Islamic Homosexualities : Culture, History, and Literature

by Roscoe, Will

• ISBN13: 9780814774687
• ISBN10: 0814774687
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1997-01-01
• Publisher: New York University Press

Summary

The dramatic impact of Islamic fundamentalism in recent years has skewed our image of Islamic history and culture. Stereotypes depict Islamic societies as economically backward, hyper-patriarchal, and fanatically religious. But in fact, the Islamic world encompasses a great diversity of cultures and a great deal of variation within those cultures in terms of gender roles and sexuality.The first collection on this topic from a historical and anthropological perspective, Homosexuality in the Muslim World reveals that patterns of male and female homosexuality have existed and often flourished within the Islamic world. Indeed, same-sex relations have, until quite recently, been much more tolerated under Islam than in the Christian West.Based on the latest theoretical perspectives in gender studies, feminism, and gay studies, Homosexuality in the Muslim World includes cultural and historical analyses of the entire Islamic world, not just the so-called Middle East. Essays show both age-stratified patterns of homosexuality, as revealed in the erotic and romantic poetry of medieval poets, and gender-based patterns, in which both men and women might, to varying degrees, choose to live as members of the opposite sex. The contributors draw on historical documents, literary texts, ethnographic observation and direct observation by both Muslim and non-Muslim authors to show the considerable diversity of Islamic societies and the existence of tolerated gender and sexual variances.

Table of Contents

Part I: Introduction to Islamic Homosexualities
Introduction	3	(11)
Will Roscoe
Stephen O. Murray
The Will Not to Know: Islamic Accommodations of Male Homosexuality	14	(41)
Stephen O. Murray
Precursors of Islamic Male Homosexualities	55	(32)
Will Roscoe
Muhammad and Male Homosexuality	87	(10)
Jim Wafer
Woman-Woman Love in Islamic Societies	97	(10)
Stephen O. Murray
Part II: Literary Studies
Vision and Passion: The Symbolism of Male Love in Islamic Mystical Literature	107	(25)
Jim Wafer
Corporealizing Medieval Persian and Turkish Tropes	132	(10)
Stephen O. Murray
Male Love and Islamic Law in Arab Spain	142	(19)
Louis Crompton
Part III: Historical Studies
Male Homosexuality, Inheritance Rules, and the Status of Women in Medieval Egypt: The Case of the Mamluks	161	(13)
Stephen O. Murray
Homosexuality among Slave Elites in Ottoman Turkey	174	(13)
Stephen O. Murray
Male Homosexuality in Ottoman Albania	187	(10)
Stephen O. Murray
The Balkan Sworn Virgin: A Cross-Gendered Female Role	197	(7)
Mildred Dickemann
Some Nineteenth-Century Reports of Islamic Homosexualities	204	(18)
Stephen O. Murray
Gender-Defined Homosexual Roles in Sub-Saharan African Islamic Cultures	222	(11)
Stephen O. Murray
Part IV: Anthropological Studies
Institutionalized Gender-Crossing in Southern Iraq	233	(11)
Sigrid Westphal-Hellbusch
Bradley Rose
The Sohari Khanith	244	(12)
Stephen O. Murray
Male Actresses in Islamic Parts of Indonesia and the Southern Philippines	256	(6)
Stephen O. Murray
Two Baluchi Buggas, a Sindhi Zenana, and the Status of Hijras in Contemporary Pakistan	262	(5)
Nauman Naqvi
Hasan Mujtaba
The Other Side of Midnight: Pakistani Male Prostitutes	267	(8)
Hasan Mujtaba
Not-So-Gay Life in Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s	275	(22)
Badruddin Khan
Two Islamic AIDS Education Organizations	297	(5)
Stephen O. Murray
Eric Allyn
Conclusion	302	(19)
Stephen O. Murray
Will Roscoe
Appendix	321	(2)
Authors	323	(2)
Index	325