Homophobia is without God. Muslim gay voices

Reflections by Paolo Hutter published on Manifest of 16 june 2016

He abandoned his country, in the Maghreb, a few days ago for Europe, where he will ask for asylum as gay. One of the lucky few to find a visa. He has lived the last months almost like a persecuted by surrounding homophobia. Yet it is not going to throw ourselves against homophobic Islam.

“I am very sad for what happened. It means that there is some Americans who don't want gays in his country. American do you understand? It is absurd that they always try to put the Arabs in the middle, this is a plot of homophobic Americans ». The reaction of the 23 -year -old Jihed is not authoritative, but significant of a feeling that is rationalized instead in the following way by Baadr Babou, leader of one of the Tunisian gay organizations. «For me homophobia has no religion. This is a crime moved by homophobic and transfobic hatred primarily. Then ISIS tries to exploit it, to put a hat above, but was born from homophobia ".

But this judgment also applies if it is confirmed that the massacrer was himself gay?

"Certain. It is completely likely that it was. I think that the most violent homophobes are repressed gays, which are afraid of seeing their own image through the other LGBT ». (Often, recently in controversy or social bickering on homophobia in the Maghreb countries, this topic has been used: you are so homophobic because you are hidden homosexuals, ed).

You have participated in various international meetings, you asked the question: how do you prevent the acts of violent homophobia?

«It is a theme on which we have to work and look for again. We must grow people and groups and teach them how to prevent violence at different levels ».

But if there is a middle machine gun rifle it is more difficult ...

«In fact, it is impossible to always and from everywhere this type of catastrophes everywhere. However, they are two different things, on the one hand anti-homophobia policies, on the other the control of weapons ».

What relief has Orlando's massacre in the news in your country?

«Few reactions, apart from those of our restricted LGBT Giro. The paradoxical thing is that in the official media we speak of machine guns in a place, about people killed and it is not said that it was an LGBT room! Of course, on some webmedia you find everything, but in national information not. Maybe it was the same in other Arab countries, I don't know ».

We also do not know how many and what information in the world has been removed that it was an LGBT place. Certainly, without going very far, our western media did not notice or did not emphasize that the evening and the victims were mainly, very mainly, Latin. Instead, they have been around the media, however, the progressive "ones the statements by Ludovic Mohamed Zahed, the gay imam who lives in France.

«Homophobia finds no room in the Koran. Rather, he lives in repressive and dictatorial regimes, at all latitude, from Arabia to China or Cuba. It is not a question of Islam, it is a political question of repression of minorities and identification of the enemy. Whether it is sexual or religious minorities, it changes little, also because history teaches that often those who set up against one, they also do it against the other ". «I was very grieved for this massacre, because this attack serves to try to divide our people even more, our communities, first of all among gays and Muslims. The moat grows. In France now 30% of gay couples (married to the egalitarian marriage) votes for the Front National. It is a drift that we now call "homonationalism".

We, homosexuals and Muslims, are doubly marginalized. But for this reason our condition puts us at the forefront. We know how discrimination work, at least these two. We are the best response to the two fascisms that try to exploit the fears of the communities ». For Zahed the last elements on the identity of the de-islabing attractor further the story, in its real aspect, even if all the exploited problem remains. "They mixed - he says - Together a disturbed mind, a homophobic component and a latent and repressed homosexuality: Mateen wanted to kill the homosexual that was in him, only that instead he also killed all the others. And this, again, is not explained with Islam, but with a little simple psychology ».