A Response To Wajahat Ali: American Muslims And The LGBTQ Political Project

The Muslim social commentator, Wajahat Ali, recently (June 23, 2023) penned an op-ed in the New York Times entitled, We Muslims Used to Be the Culture War Scapegoats. Why Are Some of Us Joining the L.G.B.T.Q. Pile-On? The essence of his essay, as the title suggests, is that American Muslims, having faced the ugly and dangerous reality of xenophobic bigotry, epitomized by the political pimping of Shariah by elements of the right wing in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, should be the last people joining forces against the embattled LGBTQ community with those who have demonized our community for political gain.

Ali’s argument hinges in large part on a comparison between the beleaguered and bullied Muslim community post-9/11 to the LGBTQ community now. A major problem with this analogy is that the LGBTQ community is not just the alienated homosexual coworker, the ostracized trans neighbor, or the bullied lesbian high school student, each deserving of compassion and pastoral care, qualities Ali implies the drafters and signatories of a statement outlining traditional Muslim gender and sexual ethics lack. Contrary to the image evoked by the kinds of individuals mentioned above, the LGBTQ community, collectively, happens to be one of the most powerful and influential political groups in this country and it is using that power to advance a revolutionary socio-political project. As the true nature and full implications of that project become clear, many people who were formerly silent concerning LGBTQ issues are reacting. This includes many Muslims. In short, Muslims are not reacting to the political opportunism of the right-wing, as Ali implies, they are reacting to the shock and revulsion generated by the increasingly tyrannical LQBTQ political project.

Unlike the LGBTQ community, both in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and now, Muslims are one of the weakest political communities in this country. Consider the following example: This year’s “Pride Day” celebrations witnessed thousands of LGBTQ individuals marching through the streets of this country, some of them shouting, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children!” Many in the LGBTQ community are seeking to distance themselves from this repugnant slogan claiming that it represents the views of a radical fringe in their movement, that it was sordid humor, or that the words are being taken out of context. The LGBTQ political project, however, will only succeed if it gains perpetuity. That requires normalizing its lifestyles among the nation’s children. Hence, in public schools and libraries, as well as in popular culture, we increasingly see policies that would lead one to believe they are coming for our children.

The strength of the LGBTQ community allows the above-mentioned slogan to be publicly uttered without censure. It allows vulgar pole dances on mock crucifixions of Christ to be performed in front of churches without rebuke. These public acts are the tip of a much darker iceberg. Some will say that queer activists undertaking such actions are only stretching the limits of free speech. Whatever the case, the strength of the LGBTQ community is such that these acts are generally unchallenged. On the other hand, the relative weakness of the Muslim community is such that we know what kind of backlash would ensue if thousands of Muslims were to march through the streets shouting, “We’re here, we’re Muslim, we’re coming for your freedoms,” or some similarly ridiculous slogan. That backlash would be fierce and would allow for no justifications based on free speech. These vastly different responses illustrate the fallacious nature of the analogy Ali is attempting to draw.

Furthermore, Muslims are incapable of imposing Islamically-defined meanings of Shari’ah on the children of this country. In many American states, however, LGBTQ activists possess the ability to impose their literature and curricula on our children and are doing so with gusto. The implications of that imposition are something uncritical Muslim defenders of LGBTQ rights fail to consider. For example, Ali writes:

“But is it truly inclusive and tolerant to signal to L.G.B.T.Q. kids or L.G.B.T.Q. parents that simply reading a book or learning about their existence might be so threatening and offensive that it requires an opt-out option in schools? How would Muslim parents feel if this were applied to children’s books about Ramadan or Hajj?”

The problem with this statement is its equating books about the devotional practices of a major world religion to a body of literature that includes, among other things, traumatizing pornographic images. Books like Gender Queer, It’s Perfectly Normal, and others are replete with nudity, young same-sex couples naked in bed together, boys performing oral sex with each and other revolting images. Is the impact of reading about Ramadan or Hajj going to be the same on the hearts and minds of young children as viewing these images? Pictures of the Kaaba or a delicious Iftar meal will be soon forgotten by a non-Muslim child. A Muslim child, or any other for that matter, who views some of the images in many of the LGBTQ books populating our classrooms and school libraries will have his or her innocence permanently stolen. These books are not intended to teach children about the existence of a community, as Ali claims. They are designed to indoctrinate children into the acceptance of and possible participation in lifestyles that are antithetical to Muslim religious and ethical teachings.

In addition to imposing foul reading material on our children, the political power of the LGBTQ community allows teachers, in some states, to ask elementary school children if they would prefer to be a boy or a girl on a given day. Parents cannot opt out of this and other pernicious practices. We all know that a Muslim teacher would never be allowed to ask a Jewish or Christian student if he or she would like to spend the day as a Muslim. Were that to happen, the teacher would be fired, and the school possibly set on fire.

Advocates for the LGBTQ community readily employ the language of love, compassion, pastoral care, fairness, and justice. These are wonderful qualities. Do they only apply, however, to LGBTQ kids and their families? Where is the love for those children, Muslims as well as others, who are being traumatized by the pornography? Where is the compassion for those depressed by the generally cruel and crude dismissal of their own as well as their parents’ values? Where is the pastoral care for the growing legions of confused first graders who are threatened with expulsion if they don’t call the boy they knew as Tommy, Tammy, because he now identifies as a girl? Where is the love for the girls who fight the urge to urinate until they return home from school because their restrooms are open to biological men? Where is the compassion for the millions of kids confused and conflicted because they are forced to think about sex and gender identity before they even know what the terms mean? Where is the fairness for Payton McNabb, a female athlete who suffered a severe concussion after being hit by a ball spiked by a transgender female during a high school volleyball game? Where is the justice for other female athletes who work tirelessly to reach the pinnacle of their chosen sport, only to see their records shattered by biological men?  Where is the love for the growing number of Muslims who see themselves forced to uproot their families and migrate to various parts of the Muslim world in order to raise their children in a manner consistent with their faith? Where is the compassion for the growing number of employees forced to wear Pride lapel pins or lose their jobs? Are we Muslims able to force anyone to wear star and crescent pins? Where is the pastoral care for the California parents who face the possibility of having their children taken away if they, the parents, don’t affirm their children’s chosen gender identity (pending the passage of Assembly Bill 957)? Where is the compassion for my neighbor’s male child who was undressed by his first-grade teacher, placed in a pink dress, and told pink for girls, blue for boys, and dresses and pants don’t mean anything? Older students might have been told that even the idea of boys and girls is a meaningless social construct or an oppressive narrative-informed performance.

Part of the LGBTQ political project, following the ideological lead of the likes of Michel Foucault, Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin, Eve Sedgwick, and others, is the destruction of all traditional views concerning gender, sex, and sexuality, which they consider oppressive socially constructed phenomena. Liberation lies in the deconstruction of traditional views of sex, sexuality, and gender, which amounts to the abolition of the family as we have known it here in the West. For these theorists, the traditional family is an inconvenient truth that has to be abolished before wider societal changes can be realized. Therefore, by way of example, Sophie Lewis, in a May 16, 2016, interview in, The Nation, states:

“It sounds scary, emotionally, when some people hear the phrase “family abolition.” But when we say we want to abolish the family, we’re not talking about taking away the few relationships and infrastructures of love that we have in this world. Of course, the private household and the family are where so many of us get the vast majority of nourishment and solace. The question that family abolition is interested in is whether that’s good enough, whether that’s a good thing—that there is such a scarcity involved. We know that the nuclear private household is where the overwhelming majority of abuse can happen. And then there’s the whole question of what it is for: training us up to be workers, training us to be inhabitants of a binary-gendered and racially stratified system, training us not to be queer.”

The family, in Lewis’ view, is ultimately harmful and must be replaced by a queer-affirming, surrogate state. This language is echoed by Black Lives Matter (BLM), as an organization. As a movement, BLM has helped to broaden and deepen a critically important conversation around the disproportionate number of Black folks killed by police in this country. It has also been able to help initiate long overdue reforms in the way policing occurs in many poor black and brown communities. However, as an organization, it advocates a queer-affirming network to disrupt the traditional family as a precursor to a radically new social structure. We have seen where radical efforts to restructure the family have led to in places like Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, or Pol Pot’s Cambodia. The LGBTQ project, which ultimately desires a societal transformation as radical as the three projects I mention here, has no future if our children inherit our “heterosexual normality.” Hence, the frenzied effort to indoctrinate them into the LGBTQ worldview.

Ali questions why a group of Muslim scholars would unite to speak out against this project. He mentions that gun violence, after all, is the leading cause of death for American children. Let me emphasize that the death of one child by gun violence is one too many. That said, however, it is exceedingly rare for an Imam or Shaykh to receive the news that one of his young congregants has been killed with a gun. Every day, however, Muslim religious leaders all over this country are being told of children coming home from school asking their parents if they are straight or gay; inquiring about why the man reading a story to them had a dress on; told that their teacher told the boys there is nothing wrong if they think they are girls, or vice versa; of parents planning to move to Florida or leave the country in order to save their children; of kids informing their parents that they were forced to read a book containing “nasty” pictures; teenagers coming home announcing to their parents that they have same-sex boyfriends or girlfriends; etc.

Hence, the unified response from the Imams, Shaykhs, professors, and community leaders who signed the statement referenced earlier is generated by neither “the current political hysteria,” a newfound affinity for the right-wing, nor a meanspirited homo or transphobia. It is birthed by the reality on the ground in most of our communities. It should not be surprising if that reality is unifying the community’s leadership, or pushing Muslims into an alliance with Christians, conservatives, or others similarly appalled by the accelerating indoctrination of our children into a lifestyle antithetical to Abrahamic beliefs, values, and culture.

Still, defenders of the LGBTQ project ask, “what is the big deal?” To begin answering that question let us return to the issue of children dying of gun violence. In 2021, approximately 3,600 children between the ages of 1-18 died of gunshots. There are 73 million American children in that age demographic. Those killed by gun violence represent 0.0049% of our youth. Again, one unnecessary death, as the Qur’an reminds us, is one too many. On the other hand, the LGBTQ project, as it is currently proceeding, threatens to affect millions of young people, most in negative ways.

Let us begin with the effects of homosexuality on men. Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s, Program for LGBTQ Health, mentions ten health concerns for homosexual men. They are HIV/AIDS, Anal Papilloma, Hepatitis, Substance Abuse, Depression and Anxiety, Sexually Transmitted Diseases (STDs), Prostate, Testicular, and Colon Cancer, Alcohol, Tobacco, Body Image Problems, and Obesity. This list is based on research conducted at one of the country’s leading and most reputable universities. It is evil to expose children to a form of social engineering that could possibly lead millions of them, unnecessarily, into a lifestyle that poses these health risks.

As for transgender folks, according to the Cleveland Clinic (CC), they face very serious health concerns, mostly psychological. CC lists among them anxiety and depression, bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, and schizoaffective disorder. Again, the LGBTQ project is creating a cultural milieu where millions of children are being exposed to conditions that lead to lifestyles carrying these extremely harmful consequences.

If we consider the startling increase in Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD), we again see the effect of the environment fostered by the LGBTQ project. An early study of ROGD, Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria: Parent Reports on 1655 Possible Cases, reached the following conclusion:

ROGD is believed to be a culture-bound syndrome, which did not exist until recently when transgender issues began to attract considerable cultural attention. Furthermore, ROGD has been hypothesized to be socially contagious. Adolescents who know others with ROGD are more likely to acquire ROGD themselves.

Advocates of the ROGD theory view the dramatic increase in referrals to gender clinics with alarm. They are concerned that adolescents with ROGD are at risk of unnecessary, harmful, and irreversible psychological and medical interventions.

[Note: This article has been retracted for reasons unrelated to what I highlight here. These conclusions are supported by other research. I quote from this article because of the concise summary of the relevant issues.]

An example of the abuses resulting from hasty referrals for gender transitioning surgeries, rushed approvals for puberty blockers, and inadequate diagnoses have led to the closure of The United Kingdom’s only dedicated gender transitioning clinic. The breakneck speed with which the LGBTQ agenda is being implemented in our schools and other public institutions makes such abuses inevitable here.

Other areas of widespread societal harm are associated with exposing children to pornography. The American College of Pediatricians, in an article entitled, The Impact of Pornography on Children, makes the following observations:

Pornography exposure to these young children often results in anxiety for the child. Children also report feelings of disgust, shock, embarrassment, anger, fear, and sadness after viewing pornography. These children can suffer all of the symptoms of anxiety and depression. They may become obsessed with acting out adult sexual acts that they have seen, and this can be very disruptive and disturbing to the child’s peers who witness or are victimized by this behavior. Children who have viewed pornography are more likely to sexually assault their peers. In sum, children exposed to pornographic material are at risk for a broad range of maladaptive behaviors and psychopathology.

The danger of pornography being introduced to children in our schools at ever younger ages is compounded by the fact that much of it could be categorized as child pornography.

Do LGBTQ activists think that an overbearing attempt to normalize sexual acts and orientations not shared by most of society will lead to the end of bullying and other negative behavior towards members of their community? If they do, they are sorely mistaken. It is folly to think that the radical “disruption” of centuries-old practices, cherished traditions, and hallowed beliefs, will produce anything other than social anarchy and an increasingly radical resistance that will only harden and deepen animosity towards their community. Hence, the radical LGBTQ agenda is likely to create conditions antithetical to those it may be desirous of fostering.

There is so much more to be said about this issue. I will conclude by responding to something not mentioned by Ali, but increasing advanced by defenders of the LGBTQ project. Namely, that those opposing that agenda are rallying to the side of white supremacy. This is a ridiculous accusation, especially when levied against Muslims, an overwhelmingly nonwhite community. Not only are Muslims who oppose the LGBTQ socio-political project willing to stand in solidarity with white Christians or conservatives, they also stand in solidarity with a growing array of African American clerics, educators, and politicians. Likewise, they stand in solidarity with the entirety of the nonwhite Muslim World and all of Africa in opposing a frontal assault on traditional values and religions. How could standing with the Muslim Ummah and Africa to preserve non-European understandings of society constitute support for white supremacy?

I would argue from far more solid ground that the effort of our government to force the LGBTQ project upon the nations of Africa and the Muslim World is itself a form of white supremacy. I say this because that agenda is rooted in the thought of Foucault, Judith Butler, Gayle Rubin, and Eve Sedgwick, whom we previously mentioned, as well as others, all of whom are white. As far as our government is concerned, it too is overwhelmingly white. Hence, you have white folks trying to impose a Euro-American ideology on black and brown folks accusing those opposing it of white supremacy!

The fact that American Muslims were or still are vilified by elements of the right wing in this country has nothing to do with what is happening to children in our schools and public institutions. We are all reacting to a situation we did not create.  It is the shortsighted, heavy-handed overreach of the LGBTQ movement that has created the circumstances generating a counter-movement. The possible emergence of an alliance around this issue between Muslims, the Christian right, and white conservatives might well be an example of politics making strange bedfellows. It might, however, be an example of what happens when Hubris awakens Nemesis.

 – Imam Zaid Shakir

Related:

– Sticky Situations: Helping Muslim Kids Navigate LGBTQ – MuslimMatters.org

– [Podcast] Man2Man: The LGBTQ+ Curriculum, Public Schools, & Islamic Values | Omar Abdul Fatah – MuslimMatters.org