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Abstract
The culture wars over homosexuality in the Middle East are studied here in the context of the theoretical debate on culture in International Relations and, more specifically, through a critical examination of postcolonial international theory. The paper argues that, although postcolonialism can offer a useful framework, it also has, in its poststructuralist variants, significant limitations in addressing the controversial issues surrounding homosexuality as cultural battleground in the Middle East. These limitations derive from an unconvincing interpretation of the relationship between the Middle East and modernity; and a problematic approach towards moral agency. The paper serves a dual purpose. Through the use of the empirical material, it furthers the debate within postcolonial international theory by bringing evidence to bear in support of its humanist or materialist strands. The theoretical discussion, in turn, by highlighting the intertwining of culture and power in the debates on homosexuality, strengthens the case for respecting homosexual rights in the Middle East region.
Acknowledgements
In writing this paper, the author would like to acknowledge the help and useful comments of Filippo Dionigi, Spyros Economides, Kim Hutchings, Margot Light, Baqer Moin, Rahul Rao, Peter Wilson, Sami Zubaida and many other colleagues and friends.
Notes
1. Cheney, “Locating Neocolonialism, ‘Tradition,’ and Human Rights.”
2. Ford and Allen, “Nobel Peace Prize Winner defends Law criminalizing Homosexuality,” 101.
3. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have produced a string of reports on the subject. See www.amnesty.org.uk; and www.hrw.org.
4. Activism in support of the rights of homosexuals in Middle Eastern societies is growing. See, for example, Helem, accessed April 13, 2013, http://helem.net/; KifKif, accessed April 13, 2014, http://fr.kifkifgroup.org/p/about-us.html; and Aswat Group, accessed April 13, 2014, http://www.aswatgroup.org/.
5. O’Flaherty and Fisher, “Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and International Human Rights Law,” 299–231.
6. One cannot equate the oic with the Middle East but there is overlap.
7. Girard, “Negotiating Sexual Rights,” 44.
8. ir was responding not only to world events but also to wider trends in the social sciences and the humanities where culture was emerging as a distinct area of enquiry and as a ‘master concept’.
9. Halliday, “Culture and International Relations”; Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations; Jacquin-Berdal et al., Culture in World Politics; Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security; Lapid and Kratochwil, The Return of Culture and Identity; Lawson, Culture and Context; and Reeves, Culture and International Relations.
10. Nair, “Forum,” 80.
11. Jacquin-Berdal et al., Culture in World Politics, 2.
12. Murray and Roscoe, Islamic Homosexualities.
13. Afary, Sexual Politics, 81. According to the Koran: ‘Must you, unlike [other] people, lust after males and abandon the wives that God has created for you? You are exceeding all bounds’ (26: 165–166). The following two verses are taken together: ‘If any of your women commit a lewd act, call for witnesses from among you, then, if they testify to their guilt, keep the women at home until death comes to them or until God shows them another way’ (4: 15). ‘If two men commit a lewd act, punish them both; if they repent and mend their ways, leave them alone – God is always ready to accept repentance, He is full of mercy’ (4: 16). Verse 16 refers to verse 15, though it must be noted that it is only in the 20th century that a majority of religious scholars interpreted it to refer to homosexuality. Abdel Haleem, The Qurʾan, 52, 326.
14. Mezziane, “Sodomie et masculinité chez les juristes musulmans,” 286 (author’s translation).
15. Whitaker, Unspeakable Love, 117–122.
16. Afary, Sexual Politics, 81.
17. Ibid., 79.
18. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam, 146.
19. Ibid.
20. El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality.
21. Ibid., 1.
22. Ibid., 3.
23. Foucault, The Will to Knowledge.
24. Ibid., 43.
25. Ibid., 101.
26. Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 42–43.
27. Murray and Roscoe, Islamic Homosexualities, 4, 310–314; and Hennessy, Profit and Pleasure.
28. Rao, Third World Protest, 175.
29. El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality; Afary, Sexual Politics; Najmabadi, “Gendered Transformations”; and Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches.
30. El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality, 92–93.
31. Ibid., 156.
32. Najmabadi, “Gendered Transformations,” 89.
33. Ibid., 91–93, 97.
34. El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality, 160.
35. Zubaida, Beyond Islam, 22.
36. Afary, Sexual Politics, 162–163.
37. The relationship between Islamism and modernism is more complex than this sentence may suggest. Although Islamism nowadays is often (and not always accurately) associated with anti-modernism, it emerged in the late 19th–early 20th century within the context of Islamic modernism.
38. Zubaida, Beyond Islam, 22.
39. Afary, Sexual Politics, 11.
40. Ibid., 242.
41. Öktem, Another Struggle.
42. Cooper, “Facing Scorn.”
43. Pratt, “The Queen Boat case in Egypt.”
44. Ibid., 131–132.
45. Ibid. p. 137.
46. Ibid., 139–141.
47. Long, “The Trials of Culture,” 16. In a telling illustration of this point, Kerem Öktem points out that homosexuality is not criminalised in Turkey but it is in Northern Cyprus, where the British introduced anti-sodomy laws. Öktem, Another Struggle.
48. AbuKhalil, “A Note on the Study of Homosexuality,” 32.
49. Said, Orientalism.
50. Ibid., 5.
51. Ibid., 7.
52. Ibid., 3.
53. Said, Culture and Imperialism, xii.
54. Ibid., xiii.
55. Chowdhry, “Edward Said and Contrapuntal Reading,” 111.
56. Massad, Desiring Arabs, 48.
57. Ibid., 37.
58. Ibid., 188–189.
59. Ibid., 188.
60. Grovogui, “Postcolonialism,” 231, 44.
61. Bhambra, “Historical Sociology.”
62. Agathangelou and Ling, Transforming World Politics, 142.
63. Darby and Paolini, “Bridging International Relations and Postcolonialism,” 371.
64. Afary, Sexual Politics; El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality; and Najmabadi, “Gendered Transformations.”
65. Murray and Roscoe, Islamic Homosexualities, 313.
66. Hodgson, The Venture of Islam.
67. Mitchell, Colonising Egypt.
68. Massad, Desiring Arabs, 187, fn 101.
69. Young, Postcolonialism, 59. For other postcolonial theorists alternative ways of ‘resisting’ the West, which do not involve internal subjugation, are possible. Nandy writes that some Indians managed to combine ‘critical awareness of Hinduism and colonialism with personal and cultural authenticity’. Nandy, The Intimate Enemy, 27.
70. Ling, “Said’s Exile,” 138.
71. Long, “The Trials of Culture.”
72. Ibid., 19.
73. Ibid., 19–20.
74. Rahman, “Queer as Intersectionality,” 956.
75. Rao, Third World Protest, 176.
76. Maffettone, uses the term ‘post-modernist’, which could also be appropriate. Maffettone, “How to Avoid the Liaison Dangereuse.”
77. Rao, “Postcolonialism”; and Rao, personal communication.
78. Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 101.
79. Ibid., 95.
80. Faubion, “Introduction,” xx; and Hoy, Foucault, 10.
81. Foucault, The Will to Knowledge, 92.
82. Hoy, Foucault, 10–11.
83. Duvall and Varadarajan, “Traveling in Paradox,” 86.
84. Said, “Foucault and the Imagination of Power,” 151.
85. The argument developed in this paper, in support of commonality as opposed to difference, has parallels with the latest wave of critique of poststructuralist, postcolonial theory (and postcolonialism tout court), which is currently being waged from a humanist or materialist perspective. See Gandhi, “The Pauper’s Gift”; and Chibber, Postcolonial Theory.
86. Chibber, Postcolonial Theory, 23.
87. Bleys shows that the ‘tropes of homophobia…remain themselves imbedded, intentionally or not, in a European discourse’. Bleys, The Geography of Perversion, 267. Bleys’ work, which places the Middle East and Islam alongside other regions in the period 1750–1918, reinforces my argument in this paper.
88. Zubaida, Beyond Islam, 23. Afary et al. point out that, in his statements on the Iranian Revolution, Foucault conflated engaging in same-sex relations with acknowledging homosexual rights. Foucault’s anti-modernism led him to hope that the revival of traditional culture in Iran would lead to fewer restrictions on sexuality, but he was wrong. Afary et al., Foucault and the Iranian Revolution, 162.
89. Khan, “Not-So-Gay Life in Pakistan,” 275–285.
90. Murray makes similar arguments and draws a parallel between ‘the will not to know’, as he calls it, in Islamic societies and the US army ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ policy on gays. Murray, “The Will not to Know,” 17.