Dr. Parvez Mandviwalais a Dental Surgeon and author of several books and articles on socio-religious issues. He is also Director of ‘TAQueer– Choosing Taqwa over Queer’. Sajida A. Zubair talks to him on the various aspects of LGBTQ+. Excerpts:
SZ:Dr. Parvez, you have maintained in your book, ‘A Crescent in the Rainbow’, that while we need to empathetically engage with those Muslims struggling with same sex attraction and transgender issues, we need to sternly oppose the LGBT culture. Can you explain why you are against people identifying themselves as LGBT?
Dr. PM:Transgender people are using the washrooms of the opposite sex. Men pretending to be women under the garb of being ‘transgender’ are competing in sports events with women, and obviously taking away the trophies in Olympics and other international events. And this is not restricted to the West; we might soon hear such incidents of injustice against female sportspersons emanating from India, too. On 29 July 2022, the Kerala High Court observed that in the absence of a separate category in sporting events for transgender persons to compete in, they must be permitted to participate in the category of their choice [Anamika v State of Kerala &Ors.].
Even the police and media have begun to treat transmen as men and transwomen as women.
Moreover, small innocent kids are being confused about their gender at school. Kids nearing puberty are being administered harmful puberty blockers so that they might lead lives as transsexuals. It is a multi-million dollar industry wherein sex-reassignment surgeries are being conducted on unassuming people. Many such transsexual people commit suicide in the few years following surgery out of sheer depression or they die of complications. The reason for depression is quite simple. Those men had been deceived into believing that they can be women, and vice versa. What the doctors probably did not tell them was that surgeries and hormonal supplements do not alter the sex of a person; all they do is offer some cosmetic tools, often at the risk of ever-deteriorating health.
SZ: Is Islam against LGBT because of its health hazards or because it is a social stigma?
Dr. PM:We, as Muslims, are and would remain against Homosexuality and Transgenderism even if every institution on earth condones it. Prophet Muhammad ﷺ has cursed those who indulge in homosexuality and those who adopt the gender of the opposite sex. He has also prescribed severe punishments for the same. We also know from the Qur’an (7:157) that Prophet Muhammad forbids only bad things, and that all good things have already been made halal for us.
SZ: So, Prophet Muhammad ﷺ has forbidden homosexual relations and cross-dressing because there is something inherently wrong with those acts, right? What might that be?
Dr. PM:The Qur’an answers that question wherever it discusses the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Qur’an regards homosexual acts as lewd, immoral, shameful, worth being detested, evil, an abomination and impure.
The people who commit such acts have been called lustful, transgressors, unclean (by implication), impure, shameful, disgraceful, devoid of right-mindedness and reason, blindly intoxicated, grossly ignorant, heedless, evil, wicked, mischief-mongers, corrupters and rejectors of sincere admonition.
In a nutshell, LGBTQ is wrong because it is Immoral.
SZ: But who defines morality? Morality can be a very subjective matter across cultures and continents.
Dr. PM:Not so for the Muslims. Muslims, by definition, are those who have surrendered their opinions to Allah and His Messenger. Prophet Muhammad ﷺ has said, “None of you can be a perfect believer unless he submits to that which I have brought.” For us, moral is what the Prophet says is moral and immoral is what he says is immoral. We have not been given the liberty to question his decisions or even have an opinion over it.
SZ: But liberals have an altogether different view on this. They don’t see it as immoral. They content that since they have been made this way, it is permissible for them and them are hence entitled to engage in it.
Dr. PM:Having a tendency to sin does not justify the act of sinning. For example, Kleptomania is also involuntary. A person finds himself compelled to steal. Does that make it permissible or right for him to steal?
SZ: They counter this by saying that if it is haram, the blame lies on God, because it is He who has made them thus. Also, since they have temptations, they should have a valid vent to express it. Otherwise, God is unjust!
Dr. PM:This is a Satanic attitude. Even Satan blamed God for his own fault. He tells God upfront that it is He who has put him in error. [Surah al-A’araf, ayat 16] It is indeed true that God has put you to trial by embedding a temptation in your nafs. But He has also given you the strength and ability to overcome it. As a matter of principle, no one is burdened more than he can endure. Blaming God is like blaming the examiner for having asked you a difficult question.
As for the vent part, even people who indulge in backbiting, even compulsive liars, even those habituated to using swear words do not have a vent. They are simply expected NOT to indulge in those acts. Even heterosexual men who have a high libido are not allowed to have sex with anyone other than their wives. What vent do they have? Would they be justified at having extra-marital affairs?
Those with erectile dysfunction and other debilitating diseases also desire to have sex, but they don’t have a vent either. Would you then call God unjust in all these cases? If that is so, all blind, dumb and deaf people would also start blaming God for being unjust. But it is not God who is unjust; it is our perspective of looking at life that is a bit skewed. If we begin to understand that life is actually an examination where everyone is being tried and tested in various ways, maybe we would begin to see things differently.
If you talk of vent, what vent do teenagers have until they eventually marry? Would you allow them to indulge in pre-marital sex with random women just to vent off? No. They need to control their sexual desires until they marry. Same applies to homosexuals, albeit for life. The farthest they can go is to indulge in masturbation; certain jurists allow that.
So, the vent argument is totally faulted. Married men also have illicit affairs. This means that marriage (vent) is not an excuse. Married men also sin, and not being married (as in the case of teenagers) is also not a justification for indulging in sin.
SZ: One very persuasive argument is that it’s all about a person’s individual freedom. Love is love. If you are anti-LGBTQ, you are anti-humanity. How would you respond to that?
Dr. PM:There is no such thing as absolute freedom to begin with. A person is either a slave of his desires or of the socio-religious norms of his community/creed. Same goes with love (or rather the expression of love). Just as incest, paedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia, etc. cannot be justified using the ‘love is love’ argument, homosexuality also can’t. And as for being anti-humanity, let’s just say that we still respect all your fundamental human rights and shall always do so, but those rights and liberties should not infringe upon the social health of humanity for that, more than anything else, would be anti-humanity.
SZ: And what about the harm factor? There is no harm caused to anyone, and it is all consensual, so why should anyone bother?
Dr. PM:Many immoral things do not cause any significant, tangible and immediate harm, but they are still immoral. For instance, doing those things on the streets that one is expected to do only in his bedroom. The concept of zina in Islam is beyond consent. Even consensual extra-marital sexual intimacy is counted as zina. So, it need not be non-consensual for it to be a sin. And we have also discussed the wider social repercussions in the first question.
In this age when every value and principle has become flexible, and the deluge of obscenity and immorality threatens to capsize our lives, Islam is the only factor that can keep our ships afloat. The towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, with just a few thousand sinners, were annihilated; imagine what can happen to millions of LGBTQ sympathizers today.
SZ: What about Intersex?
Dr. PM:Intersex is a medical condition. They should abide by the gender they have been assigned by the doctor after careful anatomical, physiological and chromosomal examination.