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[CW: mentions of Islamophobia] Is Islam as homophobic and sexist as westerners claim? (hexbear.net)

submitted 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I'm guessing it's like Christianity where there are leftist Christians who follow Jesus' more progressive messages such as giving to the less fortunate and healing the sick, and then there are the scary Christian evangelicals that want A Handmaids Tale and conversion therapy. Logically, Islam probably isn't a monolith in a similar way other religions aren't.

However, I have never heard about what those of the Islamic faith actually believe outside of the hysterical post 9/11 Islamophobia I've been indoctrinated with as a child.

I want to know what the truth is and hear the other sides story. To me it's obvious that Islamophobia is wrong, however when Islamophobes make wild claims about it, I can't really refute them confidently because I'm simply ignorant of the facts. Please educate my dumb, white ass.

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[–] [email protected] 55 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

oh! oh! I know this one

so as someone who was actually brought up Muslim and is queer, I will say that my personal experience has been nothing but intense homophobia & transphobia, yeah. I've essentially been disowned by my family + anyone I knew from that culture and I have to LARP as a white person because Islam has such a stranglehold on the arab culture

I don't really know (or care) if this is inherent to Islam, the homophobia comes from the story of lot and the transphobia tends to come mostly from the Hadith though. it is probably possible to have an Islam that is not like this but it is NOT the Islam that exists today, or will anytime soon

there is a subset of queer friendly Muslims but they almost exclusively exist in the west. OBVIOUSLY queer people exist in e.g. west Asia but it is NOT a thing you can be that public about, especially depending on the country. in the west I see the queer friendly Muslims often get treated as one of the biggest internal threats to Islam.

you've got the whole perception some people have, that queerness is like western degen bullshit invading the based East or whatever, to wrestle with as well - this DEFINITELY makes the queerphobia like 100x worse, people who are being attacked by a pinkwashing state like the Zionist entity are obviously going to be more anti-lgbt as a result, especially when the seeds in the religion/culture are already there. anti-imperialism remains the best way a westerner can improve this situation!

maybe trauma dumping idk

so yeah shit sucks fam! it is incredibly alienating to be a queer Arab ex-muslim commie. your culture rejects you and it is hard to voice any particularly anti-islam opinions sometimes because of my experiences the way westerners can be anti-christianity because of their religious trauma.

I kind of get why, in the west (especially in Europe) being anti-Islam mostly comes from islamaphobic fascists. but the nuance of 'the west should not bomb west Asia' & 'islam is bad, actually' is too difficult to communicate ime (or requires me to give a LOT of personal information like I have done here so people know I'm not just a white westerner fascist)