Two Completely Separate but Interesting Questions: The Coincidental Arrest of Al Dura, the Nature of Homosexuality among Arab Muslims
November 19, 2007, 10:46 am |
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By Phyllis Chesler
Does anybody know: Why Hamas has arrested Jamal al Dura only days after the hotly contested video of the alleged death of his son Mohammed was aired in a Paris courtroom? It became publicly clear that the film was a piece of staged “fauxtography” and that little Mohammed did not die on camera. Who might not want al Dura to talk to journalists or judges? Actually, I am surprised that there really is a Jamal Al Dura…
Why do westerners believe that homosexuals in Arab and Muslim culture are, by definition, the standard-bearers for art and other progressive values? Yasir Arafat allegedly died of AIDS and was long known to be a homosexual. Did Arafat represent a model of liberatory values? Sheikh bin Mahfouz (who has sued at least 38 western authors and news publications and obtained letters of apology from all but Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld who has counter-sued him in New York state) is also allegedly homosexual. Does that mean that he, too, represents ethical or progressive values? Of course, most Arab and Muslim homosexuals are also married and have wives and children.
Homosexuals in ancient Greece and Rome owned slaves and despised women. Some were brilliant philosophers. Many participated in a cult of man-boy love. The same contemporary western homosexuals who failed to condemn or abstain from the “bathhouse culture” which killed so many men in the West in the 1980s are now failing to distinguish between western idealizations of homosexuality as a symbol for both oppression and liberation and the nature of homosexuality among Arabs and Muslims.
Back on the Western ranch: Neither J. Edgar Hoover, who was a cross-dressing homosexual nor Roy Cohn, who was also a homosexual, could be viewed as symbols of aesthetic or political liberation either.
I am just raising some questions on a slow Sunday afternoon.
© 2007 Phyllis Chesler. This was originally posted on Chesler Chronicles. This article may not be distributed, downloaded, modified, reused, reposted or otherwise used without the express written permission of Phyllis Chesler.
Related: Arab/Muslim World, Palestinians, Society, Law