Gay Rights versus Human Rights — Reply to Joseph Massad's “Re-Orienting Desire” (Public Culture 14,2)

The world is changing, and Joseph Massad is not happy about the direction it is taking. The mightiest state on earth imposes its regime on the rest of the world: capitalism (“free mar­kets”), pluto­cracy (“demo­cracy”) and con­sumerism (“the American Way of Life”).
The U.S. fights his people, the Palesti­nians, and destroys their tradi­tional way of live — part of which is a different or­gani­zation of the sexual field: Where­as in the United States 5 % are allowed to be gay (“they can't help it”) and the others have to be straight, back “home” in the Arab world, there are “same-sex prac­tices” (381) without a gay identity, the “passive homo­sexual” has access to his preferred “object choice i.e., ex­clusively active partners” who have the choice bet­ween women and men, and are "part of a socie­tal norm" (384).
All Massad can do for his people is to write articles against the “Euro­pean settler colony of Israel” (369)¹ and against “the machina­tions of the Gay Inter­na­tional²,” (380) i.e. Amnesty Inter­national and Muslim Gay Organisa­tions, which makes “real allian­ces …; with imperia­lists” (383).

Since Public Culture has fixed "word limits" for articles, reviews, author's replies ..., and I want to defend myself, and to give food for thought, I shortened my ori­ginal reply. — If you have read the printed version, you might skip some of the crimes.

Crime #1: Belonging to the Gay Inter­national
Crime #2: Unclear Boundaries
Crime #3: Ahistoricism
Crime #4: Orientalism
Crime #5: Linguistic Incompe­tence and Inaccuracies
Gay Conspiracy or The Forces of Capi­talism?
Two questions remain to be answered:
Why does the GI carry on in spite of negative results?
And why is the Arab reaction so negative?

To show that the assumptions of the Gay Inter­national (GI) are wrong and its actions counter­productive, is not enough for Massad. He revels in kicking at academics who share the “ontology and episte­mo­logy” (355) of the GI, i.e., think that since times immemorial there have been gays in the Arab world.
So Massad attacks John Boswell, As'ad Abu Khalil and Stephen O. Murray. Since they are easy prey — they really believe in a trans­historical Gay Substance —, and it is more satis­fying to get the jury of readers to con­demn inno­cents as well, he attacks Everett K. Rowson, Bruce Dunne and myself, although none of us shares the ahistorical global assumption of the GI.
I will show that Massad not only mis­represent­ed our writings, but is guilty of most of the crimes he accuses us of.

Crime #1: Belonging to the Gay Inter­national

He prepares the foundation for his base­less attack   by saying: the GI has “produced two kinds of litera­ture on the Muslim world: academic litera­ture ... and jour­nalis­tic accounts” (362), “a certain onto­logy and epi­stemo­logy are taken as axio­matic by all of them.” (365 emphases generally added)
Massad “argue[s] that it is the dis­course of the GI that both produces homo­sexuals, as well as³ gays and lesbians, where they do not exist” (363) and that the sexual epi­stemo­logy of the GI ignores “same-sex desires and practices” (ibid.) outside of “homo­sexuals, gays and lesbians.” He comes up with no evidence that Dunne, Rowson, Schmitt share the GI's “ontology and epistemo­logy.”
I had written: “In the societies of Muslim North Africa and South­west Asia ... there are no ‘homo­sexuals’ — there is no word for ‘homo­sexua­lity’ — the concept is com­pletely unfamiliar. There are no hetero­sexuals either.”⁴ — the opposite of the GI creed.⁵

Crime #2: Unclear Boundaries

Although Massad speaks indis­crimina­tely of “Arab world” (in the title as well as in 20 other oc­cur­ren­ces), of “Muslim world” (half as often), of “Arab and Muslim worlds” (seven times — always in that order), and 5 times of “non-Western World,” “the rest of [i.e. non-U.S.] the World,” “Third World,” he has the nerve to state: “other pro­blems relate to the fact that the Muslim world [a term neither Dunne, Rowson, nor myself use, A.S.] extends beyond the ‘Middle East’ into Asia and Africa and that the ‘Middle East’ includes non-Arabs and non-Muslims. It is not clear if what Dunne and others [!] describe as ‘Middle Eastern’ applies to all these people or not.” (369 n 28) Instead of ex­plain­ing why he uses “Arab world” in the title but “Muslim” 129 times in his article, often clearly re­ferr­ing to non-Arabs, Massad attacks Dunne, who knows pre­cisely what he is writing about: Dunne includes both Turkey and Israel in his overview article — to square "Muslim world" with "Middle East" seems to be the problem of that spoilt⁶ Christian Arab in Manhattan, definitely not Dunne's or mine: I never tire to remind the reader: “we restrict our­selves to the geo­gra­phi­cal core of Islam …; The Islamic societies in the Indian sub­continent, East Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa are beyond the scope of his book.” I notify the reader that I write about "the Arab speaking countries plus Iran and Turkey", and I specify that the focus is on "members of the Islamic civili­zation — which include quite a lot of Christians, Jews, and non­believers.” And most expli­citly: “Please note that this book is mostly concerned with Muslim culture, not with Muslim religion. Indeed it can be argued that the cultural unity between the northern and southern Mediter­ranean is greater than the common traits between Muslim Egypt and Muslim Indonesia or Muslim Nigeria.”⁷
Not only does Massad attacks us for his own offense, he misquotes me by changing my "Muslim North Africa and South­west Asia” into “Muslim world” (366) although I explicitly exclude “Sub­saharan Africa, India, and Southeast Asia.”⁸
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Crime #3: Ahistoricism

“Schmitt ... makes the essentialist claim that the absence of these categories in the Muslim world [!] is a phenomenon that remains constant over time ... (this is tanta­mount of using studies of the European medieval period to generalize about all Western history). Schmitt, like orientalist scholars ... insists without any scholarly evidence ... …; Schmitt's ahistori­cism ...” (366) “Rowson draws upon Arabic texts written in the eleventh century to conclude [!] that these texts’ ‘concepts can be taken as broadly representative of Middle Eastern societies from the ninth century to the present.’” (367)

• First, essentialists believe something does not change because that thing is anchored in the nature/the essence of a particular people; to study the history of a region and to find no fundamen­tal change in its mode of production over a period of time has nothing to do with essentialism.
• Second, I do not proclaim unchangeability—to the contrary: “during recent years ... So if we disregard for the time being the newest development ... Economic and social changes (industria­lisation, entry of women into the public sphere, decreasing influence of the three-generation-household), on the one hand, and the influence of Western ideas (through colonial rule, tourists, media), on the other hand, bring with them a change in the relation­ship between men and women and consequently in the sexual relation­ship between males. Tourism does two things: it makes sex with women easier ...”⁹
• Third, it takes a sick mind to believe that Rowson drew conclusions about nine centuries by studying texts from one century only. Rowson cities text from the 8^th to the 15^th century and has studied more texts. He is keenly aware of the problem.10
• Fourth, putting Europe parallel with the Middle East for the 15^th to 18^th century is the sin of ahisto­ri­cism: The rise of Capitalism, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enligh­ten­ment did happen in Europe and not at that time in South­west Asia or North Africa.
  Throughout his article Massad opposes a time­less West to a changing (i.e., more and more West­ern­ized) East, e.g. he writes how the Western words “sex” and “sexua­lity” influenced Arabic¹¹ (371f.), totally unaware that these words appeared on the European linguistic stages only in the early 19^th century and gained their present meaning only at the beginning of the 20^th century.¹² Massad states: “most non-Western civiliza­tions, including Muslim Arab civilization, have not subscribed histori­cally to [the straight-gay binary]” (383), the desires of Arab and Muslim men are sexually poly­morph (363)¹³, while it would be nearer to the historical facts to say: before the replacement of most personal links by anonymous market forces, before the creation of free individuals rather than members of pri­mordial soli­darity groups, before the creation of pension funds, societies do not subscribe to the straight-gay binary. Only an ahisto­rian and idealist ignores that it takes anonymous cities with apart­ments for singles for the binary to take root. Only when the state enforces law and order, when one does not depend on the martial posture of the males of the clan, when educa­tion becomes more important than physical strength can men be gay. As a typical Orientalist-in-reverse¹⁴ he cuts the World into West and non-West, instead of pre-modern and modern. He is so fixated on what the devilish GI does to the Arab world, that he does not see that before Ston­wall there was much working-class same-sex sex without gay identity, that this is still common half a mile north and east of Columbia among Hispanic and Thugz on the DL.
  His only reference to change makes matters even worse: “Ironically, [increaseed harass­ment by police] is the very process through which ‘homo­sexuality’ was invented in the West. On the invention of homo­sexuality, see Foucault, History of Sexuality” (384)
  a) Foucault’s inventor is not the police, but psychiatry.
  b) Foucault wrote this without a thorough study¹⁵
  c) The book was published in 1976 and should not be cited today for its facts, they are wrong.¹⁶ The ground for the egalita­rian gay ideal was laid 200 years ago.¹⁷ And the acceptance of infertile same-sex sex was helped along by the separation of reproduction and coition by birthcontrol pill and vulcanized condom.
• Fifth, I am the opposite of an ahistorian: Where I detect change, I name it¹⁸ and where I do not find change I point out the underlying factors.¹⁹
• Sixth, it is M who is ahistorical: In his story there is only before and after the onslaught of the GI on the Muslim World. He attacks Rowson and myself for dis­covering stability over a long period of time without ever telling his reader when, where and how change did occur.

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Crime #4: Orientalism

And as a typical oriental Christian in Manhattan he takes the moral high ground: “Dunne's work exemplifies a type of anthropology that fails to problematize its own mythical idealized self, that continues to view the other as all that the self does not contain or condone, namely, non­egalitarian sexual relations, the oppressive rule of men, gender-based sexuality, patriarchy, and so forth. An anthropo­logy that cannot abandon the mytho­logical West as a reference point will continue to use it as the organizing principle for all of its arguments.” (370) Besides the fact that Massad’s West is much more mythological than mine (because he does not specify the genesis and the workings of Western capitalism; it just is the West), and that he uses the binary West‐non-West more than any of the writers he chooses to attack, in Dune's article there is not a hint of M's assertions: Not only does Dunne not paint an egali­ta­rian West, he does not even describe the East as non-egalita­rian, just that the norm was such: “Adult male egalitarian homo­sexual relations may have been publicly un­ac­cept­able, but there is evidence that, in the medieval period, men of equal rank could negotiate such relations by alter­nating active and passive sexual roles.”²⁰
While on page 370 Massad castigates Dunne for describing a gender-based sexual dis­course, when he con­cludes he speaks of the two genders in “same-sex contact” without any allowance for a less rigid reality: “the receptive parties in male-male sexual contacts are forced [by the GI dis­course] ...²¹ to identify as homo­sexual or gay, just as men who are the ‘active’ partners are …; forced to limit their sexual aim to …;²² women or men.”(383)²³, “The so-called passive homosexual²⁴ …; will no longer have access to …;²⁵ exclusively active partners, as in the interim they will have become hetero­sexual.” (384) Whereas Dunne and myself show the power of normative discourses, and of every-day language, of religion and the media, but point out that real life is often more complex than theory, Massad reduces the male sexual actors to two genders, and he paints an idyllic picture by omitting boys from the pos­sible objects of “exclusi­vely active” Arabs and ignoring that often there is no sexual desire on the side of the insertee—same-sex rape was and is rather common in many areas between Morocco and Northern India.
Massad: “The orientalist method deployed in this book where Arabs and Muslims can only be object of European scholarship and never its subject or audience …;” (p. 367) Massad's attitude is Damn the Westerners, when they do it, and damn them when they don't! The GI gets castigated for intro­ducing a dis­course into "the Arab and Muslim worlds," and I get vilified for not addressing an Arab audience. Note, that Schmitt/Sofer was published in English and “clearly most Egyptian men who practice same-sex contact [do not] know English” (382) Anyhow, in 1995, the İstanbul Kavram Press published a pirated edition of the book “Müslüman toplumlarda Erkekler arası cinsellik ve Erotizm,” hence there is a considerable audience in the Orient. No Westerner received royalties for the book, nor was it financed by the GI; there appear to be Turks in Turkey who believe that Schmitt/Sofer offers so many insights into its subject matter that they trans­lated it com­pletely. Since one of the editors is an Iraqi Jew and about half the authors in the 1995 edition are Turks, Moroccans, Pakistani or Iraqi and some of the other articles are testi­monies/eye­wit­ness accounts (both by Westerners and non-Westerns), Massad’s “only/never”-assertion is not tenable.

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Crime #5: Linguistic Incompetence and Inaccuracies

“In fact, contra ... Schmitt, modern Arabic has the verb tanayaka, which does indicate reciprocity ... The language-based errors and mistakes in ... Schmitt's ... book are too numerous to listhere.” (370)
Massad gives no evidence for the use of tanayaka = to fuck each other; Ibn Manzur (born in 1232 A.D.) has only eyelid movement and drowsi­ness—not exactly gay sex. Massad takes advantage of the fact that most of the readers ignore, that all Arab verbs have a virtual form of reciprocity. Therefore, that “Arabic has the verb tanayaka" is a zero statement. He would have to show that it was used, but no dictionary of classical or of modern Arabic has it. I know of no oc­currence in the very rich Arab sex²⁶ literature. When I used tanayaka in the 1970s I met with bewilder­ment, pro­voking the reply: “The woman should not be on top.”²⁷ If Massad can prove use of the reci­procal form from the eleventh or eigh­teenth century, I will have learned some­thing. If he assures us that he and fellow gay Arabs in America use it, that's support for my argument, which M pretends not to under­stand: There is a rich Arabic voca­bulary for sexual acts, but almost all verbs are tran­sitive: they do not refer to what human beings do with each other, but what one does to an other: he rides, beats, tames, inserts, enters, pierces, puts into a hole, over­powers, turns over, insults, rapes, hits, beats, mounts, and he or she is beaten, tamed, over­powered and so on. Of course, M does not ex­plicitly state that Arab sex litera­ture is about having sex with each other instead of being manuals for the inserters. He just insinuates to know better qua being Arab.
I am still waiting for the “linguis­tic mis­takes …; to numerous to list". I hope he is not referring to mis­spelling, for with the editor (John DeCecco) and the publisher (Haworth Press) bear the responsibility—I never saw the proofs. In the meantime, here are some mistakes I found in his article:
“assumes prediscursively that homosexuals, gays, and lesbians are universal categories” (363) for: assumes that “homo­sexual,” “gay,” and “lesbian” are universal prediscursive categories, i.e., categories anchored in human nature.
“Islamic is” not “an adjective referring” only "to the religion Islam while Muslim refers to people.” (370) A look into Webster, or the Oxford English Dictionary suffices; The internet search machine Google provides a good idea about its modern usage by Muslims and non-Muslims. In older Arabic litera­ture “islâmî” is used for somehow pertaining to Islâm, but not being truly "muslim.” M's assertion "Islamic corresponds to Judaic as Muslim to Jewish or [he means: and] Jew” is simplistic: Whereas Islam is the abstract noun to both Islamic and to Muslim, the noun for Judaic is Judaism, for Jewish Jewish­ness (Yiddish­keit). And to say: "Jew and Muslim correspond” reduces Jewishness to a religion whereas most Jews see themselves forming a people as well—the most popular form of anti-Semitism among educated Palesti­nians.
The London-based Arabic newspaper, "al-Hayah" (377) is called al-Hayat, cf. www.alhayat.com; a pedantic transliteration would be a l - ḥ a y a ah .28
Bin Mukarram Ibn Manzur (370 n.32) is ridiculous: Bin and Ibn are the same in Arabic, must be the same in transcription, and to style the author "Aba al-" instead of "Abu'l" is preposterous. Yes, after "See" follows an object and in Arabic the form changes, but in a romaniza­tion that does not even preserve the dif­feren­ces between long and short vowels, between emphatic and non-emphatic letters, any reasonable person uses the nominative Abu only.

Massad misleads the reader. After talking of "white Western males", "white male European or American gay scholars", "white gay sex-tourists" (362), "Western (read white) gay men" (375) he para­phrases on page 380 "foreign (i.e., mostly European and American)" and speaks again of "European and American tourists" (381) while in reality a good number of the foreigners and tourists in question are Arabs, who come from the Arab pen­insula to Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco for alcohol, boys, girls and/or gambling.

Gay Conspiracy or The Forces of Capitalism?

Although I contest the "ontology and episte­mology" of the GI, I doubt that they are really dangerous. Massad sees con­scious forces at work‐"efforts of [Western capital] to impose a European hetero­sex­u­al regime on Arab men" (372) plus all "the machi­nations of the GI" (380)‐, whereas I see hetero­sexu­ali­sation rather as the result of salaried work, the welfare state and "the pro­lifera­tion and hege­mony of Western cultural products" (371). I believe the French popularized cigarettes in Morocco to make money not in order to under­mine the health of the natives, and that Time-Warner is more interested in profits than in spreading the American way of life.

Two questions remain to be answered:
Why does the GI carry on in spite of negative results?

There is a huge difference in the human rights debate between France²⁹ and North America. Whereas in France only the individual has rights, in the U.S. and Canada the concept of minority rights dominates the public debate. Because one belongs to a dis­advanta­ges group (descendent of former slaves, des­cendents of pre-Colum­bian inhabitants, etc.) one is entitled to special protection (or even affirmative action). Whereas in France gays have rights because they are human and all human beings have the right to sexual fulfillment, to non-inter­ference of the state into their private lives, right to form as­socia­tions, freedom from police harassment etc., in the U.S. gays argue that they are born into a group. They do not demand free choice of sex partners for all, but proclaim that they are unfree: Nature forces us! Lesbians and gays form a community like Blacks and Jews; and as these lobby pro-Africa and pro-Israel, LGBT fight for those of their kind. The Moral Majority within the USA makes them fight for gay rights in Pakistan — they do it to further their argument "God created us gay" — the Pakis are means to their real aim. That is why negative results do not deter them.
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And why is the Arab reaction so negative?

In "Das jüngste Menschenrecht und seine Unvereinbarkeit mit dem Islam"³⁰ und in "Liwāṭ im fiqh"³¹ I explain why GI campaigns in the Arab world are counterproductive. Since today hardly anyone seems to read German, here are some of the results of my study of the šarīʿa and of societal norms and beliefs:

• Sodomy is one of the gravest sins in Islam. However, done secretly, it is not disruptive, since it neither leads to unwanted pregnancy nor doubtful affilia­tion, nor does it shame anyone.
• Same-sex desire is normal, but pious men should not give in to it.
• Propagating sin is the greatest crime — it undermines religion and is freely chosen.
• There is no obligation in the šarīʿa to enforce the interdiction of sodomy in this world.
• The protection of sex in private is fully compatible with the šarīʿa:
  — difficult to meet rules of evidence in penal trials plus rules against unproven allegations,
  — rules against investigations into the private lives of people, the inviolability of the home [Qur’ān XXIV 27], admonition to Muslims not to stick their noses into other peoples businesses (XXIV 19) and not to speak bad about others (IL 12)³² .

‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐

Notes

1 More than half the citizens if the state of Israel do not hail from Europe. ⇑

2 the Inter­national Lesbian and Gay Association, the Inter­national Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Amnesty Inter­national (pace Massad London based), Rex Wockner, as well as US-based Arab (GLAS, Ramzi Zakharia) and Muslim groups (al-Fatiha, Faisal Alam).⇑

3 Here "homosexuals" are one thing, "gays and lesbians" another. Massad's use of the terms is confused: "gays and lesbians" (362), "homosexual and gay" (362), "homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians", "homosexuals, gays, and lesbians", "homosexuals" (all three on page 363 and apparently synonymous), "homosexual and gay" (366), "homosexual and gay and lesbian" (374), "the Western gay movements", "the Western gay and lesbian movements" (both 377 — is there a difference?). He obviously could not make up his mind, how these categories are related. ⇑

4 Different Approaches to Male-Male Sexuality/Eroticism from Morocco to Usbekitstan, in Arno Schmitt and Jehoeda Sofer (eds.), Sexuality and Eroticism among Males in Moslem Societies, (New York: Haworth Press, 1992), p. 5 ⇑

5 similarly explicit: Bruce Dunne, "Power and Sexuality in the Middle East," Middle East Report 28, no. 1 (1998): 9: "Western notions of sexual identity offer little insight into …;" MERIP ⇑

6 I do not talk about the man, but about the author of "Re-Orienting Desire". Ten years ago he read articles about male-male sexuality in the Arab world past and present. He was angry and envious, that non-Arabs wrote about "his" subject. Mervat Hatem told him: Write a better one your-self! This explains why he is kicking in all directions: The main objects of his attacks (IGLHRC, GLAS, al-Fatiha) were not even around, when he started to write "this article" (361 ackn.)—but although I attack the ontological basis of the GI and Dunne and Rowson do not share it, we find ourselves in an article against the gay-rights-for-Arabs-that-do-not-yet-know-that-they-are-gay-campaigners. Behind the attack on Dunne for using the term "Middle East" I detect again a spoilt Christian Palestinian man—he likes "Arab world" better: he dislikes any term that puts him together with the Turks, who subjugate the Arabs for so long, and are now allied with the USA and Israel. ⇑

7 Sexuality and Eroticism …;, xiv, 1, 129 ⇑

8 Different Approaches p. 1 ⇑

9 Different Approaches, p. 5, 20 ⇑

10 Everett K. Rowson, "The Categorization of Gender and Sexual Irregularity in Medieval Arabic Vice Lists," in Body Guard: Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, ed. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (New York: Routledge, 1991), 51f: "Orientalist tendency to see the East as an eternal un-changing monolith…;" ⇑

11 Freud wrote neiher Die Traumdeutung nor Die drei Abhandlungen in English. (371f.) ⇑

12 He notes that tawajjuh (direction) does not clearly refer to male or female (380), but he fails to see that orientation is equally undeter­mined. That sexual orien­tation does not refer to a liking of pain in sex (machosism), of seeing or being seen (exhibi­tionism/ voyeurism), to a preference of very young partners (pedo­philia) and so on, but serves merely as a general term for both homo- and hetero­sexuality, is a result of the GI propaganda—but M is blind to see the GI at work in the USA as well. ⇑

13 Massad writes "its [i.e., the Gay Inter­national's] poly­morphous­ness" instead of "their [i.e., of Ara men] poly­morphousness". (364) ⇑

14 cf. Jalal Sadiq al-^cAzm: Orienta­lism and Orienta­lism in Reverse, in Khamsin (1981), 8:5-26 ⇑

15 The book has no bibliography and just a handful of notes. The only "evidence" on the invention of homo­sexu­ality is full of mistakes. ⇑

16 The deathblow was delivered by Klaus Müller, Aber in meinem Herzen sprach eine Stimme so laut, Berlin: Verlag rosa Winkel 1991, and for those not reading German: Harry Ooster­huis, Stepchildren of Nature: Krafft-Ebing, …;, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. — Foucault's History can still be read for its ideas, but since 1976 so many historians came up with new facts, that Massad's invocation of Holy Foucault is pathetic. I recommend: Halperin, Rocke, Weeks, Trumbach, for more see Journal of the History of Sexuality and gayhistory ⇑

17 In Germany the Romantics considered women as equal in principle, the realation between hus-band and wife should be geschwisterlich (sisterly) as well. Cf. Trumbach, Randolph, The Rise of the Egalitarian Family: Aristocratic Kinship and Domestic Relations in Eighteenth-Century England. New York: Academic Press,1978 ⇑

18 e.g. in Schwule? islamisches Recht? Ein Aufklärungsgespräch, in M. Herzer (ed.): 100 Jahre Schwulen­bewegung, Berlin: Verlag rosa Winkel 1998, p. 209f. and Sexual Meetings …; Immigrant Communities, in Schmitt/Sofer, p.125-9 ⇑

19 Liwāṭ im Fiqh: Männliche Homosexualität?, Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 4 (2001-2002), p. 1-2 ⇑

20 Dunne is careful to distinguish between normative constructions/ ideological framework and sexual behaviour, between public persona and private sex live. Examples of exceptions from the binary inserter-insertee: Different Approaches, p. 19 top, p. 20 bottom ⇑

21 The original: "are forced to have one object choice" does not make sense. ⇑

22 The original: "forced to limit their sexual aim to one object choice" is strange language ‐ somebody not on leave from Columbia would simply say: are forced to chose between women or men / are restricted to either men or women. ⇑

23 Strangely, M speaks straight­forwardly of "exclusively active partners" (384) and of "men who are the 'active' partners" (384) but calls their partners "men who are considered passive or receptive parties" (383). Whereas "'active' partners see them­selves …;" (384), their partners are perceived by others ‐ M is faithfully reproducing the old phallo­cratic lore without realizing it. Note that the noun "the homosexual" is only used for the "passive"; his counter­part is "the active partner" - something Duran gets reprimanded for. (376) ⇑

24 Note that the noun "the homo­sexual" is only used for the "passive"; his counterpart is "the active partner" ‐ something Duran gets re­pri­man­ded for. (376) ⇑

25 In Massad's original "…;access to his previously available sexual object choice (i.e., exclusively active…;" ⇑

26 The classical Arab word was bâh: coitus, sexual potency, sexuality-pace Massad, Arabs did not have to adopt genos/genuus to fill a gap. ⇑

27 Vorlesung zu mann-männlicher Sexualität/Erotik published in Kleine Schriften zu Sexualität und Erotik, Berlin 1985, p. 16 ‐ Rowson's first publi­cation on the subject is dated "Cairo 1983;" each of us came to similar conclusions without knowing of the other. ⇑

28 In Arabic, the femine final a is written: h ه with the two dots of the t ت ; elsewhere in the article Massad uses "ah" as the transcription of this t-dotted h ة , so he can not use "ah" for alif + t-dotted h. In the orientalist system t-dotted h = "a", alif + t-dotted h = "āh". ⇑

29 cf. ةric Fassin, Same Sex, Different Politics: "Gay Marriage" Debates in France and the United States, Public Culture 13.2 (Spring 2001) ⇑

30 The Latest Human Right and its Incom­patibly with Islam, delivered in German at a Human Rights Conference in Heide­lberg in 1998 ⇑

31 Sodomy in Islamic Jurisprudenc, published in Journal of Arabic and Islamic Studies 4 (2001-2002). Pp. 1-59 or just the English summary ot the German text chapter by chapter ⇑

32 A good Muslim should admonish the sinner in private, but not harm his good name in front of others.‐ I am not a fundamentalist who believes that any Muslim should apply qur’ānic directives directly, but these verses are backed up by apostolic sayings and by classical jurists (e.g. Abu Ga^clā al-Farrā’ and Muḥammad al-Mawardī). It's just that liberal politicians can justify non-inter­ference by the state as being in accordance with the ¨arī^ca ⇑