Abstract
In the previous chapters, I have challenged understandings of LGBTIQ politics as both an inevitable consequence of modernization, and as a neo-colonial imposition of homosexualization from the West. In doing so, I have suggested that both positions have partial understandings of modernity underpinning their view on LGBTIQ politics. Having argued instead that contemporary contexts are more complex than either of these models of modernity allow for, I turn in this chapter to a more detailed consideration of the sociological formation of contemporary LGBTIQ identities in order to illuminate this complexity in modernity. In this sense, my review of current evidence on queer Muslim identities is aimed at exploring the extent of their ‘connected histories’ with both the contemporary manifestation of traditions of Muslim homoeroticism and current globalized queer formations.
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Notes
A consistent focus throughout is his challenge to the pessimistic ‘moral decline’ thesis of social conservatives and so his arguments and evidence are framed specifically to counter this view: ‘Against such settled pessimism, even despair, I want to offer not so much optimism as a realistic and forward-looking appreciation of the changes in sexual and intimate life that are transforming everyday life and the rapidly globalizing world we inhabit’ (2007: ix).
Weeks says that he offers ‘almost at random, the following’ and then lists and briefly describes these ‘unfinished revolutions’ (2007: 7–15).
Weeks acknowledges the Foucauldian critique of subjectivity but he rejects these in favor of focusing on the optimistic possibilities of selfhood as elaborated by Giddens and argues that there is convincing evidence of change in social attitudes and the construction of relationships to justify rejecting a critique of subjectivity as only a manifestation of continuing inequalities of power (2007: 130–133).
Again, a small group of 14 from a variety of Arab countries, see Kramer (2010: 154–155) for demographic details of the subjects.
This is the term used to describe lesbian women who present as more masculine than lesbi although Blackwood points out that these terms are not directly comparable to English concepts (2005a: 223).
Jaspal’s study also suggests that queer Muslims also internalize the religious and cultural homophobia of their own communities (2012: 85).
Kugle’s work, Homosexuality in Islam (2010), represents a thorough religious discussion in which he acknowledges that confronting sexual diversity for Muslim communities is a difficult task, largely because of religious frameworks.
Hamzic also puts forward the term ‘alterspace’ in the context of queer Muslims, as a combination of hybridity and the emergence of a ‘third space’ but again, my preference for intersectionality rests with the importance of standpoint to is methodology although the theoretical terrain of his concept is similar to that of intersectionality: Our communities claim their origins through varying historical narratives, which may or may not have any links with the two analysed hegemonic discourses [Islamic theopolitical reductionism and Neo-liberal Homonormativity]. Their tapping into these discourses, for instance through performance and re-appropriation, comes usually out of bare necessity, out of a strategic choice, rather that out of a heart-felt ‘belonging.’ Their alterity is thus doubly asserted, as resistance and incongruity. (2012: 31)
Puar’s analysis rejects intersectionality as a useful theoretical perspective because she argues that it repeats identitarian frameworks, preferring instead to imagine queer futures as assemblages (2007: 204). My project is somewhat more mundane, focusing more on the identity categories of queer Muslims as credible identity experiences that challenge current institutionalized versions of identity.
Butler is discussing this discourse in this article, and identifies its manifestations here as largely modernity as ‘secular time’ (2008).
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© 2014 Momin Rahman
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Rahman, M. (2014). Queer Muslims in the Context of Contemporary Globalized LGBTIQ Identity. In: Homosexualities, Muslim Cultures and Modernity. Palgrave Politics of Identity and Citizenship Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137002969_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137002969_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-43409-1
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