Aslamu-alaikum:
I very much ADMIRE the MORMONS BRAVERY for standing up for their RELIGION……………

I wish realllllllllly wish that our MEN and WOMEN were STRONG and BRAVE in OUR DEEN like these people are.

BTW, i have quite a few mormon friends and believe me they are strong and brave in their deen. I guess i can relate to them because they can relate to me when i tell them that my father practices polygamy too. THEY GET SO SURPRISED that he did the same thing as they are doing in this country.
anyway my 2 cents worth.
I have to go to work now……………… salam

Long article, but over all it was nice, masha’Allah. A little editing would have made your point stronger (i.e. cut back on the dream sequence in the middle :) )

I think Muslims should be worried about the passing of Prop 8 though. It’s bigger than the actual issue of Gay Marriage.
The government is taking a minority group’s rights way without any constitutional reason. Gays still have to pay the same taxes but are not awarded the same rights as all the other citizens. When you look at the bare facts it’s a civil rights issue.

Before I get attacked: I understand and agree whole-heartedly with Allah ta’ala’s prohibition of homosexuality, He calls it an abomination.
BUT: People who worship other than Allah are the worst type of sinners right? and we make efforts to work with them and respect them, and in that case we have no problem agreeing to get along because we are all human at the end of the day.

I’m not saying Muslims should have voted either way on Prop 8, I just think we should consider what this means for the rest of the country and not be so quick to rally behind it because we agree with it on the surface.

Bottom line: if it’s okay for the country to vote one group’s rights away, how can we be sure we’re not next?

The article should’ve been half its length. Too many words spoil a good article.

@ Zaynab,

You bring up some really good points. I’d tend to agree with you, but the problem comes that you’re perceived to be FOR gay-marriage then!

Its a really difficult situation that doesn’t seem to have any clear winners on either side for us.

Great article by the way, but yes I do agree that it seems to take its time to get to the point.

@ Salman Zahid
It’s a sticky situation. I’d say that I’m not FOR gay marriage, I’m for the government honouring it’s word.
That’s the tricky thing about living in a secular country, we have to play by the rules that people make up, and since we’re only human we don’t really understand the ramifications of our decisions. Best case scenario: we should live under the Laws of Allah. But if a group decides to do otherwise the least they can do is honour their word.

My fear is just that this sets a bad precident. If you really analyze the argument in terms of the constitution it’s not fair, and people can see the hypocrisy of it.

@ Qas
You raise a good point. A society that openly transgresses is subject to the curse of Allah. And just because I cannot definitively point out what it is doesn’t mean we are not suffering through it or that it is not coming. I’ll try to think more carefully when speaking on a subject like this. May Allah forgive us all and help us protect our tongues. Ameen.

Yes, encourage the good rather than scream at the evil.
This, I believe, is a good tack to use with abortion as well.
As no one really wants to do that, a Muslim could step up and say, “I will care for you and your baby” (with financial assistance). That way, the woman need not worry about problems so much.

They call cigarettes fags in Britain. In any case, the homos seem to be fighting back:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20081209/D94URMF80.html

But the thing is that all of this is already normalized for non-Muslims. Alcohol, drugs, pre-marital relations…. homosexuality is just another facet that we hold to be haraam.

Jazakallah khair shaykh yasir for that post. Yes – we Muslims need to be wise about these social issues.

Abortion – for example. islamically, we do not believe life begins at conception – therefore analogies about burying daughters are inaccurate in terms of early term abortions!!!

I do not understand what the big fuss is among Muslims so adamently being anti abortion, or anti-gay marriage. We live in a non-Muslim society. Our law that we live by is not the law of shariah. We do have free will to do/believe whatever we want – and regardless of whether other people are gay, have abortions, drink alcohol, etc. it doesnt affect us. We need to educate ourselves and our friends/families and instill our values to our own fellow Muslims.

The only reason i say this – is because it is mostly the liberal/libertarian group – which is on the left on these issues – which for the most part are also very tolerant of Islam and defend Muslims. I’m not saying that we should abandon our moral principles and promote homosexuality, or abortions – but in essence regardless of what the law is in the US – we live our own lives and should not be affected by our surroundings.

Again i am confused about where i stand on prop8. yes of course the act of homosexuality – I believe is wrong for Muslims – but I dont know what right I have imposing my own beliefs on these issues on Non-Muslims who live by an entirely different worldview.

bismillah.

As for concerns about voting against other shari’ah mandated laws, again, not a big deal. Why? Look at the Mormons – the voted for the bill even though it made polygamy unlawful. Why is that? Because what is being forbidden is not the spiritual aspect of polygamy, nor the physical – what is being forbidden are the state rights and benefits. You’re not walking into the county clerks office and and getting the state and federal government to give you tax breaks for multiple spouses for sure, but it doesn’t cover what you and your masjid can do at a spiritual level, nor does it mandate with whom your intimacies take place with – if it did, Hugh Hefner would be out of a “job” (or lifestyle). The same with cousin marriages – actually, with cousin marriages, you’d just have to do it in another state and it *should* be recognized elsewhere, including california.

no, Siraaj. the LDS changed its religious laws — “its shariah” — to conform to pressure from other Americans. polygyny is no longer the law in the LDS. that and other changes to their laws is the cause of the schism among Mormons. so now there is the official LDS, the one being investigated in California — the “mainstream” Mormon church. and the throwback-Mormons, the ultra-fundamentalists — who continue to practice polygyny, who would rather go to jail than give it up.

with regard to your statement about “cousin marriages” — the facts are that the Muslims of Texas who voted for that law voted against the shariah, plain and simple. i am not a faqih nor a qadhi (lower-case). so i pray that Allah will forgive them for any sin or excess in their actions. but i will not go past that… except with respect to American law: according to your cousin-marriage analysis, Texas, Illinois, etc., will recognize the gay-marriages that were performed in California before Prop 8, right? and if every US state outlaws such marriage, then these states will recognize the marriages performed in Europe or Canada? really?

even if that were true, Siraaj, think for a moment: if it becomes impermissible for first-cousins to marry in the US, because nothing in your analysis argues that there would be a problem with that — what will happen to Muslims who seek to immigrate here who are in illegal cousin-marriages? no moral turpitude there? no automatic denial because their marriages defy the law?

Prop 8 does not concern us in my opinion.

pointedly, also, i did not name any individual Muslim, nor expose any person to criticism nor praise for voting for or against the measure. sincerely, i believe you discuss the vote of the shaykh without showing him adequate respect. because the goodness or wrongness of his particular vote is for Allah to decide. Allah Knows, and only He Knows, what information was available to the shaykh when he voted. Allah Knows, and I certainly do not know, if that vote was a measured result of his having discussed the issue with people in his community, perhaps forging positive ties with Muslim or non-Muslim leaders in his area.

Exactly my point – you’ve made caricatures of people, and you don’t know who you’re caricaturing, nor are you giving alternative reasons in your piece for why Muslims may have voted on this measure in California, or for that matter, in Texas. That’s why a name we all know and respect was thrown in there – it makes you think twice about saying what was said and catalyzes a new thought process – positive rationale for why a Muslim might vote for it, which your article didn’t do.

with regard to your statement about “cousin marriages” — the facts are that the Muslims of Texas who voted for that law voted against the shariah, plain and simple. i am not a faqih nor a qadhi (lower-case). so i pray that Allah will forgive them for any sin or excess in their actions. but i will not go past that… except with respect to American law: according to your cousin-marriage analysis, Texas, Illinois, etc., will recognize the gay-marriages that were performed in California before Prop 8, right? and if every US state outlaws such marriage, then these states will recognize the marriages performed in Europe or Canada? really?

In that case, voting should not be advocated because voting on laws and voting for candidates should also be avoided, plain and simple. There’s no need for a discussion of pros and cons of voting a measure on the basis of whether it is in the interest of our image or not because to begin with, it’s haraam, and that should take higher priority, right? Right?

But that’s not the position taken – part of the position that allows voting takes into account intention, and it is a more nuanced position. Ironically, the position you espouse regarding “voting against the shari’ah” is a carbon copy thought process borrowed from those you satirically named as wackos. Intention matters – when you vote a presidential candidate in, you aim for the benefit of that candidate and hope the harm he brings is outweighed by said benefit. There is no doubt that many candidates, executive or legislative, hold positions that are against the shari’ah and they advocate such positions openly – we call on Muslims to vote for them based on the overall benefit we hope to gain for the community and society. That same thought process ought to be in place when talking about voting on bills such as Prop 8 or their Texan counterparts, if you take the view that you do on voting for candidates. If not, then what I see is inconsistency in your thoughts on this which need reconciliation.

With respect to recognition of marriages, from what I have read and researched, if a marriage is recognized as a marriage in one state, then it will have to also be done in all other states. However, if it is forbidden in one state, this doesn’t make it forbidden in all states. So people coming in from other countries, they need not declare their relationship to get into the country beyond being spouses.

again, and this is not just for Siraaj: criticizing the Mormon tactics, or trying to ensure that Muslims fully contemplate the consequences of a law before they advocate for or against it — those do not make a person a supporter of homosexuality nor of gay-marriage. to assert the opposite is to play by the neo-con smear-tactics. maybe people listen to so much GOP-talk-radio on the way to work that they have absorbed more bile than they realize.

This is an interesting strawman you’ve built and bashed – in no place did I state not voting for Prop 8 equated with support of homosexuality. My point (in the context of the quote you’ve requoted) was that the use of the hadeeth of aisha to dissuade people from this measure based on daw’ah priorities is flawed because the situations presented were simply not analogous.

As I said explicitly: I do not have a position with regards to whether Muslims should or should not have supported proposition 8. Because of this, in effect my position was to remain neutral, which I did. But I do know that naively jumping on the moral bandwagon, without studying the possible repercussions, was not the wisest course of action (and I’m not suggesting that you are saying that).

My point is simply that if we have a position, we ought to advocate for it, particularly in a matter like this. Advocate intelligently, yes. But advocate nonetheless. Mormons may have been targeted by the NY Times, but black americans were targeted by the neo-con radio programs (which Abu Abdullaah noted I listen to) and 93% of them voted for Prop 8. The President Elect and his VP don’t believe in gay marriage either. The Muslim community may need to learn how to better craft the message they deliver as to why they stand in opposition to gay marriage, but they ought not to hold back their vote for fear of repercussions.

If as a community we were questioned on it, the answer would simply be, “Our position on gay marriage is the same as that of the President, so if you consider us discriminatory, then you consider him the same as well.”

That could be one, there are people who could come up with better messages to advocate our position, but the point is, our position shouldn’t be suppressed by fear from, of all people, the homosexual lobby, or other far-left leaning individuals.

Siraaj

Another question comes to mind, as muslims, how does it affect us if there are two homosexuals having relationship openly without getting married compared to having relationship openly while married? As Siraj pointed out we want our children not to consider this behavior normal and ok, but they are everywhere even if they are not married…

bismillah. i love you Siraaj, but today i am not wasting my tahajjud time with long responses to your criticisms. :) if not later today, then at TDC, inshaAllah. no, definitely not there — there is too much good at TDC to spoil my last one with hard-nosed arguments with someone i respect. maybe in Idaho…

obviously we differ in many things: most unfortunately in our interpretations of each other’s words and of the mindsets’ of the majority of readers. your comments vigorously defend positions that are held by so many people that i give no credence to your claim you have expanded anyone’s mind. in my opinion, you merely hammer down a call to persons to consider the ramifications of their actions. if i went to excess to achieve that goal (excess beyond the number of words i used: we already know it was too long an article) then i pray to Allah for His Forgiveness, and to Him alone.

LOL, akhi, fair enough, I won’t be at TDC, but insha’Allah next time you come traveling for classes, you’re welcome to crash (not literally) at my pad if Chicago is on your itinerary :D

Siraaj

I just wanted to ADD a liitle to your comment. It is not only non-muslims that are having relationships openly but also some muslim brothers and sisters and not to mention many brothers and sisters( i don’t blame the sisters they are innocent) that get caught up in the web of dawah and forget who they are suppose to do dawah to in case of SOME MSA’s NOT ALL, but SOME MSA’s that haven’t learnt who to do DAWAH.
OH brother Siraj , what is going to happen when your kiddies grow up and go to college and see an atmosphere that becomes shocking to them. I don’t sometimes that environment can be shocking to children that grew up in a very restricted or sheltered environment.
With all due respect, I really would like your MILLION DOLLARS worth of INPUT.
salam

Insha’Allah, absolutely nothing – my wife and I are both parents actively engaged in raising our children, educating them both in the Islamic sense and the secular sense. When parents are educating themselves and fully engaged socially as well, and taking an active role with their kids, then the “oh, you’re restricting you’re kids” argument is meaningless.

My concerns were for the majority of people who expect the rest of society, schools, and television to raise their kids.

Siraaj

I understand and agree with some of your comments “raising our children, educating them both in the Islamic sense and the secular sense.
My father, taught us well when we were children,,,,,,,,,,,, instead of T.V. my father would teach us the QURAN and SUNNAH and also taught us and Informed us of the SECULAR way of life as well and to KEEP AWAY from those things………………
Speaking of schools, my mother(Allah give her Jannatu-ul-Firdous) used to homeschool us in both Englhish and URDU before we went to the Secular HIGH SCHOOL…………………….
My father took us to learn how to ride horses, swimming, camping……etc
you know if one has daughters like you do, great fathers try to shelter them from many things llike mingling with non-mahrem men and such………… and i know i am mingling with them right now …………………………i guess i am learning my secularism without my father…………………………..

LOL, you just don’t stop, do you?

Siraaj

Book 032, Number 6219: (Muslim)
Abu Huraira reported Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) as saying: Don’t nurse grudge and don’t bid him out for raising the price and don’t nurse aversion or enmity and don’t enter into a transaction when the others have entered into that transaction and be as fellow-brothers and servants of Allah. A Muslim is the brother of a Muslim. He neither oppresses him nor humiliates him nor looks down upon him. The piety is here, (and while saying so) he pointed towards his chest thrice. It is a serious evil for a Muslim that he should look down upon his brother Muslim. All things of a Muslim are inviolable for his brother in faith: his blood, his wealth and his honour.

I wrote this recently, thought you guys might enjoy:

Ok, we get it.
Gay marriage is the cool “thing” to talk about.
On one side you have pastors and politicians geting votes and money from talking about it.
“Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve” joke is said over and over and yet people keep laughing.

But forget them, I don’t go to Churches and those people usually keep to themselves except for a few crazies who go to military funerals…but that’s ANOTHER story.

It’s the other side that’s really grating on my nerves.
I turn on the tv and I’m blasted with HATE PROPOSITION 8 or “I’M NOT A SECOND CLASS CITIZEN” or Ellen crying (wait no that was about a dog).
I go to PBS and kids are explaning how they have two Moms.
I go to a coffee shop and am told and lectured by a barista about the rights of gays, religion is bad and transvestites are naturally born that way.
Protests on the Mormon church, blacks, latinos, asians and a “hit list” of people who donated to the Proposition 8 campaign.
Seriously, it’s getting a bit much.
If I can’t even read a short story without being lectured on how marriage is a civil right, we have a problem.

No, the African American civil rights movement has never been nor will it ever be equivalent let alone comparable to the gay civil rights movement.
You’ve really lost your marbles if you are going to compare slavery and Jim Crow to gay marriage.
While all bigotry is wrong, for every hollywood depiction of Matthew Shepherd there are millions of untold stories of African Americans of the past, present and sadly maybe even in the future.

So for people to use the civil rights movement as the stepping stone and justification for the gay rights movement (and then to turn around and demonize African Americans in California for voting against gay marriage) is just insane.

Why don’t people get it?
Gay marriage has been banned in 30 states (in 30 tries) and the state with the largest and most prosperous gay population has also banned it.

Yet anyone who is against gay marriage is seen as a hateful bigot who doesn’t think logically and must be a religious zealot.

NO, I’m sorry it’s not that easy.
America is a conservative country with a tradition of religious values.
Hollywood and Bravotv are not representative of America.

While we are a secular republic, ethical values established through religion has dictated public and foreign policy since the birth of the United States (to our detriment and benefit)
Every session of congress begins with an invocation of prayer. The President, President-elect and all sorts of politicians constantly say “God bless America” and other faith-based phrases.

If faith was not a factor in governemnt and policy you would not see Barack Obama and John McCain visitng Churches and synogogues (although oddly not mosques) and speaking to the congregations on faith-based agendas.

It is true that while we are a country that reflect the majority we must ALSO protect the minorities, but how we classify minorities and what is seen as unequal treatment is in question.

But let’s be clear, I’m NOT representing the religious right, I’m only going to represent myself.
I’m a bleeding-heart liberal and against gay marriage *gasp*.

So here’s my case:
Homosexuality is seen as a sin in the Torah, Bible and Qur’an.
While some may cast doubt upon the validity of the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Bible, there is no doubt in the Qur’an. We never had a canonization process, we know who wrote what when and how and a cardinal rule of Islam is belief the Qur’an is the unchanged word of God.

“And (remember) Loot (Lot), when he said to his people: ‘Do you commit the worst sin such as none preceding you has committed in the ‘Aalameen (mankind and jinn)?

Verily, you practise your lusts on men instead of women. Nay, but you are a people transgressing beyond bounds (by committing great sins)’”

[al-A’raaf 7:80-81]

But the question then comes: so Asim are you saying 17 million gay people in America are sinners?
umm yah…
But let’s clear things up:
Thoughts and inclinations themselves (unless you allow them to linger) are not haraam/sinful, but acting upon them are.

And on top of that, homosexuality is not the only sin. Drinking, gambling, sex before marriage, sex with another while married…these are all huge sins in Islam.
And extensively practiced in this country!!!

Meaning if there was a new call to prohibition, I’d be for it.
ACK, I’m a religious extremist! No, just a Muslim..sorry.

Heck, we are all sinners, but repentence is what differentiates the believer from the non-believer.

The next argument is: But this isn’t a Muslim country, we have to be realistic.

Yes, we do.
I object to marriage on religious grounds, but as for civil unions and rights, this is a different story.

Many of the arguments for gay marriage (visiting partner in hospital, insurance, wills, adoption) can be done WITHOUT “marriage”.
Yes, I know, crazy innit?
(And no, this is not a pseudo-seperate but equal policy, so please do not make that argument).

My point is this: This country cannot be painted just black and white.
If gays think they can demonize people to get their agenda across, good luck with that.
Blacks, latinos, asians, people of faith…I guess we are all bad people.

And heck, there are gay people AGAINST gay marriage. And they are not just gay log cabin republicans either.

And yes, those that tend to really be against gay marriage end up being shady.
I’m not looking to become a Sen. Larry Craig or Rev. Ted Haggard here. (May Allah protect me from such a fate!)

As a Muslim, gay marriage is not even on my radar of important issues nor should it be for Muslims in America (hello, poverty, war, disease, state of the ummah??)
But everyone keeps talking about it and won’t leave me alone!

So if gay marriage happens, then it happens.
But I just wanted you to know where I stand why and maybe even given you some insight on the mindset of other people.

NOW LEAVE ME ALONE!
*cries like Ellen*

I’ve been wanting to make one for a while, but I’m a very emotional writer.

One day it’ll be super funny and the next day I go emo.

I don’t think anyone can handle that, not even myself!