonstrate that many of the Islamic perspectives on gay, lesbian, and transgender people in general developed in the context of historically specific problems of disrespect of prophets, political crisis, ideological allegiances, and sexual assault, and in the context of adultery that can lead to illegitimate children.

In chapter one Kugle explains constructivist (constructed and re-constructible) and essentialist (innate and unchanging) views on sexuality and argues in favor of essentialist sexuality. His decision not to include bisexual people in his analysis is in conjunction with his argument for essentialist sexuality, even though there is material in the sources--the main ones and others--that could be used to consider bisexual people. Kugle clarifies that Islamic law is much more complex than the ideological forms employed by neo-traditionalists and that Islamic law is rarely applied directly in modern. Muslim-majority nation states. To answer what happened in between the complexity of Islamic law and the simplifications of ideological neo-traditionalists, he builds on the work of Fatima Mernissi, who has shown that an Islamic ethic of tolerance that was characterized by silence was undermined by the globalization of culture. Later in the book Kugle argues that colonial regimes subverted traditions of Islamic legal training and marginal yet important Islamic traditions of Sufism and philosophical inquiry, while anti-colonial revolutions led to authoritarian regimes that continued to undermine and coercively control these discourses, even as they used a simplified approach to Islam.

Chapters two to...