http://legalportal.am/download/library/p16v8rklpq19vo3pn1vh3ugb1cbe3.pdf
(Extract from "Crime and Punishment in Islamic law" by Rudolph Peters, pp. 61-62)
Homosexual intercourse (with penetration) is equated to unlawful heterosexual intercourse by most schools. However, there is a difference
of opinion about the punishment. The Malikites, the Shiites and some
Shafi ë ites and Hanbalites are of the opinion that the penalty is death, either
by stoning (Malikites), the sword (some Shafiites and Hanbalites) or, at
the discretion of the court, by killing the culprit in the usual manner with
a sword, stoning him, throwing him from a (high) wall or burning him
(Shiites). Among the Shafiites and Hanbalites there are also scholars who
hold that the death penalty by stoning applies only to the active partner
or to those who are muhsan, and that otherwise the punishment is flog-
ging in combination with banishment. The Hanafites, finally, do not put
homosexual intercourse on a par with the hadd crime of unlawful inter-
course. They hold that homosexual intercourse must be punished at the
qa ̄d. ̄ı ’s discretion. The following fatwa ̄, given by an Ottoman mufti in the
sixteenth century, sets forth the Hanafite position and explains that capital
Question: The military commander Zeyd sends Amr and Bekr to the beardless
Be ̧s ̄ır, telling them to fetch him. The forenamed persons forcibly remove Be ̧sir
from his neighbour Halid’s house, whither he has fled and hidden, and take him
to Zeyd. If Zeyd were to take the beardless Be ̧sir to the mountains, and – may God
forbid – forcibly commit sodomy with him, what would his sentence be according
to the Shari ë a?
Answer: It is canonically possible to execute Zeyd, even if he is not married. If he is not executed, his sentence is a severe beating and long imprisonment, and he must be removed from his post. The authorities who connive in [carrying out] his command have no excuse or answer before God. ë Amr and Bekr’s sentence is a severe chastisement and long imprisonment.52
Answer: It is canonically possible to execute Zeyd, even if he is not married. If he is not executed, his sentence is a severe beating and long imprisonment, and he must be removed from his post. The authorities who connive in [carrying out] his command have no excuse or answer before God. ë Amr and Bekr’s sentence is a severe chastisement and long imprisonment.52
https://iranwire.com/en/features/5104
15 Jan 2018:
The publication, entitled “It's a great honor to violate homosexuals’ rights,” is published by the Iranian Lesbian and Transgender Network 6rang (“6 Colors”), and covers Iranian authorities’ hate speech about homosexuality between 2011 and 2017. It clearly illustrates the extremes to which authorities have been prepared to go to incite hostility, discrimination and violence against people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity....
It must be noted that the title of the report is not a humorous invention. “It is a great honor for the Islamic Republic to violate the rights of homosexuals,” is an actual quotation from March 2012 by Mehrdad Bazrpash, a former member of the parliament and a former deputy to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
http://www.economist.com/node/21546002
"Earlier Islamic societies were less hardline. An 11th-century Persian ruler advised his son to alternate his partners seasonally: young men in the summer and women in the winter. Many of the love poems of the eighth-century Abu Nuwas in Baghdad, and of other Persian and Urdu poets, were addressed to boys. In medieval mystic writings, particularly Sufi texts, it is unclear whether the beloved being addressed is a teenage boy or God, providing a quasi-religious sanction for relationships between men and boys. Austere European chroniclers fumed at the indulgent attitudes to gay sex in the Caliphs' courts (now the censure is the other way).
Like liberal Jewish and Christian scholars in recent decades, some Muslim thinkers are now finding theological latitude. “The Koran does not condemn homosexuality,” says Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, an American Muslim convert who teaches Islamic studies at Emory University in Atlanta. The story of Lot, he argues, deals with male rape and violence, not homosexuality in general. Classical Islamic theologians and jurists were mostly concerned with stifling lustful immorality, he says. Koranic verses describe without condemnation men who have no sexual desire for women.
Arash Naraghi, an Iranian academic at Moravian College in Pennsylvania, suggests that the verses decrying homosexuality, like those referring to slavery and Ptolemaic cosmology, stem from common beliefs at the time of writing, and should be re-examined. Even Sheikh Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah, the late spiritual leader of Lebanon's Hizbullah party-cum-militia, conceded that more research is needed in order to understand homosexuality.
Unsurprisingly, the debate, such as it is, is led by gay Muslims outside the Islamic world."
https://twitter.com/mughalbha/status/778651924656746496
https://rekhta.org/ebooks/urdu-ghazal-men-shahid-baazi-zuhoor-nazar-ebooks?lang=Ur
اردوغزل میں شاہد بازی (یعنی اغلام بازی یا لونڈے بازی)
http://scroll.in/article/810093/orlando-shooting-its-different-now-but-muslims-have-a-long-history-of-accepting-homosexuality
At the height of the Islamic Golden Age – a period from the mid-8th century to the mid-13th century when Islamic civilisation is believed to have reached its intellectual and cultural zenith – homosexuality was openly spoken and written about. Abu Nuwas (756-814), one of the great Arab classical poets during the time of the Abbasid Caliphate, wrote publicly about his homosexual desires and relations. His homoerotic poetry was openly circulated right up until the 20th century.
Nuwas was an important historical figure – he even made a couple of appearances in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (known in Urdu as Alif Laila). It was only as late as 2001 that Arabs started to blush at Nuwas’ homoerotism. In 2001, the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, under pressure from Islamic fundamentalists, burnt 6,000 volumes of his poetry.
Most modern Muslims, therefore, have little knowledge of what the Islamic Golden Age was really about, even though they keep on wanting to go back to it.
“ISIS have no idea what restoring the Caliphate actually means," a tweet by Belgian-Egyptian journalist Khaled Diab said. "In Baghdad, it’d involve booze, odes to wine, science... and a gay court poet.”
Baghdad was, till the time the Mongols invaded and destroyed it, the cultural capital of much of the world – the New York City of its time. If Nuwas and his homoerotic poetry could represent the height of Baghdadi culture, it is natural that other Muslim societies would also be quite open to homosexuality. As historian Saleem Kidwai puts in the fabulous book Same-Sex Love in India, “Homoerotically inclined men are continuously visible in Muslim medieval histories and are generally described without pejorative comment.”
......
In 1858, in fact, the Ottoman Empire decriminalised homosexuality (a status inherited by Turkey). This was two years before the British Raj created the Indian Penal Code, Section 377 of which proceeded to outlaw homosexuality in modern-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
So deep was the influence of the 1860 penal code in India that conservative Hindus continue to hold homosexuality to be immoral and in the nearly 70 years since Independence, the Parliament has not been able to overturn the law. Subramanian Swamy, Member of Parliament from the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party even went so far as to claim: “Our party position has been that homosexuality is a genetic disorder." This is near-bizarre given that Hinduism, unlike Islam or Christianity, does not even have any textual condemnation of same-sex love.
http://direland.typepad.com/direland/2009/02/i-wrote-the-folliwng-article-for-gay-city-news--when-iranian-president-mahmoud-ahmadinejad-made-his-infamous-claim-at-a-sept.html
Examples of the codes governing same-sex relations were to be found in the "Mirror for Princes genre of literature (andarz nameh)
[which] refers to both homosexual and heterosexual relations. Often
written by fathers for sons, or viziers for sultans, these books
contained separate chapter headings on the treatment of male companions
and of wives."
One such was the Qabus Nameh (1082-1083), in which a father advises a son: "As between women and youths, do not confine your inclinations to either sex; thus you may find enjoyment from both kinds without either of the two becoming inimical to you... During the summer let your desires incline toward youths, and during the winter towards women."
Afary dissects how "classical Persian literature (twelfth to fifteenth centuries)...overflowed with same-sex themes (such as passionate homoerotic allusions, symbolism, and even explicit references to beautiful young boys.)" This was true not only of the Sufi masters of this classical period but of "the poems of the great twentieth-century poet Iraj Mirza (1874-1926)... Classical poets also celebrated homosexual relationships between kings and their pages."
...
In the court of Naser al-Din Shah, who ruled Persia from 1848 to 1896, keeping boy concubines was still an acceptable practice, and the shah himself (in addition to his wives and harem) had a young male lover, Malijak, whom he "loved more than anyone else." In his memoirs, Malijak recalled proudly, "the king's love for me reached the point where it is impossible for me to write about it... [He] held me in his arms and kissed me as if he were kissing one of his great beloveds."
In a lengthy section of her book entitled "Toward a Westernized Modernity," Afary demonstrates how the trend toward modernization which emerged during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and which gave the Persian monarchy its first parliament was heavily influenced by concepts harvested from the West.
One of her most stunning revelations is how an Azeri-language newspaper edited and published in the Russian Caucuses, Molla Nasreddin (or MN, which appeared from 1906 to 1931) influenced this Iranian Revolution with a "significant new discourse on gender and sexuality," sharing Marx's well-documented contempt for homosexuals. With an editorial board that embraced Russian social democratic concepts, including women's rights, MN was also "the first paper in the Shi'i Muslim world to endorse normative heterosexuality," echoing Marx's well-documented contempt for homosexuality. Afary writes that "this illustrated satirical paper, which circulated among Iranian intellectuals and ordinary people alike, was enormously popular in the region because of its graphic cartoons."
MN conflated homosexuality and pedophilia, and attacked clerical teachers and leaders for "molesting young boys," played upon feelings of "contempt" for passive homosexuals, suggested that elite men who kept amrad concubines "had a vested interested in maintaining the (male) homosocial public spaces where semi-covert pederasty was tolerated," and "mocked the rites of exchanging brotherhood vows before a mollah and compared it to a wedding ceremony." It was in this way that a discourse of political homophobia developed in Europe, which insisted that only heterosexuality could be the norm, was introduced into Iran.
MN's attacks on homosexuality "would shape Iranian debates on sexuality for the next century," and it "became a model for several Iranian newspapers of the era," which echoed its attacks on the conservative clergy and leadership for homosexual practices. In the years that followed, "Iranian revolutionaries commonly berated major political figures for their sexual transgressions," and "revolutionary leaflets accused adult men of having homosexual sex with other adult men, 'of thirty-year-olds propositioning fifty-year-olds and twenty-year-olds propositioning forty-year-olds, right in front of the Shah.' Some leaflets repeated the old allegation that major political figures had been amrads in their youth."
Subsequently, "leading constitutionalists enthusiastically joined the campaign against homosexuality," writes Afary, noting that "the influential journal Kaveh (1916-1921), published in exile in Berlin and edited by the famous constitutionalist Hasan Taqizadeh, had led the movement of opinion against homosexuality... Their notion of modernization now included the normalization of heterosexual eros and the abandonment of all homosexual practices and even inclinations."
When Reza Kahn overthrew the monarchy's Qajar dynasty and made himself shah in 1925, he ushered in a new wave of reforms and modernization that included attempts to outlaw homosexuality entirely and a ferocious - ultimately successful - assault on classical Persian poetry. Iraj Mirza, previously known for his homoerotic poems, "joined other leading political figures of this period in encouraging compulsory heterosexuality." These politicians and intellectuals insisted that "true patriotism required switching one's sexual orientation from boys to women... Other intellectuals and educators pressed for the elimination of poems with homosexual themes from school textbooks."
Leading this crusade was a famous historian and prolific journalist, Ahmad Kasravi, "who helped shape many cultural and educational policies during the 1930s and 1940s." Kasravi founded a nationalist movement, Pak Dini (Purity of Religion), which developed a broad following. An admirer of MN, Kasravi preached that "homosexuality was a measure of cultural backwardness," that Sufi poets of homoeroticism led "parasitic" lives, and that their queer poetry "was dangerous and had to be eliminated."
Kasravi's Pak Dini movement "went so far as to institute a festival of book burning, held on winter solstice. Books deemed harmful and amoral were thrown into a bonfire in an event that seemed to echo the Nazi and Soviet-style notions of eliminating 'degenerate' art." Eventually, Prime Minister Mahmoud Jam, who held office from 1935 to 1939, acceded to Kasravi's demand that homoerotic poems be banned entirely from daily newspapers.
Kasravi "based his opposition to the homoeroticism of classical poetry on several assumptions. He expected the young generation to study Western sciences in order to rebuild the nation, and he regarded Sufi poetry as a dangerous diversion. As preposterous as it might sound, Kasravi also argued that the revival of Persian poetry was a grand conspiracy concocted by British and German Orientalists to divert the nation's youth from the revolutionary legacy of the Constitutional Revolution and to encourage... immoral pursuits."
Afary adds sorrowfully that "most supporters of women's rights sympathized with Kasravi's project because he encouraged the cultivation of monogamous, heterosexual love in marriage... In this period, neither Kasravi nor feminists distinguished between rape or molestation of boys and consensual same-sex relations between adults."
One such was the Qabus Nameh (1082-1083), in which a father advises a son: "As between women and youths, do not confine your inclinations to either sex; thus you may find enjoyment from both kinds without either of the two becoming inimical to you... During the summer let your desires incline toward youths, and during the winter towards women."
Afary dissects how "classical Persian literature (twelfth to fifteenth centuries)...overflowed with same-sex themes (such as passionate homoerotic allusions, symbolism, and even explicit references to beautiful young boys.)" This was true not only of the Sufi masters of this classical period but of "the poems of the great twentieth-century poet Iraj Mirza (1874-1926)... Classical poets also celebrated homosexual relationships between kings and their pages."
...
In the court of Naser al-Din Shah, who ruled Persia from 1848 to 1896, keeping boy concubines was still an acceptable practice, and the shah himself (in addition to his wives and harem) had a young male lover, Malijak, whom he "loved more than anyone else." In his memoirs, Malijak recalled proudly, "the king's love for me reached the point where it is impossible for me to write about it... [He] held me in his arms and kissed me as if he were kissing one of his great beloveds."
In a lengthy section of her book entitled "Toward a Westernized Modernity," Afary demonstrates how the trend toward modernization which emerged during the Constitutional Revolution of 1906 and which gave the Persian monarchy its first parliament was heavily influenced by concepts harvested from the West.
One of her most stunning revelations is how an Azeri-language newspaper edited and published in the Russian Caucuses, Molla Nasreddin (or MN, which appeared from 1906 to 1931) influenced this Iranian Revolution with a "significant new discourse on gender and sexuality," sharing Marx's well-documented contempt for homosexuals. With an editorial board that embraced Russian social democratic concepts, including women's rights, MN was also "the first paper in the Shi'i Muslim world to endorse normative heterosexuality," echoing Marx's well-documented contempt for homosexuality. Afary writes that "this illustrated satirical paper, which circulated among Iranian intellectuals and ordinary people alike, was enormously popular in the region because of its graphic cartoons."
MN conflated homosexuality and pedophilia, and attacked clerical teachers and leaders for "molesting young boys," played upon feelings of "contempt" for passive homosexuals, suggested that elite men who kept amrad concubines "had a vested interested in maintaining the (male) homosocial public spaces where semi-covert pederasty was tolerated," and "mocked the rites of exchanging brotherhood vows before a mollah and compared it to a wedding ceremony." It was in this way that a discourse of political homophobia developed in Europe, which insisted that only heterosexuality could be the norm, was introduced into Iran.
MN's attacks on homosexuality "would shape Iranian debates on sexuality for the next century," and it "became a model for several Iranian newspapers of the era," which echoed its attacks on the conservative clergy and leadership for homosexual practices. In the years that followed, "Iranian revolutionaries commonly berated major political figures for their sexual transgressions," and "revolutionary leaflets accused adult men of having homosexual sex with other adult men, 'of thirty-year-olds propositioning fifty-year-olds and twenty-year-olds propositioning forty-year-olds, right in front of the Shah.' Some leaflets repeated the old allegation that major political figures had been amrads in their youth."
Subsequently, "leading constitutionalists enthusiastically joined the campaign against homosexuality," writes Afary, noting that "the influential journal Kaveh (1916-1921), published in exile in Berlin and edited by the famous constitutionalist Hasan Taqizadeh, had led the movement of opinion against homosexuality... Their notion of modernization now included the normalization of heterosexual eros and the abandonment of all homosexual practices and even inclinations."
When Reza Kahn overthrew the monarchy's Qajar dynasty and made himself shah in 1925, he ushered in a new wave of reforms and modernization that included attempts to outlaw homosexuality entirely and a ferocious - ultimately successful - assault on classical Persian poetry. Iraj Mirza, previously known for his homoerotic poems, "joined other leading political figures of this period in encouraging compulsory heterosexuality." These politicians and intellectuals insisted that "true patriotism required switching one's sexual orientation from boys to women... Other intellectuals and educators pressed for the elimination of poems with homosexual themes from school textbooks."
Leading this crusade was a famous historian and prolific journalist, Ahmad Kasravi, "who helped shape many cultural and educational policies during the 1930s and 1940s." Kasravi founded a nationalist movement, Pak Dini (Purity of Religion), which developed a broad following. An admirer of MN, Kasravi preached that "homosexuality was a measure of cultural backwardness," that Sufi poets of homoeroticism led "parasitic" lives, and that their queer poetry "was dangerous and had to be eliminated."
Kasravi's Pak Dini movement "went so far as to institute a festival of book burning, held on winter solstice. Books deemed harmful and amoral were thrown into a bonfire in an event that seemed to echo the Nazi and Soviet-style notions of eliminating 'degenerate' art." Eventually, Prime Minister Mahmoud Jam, who held office from 1935 to 1939, acceded to Kasravi's demand that homoerotic poems be banned entirely from daily newspapers.
Kasravi "based his opposition to the homoeroticism of classical poetry on several assumptions. He expected the young generation to study Western sciences in order to rebuild the nation, and he regarded Sufi poetry as a dangerous diversion. As preposterous as it might sound, Kasravi also argued that the revival of Persian poetry was a grand conspiracy concocted by British and German Orientalists to divert the nation's youth from the revolutionary legacy of the Constitutional Revolution and to encourage... immoral pursuits."
Afary adds sorrowfully that "most supporters of women's rights sympathized with Kasravi's project because he encouraged the cultivation of monogamous, heterosexual love in marriage... In this period, neither Kasravi nor feminists distinguished between rape or molestation of boys and consensual same-sex relations between adults."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/opinion/mustafa-akyol-what-does-islam-say-about-being-gay.html?_r=0
2015: On June 29, Turkey’s 12th Gay Pride Parade was held on Istanbul’s crowded Istiklal Avenue. Thousands marched joyfully carrying rainbow flags until the police began dispersing them with water cannons. The authorities, as has become their custom since the Gezi Park protests of June 2013, once again decided not to allow a demonstration by secular Turks who don’t fit into their vision of the ideal citizen.
More worrying news came a week later when posters were put up in Ankara with a chilling instruction: “If you see those carrying out the People of Lot’s dirty work, kill the doer and the done!” The “People of Lot” was a religious reference to gays, and the instruction to kill them on sight was attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. The group that put the posters up, the so-called Islamic Defense Youth, defended its message by asserting: “What? Are you offended by the words of our prophet?!”
......
Medieval Islamic thinkers inferred an earthly punishment by considering homosexuality as a form of adultery. But significant names among them, such as the eighth-century scholar Abu Hanifa, the founder of the popular Hanafi school of jurisprudence, argued that since a homosexual relationship did not produce offspring with an unknown father, it couldn’t be considered adultery.
The real Islamic basis for punishing homosexuality is the hadiths, or sayings, attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. (The same is true for punishments on apostasy, heresy, impiety, or “insults” of Islam: None come from the Quran; all are from certain hadiths.) But the hadiths were written down almost two centuries after the prophet lived, and their authenticity has been repeatedly questioned — as early as the ninth century by the scholar Imam Nesai — and they can be questioned anew today. Moreover, there is no record of the prophet actually having anyone punished for homosexuality.
Such jurisprudential facts might help Muslims today to develop a more tolerant attitude toward gays, as some progressive Islamic thinkers in Turkey, such as Ihsan Eliacik, are encouraging. What is condemned in the story of Lot is not sexual orientation, according to Mr. Eliacik, but sexual aggression. People’s private lives are their own business, he argues, whereas the public Muslim stance should be to defend gays when they are persecuted or discriminated against — because Islam stands with the downtrodden.
It is also worth recalling that the Ottoman Caliphate, which ruled the Sunni Muslim world for centuries and which the current Turkish government claims to emulate, was much more open-minded on this issue. Indeed, the Ottoman Empire had an extensive literature of homosexual romance, and an accepted social category of transvestites. The Ottoman sultans, arguably, were social liberals compared with the contemporary Islamists of Turkey, let alone the Arab World.
http://www.juancole.com/2006/03/sistani-on-homosexuality-andrew.html
"In traditional Islam there was no conception of the “homosexual” as a permanent identity or social role. As in ancient Greece, the real distinction in sexuality (as Michel Foucault showed) was between the penetrator and the penetrated. Medieval and early modern Islamdom were like the Greece of Plato. Adult males were the penetrators. In premodern Muslim society, women could be penetrated if they were legally married to the man or if they were his slaves. Likewise, slave-boys (catamites) could be penetrated, although it was typically disapproved of by the Muslim clerics. Exclusive adult male-male sexual relationships are not recorded, and a taste for a slave-boy did not stop a wealthy man from being married or from having liasons with his female slaves, as well. About half the famous love-poems of the medieval Baghdad literary figure, Abu Nuwas, appear to have been addressed to boys.
"In traditional Islam there was no conception of the “homosexual” as a permanent identity or social role. As in ancient Greece, the real distinction in sexuality (as Michel Foucault showed) was between the penetrator and the penetrated. Medieval and early modern Islamdom were like the Greece of Plato. Adult males were the penetrators. In premodern Muslim society, women could be penetrated if they were legally married to the man or if they were his slaves. Likewise, slave-boys (catamites) could be penetrated, although it was typically disapproved of by the Muslim clerics. Exclusive adult male-male sexual relationships are not recorded, and a taste for a slave-boy did not stop a wealthy man from being married or from having liasons with his female slaves, as well. About half the famous love-poems of the medieval Baghdad literary figure, Abu Nuwas, appear to have been addressed to boys.
As slavery was forbidden in the Ottoman Empire in the course of the mid- to late-nineteenth century, obviously the keeping of slave-boys by wealthy men ceased. As society modernized, notions of sexuality moved away from the penetrator/penetrated model similar to that of the ancient Greeks, and toward a modern male-female binary. Many Muslim societies in the course of the twentieth century also moved away from polygamy toward a model of one man, one woman as the family unit.
Modern homosexual identity has only slowly emerged in the Middle East, and has sometimes faced great hostility. I say sometimes because real-life Muslim societies are not as puritanical as outsiders or local elites imagine. It is obvious that American writer Paul Bowles liked living in Tangiers precisely because anything went as long as it stayed fairly private. In cosmopolitan Muslim cultures like Egypt, at best the modern gay subculture is winked at, but sometimes there are crackdowns. The situation resembles the US in, say, the 1930s and 1940s, when the police would arrest gays. In a radical Muslim regime like Taliban Afghanistan, gays were executed. This was in part an attempt to keep discipline in the Taliban military ranks, which were notorious for gay liaisons. So there is a spectrum. It should be underlined that Taliban Afghanistan was weird and not like most of the Muslim world."
...
A later fatwa insists that homosexual relations should be punished with the utmost severity, and urges the death penalty. Again, his assumption appears to be that the penetrated partner would likely be under-age, which may help explain his severity. His first two fatwas, however, assume that the punishment will actually be much less severe, even when one of the partners was under-age!
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8473.htm
March 2015: Salafi clerics on executing homosexuals
http://rohaniilaj.dawateislami.net/bookslibrary/2571/page/84
[3]…احناف کے نزدیک :اِغلام یعنی پیچھے کے مقام میں وطی کی تو اس کی سز ایہ ہے کہ اس کے اوپر دیوار گرادیں یا اونچی جگہ سے اوسے ا وندھا گرائیں اور اس پر پتھر برسائیں یا اوسے قید میں رکھیں یہاں تک کہ وہ مرجائے یا توبہ کرے یا چند بار ایسا کیا ہو تو بادشاہِ اسلام اسے قتل کرڈالے۔ الغرض یہ فعل نہایت خبیث ہے بلکہ زنا سے بھی بدتر ہے ، ا سی وجہ سے اس میں حد نہیں کہ بعضوں کے نزدیک حد قائم کرنے سے اوس گناہ سے پاک ہوجاتا ہے اور یہ اتنا بُرا ہے کہ جب تک توبہ خالصہ نہ ہو اس میں پاکی نہ ہوگی اوراغلام کوحلال جاننے والا کافر ہے ،یہی مذہب جمہورہے۔(بہار شریعت،حصہ ۹ ، ۲/۳۸۰، ۳۸۱)
http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8473.htm
March 2015: Salafi clerics on executing homosexuals
http://rohaniilaj.dawateislami.net/bookslibrary/2571/page/84
لِواطت زنا سے کہیں زیادہ بڑھ کر بے حیائی اور بُرائی کا کام ہے۔
لِواطت کی مَذمَّت میں تین فرامین مصطفٰے:
اس حدیث پاک کی سندبھی حَسَن ہے۔
لواطت کی سزا:
حضرتِ سیِّدُنا ابنِ عباس رَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہُمَا فرماتے ہیں: لواطت کی سزا یہ ہے کہ ایسےشخص کو شہر کی سب سے بلند عمارت سےگراکر پھر اُس پر پتھر برسائے جائیں([3])۔([4])
[3]…احناف کے نزدیک :اِغلام یعنی پیچھے کے مقام میں وطی کی تو اس کی سز ایہ ہے کہ اس کے اوپر دیوار گرادیں یا اونچی جگہ سے اوسے ا وندھا گرائیں اور اس پر پتھر برسائیں یا اوسے قید میں رکھیں یہاں تک کہ وہ مرجائے یا توبہ کرے یا چند بار ایسا کیا ہو تو بادشاہِ اسلام اسے قتل کرڈالے۔ الغرض یہ فعل نہایت خبیث ہے بلکہ زنا سے بھی بدتر ہے ، ا سی وجہ سے اس میں حد نہیں کہ بعضوں کے نزدیک حد قائم کرنے سے اوس گناہ سے پاک ہوجاتا ہے اور یہ اتنا بُرا ہے کہ جب تک توبہ خالصہ نہ ہو اس میں پاکی نہ ہوگی اوراغلام کوحلال جاننے والا کافر ہے ،یہی مذہب جمہورہے۔(بہار شریعت،حصہ ۹ ، ۲/۳۸۰، ۳۸۱)
http://www.dawateislami.net/bookslibrary/1933/page/485
حضرت عبداللہ بن عباس رَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہُمَاسے روایت ہے ، رسولِ اکرم صَلَّی اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَلَیْہِ وَاٰلِہٖ وَسَلَّمَ نے ارشاد فرمایا ’’جسے تم قومِ لوط جیسا عمل کرتے پا ئو تو لواطت کرنے اور کروانے والے دونوں کو قتل کر دو۔ (4)
حضرت عبداللہبن عباس رَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہُمَاسے روایت ہے ،رسولُ اللہ صَلَّی اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَلَیْہِ وَاٰلِہٖ وَسَلَّمَ نے ارشاد فرمایا ’’اللہ تعالیٰ اس شخص کی طرف نظررحمت نہیں فرماتا جو کسی مرد یا عورت کے پچھلے مقام میں وطی کرے ۔ (5)
حضرت عبداللہبن عباس رَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہُمَا فرماتے ہیں کہ بد فعلی کا مرتکب اگر توبہ کیے بغیر مر جائے تو اسے قبر میں خنزیر کی شکل میں بدل دیا جاتا ہے۔(6)
(2)… شریعتِ مطہرہ میں لواطت یعنی بد فعلی کی سزا یہ ہے اس کے اوپر دیوار گرادی جا ئے یا اونچی جگہ سے اُسے اوندھا کرکے گرایا جا ئے اور اُس پر پتھر برسائے جائیں یا اُسے قید میں رکھا جائے یہاں تک کہ مرجائے یا توبہ کرے یا چند بار ایسا کیا ہوتو بادشاہِ اسلام اُسے قتل کرڈالے۔ (7)
http://www.dawateislami.net/bookslibrary/913/page/523
حدیث ِ پاک میں گزر چکا ہے کہ جو کسی چوپائے سے صحبت کرے تو چوپائے کو بھی اس کے ساتھ قتل کر دیا جائے۔ حضرت سیِّدُنا خطابی عَلَـیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ الْکَافِی( متوفی۳۸۸ھ)فرماتے ہیں : ’’حیوان کے قتل کی ممانعت والی حدیث اس حدیث پاک سے معارض ہوسکتی ہے۔‘‘ صاحب کتاب فرماتے ہیں علامہ خطابی نے جو کلام کیا ہے وہ درست ہے۔ پسغَیْرمَأْکُوْلَہ (یعنی حرا م جانور) کو قتل نہیں کیا جائے گا اور مَأْکُوْلَہ (یعنی حلال جانور) کو ذبح نہیں کیا جائے گا، یہ قول ان کے خلاف ہے جنہوں نے جانور کو قتل کرنے کا گمان کیا۔ اسی طرح حدیث ِ پاک میں گزرا ہے کہ ’’لواطت کرنے والے اور جس سے کی جائے دونوں کو قتل کر دیا جائے۔‘‘ ایک روایت میں یہ بھی ہے کہ ’’فاعل اور مفعول اور چوپایوں سے وطی کرنے والے کو قتل کر دو۔‘‘ (۲)
مُحْیِ السُّنَّہحضرت سیِّدُناامام ا بومحمد حسین بن مسعود بَغویعَلَـــیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ الْقَوِی فرماتے ہیں کہ لُوطی کی حد میں اہلِ علم کا اختلاف ہے، ایک قوم کا قول ہے کہ لواطت کرنے والے(یعنی فاعل)کی حدوہی ہے جو زنا کی ہے یعنی اگر شادی شدہ ہو تو اسے رجم کیا جائے گااور اگرغیرشادی شدہ ہو تو100کوڑے لگائے جائیں گے،یہ حضرت سیِّدُنا ابن مسیب، حضرت سیِّدُنا عطا، حضرت سیِّدُنا حسن، حضرت سیِّدُنا قتادہ اور حضرت سیِّدُنا نخعی رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ تَعَالٰی عَلَـیْہِمْ اَجْمَعِیْنکا قول ہے۔ حضرت سیِّدُنا امام سفیان ثوری عَلَـیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ الْقَوِی (متوفی۱۶۱ھ) اور سیِّدُنا امام اوزاعی رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ تَعَالٰی عَلَـیْہ کا بھی یہی قول ہے اور حضرت سیِّدُنا امام محمد بن ادریس شافعی عَلَـیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ الْکَافِی (متوفی۲۰۴ھ) کے دو اقوال میں سے زیادہ ظاہر قول بھی یہی ہے، حضرت سیِّدُنا امام ابویوسف رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ تَعَالٰی عَلَـــیْہاور سیِّدُنا اما م محمد بن حسن رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ تَعَالٰی عَلَـــیْہ سے
http://www.dawateislami.net/bookslibrary/913/page/524
بھی اسی طرح حکایت کیا گیا ہے اور حضرت سیِّدُنا امام شافعی عَلَیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ الْکَافِی (متوفی۲۰۴ھ) کے نزدیک اس قول کی بنا پر 100 کوڑے اور ایک سال کی جَلاوطنی ہے، خواہ وہ مرد ہو یا عورت، شادی شدہ ہو یا غیر شادی شدہ۔
ایک گروہ کا قول ہے کہ لُوطی کو رجم کیا جائے گا اگرچہ غیر شادی شدہ ہو،یہ قول حضرت سیِّدُنا سعید بن جبیر رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ تَعَالٰی عَلَــیْہ اور حضرت سیِّدُنا مجاہد عَلَـــیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِنے حضرت سیِّدُنا عبداللہ بن عباس رَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہُمَا سے نقل کیا ہے اور حضرت سیِّدُنا امام شعبیعَلَیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ الْقَوِی (متوفی ۱۰۳ھ) سے بھی نقل کیا گیا ہے جبکہ حضرت سیِّدُنا امام زُہری عَلَـیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ الْوَلِی نے بھی اسی کو اختیار کیا اور حضرت سیِّدُنا امام مالک بن انس، حضرت سیِّدُنا امام احمد بن حنبل اور حضرت سیِّدُنا امام اسحاق بن راہویہ رَحِمَـہُمُ اللہُ السَّلَام کا بھی یہ ہی قول ہے۔
حضرت سیِّدُنا حماد بن ابراہیم عَلَیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ الْکَرِیْم حضرت سیِّدُنا امام ابراہیم نخعی عَلَـــیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ الْوَلِی سے نقل فرماتے ہیں کہ ’’اگر کسی کو دو بار رجم کرنے کی سزا دی جاتی تو لوطی کو دی جاتی۔‘‘
حضرت سیِّدُنا امام شافعی عَلَیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ الْکَافِی (متوفی۲۰۴ھ)کا دوسرا قول یہ ہے کہ ’’لواطت کرنے والے اور کروانے والے دونوں کو قتل کر دیا جائے جیسا کہ حدیث ِ پاک میں آیا ہے۔‘‘ (۱)
حضرت سیِّدُناحافظ امام زکی الدین عبدُالعظیم مُنذِرِی عَلَـیْہِ رَحْمَۃُ اللہِ الْقَوِی فرماتے ہیں :’’4خلفا امیر المؤ منین حضرت سیِّدُنا ابوبکر صدیقرَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہ، امیر المؤ منین حضرت سیِّدُنا علی المرتضیٰکَرَّمَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی وَجْہَہُ الْکَرِیْم، حضرت سیِّدُنا عبداللہ بن زبیر رَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہاور خلیفہ ہشام بن عبد الملک نے لوطی کو آگ سے جَلایا۔‘‘ (۲)
حضرت سیِّدُنا خالد بن ولید رَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہ نے امیر المؤ منین حضرت سیِّدُنا ابو بکر صدیقرَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہ کی خدمت میں ایک خط روانہ کیا کہ انہوں نے عرب کے اطراف میں ایک شخص کو پایا جس سے اسی طرح جماع کیا جاتا ہے جس طرح عورت سے کیا جاتا ہے تو آپ رَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہ نے اس شخص کے متعلق فیصلہ کرنے کے لئے صحابۂ کرام رِضْوَانُ اللہِ تَعَالٰی عَلَـــیْہِمْ اَجْمَعِیْن کو جمع فرمایا، ان میں امیر المؤ منین حضرت سیِّدُنا علی المرتضیٰ کَرَّمَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی وَجْہَہُ الْکَرِیْم بھی تھے، انہوں نے ارشاد فرمایا: ’’بے شک یہ ایک ایسا گناہ ہے جو صرف ایک امت نے کیا تو اللہ عَزَّوَجَلَّ نے انہیں وہ
عذاب دیاجو تم جانتے ہو، میرا خیال ہے کہ ہم اسے آگ سے جَلا دیں۔‘‘ پس صحابۂ کرامعَلَـیْہِمُ الرِّضْوَانکا اسے آگ سے جلانے پر اجماع ہو گیا توامیرالمؤمنین حضرت سیِّدُنا ابو بکر صدیق رَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہ نے اُسے آگ سے جلانے کا حکم دے دیا اور حضرت سیِّدُنا خالد بن ولید رَضِیَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی عَنْہ نے اسے آگ سے جلا دیا۔‘‘ (۱)
امیر المؤمنین حضرت سیِّدُنا علی المرتضیٰ کَرَّمَ اللہُ تَعَالٰی وَجْہَہُ الْکَرِیْم ارشاد فرماتے ہیں : ’’جو شخص خود کو لواطت کے لئے پیش کرے اللہ عَزَّوَجَلَّ اسے عورتوں کی شہوت میں مبتلا کردے گااور اسے قیامت کے دن تک قبر میں مردود شیطان کی صورت میں رکھے گا۔‘‘ (۲)
اس بات پرامت کا اجماع ہے کہ جس نے اپنے غلام سے ملعون، فاسق اور مجرم قومِ لُوط جیسا فعل کیا اس پر اللہ عَزَّوَجَلَّ کی لعنت، پھر اللہ عَزَّوَجَلَّ کی لعنت، پھراللہ عَزَّوَجَلَّ، فرشتوں اور تمام لوگوں کی لعنت ہے۔ حقیقت یہ ہے کہ یہ عادت تاجروں اور سرمایہ داروں میں عام ہو گئی اور انہوں نے اس برے فعل کے لئے سیاہ اور سفید خوبصورت غلام اپنائے، پس ان پر شدید دائمی ظاہری لعنت ہے اور بڑی ذلت ورسوائی، ہلاکت اور دنیا و آخرت میں عذاب ہے، جب تک کہ وہ ان بری عیب دار، بدنما اور خطرناک خصلتوں پر قائم رہیں جو کہ تنگ دستی، مال کی ہلاکت، برکات کے خاتمہ اور معاملات و امانات میں خیانت کا موجب ہیں۔
https://www.al-islam.org/sv/printpdf/book/export/html/38594
https://www.al-islam.org/sv/node/38630
[Extracts from Ayatollah Abul Qassim Khoei's book "Islamic Laws"]
2747. If an adult and sane person commits sodomy with another adult and sane person, both of them should be killed. And the religious Head can kill the person guilty of sodomy with a sword, or bum [sic! burn] him alive, or tie his hands and feet and hurl him down from a high place, and under the conditions mentioned in Article 2795 can lapidate him.
.....
2802. If a person wants to commit adultery with a woman or sodomy with a boy and it is not possible to restrain him from doing so without killing him, it is permissible to kill him.
http://www.iranhrdc.org/english/human-rights-documents/iranian-codes/1000000455-english-translation-of-books-1-and-2-of-the-new-islamic-penal-code.html#45
Chapter Two- Livat, Tafkhiz, and Musaheqeh
Article 233- Livat is defined as penetration of a man’s sex organ (penis), up to the point of circumcision, into another male person’s anus.
Article 234- The hadd punishment for livat shall be the death penalty for the insertive/active party if he has committed livat by using force, coercion, or in cases where he meets the conditions for ihsan; otherwise, he shall be sentenced to one hundred lashes. The hadd punishment for the receptive/passive party, in any case (whether or not he meets the conditions for ihsan) shall be the death penalty.
Note 1- If the insertive/active party is a non-Muslim and the receptive/passive party is a Muslim, the hadd punishment for the insertive/active party shall be the death penalty.
Note 2- Ihsan is defined as a status that a man is married to a permanent and pubescent wife and whilst he has been sane and pubescent has had a vaginal intercourse with the same wife while she was pubescent, and he can have an intercourse with her in the same way [vaginal] whenever he so wishes.
Article 235- Tafkhiz is defined as putting a man’s sex organ (penis) between the thighs or buttocks of another male person.
Note- A penetration [of a penis into another male person’s anus] that does not reach the point of circumcision shall be regarded as tafkhiz.
Article 236- In the case of tafkhiz, the hadd punishment for the active and passive party shall be one hundred lashes and it shall make no difference whether or not the offender meets the conditions of ihsan [mentioned in note 2 of article 234], or whether or not [the offender] has resorted to coercion.
Note- If the active party is a non-Muslim and the passive party is a Muslim, the hadd punishment for the active party shall be the death penalty.
Article 237- Homosexual acts of a male person in cases other than livat and tafkhiz, such as kissing or touching as a result of lust, shall be punishable by thirty-one to seventy-four lashes of ta’zir punishment of the sixth grade.
Note 1- This article shall be equally applicable in the case of a female person.
Note 2- This article shall not be applicable in the cases punishable by a hadd punishment under Shari’a rules.
Article 238- Musaheqeh is defined as where a female person puts her sex organ on the sex organ of another person of the same sex.
Article 239- The hadd punishment for musaheqeh shall be one hundred lashes.
Article 240- Regarding the hadd punishment for musaheqeh, there is no difference between the active or passive parties or between Muslims and non-Muslims, or between a person that meets the conditions for ihsan and a person who does not, and also whether or not [the offender] has resorted to coercion.
Article 241- In the cases of indecent offenses, in the absence of admissible legal evidence and with denial of the accused, any type of investigation and interrogation in order to discover hidden affairs and things concealed from the public eye shall be prohibited. In cases with the possibility of commission of an offense with force, coercion, assault, abduction, or deception, or cases which are considered as commission [of an offense] with resorting to force, this rule shall not be applicable.
http://www.al-islam.org/greater-sins-volume-1-ayatullah-sayyid-abdul-husayn-dastghaib-shirazi/eleventh-greater-sin-sodomy#punishment-sodomy
The eleventh sin that is classified as a Greater sin is sodomy or homosexuality. This is verified from the sayings of Imam Ja’far as-Sadiq (a.s.) and Imam ar-Riďa (a.s.). In fact it is a sin greater than adultery. Its retribution and punishment are more severe than for adultery. Imam Ja’far as-Sadiq (a.s.) has stated:
“Penetrating the anal opening is a greater sin than penetrating the vagina. Certainly Allah destroyed a complete Umma (Umma of Hazrat Lut (a.s.) because they indulged in sodomy. Allah has not destroyed even one man for adultery”.1
.....
"Since sodomy is a greater crime than adultery and its evils are worse, the punishment for sodomy is also more severe than that of adultery according to the Islamic law. Islam prescribes capital punishment for the active as well as the passive partner in the crime. If both are major and sane, both of them have to be killed. The active partner is beheaded with the sword or killed by stoning or burnt alive or thrown from a height with the hands and the legs tied. These are the ways prescribed for punishing the criminal, but it is at the discretion of the Judge to determine the method. Similarly, the method adopted for the death of the passive partner is also determined by the Qazi.
According to Amir ul-Mu’minīn ‘Ali (a.s.), a person who has committed this sin must also be burnt after being killed."
http://www.al-islam.org/marriage-and-morals-islam-sayyid-muhammad-rizvi/chapter-three-islamic-sexual-morality-2-its#c-homosexuality
http://www.al-islam.org/marriage-and-morals-islam-sayyid-muhammad-rizvi/chapter-three-islamic-sexual-morality-2-its#c-homosexuality
In the Islamic legal system, homosexuality is a punishable crime against the laws of God. In the case of homosexuality between two males, the active partner is to be lashed a hundred times if he is unmarried and killed if he is married; whereas the passive partner is to be killed regardless of his marital status.
In the case of two females (i.e., lesbianism), the sinners are to be lashed a hundred times if they are unmarried and stoned to death if they are married.
http://en.iranwire.com/features/6135/
According to Iran's penal code, not only is homosexuality penalized, but the punishment for the “insertive” (fael) and the “receptive” (mafool) differs. While the punishment assigned for the receptive is execution, the punishment given to the insertive is lashes (unless there is an element of coercion, in which case the punishment is also execution). This shows the patriarchal thinking behind the law, which assigns for the man who allegedly looses his masculinity a more severe penalty.
In recent years, Human Rights Council head Larijani has issued a range of attacks on the validity of LGBT rights: last year, he referred to homosexuality as an “illness and a malady”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1990/01/22/beheadings-in-moderate-iran/ecfa0d69-865f-4328-996f-e9ff39b7925e/
In the case of two females (i.e., lesbianism), the sinners are to be lashed a hundred times if they are unmarried and stoned to death if they are married.
http://en.iranwire.com/features/6135/
According to Iran's penal code, not only is homosexuality penalized, but the punishment for the “insertive” (fael) and the “receptive” (mafool) differs. While the punishment assigned for the receptive is execution, the punishment given to the insertive is lashes (unless there is an element of coercion, in which case the punishment is also execution). This shows the patriarchal thinking behind the law, which assigns for the man who allegedly looses his masculinity a more severe penalty.
In recent years, Human Rights Council head Larijani has issued a range of attacks on the validity of LGBT rights: last year, he referred to homosexuality as an “illness and a malady”.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1990/01/22/beheadings-in-moderate-iran/ecfa0d69-865f-4328-996f-e9ff39b7925e/
January 22, 1990: On New Year's Eve, Iran's chief justice, Morteza Moghtadai, held private discussions with lower judges and court officials to outline a new policy toward homosexuals.
"The religious punishment for the despicable act of homosexuality is death for both parties," Moghtadai said. The judge presiding over the case has five options for execution of homosexuals:
They are either to be "beheaded by a sword"; "stoned to death"; "thrown down from a height such as a mountain or tall building"; "die under the rubble of a wall demolished on their head"; or "burned alive." Moghtadai added: "It is even permitted that in punishing such a despicable act, one of the first four punishments be implemented and then have their corpse burned."
On New Year's Day, three accused homosexual men were publicly beheaded in one of the city squares of Nahavand, and two accused lesbians were stoned to death in the city of Langrood, according to our Iranian sources.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/world/middleeast/30gays.html
30 Sep 2007: For a country that is said to have no homosexuality, Iran goes to great lengths to ban it. Gays are punished by lashing or death if it is proved that they have had homosexual relations. Two gay teenagers were executed in 2005 in Mashad, a northeastern city.
Fear of persecution is so strong that some gay men and lesbians have sought and received asylum in Western countries.
The Iranian Student News Agency reported in 2005 that a lesbian had been killed in prison by other inmates whom, it was alleged, she had forced to have sex with her. Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, said in May in an interview on state-run television that the police were looking for men who dressed and looked like homosexuals.
http://www.rferl.org/a/1347717.html
Jan 2008:
Usually, executions in Iran are by hanging. But according to recent Iranian press reports, two men convicted of homosexual rape in Fars, southern Iran, were sentenced to death by putting them in a sack and throwing it off the top of a cliff.
According to Iran's form of Islamic Shari'a law, homosexuality is punishable by death and the judge can choose from five methods including throwing off a height and demolishing a wall on the offender, a method whose use has not been reported in the past 30 years.
http://revival-of-the-fittest.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/iiu-pro-homosexuality-female-professor.html
https://www.dawn.com/news/230933
1 Feb 2007:
The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has terminated the contract of Dr Ghazala Anwar, reportedly because of her views on sexual orientation which were found objectionable by some students and a section of the media.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/world/middleeast/30gays.html
30 Sep 2007: For a country that is said to have no homosexuality, Iran goes to great lengths to ban it. Gays are punished by lashing or death if it is proved that they have had homosexual relations. Two gay teenagers were executed in 2005 in Mashad, a northeastern city.
Fear of persecution is so strong that some gay men and lesbians have sought and received asylum in Western countries.
The Iranian Student News Agency reported in 2005 that a lesbian had been killed in prison by other inmates whom, it was alleged, she had forced to have sex with her. Tehran’s chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, said in May in an interview on state-run television that the police were looking for men who dressed and looked like homosexuals.
http://www.rferl.org/a/1347717.html
Jan 2008:
Usually, executions in Iran are by hanging. But according to recent Iranian press reports, two men convicted of homosexual rape in Fars, southern Iran, were sentenced to death by putting them in a sack and throwing it off the top of a cliff.
According to Iran's form of Islamic Shari'a law, homosexuality is punishable by death and the judge can choose from five methods including throwing off a height and demolishing a wall on the offender, a method whose use has not been reported in the past 30 years.
http://revival-of-the-fittest.blogspot.co.uk/2007/02/iiu-pro-homosexuality-female-professor.html
https://www.dawn.com/news/230933
1 Feb 2007:
The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has terminated the contract of Dr Ghazala Anwar, reportedly because of her views on sexual orientation which were found objectionable by some students and a section of the media.
===============
Anti-gay violence in Iraq
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyh-ZnTXou0
A documentary on gay witch hunting by Shia militias in Iraq
https://gayswithoutborders.wordpress.com/category/shia/
News stories about the plight of gays in Iraq
http://gaycitynews.nyc/gcn_512/shiadeathsquads.html
23 March 2006: Following a death-to-gays fatwa issued last October by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, death squads of the Badr Corps have been systematically targeting gay Iraqis for persecution and execution, gay Iraqis say. But when they ask for help and protection from U.S. occupying authorities in the Green Zone, the secure area officialdom has carved out within Baghdad, gays Iraqis are met with indifference and derision.
....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4915172.stm
17 April 2006: A website published in the Iranian city of Qom in the name of Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shia cleric, says: "Those who commit sodomy must be killed in the harshest way".
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraqi-police-killed-14-year-old-boy-for-being-homosexual-476917.html
5 May 2006: "Human rights groups have condemned the "barbaric" murder of a 14-year-old boy, who, according to witnesses, was shot on his doorstep by Iraqi police for the apparent crime of being gay.
News stories about the plight of gays in Iraq
http://gaycitynews.nyc/gcn_512/shiadeathsquads.html
23 March 2006: Following a death-to-gays fatwa issued last October by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, death squads of the Badr Corps have been systematically targeting gay Iraqis for persecution and execution, gay Iraqis say. But when they ask for help and protection from U.S. occupying authorities in the Green Zone, the secure area officialdom has carved out within Baghdad, gays Iraqis are met with indifference and derision.
....
The Ayatollah Sistani, the 77-year-old Iranian-born cleric who is the supreme Shia authority in Iraq, is revered by SCIRI as its spiritual leader. His anti-gay fatwa—available on Sistani’s official Web site—says that “people involved” in homosexuality “should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”
Speaking by telephone from London, Hili said that “there is a very, very serious threat to life for gay people in Iraq today. We are receiving regular reports from our extensive network of contacts with underground gay activists and gay people in Iraq—intimidation, beatings, kidnappings, and murders of gays have become an almost daily occurrence. The Badr Corps was killing gay people even before the ayatollah’s fatwa, but Sistani’s murderous homophobic incitement has given a green light to all Shia Muslims to hunt and kill lesbians and gay men.”
Now, Hili said, “when Badr thugs attack and beat up a gay person in the street, crowds of passers-by gather around to cheer them on.”
“Badr Corps agents have a network of informers who, among other things, target alleged immoral behavior,” Hili continued. “They kill gays, unveiled women, prostitutes, people who sell or drink alcohol, and those who listen to Western music and wear Western fashions.”
“Badr militants are entrapping gay men via Internet chat rooms,” Hili said. “They arrange a date, and then beat and kill the victim. Males who are unmarried by the age of 30 or 35 are placed under surveillance on suspicion of being gay, as are effeminate men. They will be investigated and warned to get married.
“Badr will typically give them a month to change their ways. If they don’t change their behavior, or if they fail to show evidence that they plan to get married, they will be arrested, disappear, and eventually be found dead. The bodies are usually discovered with their hands bound behind their back, blindfolds over their eyes, and bullet wounds to the back of the head.”
Hili, who has a bachelor’s degree in English literature, and who used to work for Iraqi radio and television, fled to the U.K. in 2002 after having been persecuted for being gay under Saddam Hussein.
He has been receiving telephoned threats of beatings or death from supporters of SCIRI and Sistani living in England since he became publically identified with the cause of Iraqi gays and as a gay man himself.
....
Hili provided details on several of those killed in Iraq. Ammar, a young gay man of 27, was abducted and shot in back of the head in Baghdad by suspected Badr militias in January 2006. Haydar Faiek, aged 40, a transsexual Iraqi, was beaten and burned to death by Badr militias in the main street in the Al-Karada district of Baghdad in September 2005. Naffeh, aged 45, disappeared in August 2005. His family was informed that he was kidnapped by the Badr organization. His body was found in January 2006. He, too, had been subjected to an execution-style killing.
Sarmad and Khalid were partners who lived in the Al-Jameha area of Baghdad. Persons unknown revealed their same-sex relationship. They were abducted by the Badr organization in April 2005. Their bodies were found two months later, in June, bound, blindfolded, and shot in the back of the head.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4915172.stm
17 April 2006: A website published in the Iranian city of Qom in the name of Ayatollah Sistani, Iraq's most revered Shia cleric, says: "Those who commit sodomy must be killed in the harshest way".
The statement appears in Arabic section of the website, in a section dealing with questions of morality, but not in the English-language equivalent.
The BBC asked Mr Sistani's representative, Seyed Kashmiri, to explain the ruling.
"Homosexuals and lesbians are not killed for practising their inclinations for the first time," Mr Kashmiri said in a response sent via email.
"There are certain conditions drawn out by jurists before this punishment can be implemented, which is perhaps similar to the punishment meted out by other heavenly religions."
Mr Kashmiri added: "Some rulings that are drawn out by jurists are done so on a theoretical basis. Not everything that is said is implemented."
....
The Interior Ministry is run by members of Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (Sciri), which is one of Iraq's country's leading Shia parties.
Sciri has its own militia, the Badr Brigades, and there are widespread concerns that large parts of Iraq's police force are under the control of such groups.
Hussein blames the Badr Brigades and other Shia militia for many of the attacks on gay Iraqis.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iraqi-police-killed-14-year-old-boy-for-being-homosexual-476917.html
5 May 2006: "Human rights groups have condemned the "barbaric" murder of a 14-year-old boy, who, according to witnesses, was shot on his doorstep by Iraqi police for the apparent crime of being gay.
Ahmed
Khalil was shot at point-blank range after being accosted by men in
police uniforms, according to his neighbours in the al-Dura area of
Baghdad.
Campaign
groups have warned of a surge in homophobic killings by state security
services and religious militias following an anti-gay and anti-lesbian
fatwa issued by Iraq's most prominent Shia leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani.
Ali
Hili, the co-ordinator of a group of exiled Iraqi gay men who monitor
homophobic attacks inside Iraq, said the fatwa had instigated a
"witch-hunt of lesbian and gay Iraqis, including violent beatings,
kidnappings and assassinations".
"Young
Ahmed was a victim of poverty," he said. "He was summarily executed,
apparently by fundamentalist elements in the Iraqi police."
Neighbours
in al-Dura district say Ahmed's father was arrested and interrogated
two days before his son's murder by police who demanded to know about
Ahmed's sexual activities. It is believed Ahmed slept with men for money
to support his poverty-stricken family, who have fled the area fearing
further reprisals.
The
killing of Ahmed is one of a series of alleged homophobic murders.
There is mounting evidence that fundamentalists have infiltrated
government security forces to commit homophobic murders while wearing
police uniforms.
Human
rights groups are particularly concerned that the Sadr and Badr
militias, both Shia, have stepped up their attacks on the gay community
after a string of religious rulings, since the US-led invasion, calling
for the eradication of homosexuals.
Grand
Ayatollah Sistani recently issued a fatwa on his website calling for
the execution of gays in the "worst, most severe way".
The
powerful Badr militia acts as the military wing of the Supreme Council
for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which counts Ayatollah Sistani
as its spiritual leader. Another fatwa from the late and much revered
Ayatollah Abul Qassim Khoei allows followers to kill gays "with a sword,
or burn him alive, or tie his hands and feet and hurl him down from a
high place".
Mr
Hili said: "According to our contacts in Baghdad, the Iraqi police have
been heavily infiltrated by the Shia paramilitary Badr Corps."
Mr
Hili, whose Abu Nawas group has close links with clandestine gay
activists inside Iraq, said US coalition forces are unwilling to try and
tackle the rising tide of homophobic attacks. "They just don't want to
upset the Iraqi government by bringing up the taboo of homosexuality
even though homophobic murders have intensified," he said.
A
number of public homophobic murders by the Badr militia have terrified
Iraq's gay community. Last September, Hayder Faiek, a transsexual, was
burnt to death by Badr militias in the main street of Baghdad's
al-Karada district. In January, suspected militants shot another gay man
in the back of the head.
The
US State Department has yet to document the surge in its annual human
rights reports. Iraq's neighbours, however, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia
and the UAE, are often criticised for their persecution of gays.
Darla
Jordan, from the US State Department said: "The US government continues
to work closely with our Iraqi partners to ensure the protection of
human rights and the safety of all Iraqi citizens."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/sistani-renounces-fatwa-on-gays-478396.html
http://gaycitynews.nyc/gcn_520/sistaniretreats.html
15 May 2006: Iraqi gays are claiming partial success following the decision by Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and his aides to remove from his Web site a fatwa calling for the killing of homosexuals in the “worst, most severe way possible.”
The fatwa itself, however, remains in force, and has not been publicly repudiated by the grand ayatollah, who is the supreme religious authority for Iraq’s Shia Muslims.
The removal of the fatwa from the ayatollah’s Web site followed protests to Sistani by the London office of the Iraqi gay rights organization, Iraqi LGBT, which represents a clandestine network of lesbian and gay activists inside Iraq’s major cities, including Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Duhok, and Basra.
Following two weeks of often tense negotiations with Iraqi LGBT—U.K., Sistani’s office agreed to remove the fatwa calling for the murder of gay men—but unfortunately refused to remove the fatwa urging punishment for lesbianism.
Initially, Sistani’s office had demanded that Iraqi LGBT-U.K. delete its criticisms of Sistani from that group’s Web site and apologize to the grand ayatollah for questioning his religious authority. The gay Iraqi group refused, and instead issued a counter-demand that Sistani remove his death to gays fatwa from his Web site. Sistani’s representatives in London and Najaf finally agreed to drop the homophobic fatwa from his site—except for the section calling for the punishment of lesbians.
While welcome, the removal of the murderous fatwa from Sistani’s Web site is unlikely to affect the situation on the ground in Iraq, where death squads of the Badr Corps—now operating in police uniforms with the authorization of the Iraqi Interior Ministry—continue their lethal campaign of terror against gay people. Absent any public repudiation by Sistani of his fatwa and its formal withdrawal, the wave of organized intimidation, violence, and murder directed at Iraqi gays is likely to persist unabated.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/aug/06/gayrights.iraq
6 August 2006: There is growing evidence that Shia militias have been killing men suspected of being gay and children who have been sold to criminal gangs to be sexually abused. The threat has led to a rapid increase in the numbers of Iraqi homosexuals now seeking asylum in the UK because it has become impossible for them to live safely in their own country.
.....
Graphic photos obtained from Baghdad sources too frightened to identify themselves as having known a gay man, and seen by the Observer, show other gay Iraqis who have been executed. One shows two men, suspected of having a relationship, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs - guns at the ready behind their heads - awaiting execution. Another picture captured on a mobile phone shows a gay man being beaten to death. Yet another shows a corpse being dragged through the streets after his execution.
One photograph is of the mutilated, burnt body of 38-year-old Karar Oda from Sadr City. He was kidnapped by the Badr Brigade in mid-June. They work with the Ministry of Interior and are the informal armed wing of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who make up the largest Shia bloc in the Iraq parliament. Oda's family were given an arrest warrant signed by the Ministry of Interior which said their son deserved to be arrested and killed for immorality as a homosexual. His body was found ten days later.
https://iwpr.net/global-voices/baghdad-gays-fear-their-lives
3 Nov 2006: Thamir and other gay men complain about frequent mistreatment by police, accusing them of blackmail, torture, sexual abuse and theft. "Policemen raped me several times at gunpoint and threatened to hand me over to extremist groups if I refuse," said Thamir.
Concern about the involvement of policemen in criminal acts have also been raised by western officials and Sunni Arab leaders who say the Shia-controlled interior ministry has been infiltrated by Shia militias, like the Badr Brigades, who allegedly use their uniforms as cover to kidnap, torture and murder...
Thamir does not count on any official help anymore. After spending a month in prison - during which he said he was tortured and beaten - police continued to pursue him. So he hid at a friend’s house - and only dares to go out twice a month, disguised as a woman.
For him, the Saddam era seems like a "golden" time because homosexuality was discreetly tolerated. "Now I am desperate because I expect either to be shot or beheaded at any moment," he said.
...
Meanwhile, the witch-hunt against the country’s gays has apparently received a blessing from one of the highest religious authorities in Iraq, Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
According to the London-based gay human rights group OutRage!, a website linked to Sistani in the Iranian city of Qom posted a fatwa against gays in October 2005. "The people involved [in homosexuality] should be killed in the worst, most severe way," it said. Although the text was removed from the website in May 2006, the fatwa has not been officially revoked.
Inhabitants of the Baghdadi neighbourhoods of Al-Amiriya and Al-Jamia'a speak of how extremist groups have killed gays in the street and also targeted their relatives.
Outrage! reports of cases where members of a family have been killed for refusing to hand over a gay male relative to the militia.
From his house in the western neighbourhood of Al-Jamia’a, Mukhtar Salah, 40, a former member of Saddam's security forces, said he witnessed gunmen kill a young man, who he later heard is alleged to have had an affair with an American soldier.
After killing him, the militants ordered people to go home and threatened to behead anyone who tried to claim the body. "[It] was left in the street for two days," said Salah, until eventually it was picked up by a National Guard patrol.
In Saddam's time, you risked being imprisoned for being gay - but homosexual practices were nonetheless common in religious neighbourhoods where young unmarried men would not dare to have any contact with women.
Nail Mohammed, 25, considers his being gay just one risk among many others. In the Al-Fadhil neighbourhood where he lives, extremist Islamic groups kill gay men, but also people who wear jeans or drink alcohol. In the past six months, he said three of his closest friends have been killed for drinking.
Bilal Arif, 40, a Baghdad lawyer, feels Iraqi society is going from bad to worse: open and secular from the 1950s to the 1970s, it turned into a military dictatorship under Saddam and is now moving towards religious extremism, he says.
Arif doubts that homosexuals are being systematically targeted. Rather, he suspects they are the victims of "the mess all over Iraq" which allows people to take the law into their own hands. "They are killed because there is no state to hold the murderers responsible or pursue them judicially," he said.
Paradoxically, those who kill gays believe they are acting within the law as the Sharia, which they adhere to, deems homosexuality a crime punishable by death.
In so-called religious courts, supervised by clerics, with no official authority, gays are tried, sentenced to death and then executed by militiamen.
Such courts were first established by Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, father of Muqtada al-Sadr, in 1999 in secret to adjudicate on Islamic issues. Now they are present in many predominantly Shia towns like Ammara, Basra, Ramadi and in several Shia neighbourhoods in Baghdad such as Shu´la, Hurria and Sadr City.
Due to the absence of the state in large areas of the country, these illegitimate courts have gained more and more popular support.
The trials, presided over by young inexperienced clerics, are held in Husseiniyas (Shia mosques), offices of the Sadr movement or, particularly in Shu'la and Sadr City, in ordinary halls. Gays and rapists face anything from 40 lashes to the death penalty.
Mohammed al-Saidi, one of the self-appointed judges in Sadr City, believes that homosexuality is on the wane in Iraq. "Most [gays] have been killed and others have fled," he said. Indeed, the number who've sought asylum in the UK has risen noticeably over the last few months.
Saidi insists the religious courts have a lot to be proud of, "We now represent a society that asked us to protect it not only from thieves and terrorists but also from these [bad] deeds."
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-tatchell271107.htm
http://www.petertatchell.net/international/iraq/fivegayactivists.htm
8 Dec 2006: Five gay activists were abducted at gun-point by Iraqi police in Baghdad on 9 November. Nothing has been heard of them since then. It is feared they may have been murdered by death squads operating under the cover of the Iraqi police.
The kidnapped men are Amjad 27, Rafid 29, Hassan 24, Ayman 19 and Ali 21. All were members of Iraq 's clandestine gay rights movement, Iraqi LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender).
...
Just days after these five activists were abducted, Haydar Kamel, aged 35, the owner of famous men's clothing shop in the al-Karada district of Baghdad, was kidnapped near his home in Sadr city. The kidnappers were members of the Mahdi army, an Islamist militia loyal to fundamentalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr.
"Haydar had previously received death threats because of rumours about his alleged homosexuality. For many months, he had financially supported several men who were in hiding after they had been threatened by death squads because of claims that they were gay," said Mr Hili.
Another recent raid was on the Jar al-Qamar barber shop in the al-Karada district of Baghdad. It was popular with gay men, which is probably the reason it was targeted. All four employees were arrested and taken away by the Iraqi police. They have disappeared.
It is feared that these 10 kidnapped men have been summarily executed.
...
Earlier, in June this year, extreme lslamist death squads burst into the home of two lesbians in the city of Najaf . They shot them dead, slashed their throats, and also murdered a young child the lesbians had rescued from the sex trade.
The two women, both in their mid-30s, were members of Iraqi LGBT. They were providing a safe house for gay men on the run from death squads. By sheer luck, none of the men being given shelter in the house were at home when the assassins struck. They have now fled to Baghdad and are hiding in an Iraqi LGBT safe house in the suburbs.
"These homophobic kidnappings and murders are a snapshot of the rapidly growing power and menace of fundamentalist death squads," added Mr Hili.
"Gays are not their only targets. They enforce a harsh interpretation of Sharia law, summarily executing people for listening to western pop music, wearing shorts or jeans, drinking alcohol, selling videos, working in a barber's shop, homosexuality, dancing, having a Sunni name, adultery and, in the case of women, not being veiled or walking in the street unaccompanied by a male relative.
"Two militias are doing most of the killing. They are the armed wings of parties in the Bush and Blair-backed Iraqi government. Badr is the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is the leading political force in Baghdad's government coalition. Madhi is the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr.
http://gaycitynews.nyc/iraq-new-murders-gays/
http://gaycitynews.nyc/man-baghdad/
Nov 22, 2007: Rahim described for me an attempted entrapment he experienced by members of the Shia Mahdi Army who use gay websites to chat with, meet, and then kill gay men in Baghdad. I had read about such cases, but hearing the details first-hand was fascinating.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/aug/19/iraq-anti-gay-gangs-killing-campaign
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-gay-sons-of-allah-wave-of-homophobia-sweeps-the-muslim-world-a-647913.html
Sep 17, 2009: "A video clip showing men dancing with each other at a party in Baghdad in the summer of 2008 is thought to have triggered this string of kidnappings, rapes, and murders. Thousands of people have seen it on the Internet and on their cell phones. Islamic religious leaders began ranting about the growing presence of a "third sex" which American soldiers were said to have brought in with them. The followers of radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, in particular, felt the need to take action aimed at restoring "religious morals."
In their stronghold, the part of Baghdad known as Sadr City, black-clad militiamen patrol the streets, on the lookout for anyone whose "unmanly appearance" or behavior would make it possible to identify them as being homosexual. Often enough long hair, tight-fitting t-shirts and trousers, or a certain way of walking were a death sentence for the persons in question. But it's not just the Mahdi army who has been hunting down and killing gay men. Other groups such as Sunni militias close to al-Qaida and the Iraqi security services are also known to be involved.
Homosexuals in Iraq may be faced with an exceptionally dangerous situation but they are ostracized almost everywhere in the Muslim world. Gay rights organizations estimate that more than 100,000 gay men and women are currently being discriminated against and threatened in Muslim countries. Thousands of them commit suicide, end up in prison, or go into hiding."
https://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/09/199614.html
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/iraqi-teenagers-stoned-death-emo-haircuts
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-emo-killings-idUSBRE8290CY20120310
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/03/11/source-iraqi-government-complicit-with-emo-and-lgbt-massacres/
http://observers.france24.com/en/20120321-iraqi-emo-harassed-islamist-extremists-militias-list-killed-murdered-hair-clothes-style-rock-hardcore-music
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/world/middleeast/killings-strike-fear-in-iraqi-gay-and-emo-youth.html
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/is-the-iraqi-government-killing-LGBT-people
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-gays-emo-idUSBRE82B0VZ20120312
http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Iraqi-emo-subculture-target-of-antigay-attacks-3407072.php
https://www.yahoo.com/news/emo-killings-raise-alarms-iraq-070258712.html
http://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/09/24/militants-use-social-media-lure-kill-gay-iraqi-men/
24 Sep 2016: Members of a Shiite militant group in Iraq have reportedly killed 11 gay men in Baghdad since Sept. 1.
http://gaycitynews.nyc/gays-and-the-syrian-revolution/
28 Sep 2012:
ML: Once the uprising started, government TV accused revolutionaries of being gay.
MH: It was the regime’s lowest point before the armed revolution started. Again, because homosexuals are the easiest target, which all Syrians would agree with, the regime started a homophobic campaign to say that the revolution is immoral because people who own the news channels, which are supporting it, are homosexuals. They went further by saying that everyone who is active in the revolution is gay — i.e., “sinners, immoral, and want to damage the fabric and the structure of the conservative Syrian community,” according to Ali Shueibi, who was the one behind the campaign. He used the word “luti” [sodomite].
Gays, Christians, Sunnis, Alawites, and others, might be pro-regime or anti-regime. My friends come from different backgrounds — Christians, Sunnis, Alawites, Ismaelis, Kurds, Assyrians, Circassians, etc. Most of them are anti-regime. Four of our contributors in the magazine are Christians, and three of them are anti-regime. People are entitled to their opinions. I only have a problem with those who support the killings and injustice.
http://ur.abna24.com/service/reports//archive/2012/12/31/377058/story.html
31 Dec 2012:
Dr. Trond Ali Linstad"
ڈاکٹر تروند علی لینستاد ـ ناروے کے مقامی شیعہ ڈاکٹر و سماجی کارکن ہیں جنہیں نومبر 2012 ان کی انسانی خدمات کے عوض ناروے کا قومی شاہی اعزاز دیئے جانے کا اعلان ہیرالڈ پنجم کی طرف سے ہوا لیکن یہ اعزاز ان سے صہیونیت کی مخالفت، ہمجنس پرستی کی مخالفت اور اسلامی جمہوریہ ایران کی حمایت کی بنا پر واپس لیا گیا۔
https://en.iranwire.com/features/5883/
prominent hardliners spoke out against the annual Eurovision Song Contest, which was held in the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2013. They condemned a side event of the contest, the gay parade, and warned Azerbaijan authorities about it. Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi Kani, chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which has the power to choose Iran’s Supreme Leader, called the event “the parade of faggot beasts.”
More famously, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regularly enjoyed attacking homosexuality. "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country,” he told an audience at Columbia University in September 2007. Ahmadinejad has referred to homosexuality as the cause of mental and social ills in television interviews. And, in 2009, during a victory speech following the presidential election, he compared homosexuals to thieves, claiming that some of his opponents had pandered to such “filth” to get their votes.
But it is not only hardliners who publicly criticize homosexuality. In his letter of complaint to Keyhan, the cleric Mohammad Motahari himself used a pejorative term for homosexuals and praised Professor Clark for being anti-gay. Earlier this month, Ali Motahari, brother of Mohammad Motahari and an MP, called homosexuals “deviants” and compared homosexuality to bestiality.
“I did hear that Mohammad Motahari courageously and patiently defended me against the attacks,” Clark says, “[But] since I can’t read Farsi, I wasn’t sure what he wrote about me. In all of my writings on gay rights—and there aren’t many of them—I defend the civic virtues of tolerance and liberty and argue against any religious majority seeking to legislate their own religious and moral beliefs. I think the very rights that protect gay people are the rights that protect the freedom of religion.”
Motahari’s letter went on to criticize Keyhan for interviewing Thierry Meyssan, the French journalist and gay activist whose book The Big Lie argues that the attacks of September 11 were carried out by a dissenting group with links to the US military. Motahari also criticized Iranian state television for regularly interviewing Mayssan about September 11 attacks.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/10/iran-arrests-network-homosexual-satanists
http://tundratabloids.com/2013/10/yle-islam-debate-evening-social-democrat-and-greens-mps-on-the-ropes-for-failure-to-outright-demand-tolerance-and-equality-for-sexual-minorities-from-muslim-community/
Oct 30, 2013: imam, Bahmanpour Abbas, spoke frankly on Islam evening, that being gay is forbidden, and that the Shari’ah demands the death penalty for it.
......
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bareilly-cleric-issues-fatwa-against-homosexuality-live-in-relationships/articleshow/27666252.cms
Dec 20, 2013: Bareilly-based cleric has issued a fatwa against homosexuality and live-in relationships calling them anti-Islam and said Shariyat has provisions to punish those indulging in such acts.
The fatwa was issued by Mohammad Afzaal Rizwi, the mufti of Darululoom Ifta at Dargah Aala Hazrat, Bareilly in response to a query by Akhlaq Ahmed Siddiqui Noori on the issue.
The mufti has cited two hadis (teachings of the Prophet Mohammed) from the Quran as a premise for his fatwa. As per Hadis Dur-re-mukhtar, such acts could attract severe punishment, he said. "A person may be burnt alive, pushed from a high wall or be beaten publically with stones if he indulges into either of the two behaviours," the fatwa states.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1102826
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/sistani-renounces-fatwa-on-gays-478396.html
http://gaycitynews.nyc/gcn_520/sistaniretreats.html
15 May 2006: Iraqi gays are claiming partial success following the decision by Iraq’s Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani and his aides to remove from his Web site a fatwa calling for the killing of homosexuals in the “worst, most severe way possible.”
The fatwa itself, however, remains in force, and has not been publicly repudiated by the grand ayatollah, who is the supreme religious authority for Iraq’s Shia Muslims.
The removal of the fatwa from the ayatollah’s Web site followed protests to Sistani by the London office of the Iraqi gay rights organization, Iraqi LGBT, which represents a clandestine network of lesbian and gay activists inside Iraq’s major cities, including Baghdad, Najaf, Karbala, Hilla, Duhok, and Basra.
Following two weeks of often tense negotiations with Iraqi LGBT—U.K., Sistani’s office agreed to remove the fatwa calling for the murder of gay men—but unfortunately refused to remove the fatwa urging punishment for lesbianism.
Initially, Sistani’s office had demanded that Iraqi LGBT-U.K. delete its criticisms of Sistani from that group’s Web site and apologize to the grand ayatollah for questioning his religious authority. The gay Iraqi group refused, and instead issued a counter-demand that Sistani remove his death to gays fatwa from his Web site. Sistani’s representatives in London and Najaf finally agreed to drop the homophobic fatwa from his site—except for the section calling for the punishment of lesbians.
While welcome, the removal of the murderous fatwa from Sistani’s Web site is unlikely to affect the situation on the ground in Iraq, where death squads of the Badr Corps—now operating in police uniforms with the authorization of the Iraqi Interior Ministry—continue their lethal campaign of terror against gay people. Absent any public repudiation by Sistani of his fatwa and its formal withdrawal, the wave of organized intimidation, violence, and murder directed at Iraqi gays is likely to persist unabated.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2006/aug/06/gayrights.iraq
6 August 2006: There is growing evidence that Shia militias have been killing men suspected of being gay and children who have been sold to criminal gangs to be sexually abused. The threat has led to a rapid increase in the numbers of Iraqi homosexuals now seeking asylum in the UK because it has become impossible for them to live safely in their own country.
.....
Graphic photos obtained from Baghdad sources too frightened to identify themselves as having known a gay man, and seen by the Observer, show other gay Iraqis who have been executed. One shows two men, suspected of having a relationship, blindfolded with their hands tied behind their backs - guns at the ready behind their heads - awaiting execution. Another picture captured on a mobile phone shows a gay man being beaten to death. Yet another shows a corpse being dragged through the streets after his execution.
One photograph is of the mutilated, burnt body of 38-year-old Karar Oda from Sadr City. He was kidnapped by the Badr Brigade in mid-June. They work with the Ministry of Interior and are the informal armed wing of the Supreme Council of Islamic Revolution in Iraq, who make up the largest Shia bloc in the Iraq parliament. Oda's family were given an arrest warrant signed by the Ministry of Interior which said their son deserved to be arrested and killed for immorality as a homosexual. His body was found ten days later.
https://iwpr.net/global-voices/baghdad-gays-fear-their-lives
3 Nov 2006: Thamir and other gay men complain about frequent mistreatment by police, accusing them of blackmail, torture, sexual abuse and theft. "Policemen raped me several times at gunpoint and threatened to hand me over to extremist groups if I refuse," said Thamir.
Concern about the involvement of policemen in criminal acts have also been raised by western officials and Sunni Arab leaders who say the Shia-controlled interior ministry has been infiltrated by Shia militias, like the Badr Brigades, who allegedly use their uniforms as cover to kidnap, torture and murder...
Thamir does not count on any official help anymore. After spending a month in prison - during which he said he was tortured and beaten - police continued to pursue him. So he hid at a friend’s house - and only dares to go out twice a month, disguised as a woman.
For him, the Saddam era seems like a "golden" time because homosexuality was discreetly tolerated. "Now I am desperate because I expect either to be shot or beheaded at any moment," he said.
...
Meanwhile, the witch-hunt against the country’s gays has apparently received a blessing from one of the highest religious authorities in Iraq, Ayatollah Ali Sistani.
According to the London-based gay human rights group OutRage!, a website linked to Sistani in the Iranian city of Qom posted a fatwa against gays in October 2005. "The people involved [in homosexuality] should be killed in the worst, most severe way," it said. Although the text was removed from the website in May 2006, the fatwa has not been officially revoked.
Inhabitants of the Baghdadi neighbourhoods of Al-Amiriya and Al-Jamia'a speak of how extremist groups have killed gays in the street and also targeted their relatives.
Outrage! reports of cases where members of a family have been killed for refusing to hand over a gay male relative to the militia.
From his house in the western neighbourhood of Al-Jamia’a, Mukhtar Salah, 40, a former member of Saddam's security forces, said he witnessed gunmen kill a young man, who he later heard is alleged to have had an affair with an American soldier.
After killing him, the militants ordered people to go home and threatened to behead anyone who tried to claim the body. "[It] was left in the street for two days," said Salah, until eventually it was picked up by a National Guard patrol.
In Saddam's time, you risked being imprisoned for being gay - but homosexual practices were nonetheless common in religious neighbourhoods where young unmarried men would not dare to have any contact with women.
Nail Mohammed, 25, considers his being gay just one risk among many others. In the Al-Fadhil neighbourhood where he lives, extremist Islamic groups kill gay men, but also people who wear jeans or drink alcohol. In the past six months, he said three of his closest friends have been killed for drinking.
Bilal Arif, 40, a Baghdad lawyer, feels Iraqi society is going from bad to worse: open and secular from the 1950s to the 1970s, it turned into a military dictatorship under Saddam and is now moving towards religious extremism, he says.
Arif doubts that homosexuals are being systematically targeted. Rather, he suspects they are the victims of "the mess all over Iraq" which allows people to take the law into their own hands. "They are killed because there is no state to hold the murderers responsible or pursue them judicially," he said.
Paradoxically, those who kill gays believe they are acting within the law as the Sharia, which they adhere to, deems homosexuality a crime punishable by death.
In so-called religious courts, supervised by clerics, with no official authority, gays are tried, sentenced to death and then executed by militiamen.
Such courts were first established by Mohammed Sadiq al-Sadr, father of Muqtada al-Sadr, in 1999 in secret to adjudicate on Islamic issues. Now they are present in many predominantly Shia towns like Ammara, Basra, Ramadi and in several Shia neighbourhoods in Baghdad such as Shu´la, Hurria and Sadr City.
Due to the absence of the state in large areas of the country, these illegitimate courts have gained more and more popular support.
The trials, presided over by young inexperienced clerics, are held in Husseiniyas (Shia mosques), offices of the Sadr movement or, particularly in Shu'la and Sadr City, in ordinary halls. Gays and rapists face anything from 40 lashes to the death penalty.
Mohammed al-Saidi, one of the self-appointed judges in Sadr City, believes that homosexuality is on the wane in Iraq. "Most [gays] have been killed and others have fled," he said. Indeed, the number who've sought asylum in the UK has risen noticeably over the last few months.
Saidi insists the religious courts have a lot to be proud of, "We now represent a society that asked us to protect it not only from thieves and terrorists but also from these [bad] deeds."
http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-tatchell271107.htm
http://www.petertatchell.net/international/iraq/fivegayactivists.htm
8 Dec 2006: Five gay activists were abducted at gun-point by Iraqi police in Baghdad on 9 November. Nothing has been heard of them since then. It is feared they may have been murdered by death squads operating under the cover of the Iraqi police.
The kidnapped men are Amjad 27, Rafid 29, Hassan 24, Ayman 19 and Ali 21. All were members of Iraq 's clandestine gay rights movement, Iraqi LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender).
...
Just days after these five activists were abducted, Haydar Kamel, aged 35, the owner of famous men's clothing shop in the al-Karada district of Baghdad, was kidnapped near his home in Sadr city. The kidnappers were members of the Mahdi army, an Islamist militia loyal to fundamentalist leader Muqtada al-Sadr.
"Haydar had previously received death threats because of rumours about his alleged homosexuality. For many months, he had financially supported several men who were in hiding after they had been threatened by death squads because of claims that they were gay," said Mr Hili.
Another recent raid was on the Jar al-Qamar barber shop in the al-Karada district of Baghdad. It was popular with gay men, which is probably the reason it was targeted. All four employees were arrested and taken away by the Iraqi police. They have disappeared.
It is feared that these 10 kidnapped men have been summarily executed.
...
Earlier, in June this year, extreme lslamist death squads burst into the home of two lesbians in the city of Najaf . They shot them dead, slashed their throats, and also murdered a young child the lesbians had rescued from the sex trade.
The two women, both in their mid-30s, were members of Iraqi LGBT. They were providing a safe house for gay men on the run from death squads. By sheer luck, none of the men being given shelter in the house were at home when the assassins struck. They have now fled to Baghdad and are hiding in an Iraqi LGBT safe house in the suburbs.
"These homophobic kidnappings and murders are a snapshot of the rapidly growing power and menace of fundamentalist death squads," added Mr Hili.
"Gays are not their only targets. They enforce a harsh interpretation of Sharia law, summarily executing people for listening to western pop music, wearing shorts or jeans, drinking alcohol, selling videos, working in a barber's shop, homosexuality, dancing, having a Sunni name, adultery and, in the case of women, not being veiled or walking in the street unaccompanied by a male relative.
"Two militias are doing most of the killing. They are the armed wings of parties in the Bush and Blair-backed Iraqi government. Badr is the militia of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), which is the leading political force in Baghdad's government coalition. Madhi is the militia of Muqtada al-Sadr.
http://gaycitynews.nyc/iraq-new-murders-gays/
12 April 2007: Iraqi LGBT – the London-based group with a network of members and supporters inside Iraq that documents anti-gay violence – last week released details on the latest series of murders of Iraqi gays by fanatical Islamist death squads.
At the same time, the group said lack of money will force it to close two of the six safe houses it maintains in Iraq for gay Iraqis who have been threatened with death and forced to flee their homes. And the group’s coordinator has himself been targeted for death by an anti-gay fatwa.
“I received a death fatwa targeting me and sent to my personal e-mail address last month,” Ali Hili, the 33-year-old gay Iraqi exile who is the full-time volunteer coordinator of Iraqi LGBT, told Gay City News by telephone from London. “It came from the official headquarters of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani in Qum, Iran, and was stamped with his signature.”
The 78-year-old Sistani, the Iranian-born and educated cleric who is the spiritual leader of all Iraqi Shia Muslims, issued an infamous fatwa calling for death for all gays and all lesbians in “the most severe way possible” in October 2005. That fatwa, or religiously-inspired legal pronouncement, led to the deployment of anti-gay death squads by the Badr Corps, the military arm of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), the most powerful political Shia group in that nation and the cornerstone of the current Iraqi government. The Badr Corps was integrated into the Iraqi Interior Ministry last fall, and its members now wear police uniforms and are able to operate with full police powers.
Gay City News first broke the story about the systematic murder of Iraqi gays in March 2006 (see this reporter’s article, “Shia Death Squads Target Iraqi Gays” March 23-29, 2006).
Hili, who was the subject of a lengthy profile by David France in the February issue of GQ Magazine, said the fatwa targeting him, which demanded that he “repent” his homosexuality or face killing, was dated February 5 and received by Hili shortly after his brother, who was not gay but had been helping Iraqi LGBT and received death threats for his activism, was murdered in Baghdad.
“I reported this death threat against me to the Metropolitan London Police, and am now under their protection,” said Hili, who is also the Middle East spokesman for the militant British gay rights group OutRage.
http://gaycitynews.nyc/man-baghdad/
Nov 22, 2007: Rahim described for me an attempted entrapment he experienced by members of the Shia Mahdi Army who use gay websites to chat with, meet, and then kill gay men in Baghdad. I had read about such cases, but hearing the details first-hand was fascinating.
..... Hili’s own story – he was forced to work as a spy for Saddam seducing gay diplomats before he managed to escape to England in exile – suggests as much intrigue as anything going on in Baghdad today. As for a translator, I was on my own. “Try to get a Sunni,” Hili warned, adding, “Sunnis are more liberal on these issues.” ..... Overall, Sunnis in Iraq are relatively secular, shunning the religious fervor of Shias, who are the majority in neighboring countries including Iran, an historic enemy of Iraq.
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/07/24/gay.iraqis/index.html
July 25, 2008: A 16-year old Iraqi gay abducted, raped and terrorized
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ajSopj95CU
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6vbpr_iraq-queer-fear-gay-life-gay-death_news
Short film, Queer Fear – Gay Life, Gay Death in Iraq
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/sep/25/iraq.humanrights
Sep 25, 2008: Islamist death squads are engaged in a homophobic killing spree with the active encouragement of leading Muslim clerics, such as Moqtada al-Sadr, as Newsweek recently revealed.
One of these clerics, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa urging the killing of lesbians and gays in the "most severe way possible".
The short film, Queer Fear – Gay Life, Gay Death in Iraq, produced by David Grey for Village Film, documents the tragic fates of a several individual gay Iraqis. You can view it here. Watch and weep. It is a truly poignant and moving documentary about the terrorisation and murder of Iraqi lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Since this film was made, the killings have continued and, many say, got worse. For gay Iraqis there is little evidence of the transition to democracy. They don't experience any newfound respect for human rights. Life for them is even worse than under the tyrant Saddam Hussein.
It is a death sentence in today's "liberated" Iraq to love a person of the same sex, or for a woman to have sex outside of marriage, or for a Muslim to give up his or her faith or embrace another religion.
The reality on the ground is that theocracy is taking hold of the country, including in Basra, which was abandoned by the British military. In place of foreign occupation, the city's inhabitants now endure the terror of fundamentalist militias and death squads.
Those who are deemed insufficiently devout and pure are liable to be assassinated.
The death squads of the Badr organisation and the Mahdi army are targeting gays and lesbians, according to UN reports, in a systematic campaign of sexual cleansing. They proudly boast of their success, claiming that they have already exterminated all "perverts and sodomites" in many of the major cities.
You can view photos of a few of the LGBT victims of these summary executions
here and here.
http://www.law.cuny.edu/academics/clinics/hrgj/publications/ICCPR-Iraq-Shadow-Report-LGBT-ENG.pdf
in 2008, Al Madhi Army kidnapped an 18 year-old lesbian, in Baghdad. They took her to a place that was covered in blood. In that same place, there were some gay men and two other lesbians. Al Mahdi Army militants tortured them, burned the woman’s left thigh, and killed a gay man.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/25/iraq-gay-rights
Feb 25, 2009: This campaign of terror is sanctioned by Iraq's leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2005, he issued a fatwa urging the killing of LGBT people in the "worst, most severe way" possible.
This is the same Sistani who was praised by President Bush as a "leading moderate".
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/meast/07/24/gay.iraqis/index.html
July 25, 2008: A 16-year old Iraqi gay abducted, raped and terrorized
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ajSopj95CU
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6vbpr_iraq-queer-fear-gay-life-gay-death_news
Short film, Queer Fear – Gay Life, Gay Death in Iraq
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/sep/25/iraq.humanrights
Sep 25, 2008: Islamist death squads are engaged in a homophobic killing spree with the active encouragement of leading Muslim clerics, such as Moqtada al-Sadr, as Newsweek recently revealed.
One of these clerics, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, issued a fatwa urging the killing of lesbians and gays in the "most severe way possible".
The short film, Queer Fear – Gay Life, Gay Death in Iraq, produced by David Grey for Village Film, documents the tragic fates of a several individual gay Iraqis. You can view it here. Watch and weep. It is a truly poignant and moving documentary about the terrorisation and murder of Iraqi lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.
Since this film was made, the killings have continued and, many say, got worse. For gay Iraqis there is little evidence of the transition to democracy. They don't experience any newfound respect for human rights. Life for them is even worse than under the tyrant Saddam Hussein.
It is a death sentence in today's "liberated" Iraq to love a person of the same sex, or for a woman to have sex outside of marriage, or for a Muslim to give up his or her faith or embrace another religion.
The reality on the ground is that theocracy is taking hold of the country, including in Basra, which was abandoned by the British military. In place of foreign occupation, the city's inhabitants now endure the terror of fundamentalist militias and death squads.
Those who are deemed insufficiently devout and pure are liable to be assassinated.
The death squads of the Badr organisation and the Mahdi army are targeting gays and lesbians, according to UN reports, in a systematic campaign of sexual cleansing. They proudly boast of their success, claiming that they have already exterminated all "perverts and sodomites" in many of the major cities.
You can view photos of a few of the LGBT victims of these summary executions
here and here.
http://www.law.cuny.edu/academics/clinics/hrgj/publications/ICCPR-Iraq-Shadow-Report-LGBT-ENG.pdf
in 2008, Al Madhi Army kidnapped an 18 year-old lesbian, in Baghdad. They took her to a place that was covered in blood. In that same place, there were some gay men and two other lesbians. Al Mahdi Army militants tortured them, burned the woman’s left thigh, and killed a gay man.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/feb/25/iraq-gay-rights
Feb 25, 2009: This campaign of terror is sanctioned by Iraq's leading Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. In 2005, he issued a fatwa urging the killing of LGBT people in the "worst, most severe way" possible.
This is the same Sistani who was praised by President Bush as a "leading moderate".
...
Systematic assassinations of queers are being orchestrated by police and security agents in the interior ministry, many of whom are former members of the Iranian-backed Badr Corps militia.
Queers are being shot dead in their homes, streets and workplaces. Even suspected gay children are being murdered. They killers claim to be doing these assassinations at the behest of the "democratic" Iraqi government, in order to eradicate what they see as immoral, un-Islamic behaviour.
This programme of targeted murders has one aim, according to the death squads: the total eradication of all queers from Iraq. It is, in effect, a form of sexual cleansing. The killers boast that most "sodomites" have already been eliminated.
Systematic assassinations of queers are being orchestrated by police and security agents in the interior ministry, many of whom are former members of the Iranian-backed Badr Corps militia.
Queers are being shot dead in their homes, streets and workplaces. Even suspected gay children are being murdered. They killers claim to be doing these assassinations at the behest of the "democratic" Iraqi government, in order to eradicate what they see as immoral, un-Islamic behaviour.
This programme of targeted murders has one aim, according to the death squads: the total eradication of all queers from Iraq. It is, in effect, a form of sexual cleansing. The killers boast that most "sodomites" have already been eliminated.
.... Many of the underground activists have been assassinated, in a series of grisly homophobic and transphobic murders.
Two lesbians who ran the safe house in the city of Najaf were butchered, together with a young boy they had rescued from the sex industry. Last summer, the coordinator of a Baghdad safe house, Bashar, was gunned to death in his local barber's shop by an Islamist hit squad. Previously, five gay activists who organised another Baghdad safe house were massacred.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/04/05/gay.deaths.iraq/
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-gays-killings-sb-idUKTRE53312Q20090404
4 April 2009: Two gay men were killed in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, a local official said on Saturday, and police said they had found the bodies of four more after clerics urged a crackdown on a perceived spread of homosexuality.
Homosexuality is prohibited almost everywhere in the Middle East, but conditions have become especially dangerous for gays and lesbians in Iraq since the rise of religious militias after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein six years ago.
https://iwpr.net/global-voices/new-wave-violence-against-iraqi-gays
8 July 2009:
At least 68 gay and transgendered men have been killed over the last four months, according to the London-based rights advocacy group Iraqi LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender), bringing the total number of killings of Iraqis because of their sexuality to 678 since 2004.
New York-based Human Rights Watch, which recently conducted field investigations on the violence, estimates that hundreds of homosexual men may have been killed in recent months.
Scott Long, a senior Human Rights Watch representative, described the killings as an "extraordinarily brutal campaign" targeting gay, transgender and effeminate men in several provinces.
"I am so afraid that I will be killed," said Samir, a 20-year-old gay Baghdad resident, who preferred not to give his surname.
"People do not understand that I have been created like this. Those who claim to be religious are disgusted by me."
Effeminate men are being targeted whether or not they are gay, but transgender men, particularly those taking hormones, face the most danger, said Ali Hili, Iraqi LGBT chair.
Iraqi LGBT and HRW believe that Shia militias are the primary perpetrators of the violence and say the majority of killings have occurred in Shia areas in south/central Iraq (including the towns of Ammarah, Najaf, Karbala and Basra) and Baghdad’s Sadr City district, the stronghold of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army.
This is based in part on reports of harassment and torture by Shia militias from victims who survived attacks.
“Sadr City was one of the areas where a lot of the killings appeared to be taking place … We talked to people in hospitals and morgues where bodies were coming in. Live victims were coming in with things like their anuses being filled with glue,” Long said.
Hili said names of individuals "wanted" for homosexuality have been posted in Shia neighbourhoods.
“Shia militias are ... [conducting] a killing, harassment…campaign against [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] people in Iraq. They quite clearly have a specific target and tend toward sexual cleansing in Iraq,” he said.
While no group has said it’s behind the killings, Iraqi LGBT and HRW believe that elements of the Mehdi Army may be among the militants implicated in the violence, particularly in Sadr City.
Hili and Long also point out that smaller extremist Shia militias have openly threatened gays.
But both activists caution that it is difficult to know which militia is responsible for what in Iraq as most don't admit to crimes they’ve committed. It’s "always difficult to pin down exact accountability of militias in Iraq”, Long said.
Nonetheless, Long suggested that some members of Mehdi Army were trying to act as "agents of moral regeneration" in an attempt to regain some control over Shia neighbourhoods, following massive military operations that weakened the militia.
"My sense is that they probably initiated the campaign [of violence] because the Mehdi Army was trying to come back," he said.
“It is pretty clear that sermons started being preached in Shia mosques, particularly ones in areas that are heavily influenced by the Sadrists earlier this year, on the dangers of homosexuality [in the weeks prior to the wave of killings].”
Hili suspects Mehdi Army involvement in the violence in Sadr City because they are “are ruling and acting as a government [there]. There is no other force in Sadr City but Mehdi Army”.
Jasim al-Jabiri, a Mehdi Army leader in Sadr City, denied that the militia has played any party in the killing homosexuals in the district.
"The tribes to which the gays belonged killed them,” he said. “They consider them a shame on [the tribe].
“The Iraqi community rejects [gays] as disgusting and despicable."
And Sheikh Sayid al-Battat, a Sadr loyalist, said the perpetrators of crimes against homosexuals should be brought to justice.
"No party, whoever it might be, is above the law," Battat said. "Anyone proven guilty will be punished by Iraqi legislation and laws."
Sadr recently scorned homosexuality but warned against attacking gays.
He has launched a youth-targeted religious morality campaign to discourage "depravity", including homosexuality. Battat said that clerics deem homosexuality "a deviation from religious laws and will stand against it through preaching and guidance".
Iraqi LGBT and HRW also suspect police officers may be involved in the violence. They say some victims who survived torture or beatings reported their assailants were wearing uniforms. One said he was taken to an interior ministry building in Baghdad earlier this year, Long said.
Hili said his organisation receives reports of policemen arresting gays and handing them over to militias. “I think we’ve become a main target for extremist militias and even the Iraqi police,” he said.
Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the ministry of interior's official spokesman, denied the allegations.
"The police have nothing to do with these killings,” he said. “The police are launching an investigation to find the killers."
Currently, the interior ministry is only probing the murders of six homosexuals who were killed in Sadr City in April, but has not made any arrests. Khalaf said the ministry had no information about additional cases in which gays have been targeted.
Meanwhile, many gays in Baghdad are changing their appearance to make them less of a target. Fitted jeans and t-shirts have been replaced with baggier clothing. Hairdressers who cater for a gay clientele say customers who typically wore their hair longer are now requesting more masculine closely-cropped styles.
Some gays are even carrying guns for self-defence.
The United States early last month condemned anti-homosexual attacks and said the US embassy is raising the issue with senior Iraqi officials.
A number of local politicians have also spoken out against the killings. Rasheed Ismail, a representative of the Iraqi Communist party in Baghdad, called for protective legislation.
"Gays are not a huge population in Iraq, so why are they being killed and having their rights trampled on?" he asked.
Rights advocates see a bleak future for Iraqi gays, arguing that those under threat need to be granted asylum in western countries. Neighbouring states are not good options because they also persecute homosexuals, Long said.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2009-07-28-gays-in-iraq_N.htm
28 July 2009: The killers aren't just executing their gay victims. They are "mutilating their bodies and torturing them," says fundamentalist Sunni cleric Sheik Mohammed al-Ghreri, who has criticized the violence. Hili says the militias have come up with a particularly cruel way to inflict pain: sealing victims' anuses with glue, then force-feeding them laxatives. Hili says he has spoken to several victims who survived the ordeal.
Two lesbians who ran the safe house in the city of Najaf were butchered, together with a young boy they had rescued from the sex industry. Last summer, the coordinator of a Baghdad safe house, Bashar, was gunned to death in his local barber's shop by an Islamist hit squad. Previously, five gay activists who organised another Baghdad safe house were massacred.
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/04/05/gay.deaths.iraq/
http://uk.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-gays-killings-sb-idUKTRE53312Q20090404
4 April 2009: Two gay men were killed in Baghdad's Sadr City slum, a local official said on Saturday, and police said they had found the bodies of four more after clerics urged a crackdown on a perceived spread of homosexuality.
Homosexuality is prohibited almost everywhere in the Middle East, but conditions have become especially dangerous for gays and lesbians in Iraq since the rise of religious militias after U.S.-led forces toppled Saddam Hussein six years ago.
"Two
young men were killed on Thursday. They were sexual deviants. Their
tribes killed them to restore their family honor," a Sadr City official
who declined to be named said.
The police source who declined to be named said the bodies of four gay men were unearthed in Sadr City on March 25, each bearing a sign reading "pervert" in Arabic on their chests.
Sermons
condemning homosexuality were read at the last two Friday prayer
gatherings in Sadr City, a sprawling Baghdad slum of some 2 million
people. The slum is a bastion of support for fiery Shi'ite cleric
Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia.The police source who declined to be named said the bodies of four gay men were unearthed in Sadr City on March 25, each bearing a sign reading "pervert" in Arabic on their chests.
The Mehdi Army has frozen its activities over the last year and government forces have wrested control of the slum.
Many
young men who might have cut their hair short and grown beards when
religious gangs controlled much of Iraq now dress in a more Western
style as government forces take back control.
Some are now accused of being gay, and residents of Sadr City say at least one coffee shop has become a gay hangout.
A
member of the slum's Sadrist office said the Mehdi Army was not
involved in the killings, but said homosexuality was now more widespread
since the Mehdi Army lost control of the slum.
"This
(homosexuality) has spread because of the absence of the Mehdi Army,
the spread of sexual films and satellite television and a lack of
government surveillance," said the office's Sheikh Ibrahim al-Gharawi, a
Shi'ite cleric.
Homosexual
acts are punishable by up to seven years in prison in Iraq. A gay Iraqi
man said any alleged crimes should be left to the law to deal with.
"If they've committed a crime, then there is the law. Killing is a big sin," he said, giving his name as Laith.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/world/middleeast/08gay.html
8 April 2009: Clerics in Sadr City have urged followers to help root out homosexuality in Iraqi society, and the police have begun their own crackdown on gay men.
“Homosexuality is against the law,” said Lt. Muthana Shaad, at a police station in the Karada district, a neighborhood that has become popular with gay men. “And it’s disgusting.”
For the past four months, he said, officers have been engaged in a “campaign to clean up the streets and get the beggars and homosexuals off them.”
......
“The community should be purified from such delinquent behavior like stealing, lying and the effeminacy phenomenon among men,” Sheik Jassem al-Mutairi said during his sermon last Friday. Homosexuality, he said, was “far from manhood and honesty.”
Abu Muhaned al-Diraji, a Sadrist official in Sadr City, said the clerics were in no way encouraging people to kill gay men.
“All we are doing is giving advice to people to take care of their sons,” Mr. Diraji said. He acknowledged, however, that some of the killing had been committed by members of “special groups,” or death squads.
“In general, it is the families that are killing the gay son, but I know that there are gunmen involved in this, too,” he said. “But we disavow anybody committing this kind of crime and we encourage the people to follow the law.”
In addition to the killings, a Sadr City cafe frequented by gay men recently burned down under mysterious circumstances.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8005420.stm
18 April 2009: In the latest manifestation of the campaign, posters have appeared on walls in the poor Shia suburb of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, listing alleged homosexuals by name and threatening to kill them. Those named have gone underground, while gay men throughout the city and in some other parts of the country also live in fear.
http://www.niqash.org/en/articles/society/2431/
22 April 2009: Security officials found three torture-ridden corpses of gay men in Sadr, Dawra and Karadah areas of Baghdad. Their killers were not identified. Al-Baghdadiya, a satellite television channel based in Cairo and one of the few media outlets to have reported the attacks, broadcast a report on April 7 saying that 20 young men accused of homosexuality were taken to Ibn al-Nafis hospital in Baghdad with mutilated genitals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/world/middleeast/08gay.html
8 April 2009: Clerics in Sadr City have urged followers to help root out homosexuality in Iraqi society, and the police have begun their own crackdown on gay men.
“Homosexuality is against the law,” said Lt. Muthana Shaad, at a police station in the Karada district, a neighborhood that has become popular with gay men. “And it’s disgusting.”
For the past four months, he said, officers have been engaged in a “campaign to clean up the streets and get the beggars and homosexuals off them.”
......
“The community should be purified from such delinquent behavior like stealing, lying and the effeminacy phenomenon among men,” Sheik Jassem al-Mutairi said during his sermon last Friday. Homosexuality, he said, was “far from manhood and honesty.”
Abu Muhaned al-Diraji, a Sadrist official in Sadr City, said the clerics were in no way encouraging people to kill gay men.
“All we are doing is giving advice to people to take care of their sons,” Mr. Diraji said. He acknowledged, however, that some of the killing had been committed by members of “special groups,” or death squads.
“In general, it is the families that are killing the gay son, but I know that there are gunmen involved in this, too,” he said. “But we disavow anybody committing this kind of crime and we encourage the people to follow the law.”
In addition to the killings, a Sadr City cafe frequented by gay men recently burned down under mysterious circumstances.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8005420.stm
18 April 2009: In the latest manifestation of the campaign, posters have appeared on walls in the poor Shia suburb of Sadr City in eastern Baghdad, listing alleged homosexuals by name and threatening to kill them. Those named have gone underground, while gay men throughout the city and in some other parts of the country also live in fear.
http://www.niqash.org/en/articles/society/2431/
22 April 2009: Security officials found three torture-ridden corpses of gay men in Sadr, Dawra and Karadah areas of Baghdad. Their killers were not identified. Al-Baghdadiya, a satellite television channel based in Cairo and one of the few media outlets to have reported the attacks, broadcast a report on April 7 saying that 20 young men accused of homosexuality were taken to Ibn al-Nafis hospital in Baghdad with mutilated genitals.
https://iwpr.net/global-voices/new-wave-violence-against-iraqi-gays
8 July 2009:
At least 68 gay and transgendered men have been killed over the last four months, according to the London-based rights advocacy group Iraqi LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender), bringing the total number of killings of Iraqis because of their sexuality to 678 since 2004.
New York-based Human Rights Watch, which recently conducted field investigations on the violence, estimates that hundreds of homosexual men may have been killed in recent months.
Scott Long, a senior Human Rights Watch representative, described the killings as an "extraordinarily brutal campaign" targeting gay, transgender and effeminate men in several provinces.
"I am so afraid that I will be killed," said Samir, a 20-year-old gay Baghdad resident, who preferred not to give his surname.
"People do not understand that I have been created like this. Those who claim to be religious are disgusted by me."
Effeminate men are being targeted whether or not they are gay, but transgender men, particularly those taking hormones, face the most danger, said Ali Hili, Iraqi LGBT chair.
Iraqi LGBT and HRW believe that Shia militias are the primary perpetrators of the violence and say the majority of killings have occurred in Shia areas in south/central Iraq (including the towns of Ammarah, Najaf, Karbala and Basra) and Baghdad’s Sadr City district, the stronghold of the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army.
This is based in part on reports of harassment and torture by Shia militias from victims who survived attacks.
“Sadr City was one of the areas where a lot of the killings appeared to be taking place … We talked to people in hospitals and morgues where bodies were coming in. Live victims were coming in with things like their anuses being filled with glue,” Long said.
Hili said names of individuals "wanted" for homosexuality have been posted in Shia neighbourhoods.
“Shia militias are ... [conducting] a killing, harassment…campaign against [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] people in Iraq. They quite clearly have a specific target and tend toward sexual cleansing in Iraq,” he said.
While no group has said it’s behind the killings, Iraqi LGBT and HRW believe that elements of the Mehdi Army may be among the militants implicated in the violence, particularly in Sadr City.
Hili and Long also point out that smaller extremist Shia militias have openly threatened gays.
But both activists caution that it is difficult to know which militia is responsible for what in Iraq as most don't admit to crimes they’ve committed. It’s "always difficult to pin down exact accountability of militias in Iraq”, Long said.
Nonetheless, Long suggested that some members of Mehdi Army were trying to act as "agents of moral regeneration" in an attempt to regain some control over Shia neighbourhoods, following massive military operations that weakened the militia.
"My sense is that they probably initiated the campaign [of violence] because the Mehdi Army was trying to come back," he said.
“It is pretty clear that sermons started being preached in Shia mosques, particularly ones in areas that are heavily influenced by the Sadrists earlier this year, on the dangers of homosexuality [in the weeks prior to the wave of killings].”
Hili suspects Mehdi Army involvement in the violence in Sadr City because they are “are ruling and acting as a government [there]. There is no other force in Sadr City but Mehdi Army”.
Jasim al-Jabiri, a Mehdi Army leader in Sadr City, denied that the militia has played any party in the killing homosexuals in the district.
"The tribes to which the gays belonged killed them,” he said. “They consider them a shame on [the tribe].
“The Iraqi community rejects [gays] as disgusting and despicable."
And Sheikh Sayid al-Battat, a Sadr loyalist, said the perpetrators of crimes against homosexuals should be brought to justice.
"No party, whoever it might be, is above the law," Battat said. "Anyone proven guilty will be punished by Iraqi legislation and laws."
Sadr recently scorned homosexuality but warned against attacking gays.
He has launched a youth-targeted religious morality campaign to discourage "depravity", including homosexuality. Battat said that clerics deem homosexuality "a deviation from religious laws and will stand against it through preaching and guidance".
Iraqi LGBT and HRW also suspect police officers may be involved in the violence. They say some victims who survived torture or beatings reported their assailants were wearing uniforms. One said he was taken to an interior ministry building in Baghdad earlier this year, Long said.
Hili said his organisation receives reports of policemen arresting gays and handing them over to militias. “I think we’ve become a main target for extremist militias and even the Iraqi police,” he said.
Abdul-Karim Khalaf, the ministry of interior's official spokesman, denied the allegations.
"The police have nothing to do with these killings,” he said. “The police are launching an investigation to find the killers."
Currently, the interior ministry is only probing the murders of six homosexuals who were killed in Sadr City in April, but has not made any arrests. Khalaf said the ministry had no information about additional cases in which gays have been targeted.
Meanwhile, many gays in Baghdad are changing their appearance to make them less of a target. Fitted jeans and t-shirts have been replaced with baggier clothing. Hairdressers who cater for a gay clientele say customers who typically wore their hair longer are now requesting more masculine closely-cropped styles.
Some gays are even carrying guns for self-defence.
The United States early last month condemned anti-homosexual attacks and said the US embassy is raising the issue with senior Iraqi officials.
A number of local politicians have also spoken out against the killings. Rasheed Ismail, a representative of the Iraqi Communist party in Baghdad, called for protective legislation.
"Gays are not a huge population in Iraq, so why are they being killed and having their rights trampled on?" he asked.
Rights advocates see a bleak future for Iraqi gays, arguing that those under threat need to be granted asylum in western countries. Neighbouring states are not good options because they also persecute homosexuals, Long said.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2009-07-28-gays-in-iraq_N.htm
28 July 2009: The killers aren't just executing their gay victims. They are "mutilating their bodies and torturing them," says fundamentalist Sunni cleric Sheik Mohammed al-Ghreri, who has criticized the violence. Hili says the militias have come up with a particularly cruel way to inflict pain: sealing victims' anuses with glue, then force-feeding them laxatives. Hili says he has spoken to several victims who survived the ordeal.
...... Iraq's Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani several years ago decreed that the punishment for homosexuality is death "if it is proven before the religious judge." An Iraqi TV channel, Alsumaria, reported that Sunni cleric al-Ghreri has called for the execution of gays. Al-Ghreri denies issuing such a statement, but concedes that some "stubborn" clerics might support the death penalty for gays. He says homosexuality is "abnormal" and that gays should know that "freedom has limits." First, he says, gays should be warned to change their offensive behavior. If that fails, he says, they should be jailed. If detentions don't work, they should endure 100 lashes for engaging in gay sex. And if four separate lashings fail and if witnesses testify against the suspects, he says, then they should be executed.
https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/iraq0809webwcover.pdf
https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/08/17/they-want-us-exterminated/murder-torture-sexual-orientation-and-gender-iraq
17 August 2009: At this writing, in July 2009, the campaign remains at its most intense in Baghdad, but it has left bloody tracks in other cities as well; men have been targeted, threatened or tortured in Kirkuk, Najaf, Basra. Murders are committed with impunity, admonitory in intent, with corpses dumped in garbage or hung as warnings on the street. The killers invade the privacy of homes, abducting sons or brothers, leaving their mutilated bodies in the neighborhood the next day. They interrogate and brutalize men to extract names of other people suspected of homosexual conduct. They specialize in grotesque and appalling tortures: several doctors told Human Rights Watch about men executed by injecting glue up their anuses. Their bodies have appeared by the dozens in hospitals and morgues. How many have been killed will likely never be known: the failure of authorities to investigate compounds the fear and shame of families to ensure that reliable figures are unattainable. A well-informed official at the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) told Human Rights Watch in April that the dead probably already numbered "in the hundreds."
....
He says that of sixteen men he shared those quarters with, only nine are left: the rest have been murdered or have disappeared. Friends and family told him that "the Mahdi Army threw my friend Mustafa off the top of a building: then they shot and killed him."Also in early 2009,
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-rights-gays-idUSTRE57G1E420090817
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8204853.stmhttps://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/iraq0809webwcover.pdf
https://www.hrw.org/report/2009/08/17/they-want-us-exterminated/murder-torture-sexual-orientation-and-gender-iraq
17 August 2009: At this writing, in July 2009, the campaign remains at its most intense in Baghdad, but it has left bloody tracks in other cities as well; men have been targeted, threatened or tortured in Kirkuk, Najaf, Basra. Murders are committed with impunity, admonitory in intent, with corpses dumped in garbage or hung as warnings on the street. The killers invade the privacy of homes, abducting sons or brothers, leaving their mutilated bodies in the neighborhood the next day. They interrogate and brutalize men to extract names of other people suspected of homosexual conduct. They specialize in grotesque and appalling tortures: several doctors told Human Rights Watch about men executed by injecting glue up their anuses. Their bodies have appeared by the dozens in hospitals and morgues. How many have been killed will likely never be known: the failure of authorities to investigate compounds the fear and shame of families to ensure that reliable figures are unattainable. A well-informed official at the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) told Human Rights Watch in April that the dead probably already numbered "in the hundreds."
....
He says that of sixteen men he shared those quarters with, only nine are left: the rest have been murdered or have disappeared. Friends and family told him that "the Mahdi Army threw my friend Mustafa off the top of a building: then they shot and killed him."Also in early 2009,
The Mahdi Army killed Khaldoun in Baghdad al-Jadida. I heard that Khaldoun was tortured, beaten and disfigured, and finally hung on the street. One of the tortures they used on him was a very strong glue to close his anus, after which he was given a laxative causing diarrhea that killed him.[42]
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-rights-gays-idUSTRE57G1E420090817
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2009/aug/19/iraq-anti-gay-gangs-killing-campaign
19 August 2009: Across Iraq, a killing campaign has spread since early this year. Armed gangs have kidnapped men and tortured them, leaving castrated and mutilated bodies dumped in the garbage or in front of morgues. In April, during a Human Rights Watch research trip to Iraq, men told us tales of death threats, blackmail, midnight raids by masked men on private homes and abductions from the streets. The targets? Men suspected of being gay, or of not being "masculine" enough in their killers' eyes.
Most survivors pointed to Moqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, the largest Shia militia in Iraq, as the driving force behind the killings. Sadrist mosques and leaders have warned loudly that homosexuality threatens Iraqi life and culture – though even some Sunni militias may have joined the violence, competing to show their moral credentials. No one can yet give an accurate tally of the victims, but some say the dead may number in the hundreds.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-gay-sons-of-allah-wave-of-homophobia-sweeps-the-muslim-world-a-647913.html
Sep 17, 2009: "A video clip showing men dancing with each other at a party in Baghdad in the summer of 2008 is thought to have triggered this string of kidnappings, rapes, and murders. Thousands of people have seen it on the Internet and on their cell phones. Islamic religious leaders began ranting about the growing presence of a "third sex" which American soldiers were said to have brought in with them. The followers of radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, in particular, felt the need to take action aimed at restoring "religious morals."
In their stronghold, the part of Baghdad known as Sadr City, black-clad militiamen patrol the streets, on the lookout for anyone whose "unmanly appearance" or behavior would make it possible to identify them as being homosexual. Often enough long hair, tight-fitting t-shirts and trousers, or a certain way of walking were a death sentence for the persons in question. But it's not just the Mahdi army who has been hunting down and killing gay men. Other groups such as Sunni militias close to al-Qaida and the Iraqi security services are also known to be involved.
Homosexuals in Iraq may be faced with an exceptionally dangerous situation but they are ostracized almost everywhere in the Muslim world. Gay rights organizations estimate that more than 100,000 gay men and women are currently being discriminated against and threatened in Muslim countries. Thousands of them commit suicide, end up in prison, or go into hiding."
https://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/09/199614.html
http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/iraqi-teenagers-stoned-death-emo-haircuts
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-emo-killings-idUSBRE8290CY20120310
10 March 2012: At least 14 youths have been stoned to death in Baghdad in the past three weeks in what appears to be a campaign by Shi’ite militants against youths wearing Western-style “emo” clothes and haircuts, security and hospital sources say.
Militants in Shi’ite neighborhoods where the stonings have taken place circulated lists on Saturday naming more youths targeted to be killed if they do not change the way they dress.
The killings have taken place since Iraq’s interior ministry drew attention to the “emo” subculture last month, labeling it “Satanism” and ordering a community police force to stamp it out.
https://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/10/199751.html
10 March 2012: Iraqi clerics on Emo killings
https://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/03/10/199751.html
10 March 2012: Iraqi clerics on Emo killings
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2012/03/11/source-iraqi-government-complicit-with-emo-and-lgbt-massacres/
http://observers.france24.com/en/20120321-iraqi-emo-harassed-islamist-extremists-militias-list-killed-murdered-hair-clothes-style-rock-hardcore-music
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/12/world/middleeast/killings-strike-fear-in-iraqi-gay-and-emo-youth.html
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/is-the-iraqi-government-killing-LGBT-people
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-gays-emo-idUSBRE82B0VZ20120312
http://www.sfgate.com/world/article/Iraqi-emo-subculture-target-of-antigay-attacks-3407072.php
https://www.yahoo.com/news/emo-killings-raise-alarms-iraq-070258712.html
11 March 2012: Officials
and human rights groups estimated as many as 58 Iraqis who are believed
to be gay have been killed in the past six weeks - forecasting what
experts fear is a return to the rampant hate crimes against homosexuals
in 2009. This year, eyewitnesses and human rights groups say some of the
victims have been bludgeoned to death by militiamen smashing in their
skulls with heavy concrete blocks. A recent list distributed by
militants in Baghdad's Shiite Sadr City neighborhood gives the names or
nicknames of 33 people and their home addresses. "If you do not stop
this dirty act within four days, then the punishment of God will fall on
you at the hands of Mujahideen," the militia hit list says. All but one
of the targets are men.
....
The
killings have drawn so much attention that even hardline Shiite cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr weighed in Saturday, calling Emos "crazy fools" and a
"lesion on the Muslim community" in a statement on his website. However, al-Sadr did not condone the violence, telling his followers "to end the scourge of Emo within the law."
https://mideastinsights.wordpress.com/2012/04/20/ben-taub-iraq/https://www.hrw.org/news/2012/03/16/iraq-investigate-emo-attacks
16 March 2012:
The Interior Ministry’s February 13 statement on its website characterized emos as “Satanists” who constitute a danger to Iraqi society. The statement also indicated that the ministry was seeking approval from the Education Ministry for “an integrated plan that would let them [police] enter all the schools in the capital.” On February 29 the Interior Ministry released another statement in which it announced a campaign against emo culture in Baghdad, particularly in the Khadimiya neighborhood, where they identified one shop that sold “emo clothing and accessories.”
5 April 2012: Baghdad's moral police against emos and gays.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19570870
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19525137
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19525133
11 Sep 2012: It's very difficult to determine how many homosexuals have died in so called "honour killings" by their own families or in the hands of militiamen. But now a BBC investigation has found that law enforcement agencies are involved in ongoing, systematic and organised violence against gays, while the country's Western backed government refuses to acknowledge it.
http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/is-iraqs-dawa-party-returning-to-their.html
2012: In 2012, there were reports that anywhere from six to forty emos and gays were murdered in Baghdad. This came after the Interior Ministry posted a statement on its website calling emos Devil worshippers in February. The Ministry then called for a police crackdown, while at the same time claiming that any deaths were being made up by the media. Stories emerged that Shiite militants were handing out lists of people they were going to kill. In March,Human Rights Watch blamed the government for the attacks, which was later substantiated by a BBC investigation. The BBC found that the Interior Ministry statement about emos being Satanists led to a concerted and covert campaign to murder gays and emos in the capital by members of the security forces. While Adnan Asadi is the deputy Interior Minister, he was appointed by Prime Minister Maliki in 2011, who is still the acting Interior Minister. Like the alcohol banning, this appears to be an instance where the premier has used the security forces to go after those he feels are in violation of his image of what an Islamic society should be like. Unlike those earlier events however, this one has led to several deaths, which will go unpunished since they are at the behest of the central government. At the same time, this again shows that Maliki and Dawa have only felt comfortable imposing their views on a limited scale, only going after emos and homosexuals in certain districts of Baghdad, rather than the whole city, other provinces or the entire country.
http://www.owfi.info/EN/campaigns/campaign-of-iraqi-gay-killings-by-smashing-skulls-with-concrete-blocks/
2012:
http://www.vice.com/video/in-saddams-shadow-part-3
March 20, 2013: VICE documentary clip about threats to musicians, gays and emos in Baghdad.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/19/militia-lgbt-iraq-report-gay-lesbian-persecution
https://news.vice.com/article/caught-between-the-islamic-state-and-shiite-militias-gays-are-dying-in-iraq
19 Nov 2014: On May 15, members of Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq — a powerful Iranian-backed militia also known as the "League of the Righteous" — tacked up public lists of 24 "wanted" individuals, 23 of whom it claimed had carried out homosexual acts. The remaining person had hair that was too long. In 2013, the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army distributed a similar document. A month later, on June 15, the militia killed two teenagers, beheaded them, and threw their heads in the garbage. IGHCR and MADRE spoke with Iraqi human rights activists who said that the boys were commonly thought to be gay in the community. In July, an attack believed to be carried out by Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq on a suspected brothel in Baghdad left 34 dead. All but two of the people killed were women, gunned down as they hid in bedrooms and showers. The men, Alizadeh said, were assumed to be gay. The Mahdi Army has also been implicated in other attacks dating back years. "In 2008, the Mahdi Army would even kill barbers who didn't cut men's hair in the way they were supposed to," Erin Evers, Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch, told VICE News. A wave of so called "emo killings" in Iraq in 2012 saw the murder of dozens of gays and suspected homosexuals by militias operating in Baghdad and its environs, including Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq.
https://www.outrightinternational.org/sites/default/files/ComingOutDeathSentence_Iraq_0.pdf
Nov 2014: It is not easy for LGBT Iraqis in central and southern Iraq to reach the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan, where LGBT Kurds reportedly face fewer death threats despite difficult prevailing societal and official attitudes.
http://gaycitynews.nyc/new-reports-document-re-escalating-violence-lgbt-iraqis/
Dec 24, 2014: The invasion of Iraq by the United States led to the internal and external displacement of millions of Iraqis, including large numbers from the LGBT community. Many Arab Iraqis resettled in the Kurdish region of Iraq’s north, where homosexuality has been more tolerated. Others fled to Damascus, where –– until the Arab Spring revolts began in 2011 –– nearly one million Iraqis refugees lived, including thousands of gay men. Some traveled there with their families and others on their own.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33565055
23 July 2015: For the past few years it's been really, really hard. There were militiamen or security men who - if they found out someone was gay - would arrest him, rape him, torture him. There were lots of murders supervised by the Iraqi army. Videos came out of people being burned alive or stoned and you can see soldiers there. I have seen a video where some gay men had ropes put around their necks and they were dragged around the streets and people were throwing stones at them and when they were half-dead they were set on fire. Some people had their rectums glued up and were then left to die in the desert.
http://www.law.cuny.edu/academics/clinics/hrgj/publications/ICCPR-Iraq-Shadow-Report-LGBT-ENG.pdf
2015: Shadow report on LGBT rights in Iraq
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-baghdads-brutal-battle-against-isis-20150313
2015:
16 March 2012:
The Interior Ministry’s February 13 statement on its website characterized emos as “Satanists” who constitute a danger to Iraqi society. The statement also indicated that the ministry was seeking approval from the Education Ministry for “an integrated plan that would let them [police] enter all the schools in the capital.” On February 29 the Interior Ministry released another statement in which it announced a campaign against emo culture in Baghdad, particularly in the Khadimiya neighborhood, where they identified one shop that sold “emo clothing and accessories.”
After widespread media coverage of the violence and intimidation against emos, the Interior Ministry toned down its language in the March 8 statement, warning “radical and extremist groups attempting to stand as protectors for morals and religious traditions from any conduct against people based on a fashion, dress or haircut.” The ministry denied that any emos had been killed and threatened “necessary legal actions against those who try to highlight this issue and build it out of proportion.”
On March 14 security forces in Baghdad detained for three hours the film crew of Russia Today’s Arabic TV channel, Rusiya al-Yaum, as they tried to film a segment related to the attacks on emos. Security forces confiscated their footage even though the channel had a permit to film in downtown Baghdad.
A report by Al-Sharqiya TV on March 7 said that men in civilian clothes brutally beat two young women in public in al-Mansour district because of their “fashionable clothing.”
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2012/04/05/damon-iraq-moral-police.cnn5 April 2012: Baghdad's moral police against emos and gays.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-19570870
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19525137
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19525133
11 Sep 2012: It's very difficult to determine how many homosexuals have died in so called "honour killings" by their own families or in the hands of militiamen. But now a BBC investigation has found that law enforcement agencies are involved in ongoing, systematic and organised violence against gays, while the country's Western backed government refuses to acknowledge it.
http://musingsoniraq.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/is-iraqs-dawa-party-returning-to-their.html
2012: In 2012, there were reports that anywhere from six to forty emos and gays were murdered in Baghdad. This came after the Interior Ministry posted a statement on its website calling emos Devil worshippers in February. The Ministry then called for a police crackdown, while at the same time claiming that any deaths were being made up by the media. Stories emerged that Shiite militants were handing out lists of people they were going to kill. In March,Human Rights Watch blamed the government for the attacks, which was later substantiated by a BBC investigation. The BBC found that the Interior Ministry statement about emos being Satanists led to a concerted and covert campaign to murder gays and emos in the capital by members of the security forces. While Adnan Asadi is the deputy Interior Minister, he was appointed by Prime Minister Maliki in 2011, who is still the acting Interior Minister. Like the alcohol banning, this appears to be an instance where the premier has used the security forces to go after those he feels are in violation of his image of what an Islamic society should be like. Unlike those earlier events however, this one has led to several deaths, which will go unpunished since they are at the behest of the central government. At the same time, this again shows that Maliki and Dawa have only felt comfortable imposing their views on a limited scale, only going after emos and homosexuals in certain districts of Baghdad, rather than the whole city, other provinces or the entire country.
http://www.owfi.info/EN/campaigns/campaign-of-iraqi-gay-killings-by-smashing-skulls-with-concrete-blocks/
2012:
New barbaric attacks started against the Iraqi LGBT in many cities like Baghdad and Basra while using inhumane methods such as hitting the head and body parts of gay victims with building concrete blocks repeatedly till death or by pushing them over high building roof which took place in Basra city. The actions of killings, torture, and dismembering against those who were described as “adulterous” by Islamic Shia militias, besides hanging lists on the walls of several sections in Al-Sadr city and in Al- Habibea region, had all terrorized the society at large and especially the Iraqi lgbt community, knowing that those attacks are directed against anyone suspected with gay practices or appearance.
The first killings took place on the sixth of February 2012 and continued or rather escalated till the current days. One of the hanged lists in Al-Sadr city included the names and addresses of 33 person, while other lists included other tens of names in other areas. News confirmed that 42 gay men were tortured and killed so far, mostly by concrete blocks, while some by dismembering.
http://www.vice.com/video/in-saddams-shadow-part-3
March 20, 2013: VICE documentary clip about threats to musicians, gays and emos in Baghdad.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/nov/19/militia-lgbt-iraq-report-gay-lesbian-persecution
19 Nov 2014: LGBT Iraqis lack family or community support and the government refuses to offer any meaningful protection, according to the report When Coming Out Is A Death Sentence published by the group. It said the central government was likely to be complicit in a recent increase in attacks against gay people in Baghdad, which have been carried out by the feared Shia militia, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq.
“Past and present killing sprees against LGBT Iraqis have taken place with total impunity,” it said. “No one has been held accountable for the murders, and the previous government rejected calls to even investigate violence based on actual or perceived sexual and gender non-conformity.”
On 15 May this year, Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq – the most powerful Iranian backed militia group in Iraq – displayed wanted posters in Baghdad of 23 men it said were gay and another man accused of having long hair. One month later, two allegedly gay youths, aged between 15 and 17, were attacked and beheaded with their heads thrown in a rubbish bin, said a witness to the attack. A subsequent attack on a Baghdad brothel, thought to have been carried out by the same militia, killed about 34 people, most of them women.
......
The report says that Kurdish attitudes to LBGT issues are marginally better than in Baghdad.
https://news.vice.com/article/caught-between-the-islamic-state-and-shiite-militias-gays-are-dying-in-iraq
19 Nov 2014: On May 15, members of Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq — a powerful Iranian-backed militia also known as the "League of the Righteous" — tacked up public lists of 24 "wanted" individuals, 23 of whom it claimed had carried out homosexual acts. The remaining person had hair that was too long. In 2013, the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army distributed a similar document. A month later, on June 15, the militia killed two teenagers, beheaded them, and threw their heads in the garbage. IGHCR and MADRE spoke with Iraqi human rights activists who said that the boys were commonly thought to be gay in the community. In July, an attack believed to be carried out by Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq on a suspected brothel in Baghdad left 34 dead. All but two of the people killed were women, gunned down as they hid in bedrooms and showers. The men, Alizadeh said, were assumed to be gay. The Mahdi Army has also been implicated in other attacks dating back years. "In 2008, the Mahdi Army would even kill barbers who didn't cut men's hair in the way they were supposed to," Erin Evers, Iraq researcher at Human Rights Watch, told VICE News. A wave of so called "emo killings" in Iraq in 2012 saw the murder of dozens of gays and suspected homosexuals by militias operating in Baghdad and its environs, including Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq.
https://www.outrightinternational.org/sites/default/files/ComingOutDeathSentence_Iraq_0.pdf
Nov 2014: It is not easy for LGBT Iraqis in central and southern Iraq to reach the relative safety of Iraqi Kurdistan, where LGBT Kurds reportedly face fewer death threats despite difficult prevailing societal and official attitudes.
http://gaycitynews.nyc/new-reports-document-re-escalating-violence-lgbt-iraqis/
Dec 24, 2014: The invasion of Iraq by the United States led to the internal and external displacement of millions of Iraqis, including large numbers from the LGBT community. Many Arab Iraqis resettled in the Kurdish region of Iraq’s north, where homosexuality has been more tolerated. Others fled to Damascus, where –– until the Arab Spring revolts began in 2011 –– nearly one million Iraqis refugees lived, including thousands of gay men. Some traveled there with their families and others on their own.
23 June 2015: In Kurdistan the situation is better, with LGBTs fleeing from Baghdad and southern Iraq to the region. Safe houses for LGBTs exist in Kurdistan, and transgenders can live relatively more in the open. On the other hand, the situation for LGBTs in Kurdistan is far from the (relative) tolerance that exists in the Kurdish region of Turkey, where some LGBT activists operate in public
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33565055
23 July 2015: For the past few years it's been really, really hard. There were militiamen or security men who - if they found out someone was gay - would arrest him, rape him, torture him. There were lots of murders supervised by the Iraqi army. Videos came out of people being burned alive or stoned and you can see soldiers there. I have seen a video where some gay men had ropes put around their necks and they were dragged around the streets and people were throwing stones at them and when they were half-dead they were set on fire. Some people had their rectums glued up and were then left to die in the desert.
Before
Isis, I think that maybe the power of my family protected me. But let's
assume that Isis disappeared this second, the threat to my life would
be just as serious, now that I've been identified as gay.
http://www.law.cuny.edu/academics/clinics/hrgj/publications/ICCPR-Iraq-Shadow-Report-LGBT-ENG.pdf
2015: Shadow report on LGBT rights in Iraq
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/inside-baghdads-brutal-battle-against-isis-20150313
2015:
A slender 25-year-old who loves Mariah Carey, Ahmed had escaped an abusive father by pursuing a career as an actor. His break had come when he was cast to play a gay character on a groundbreaking TV series in 2009. But the role attracted the attention of neighborhood militiamen, who had already suspected his sexuality. "Let's be honest," he says with a sad smile, "you can tell by the way that I walk and talk."
Not long after the show aired, he found a local commander and his henchmen waiting for him at his bus stop. He says that they forced him into their car at gunpoint and took him to an abandoned construction site, where they made him strip. Then the militiamen took turns: One put a gun to his head, the other held him down and the third raped him. They filmed the attack and cursed him for being gay. When they were finished, they stuffed rope and glue up his anus and dropped him, naked and bleeding, in front of his grandmother's house. Still, he considers himself lucky to be alive; many of his friends have been killed, including one he says he witnessed having his head smashed open on a curb. The threat from ISIS is even worse; the militant group recently put out videos showing members throwing men accused of homosexuality off buildings. Ahmed is hoping to get accepted as a refugee in the United States. (In February, according to lawyers helping him with his case, his boyfriend was beheaded in Baghdad.) "There's no life for gays in Iraq," he says.
http://www.washingtonblade.com/2016/09/24/militants-use-social-media-lure-kill-gay-iraqi-men/
24 Sep 2016: Members of a Shiite militant group in Iraq have reportedly killed 11 gay men in Baghdad since Sept. 1.
Ayaz Hassan, a human rights activist from the city of Sulaymaniyah in Iraqi Kurdistan, told the Washington Blade this week during a telephone interview that members of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq are using Grindr and Facebook to “talk to gays in Baghdad.”
Hassan said the militants send messages to people they suspect are gay. He told the Blade that the militants “convince them to go out” on dates after sending them pictures of themselves.
“They take them away and they kill them,” said Hassan.
Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, which is also known as the Khazali Network, is a branch of Al-Hashd al-Shabi, a group that is affiliated with former Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. The organization split from the Madhi Army, another Shiite militia run by prominent cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, in 2004.
http://www.basnews.com/index.php/en/news/iraq/308320
30 Oct 2016:
=====================
Homophobia in UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/6087430.stm
26 Oct 2006: A gay rights campaigner has accused an Imam of saying the execution of gay Muslims to stop the spread of disease is "for the common good of man".
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-16581758
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/men-found-guilty-of-handing-out-anti-homosexuality-leaflets-6292446.html
20 January 2012: "Three Muslim men have been found guilty of stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation after distributing a leaflet that said Islam called for anyone caught committing homosexuality to be executed." ... "The leaflet was handed out outside and near the Jamia Mosque in Derby's Rosehill Street and in streets around the local neighbourhood in July 2010. It was made and used as part of a campaign to publicise a protest in response to the Gay Pride parade due to be held in Derby on July 10 that year."
http://archive.is/zGunn
https://www.thenews.com.pk/archive/print/628669-uk-muslim-mps-scared-after-voting-for-gay-marriage-bill
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2279703/Death-threats-UKs-Muslim-MP-voted-gay-marriage.html#ixzz43eT3g8IA
=============================
http://www.islamtimes.org/ur/doc/news/82765/
4 July 2011:
اسلام آباد میں امریکی سفارتخانے میں ہم جنس پرستوں کی تقریب منعقد کرنے پر پاکستان کے مذہبی رہنماؤں نے شدید ردعمل کا اظہار کرتے ہوئے حکومت سے مطالبہ کیا ہے کہ معاملے کا نوٹس لیا جائے ورنہ شدید احتجاج کیا جائیگا۔ سید منور حسن، پروفیسر ساجد میر، قاری حنیف جالندھری، مولانا فضل الرحیم، مولانا عبدالرؤف فاروقی، لیاقت بلوچ، صاحبزادہ فضل کریم، ثروت اعجاز قادری، مظہر سعید کاظمی، فرید پراچہ اور دیگر نے کہا کہ ایسی سرگرمیاں اسلام اور ملکی قوانین کے منافی اور عذاب الٰہی کو دعوت دینے کے مترادف ہیں، امریکی حکمران پاکستان میں ہم جنس پرستی کی بیماری پھیلانا چاہتے ہیں۔ امریکی سفیر کا ہم جنس پرستوں کو حمایت کا یقین دلانا ثابت کرتا ہے کہ امریکہ اس منصوبے کے پیچھے ہے، یہ ڈرون حملوں کے بعد سب سے بڑا حملہ ہے لیکن ماضی کی طرح امریکہ کی یہ کوشش بھی ناکام ہو گی۔
http://ur.rasanews.ir/detail/news/2976/-100
http://ur.abna24.com/urdu/service//archive/2011/07/05/251554/story.html
5 July 2011:
ہم جنس پرستی ﻣلک ﻣیں نہ ﺻرف غیر قانونی ہے ﺑلکہ یہ ﺳراسر ﺑنیادی اسلامی قوانین کی ﺳخت ﻣخالفت اور ایسے قبیح افعال کے ﻣرتکب افرادسخت ﺗرین ﺳزاﺅں کے ﻣستحق ہیں سیکریٹریری جنرﻞ ﻣﺠلس وﺤدت ﻣسلمین پاکستان نے ﻣزید کہا کہ جو ﻟوگ اس قسم کے قبیح اور غیر اسلامی افعال کی ﺗرویج کے ﻣرتکب ہورہے ہیں انہیں کڑی سے کڑی ﺳزا دی جانی ﭼاہیے ۔
علامہ جعفری نے ﻣزید کہا ایک ﺑات ﻣزید واﻀﺢ ہوﺠاتی ہے کہ امریکی ﺳفارت ﺧانے کے اصل اہداف کیا ہیں اور اب ان اہداف کے واﻀﺢ ہوﺠانے کے ﺑﻌد ﺣکومت کﻮ ﭼاہیے کہ امریکہ سے ﻣکمل قطع ﺗﻌلق کرے۔
http://www.islamtimes.org/ur/doc/news/83487
7 July 2011:
جماعت اہل سنت پاکستان کے مرکزی سیکریٹری جنرل علامہ سید ریاض حسین شاہ نے اسلام آباد امریکی سفارت خانے میں ہم جنس پرستوں کی تقریب کے انعقاد کی شدید مذمت کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ امریکی سفارت خانے کا اقدام اسلام دشمنی ہے، حکومت پاکستان فی الفو ر امریکی سفیر کو طلب کر کے احتجاج کرے۔
http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201111/76397.php
13 August 2011: Hajia Sadika Bonsu Yeboah, President of the Ladies Association of the Ahmadiyya Muslims Mission, on Sunday attributed the rise of homosexuality in society to the negative influences of human rights.
According to her, homosexuality had been on earth for a long time, but had become more popular in recent times due to negative effects of human rights.
He said for this reason, society must abhor it and fight against other negative influences of human rights.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/08/11/iran-chief-justice-its-a-lie-to-say-we-execute-homosexuals/
Because trials on moral charges in Iran are usually held in closed sessions, it is impossible to know how many people have been executed for same-sex conduct, but four men were sentenced to death in 2012 for sodomy.
Two teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, were hung for homosexual acts in 2005, though the country claims they were actually guilty of rape.
The Iranian legal code does not differentiate between rape and consensual homosexual acts, with both punishable by death, though the judge can choose the method of execution.
In addition, lesbians in the country are routinely forced to have gender reassignment surgery, in order to ‘fix’ their sexual orientation.
Over 1000 such surgeries were carried out between 2006 and 2010.
http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/iran-bans-paper-for-interviewing-homosexual-365133
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2007/08/07/iranian-paper-shut-down-for-interviewing-lesbian/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-08-06/iran-paper-banned-for-interviewing-gay-activist/2523518
6 August 2007: Iran has shut down leading moderate daily Shargh for the second time in less than a year after it published an interview with a woman accused of being a homosexual activist, staff members said.
The ban on Shargh (East), the favourite newspaper of Iranian liberals, comes amid growing pressure on the press in Iran and follows the closure of fellow moderate daily Ham Mihan last month.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-493570/Gays-tortured-hanged-says-Iranian-minister-meeting-British-MPs.html
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/article2603258.ece
http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2012/apr/18/iran-cleric-condemns-homosexuality30 Oct 2016:
Two young Iraqi men were found dead in the Sadr district of Baghdad, said to be victims of “Emo killing” in the country’s capital city.
Ammar Douraji, officer at the Intelligence Department of Baghdad Operations, told BasNews that the two victims were shot dead and their bodies were left in eastern Baghdad.
Killing of Iraqi teenagers whom are being referred to as "emos", a term originally used in the West to describe youths who listen to a melodic style of rock music, and dress in alternative clothing, has been a new human rights challenge in the country as extremists alternatively describe them as Satanists, vampires, gays, masons, or all of the above.
Douraji said they have gathered ground intelligence suggesting that a group of militia men, connected to a Shi’ite cleric, have recently started targeting emos.
The Iraqi Interior Ministry says only five teenagers have been killed for the reason during the past few years, while unofficial figures indicate around 90 people.
3 Nov 2016:
A group of unidentified armed men in Baghdad kidnapped five teenagers reportedly for wearing tight closes and having Western style.
A military source told Mada News Agency that the abductees are referred to as "emos", a term originally used in the West to describe youths who listen to a melodic style of rock music, and dress in alternative clothing, but in Iraq they are know as homosexuals.
According to the military sources, the incident took place in Sadr district where two other young men, said to be “emos”, were killed earlier this week.
However, the fate and location of the abductees remain unknown up to the moment, and perpetrators have not been identified by the authorities in the Iraqi capital.
http://www.niqash.org/en/articles/society/5627
https://www.albawaba.com/loop/iraqi-actor-reportedly-murdered-%E2%80%98being-gay%E2%80%99-992472
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/features/2017/07/03/Iraqis-blame-ISIS-mentality-for-the-killing-of-flamboyant-Iraqi-student-.html
2 July 2017: Karar Noushi, an Iraqi actor, killed by Shia militias for his gay-looking lifestyle.
http://www.niqash.org/en/articles/society/5627
https://www.albawaba.com/loop/iraqi-actor-reportedly-murdered-%E2%80%98being-gay%E2%80%99-992472
https://english.alarabiya.net/en/features/2017/07/03/Iraqis-blame-ISIS-mentality-for-the-killing-of-flamboyant-Iraqi-student-.html
2 July 2017: Karar Noushi, an Iraqi actor, killed by Shia militias for his gay-looking lifestyle.
=====================
Homophobia in UK
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/manchester/6087430.stm
26 Oct 2006: A gay rights campaigner has accused an Imam of saying the execution of gay Muslims to stop the spread of disease is "for the common good of man".
Dr
John Casson visited Arshad Misbahi, the Imam at Manchester Central
Mosque, to discuss concerns over the execution of homosexual Muslims in
Iran.
Dr Casson said the comments were made in a private meeting but he wrote them down afterwards.
The Imam did not deny the comments but said he had been misinterpreted.
Mr
Misbahi said he was only talking about the Islamic perspective on
homosexuality and stressed he would make a statement later on Thursday.http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-derbyshire-16581758
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/men-found-guilty-of-handing-out-anti-homosexuality-leaflets-6292446.html
20 January 2012: "Three Muslim men have been found guilty of stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation after distributing a leaflet that said Islam called for anyone caught committing homosexuality to be executed." ... "The leaflet was handed out outside and near the Jamia Mosque in Derby's Rosehill Street and in streets around the local neighbourhood in July 2010. It was made and used as part of a campaign to publicise a protest in response to the Gay Pride parade due to be held in Derby on July 10 that year."
http://archive.is/zGunn
https://www.thenews.com.pk/archive/print/628669-uk-muslim-mps-scared-after-voting-for-gay-marriage-bill
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2279703/Death-threats-UKs-Muslim-MP-voted-gay-marriage.html#ixzz43eT3g8IA
16 Feb 2013: "Britain's most senior Muslim MP has received death threats after voting in favour of gay marriage. Police
have told Sadiq Khan, Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary, that the
threats are credible enough that he should review the security around
him and his family following the Commons vote......
Mr
Khan – who became Britain’s first Muslim Minister to attend Cabinet in
the last Government – has been condemned by British-based hardline
clerics, who have accused him of ‘selling out’ his religion.
Mufti Muhammed Aslam Naqshbandi Bandhalevi, who is the head imam of the
Jamia Islamia Rizvia mosque in Bradford, has issued a fatwa, or ruling,
declaring Mr Khan an ‘apostate’ from Islam and said he should ‘repent
before Allah’. Some veiled threats against all the Muslim MPs who backed gay marriage are visible online."=============================
http://www.islamtimes.org/ur/doc/news/82765/
4 July 2011:
اسلام آباد میں امریکی سفارتخانے میں ہم جنس پرستوں کی تقریب منعقد کرنے پر پاکستان کے مذہبی رہنماؤں نے شدید ردعمل کا اظہار کرتے ہوئے حکومت سے مطالبہ کیا ہے کہ معاملے کا نوٹس لیا جائے ورنہ شدید احتجاج کیا جائیگا۔ سید منور حسن، پروفیسر ساجد میر، قاری حنیف جالندھری، مولانا فضل الرحیم، مولانا عبدالرؤف فاروقی، لیاقت بلوچ، صاحبزادہ فضل کریم، ثروت اعجاز قادری، مظہر سعید کاظمی، فرید پراچہ اور دیگر نے کہا کہ ایسی سرگرمیاں اسلام اور ملکی قوانین کے منافی اور عذاب الٰہی کو دعوت دینے کے مترادف ہیں، امریکی حکمران پاکستان میں ہم جنس پرستی کی بیماری پھیلانا چاہتے ہیں۔ امریکی سفیر کا ہم جنس پرستوں کو حمایت کا یقین دلانا ثابت کرتا ہے کہ امریکہ اس منصوبے کے پیچھے ہے، یہ ڈرون حملوں کے بعد سب سے بڑا حملہ ہے لیکن ماضی کی طرح امریکہ کی یہ کوشش بھی ناکام ہو گی۔
http://ur.rasanews.ir/detail/news/2976/-100
http://ur.abna24.com/urdu/service//archive/2011/07/05/251554/story.html
5 July 2011:
ہم جنس پرستی ﻣلک ﻣیں نہ ﺻرف غیر قانونی ہے ﺑلکہ یہ ﺳراسر ﺑنیادی اسلامی قوانین کی ﺳخت ﻣخالفت اور ایسے قبیح افعال کے ﻣرتکب افرادسخت ﺗرین ﺳزاﺅں کے ﻣستحق ہیں سیکریٹریری جنرﻞ ﻣﺠلس وﺤدت ﻣسلمین پاکستان نے ﻣزید کہا کہ جو ﻟوگ اس قسم کے قبیح اور غیر اسلامی افعال کی ﺗرویج کے ﻣرتکب ہورہے ہیں انہیں کڑی سے کڑی ﺳزا دی جانی ﭼاہیے ۔
علامہ جعفری نے ﻣزید کہا ایک ﺑات ﻣزید واﻀﺢ ہوﺠاتی ہے کہ امریکی ﺳفارت ﺧانے کے اصل اہداف کیا ہیں اور اب ان اہداف کے واﻀﺢ ہوﺠانے کے ﺑﻌد ﺣکومت کﻮ ﭼاہیے کہ امریکہ سے ﻣکمل قطع ﺗﻌلق کرے۔
http://www.islamtimes.org/ur/doc/news/83487
7 July 2011:
جماعت اہل سنت پاکستان کے مرکزی سیکریٹری جنرل علامہ سید ریاض حسین شاہ نے اسلام آباد امریکی سفارت خانے میں ہم جنس پرستوں کی تقریب کے انعقاد کی شدید مذمت کرتے ہوئے کہا کہ امریکی سفارت خانے کا اقدام اسلام دشمنی ہے، حکومت پاکستان فی الفو ر امریکی سفیر کو طلب کر کے احتجاج کرے۔
http://edition.myjoyonline.com/pages/news/201111/76397.php
13 August 2011: Hajia Sadika Bonsu Yeboah, President of the Ladies Association of the Ahmadiyya Muslims Mission, on Sunday attributed the rise of homosexuality in society to the negative influences of human rights.
According to her, homosexuality had been on earth for a long time, but had become more popular in recent times due to negative effects of human rights.
He said for this reason, society must abhor it and fight against other negative influences of human rights.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2014/08/11/iran-chief-justice-its-a-lie-to-say-we-execute-homosexuals/
Because trials on moral charges in Iran are usually held in closed sessions, it is impossible to know how many people have been executed for same-sex conduct, but four men were sentenced to death in 2012 for sodomy.
Two teenagers, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, were hung for homosexual acts in 2005, though the country claims they were actually guilty of rape.
The Iranian legal code does not differentiate between rape and consensual homosexual acts, with both punishable by death, though the judge can choose the method of execution.
In addition, lesbians in the country are routinely forced to have gender reassignment surgery, in order to ‘fix’ their sexual orientation.
Over 1000 such surgeries were carried out between 2006 and 2010.
http://www.iol.co.za/news/world/iran-bans-paper-for-interviewing-homosexual-365133
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2007/08/07/iranian-paper-shut-down-for-interviewing-lesbian/
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2007-08-06/iran-paper-banned-for-interviewing-gay-activist/2523518
6 August 2007: Iran has shut down leading moderate daily Shargh for the second time in less than a year after it published an interview with a woman accused of being a homosexual activist, staff members said.
The ban on Shargh (East), the favourite newspaper of Iranian liberals, comes amid growing pressure on the press in Iran and follows the closure of fellow moderate daily Ham Mihan last month.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-493570/Gays-tortured-hanged-says-Iranian-minister-meeting-British-MPs.html
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/middleeast/article2603258.ece
Nov 13, 2007: Homosexuals
deserve to be executed or tortured and possibly both, an Iranian leader
told British MPs during a private meeting at a peace conference, The
Times has learnt.
Mohsen
Yahyavi is the highest-ranked politician to admit that Iran believes in
the death penalty for homosexuality after a spate of reports that gay
youths were being hanged.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/asylum-for-lesbian-on-the-run-from-iran-1622991.html
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/07/iran-executes-men-homosexuality-charges
Sep 7, 2011: Three Iranian men have been executed after being found guilty of charges related to homosexuality, according to a semi-official news agency. .... "The executions for sodomy might be among the rare cases where the Iranian authorities admit to having executed men convicted of homosexual acts ... Iranian authorities normally present such cases as rape, but rape has not been mentioned in this case," said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, a spokesman for IHR.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/asylum-for-lesbian-on-the-run-from-iran-1622991.html
16 Feb 2009: A lesbian who fled Iran after her girlfriend was arrested and sentenced to death in Tehran has won her battle to be granted asylum in Britain.
Supporters of Pegah Emambakhsh, 41, who claimed she would be executed if she was deported back to her homeland, welcomed the Government's change of heart last night after their hard-fought, four-year campaign.
...
The case is the second victory by a gay Iranian seeking sanctuary in the UK. In May last year, Mehdi Kazemi, a 20-year-old student, was granted asylum after his supporters said he also faced the death penalty if sent home. Mr Kazemi came to London to study in 2005 but in April 2006 discovered that his partner had been arrested in Iran and had named Mr Kazemi as his boyfriend before being executed.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/sep/07/iran-executes-men-homosexuality-charges
Sep 7, 2011: Three Iranian men have been executed after being found guilty of charges related to homosexuality, according to a semi-official news agency. .... "The executions for sodomy might be among the rare cases where the Iranian authorities admit to having executed men convicted of homosexual acts ... Iranian authorities normally present such cases as rape, but rape has not been mentioned in this case," said Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, a spokesman for IHR.
18 April 2012:
Ayatollah Abdollah
Javadi-Amoli,
an Islamic scholar based in Iran's holy city of Qom, said in a speech
among his followers that homosexuals are inferior to dogs and
pigs, according
to the news website Khabaronline.
"If a society commits a new sin, it will face a new punishment," he said while interpreting Qur'anic verses about prophet Lot whose tribe Isalmic scholars say was punished by God for sodomy. "Problems like Aids did not exist before."
Citing the Qur'an, Javadi-Amoli said politicians who pass laws in favour of homosexuals are lower than animals. "Even animals ... dogs and pigs don't engage in this disgusting act [homosexuality] but yet they [western politicians] pass laws in favour of them in their parliaments."
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65433
21 May 2012:
http://islamtimes.org/ur/doc/news/198027/
24 Sep 2012:
یو ایس ایڈ مسلمانوں کو ترقی و کمال دینے نہیں بلکہ تباہ و برباد کرنے آئی ہے۔ یو ایس ایڈ پہلے خیر پختونخواہ میں منصوبوں پر کام کرتی رہی جس کے نتیجے میں دہشت گرد پلے بڑھے ہیں اور جو دہشت گرد ڈالروں سے پلے ہیں وہ پاکستان کی سلامتی کے لیے خطرہ بن چکے ہیں۔ ان خیالات کا اظہار مرکز انجمن امامیہ بلتستان کے سینئر نائب صدر علامہ سید مظاہر حسین الموسوی نے کیا۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ یہی یو ایس ایڈ ہے جس نے تین چار سال تاجکستان میں مسلسل کام کیا اور اتنے مختصر عرصے میں لوگوں کو اتنا بے غیرت اور بے شرم بنا دیا کہ وہاں " گے پیریڈ " تک کا انعقاد بغیر کسی روٹ ٹوک کے کروایا۔
ان کا کہنا تھا کہ گزشتہ سال اسلام آباد میں امریکی ایمبیسی میں پاکستانی ہم جنس پرستوں کا اجتماع کر کے پاکستان کی نظریاتی سرحدوں پر حملہ کیا تھا۔ جس پہ ہمارے بے غیرت حکمرانوں نے چپ سادھ لی۔ انہوں نے مزید کہا کہ جو دشمن رسول پاک (ص) ہوں، جو توہین رسالت (ص) کے مرتکب ہوں وہ کس طرح مسلمانوں کے خیر خواہ ہو سکتے ہیں۔ یاد کھیں یو ایس ایڈ اسلامی اقدار و تشخص کے لیے زہر قاتل ہے۔ عشق رسول (ص) کا تقاضا ہے کہ ان کی راہیں مسدود کریں۔
The Iranian report also attacked Hollywood for depicting gays in positive terms on the silver screen. Moreover, according to the article, schools in California include homosexuality in their education plans because of a recommendation of a Jewish university.
http://www.eurasianet.org/node/65433
21 May 2012:
“The dance party [Eurovision] and the [gay] pride will attract all sorts of anti-Islamic groups and perverts,” declared prominent Shiite clergyman Ayatollah Mohsen Mojtahed Shabestari. He demanded that the Azerbaijani authorities cancel the “Zionist” and “gay” festival or face the full wrath of the people and God. A senior Iranian lawmaker, Mohammad Esmayeel Kossari, also warned that Azerbaijan will “regret” hosting such events.
The words "Azerbaijan" and "gay pride" are not often seen together, but one senior Azerbaijani presidential administration official nonetheless felt the need to clarify matters for Iran.
“We are hosting a song contest, not a gay parade,” bristled Ali Hasanov, head of the administration's political and public policy department and Azerbaijan's de-facto point-man for all Eurovision PR matters. “I do not know who got this idea into their heads in Iran.”
http://islamtimes.org/ur/doc/news/198027/
24 Sep 2012:
یو ایس ایڈ مسلمانوں کو ترقی و کمال دینے نہیں بلکہ تباہ و برباد کرنے آئی ہے۔ یو ایس ایڈ پہلے خیر پختونخواہ میں منصوبوں پر کام کرتی رہی جس کے نتیجے میں دہشت گرد پلے بڑھے ہیں اور جو دہشت گرد ڈالروں سے پلے ہیں وہ پاکستان کی سلامتی کے لیے خطرہ بن چکے ہیں۔ ان خیالات کا اظہار مرکز انجمن امامیہ بلتستان کے سینئر نائب صدر علامہ سید مظاہر حسین الموسوی نے کیا۔ انہوں نے کہا کہ یہی یو ایس ایڈ ہے جس نے تین چار سال تاجکستان میں مسلسل کام کیا اور اتنے مختصر عرصے میں لوگوں کو اتنا بے غیرت اور بے شرم بنا دیا کہ وہاں " گے پیریڈ " تک کا انعقاد بغیر کسی روٹ ٹوک کے کروایا۔
ان کا کہنا تھا کہ گزشتہ سال اسلام آباد میں امریکی ایمبیسی میں پاکستانی ہم جنس پرستوں کا اجتماع کر کے پاکستان کی نظریاتی سرحدوں پر حملہ کیا تھا۔ جس پہ ہمارے بے غیرت حکمرانوں نے چپ سادھ لی۔ انہوں نے مزید کہا کہ جو دشمن رسول پاک (ص) ہوں، جو توہین رسالت (ص) کے مرتکب ہوں وہ کس طرح مسلمانوں کے خیر خواہ ہو سکتے ہیں۔ یاد کھیں یو ایس ایڈ اسلامی اقدار و تشخص کے لیے زہر قاتل ہے۔ عشق رسول (ص) کا تقاضا ہے کہ ان کی راہیں مسدود کریں۔
Sep 5, 2012: Mashregh News, an outlet affiliated with radical Islamists in Qom, wrote that the US and the UK are using money from Jews to spread homosexuality throughout the world. The article blasted Israel for promoting demonstrations for gay rights and specifically decried Tel Aviv as the gay paradise on earth. It also ridiculed Conservative Judaism for accepting gay rabbis, and urged Western governments to stop people from engaging in gay – and therefore immoral – actions, and provide medical treatment for homosexuals in order to stop their conduct.
Writing on Monday on the gay website GGG, Chris Karnak said the Mashregh item “reads like an article from the Nazi agitation paper Der Stürmer.”
Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, an expert on minority groups in Iran, told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday that the article is “against gays, against the West and anti-Semitic.” He added that “the text legitimizes the execution of gays in Iran; they made a text not only to ridicule the West but to provide a reason why Iran executes gays.”Writing on Monday on the gay website GGG, Chris Karnak said the Mashregh item “reads like an article from the Nazi agitation paper Der Stürmer.”
The Iranian report also attacked Hollywood for depicting gays in positive terms on the silver screen. Moreover, according to the article, schools in California include homosexuality in their education plans because of a recommendation of a Jewish university.
http://gaycitynews.nyc/gays-and-the-syrian-revolution/
28 Sep 2012:
ML: Once the uprising started, government TV accused revolutionaries of being gay.
MH: It was the regime’s lowest point before the armed revolution started. Again, because homosexuals are the easiest target, which all Syrians would agree with, the regime started a homophobic campaign to say that the revolution is immoral because people who own the news channels, which are supporting it, are homosexuals. They went further by saying that everyone who is active in the revolution is gay — i.e., “sinners, immoral, and want to damage the fabric and the structure of the conservative Syrian community,” according to Ali Shueibi, who was the one behind the campaign. He used the word “luti” [sodomite].
Gays, Christians, Sunnis, Alawites, and others, might be pro-regime or anti-regime. My friends come from different backgrounds — Christians, Sunnis, Alawites, Ismaelis, Kurds, Assyrians, Circassians, etc. Most of them are anti-regime. Four of our contributors in the magazine are Christians, and three of them are anti-regime. People are entitled to their opinions. I only have a problem with those who support the killings and injustice.
http://ur.abna24.com/service/reports//archive/2012/12/31/377058/story.html
31 Dec 2012:
Dr. Trond Ali Linstad"
ڈاکٹر تروند علی لینستاد ـ ناروے کے مقامی شیعہ ڈاکٹر و سماجی کارکن ہیں جنہیں نومبر 2012 ان کی انسانی خدمات کے عوض ناروے کا قومی شاہی اعزاز دیئے جانے کا اعلان ہیرالڈ پنجم کی طرف سے ہوا لیکن یہ اعزاز ان سے صہیونیت کی مخالفت، ہمجنس پرستی کی مخالفت اور اسلامی جمہوریہ ایران کی حمایت کی بنا پر واپس لیا گیا۔
prominent hardliners spoke out against the annual Eurovision Song Contest, which was held in the Republic of Azerbaijan in 2013. They condemned a side event of the contest, the gay parade, and warned Azerbaijan authorities about it. Mohammad-Reza Mahdavi Kani, chairman of the Assembly of Experts, which has the power to choose Iran’s Supreme Leader, called the event “the parade of faggot beasts.”
More famously, former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regularly enjoyed attacking homosexuality. "In Iran we don't have homosexuals like in your country,” he told an audience at Columbia University in September 2007. Ahmadinejad has referred to homosexuality as the cause of mental and social ills in television interviews. And, in 2009, during a victory speech following the presidential election, he compared homosexuals to thieves, claiming that some of his opponents had pandered to such “filth” to get their votes.
But it is not only hardliners who publicly criticize homosexuality. In his letter of complaint to Keyhan, the cleric Mohammad Motahari himself used a pejorative term for homosexuals and praised Professor Clark for being anti-gay. Earlier this month, Ali Motahari, brother of Mohammad Motahari and an MP, called homosexuals “deviants” and compared homosexuality to bestiality.
“I did hear that Mohammad Motahari courageously and patiently defended me against the attacks,” Clark says, “[But] since I can’t read Farsi, I wasn’t sure what he wrote about me. In all of my writings on gay rights—and there aren’t many of them—I defend the civic virtues of tolerance and liberty and argue against any religious majority seeking to legislate their own religious and moral beliefs. I think the very rights that protect gay people are the rights that protect the freedom of religion.”
Motahari’s letter went on to criticize Keyhan for interviewing Thierry Meyssan, the French journalist and gay activist whose book The Big Lie argues that the attacks of September 11 were carried out by a dissenting group with links to the US military. Motahari also criticized Iranian state television for regularly interviewing Mayssan about September 11 attacks.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/oct/10/iran-arrests-network-homosexual-satanists
Oct 10, 2013: Iran's revolutionary guards have announced the arrest of "a network of homosexuals and satanists" in the western city of Kermanshah, close to the country's border with Iraq, prompting fresh alarm over the treatment of gay people in the Islamic republic.
The news website of the revolutionary guards in Kermanshah province, home to the country's Kurd ethnic minority, reported on Thursday that their elite forces had dismantled what it claimed to be a network of homosexuals and devil-worshippers.
A number of foreign nationals, including Iraqis, were also among those detained, the report said, adding that eight of the group were married to each other.
The group were picked up from one of the city's ceremony halls, which they had rented for a birthday party. The guards' webiste said they were dancing as the raid ensued.
The revolutionary guards claimed the group had been under surveillance for some time but did not specify how many people were arrested.
Authorities in the Islamic republic have previously likened homosexuals to satanists in an apparent attempt to further smear them in the eyes of the country's religious conservatives.
http://tundratabloids.com/2013/10/yle-islam-debate-evening-social-democrat-and-greens-mps-on-the-ropes-for-failure-to-outright-demand-tolerance-and-equality-for-sexual-minorities-from-muslim-community/
Oct 30, 2013: imam, Bahmanpour Abbas, spoke frankly on Islam evening, that being gay is forbidden, and that the Shari’ah demands the death penalty for it.
......
– Islam deems morally gay sexuality as wrong. The penalty is given if the gay sexual act is seen, i.e. the penetration is seen by four witnesses, so if they aren’t openly in the market square when they do it no punishment will come. It’s a very, very rare punishment Bahmanpour said.
The program presenter asked for an explanation as to what is the punishment in accordance with Sharia law for gay sexual acts.
– It is a death sentence, Bahmanpour said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Bareilly-cleric-issues-fatwa-against-homosexuality-live-in-relationships/articleshow/27666252.cms
Dec 20, 2013: Bareilly-based cleric has issued a fatwa against homosexuality and live-in relationships calling them anti-Islam and said Shariyat has provisions to punish those indulging in such acts.
The fatwa was issued by Mohammad Afzaal Rizwi, the mufti of Darululoom Ifta at Dargah Aala Hazrat, Bareilly in response to a query by Akhlaq Ahmed Siddiqui Noori on the issue.
The mufti has cited two hadis (teachings of the Prophet Mohammed) from the Quran as a premise for his fatwa. As per Hadis Dur-re-mukhtar, such acts could attract severe punishment, he said. "A person may be burnt alive, pushed from a high wall or be beaten publically with stones if he indulges into either of the two behaviours," the fatwa states.
http://www.dawn.com/news/1102826
April 27, 2014: LAHORE: Short in stature and soft spoken, Pakistani paramedic Ehsan* was probably destined for a life of relative anonymity, until he began killing homosexual men he met online. The 28-year-old father-of-two was arrested last week and confessed to three brutal murders, saying he wanted to send out a message about the “evils” of homosexuality, though police insist he had sex with his victims first.
Ehsan said he was the victim of sexual abuse by an older boy when he was around 10 years old and had led a deeply unhappy childhood.
“I have hated them ever since what happened to me,” he said.
The killings have sent shockwaves through the underground gay community of the eastern city of Lahore, which fears Ehsan could be lionised as a hero in a conservative society where homosexuality is stigmatised and sodomy is punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29926553
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29832690
6 Nov 2014: The gay people in Iran pushed to change their gender
The killings have sent shockwaves through the underground gay community of the eastern city of Lahore, which fears Ehsan could be lionised as a hero in a conservative society where homosexuality is stigmatised and sodomy is punishable by up to 10 years in jail.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-29926553
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29832690
6 Nov 2014: The gay people in Iran pushed to change their gender
http://en.abna24.com/service/middle-east-west-asia/archive/2015/07/12/700389/story.html
http://en.rasanews.ir/detail/News/2920/-100
11 Jul 2015: Ayatollah Muhammad al-Ya’qoubi, an Iraqi source of emulation, harshly criticized the recent legalization of same-sex marriage by the Supreme Court of the United States.
“The approval of the homosexual marriage law by Barack Obama was intended to lowering the status of humans to animals, but it is even lower than that,” he said.
....
He said that the practice of homosexuality is against human nature and the laws of creation. This action is not even practiced by animals because the nature of all creatures is for marriage and procreation between male and females.
The Iraqi scholar stated that homosexuality is contrary to the laws of personal privacy and stated that it is an infringement which means it is a violation of laws of reason.
Ayatollah Ya’qoubi stated that homosexuality was a type of “deadly disease” which violates human freedom. “People who are interested in committing this disgraceful act should be treated. Ethical and social illnesses are more severe and worse than physical illnesses,” he said.
He said Western countries have claimed to have advanced in regard to technology and the growth of human civilization, but are incompetent in dealing with some issues such as moral decadence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBlwxqqAprQ
http://www.watermarkonline.com/2016/03/25/anti-gay-preacher-set-speak-orlando/
16 April 2016: “When is the death sentence given? It’s when they kill the souls of at least four people by doing the act in public,” Sekaleshfar said in a 2013 discussion at the University of Michigan in Dearborn titled “Islam and Homosexuality.” “If you are to die, you will sin less, and with this sentence you will be forgiven and you won’t be accountable for the behavior,” said Sekaleshfar. “Given Dr. Sekaleshfar’s extensive background in bioethics and Islamic spirituality, we have invited him to share his views and research,” Husseini Islamic Center secretary Imran Pirmohamed told Watermark via email. They have yet to clarify whether or not they endorse their Sekaleshfar’s views that gays be killed. The Center is located at 5211 Hester Ave in Sanford.
http://www.urdu.shiitenews.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=40809:2016-05-06-13-04-51&Itemid=235
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/senior-saudi-cleric-homosexuality-should-not-be-punished-2030515999
3 May 2016:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-36399393
27 May 2016: Iranian authorities are investigating the women's national football team because they believe some players might be homosexual.
http://irqr.ca/2016/?p=398
28 May 2016:
Ayatollah Khamenei claimed that “there is no worst form of moral degeneration than [homosexuality].” He warned them that the West’s sexual freedoms will not stop at legalization of homosexuality and will one day lead to legalized “incest and even worse.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BGZ69wtOj8K/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36276965
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gay-mullah-flees-iran-for-conducting-same-sex-weddings-a7073301.html
June 8, 2016: A Muslim gay cleric who conducted same sex weddings in secret in Iran has been forced to leave the county after receiving death threats from fellow religious figures.
http://en.rasanews.ir/detail/News/2920/-100
11 Jul 2015: Ayatollah Muhammad al-Ya’qoubi, an Iraqi source of emulation, harshly criticized the recent legalization of same-sex marriage by the Supreme Court of the United States.
“The approval of the homosexual marriage law by Barack Obama was intended to lowering the status of humans to animals, but it is even lower than that,” he said.
....
He said that the practice of homosexuality is against human nature and the laws of creation. This action is not even practiced by animals because the nature of all creatures is for marriage and procreation between male and females.
The Iraqi scholar stated that homosexuality is contrary to the laws of personal privacy and stated that it is an infringement which means it is a violation of laws of reason.
Ayatollah Ya’qoubi stated that homosexuality was a type of “deadly disease” which violates human freedom. “People who are interested in committing this disgraceful act should be treated. Ethical and social illnesses are more severe and worse than physical illnesses,” he said.
He said Western countries have claimed to have advanced in regard to technology and the growth of human civilization, but are incompetent in dealing with some issues such as moral decadence.
17 Oct 2015: "Also, this isn't just an Islamic State story," he continues. "If you are gay, you have many enemies intent on your persecution: the government, Islamic State (IS), al-Nusra [the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda]. That's not including your own extended family: they are often enemy number one." On the table in front of us is an untidy ring-binder detailing the torture that has been inflicted on gay men in Syria. Methods include the shabeh, which roughly translates as "the ghost" and involves handcuffing the victims' arms behind their backs and using them to hoist their bodies into the air, putting extreme pressure on the shoulder sockets, often until they pop out.
Other men accused of being gay, who have been abducted in the night by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's agents, describe being placed, helpless and motionless, inside the rims of large tyres and brutalised with electrodes and iron bars. The testimony of one Homs teenager details, in spidery writing, how he had his testicles smashed with a hammer by a member of the Syrian Republican Guard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBlwxqqAprQ
http://www.watermarkonline.com/2016/03/25/anti-gay-preacher-set-speak-orlando/
16 April 2016: “When is the death sentence given? It’s when they kill the souls of at least four people by doing the act in public,” Sekaleshfar said in a 2013 discussion at the University of Michigan in Dearborn titled “Islam and Homosexuality.” “If you are to die, you will sin less, and with this sentence you will be forgiven and you won’t be accountable for the behavior,” said Sekaleshfar. “Given Dr. Sekaleshfar’s extensive background in bioethics and Islamic spirituality, we have invited him to share his views and research,” Husseini Islamic Center secretary Imran Pirmohamed told Watermark via email. They have yet to clarify whether or not they endorse their Sekaleshfar’s views that gays be killed. The Center is located at 5211 Hester Ave in Sanford.
http://www.urdu.shiitenews.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=40809:2016-05-06-13-04-51&Itemid=235
http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/senior-saudi-cleric-homosexuality-should-not-be-punished-2030515999
3 May 2016:
A leading Saudi cleric has publicly stated that homosexuality should not be criminally punished, during a visit to Sweden to visit Syrian refugees.
“Even though homosexuality is considered a sin in all the Semitic holy books, it does not require any punishment in this world," Dr Salman al-Ouda said in an interview with the Swedish Sydsvenskan newspaper, adding that homosexuals would be punished "after death."
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-36399393
27 May 2016: Iranian authorities are investigating the women's national football team because they believe some players might be homosexual.
http://irqr.ca/2016/?p=398
28 May 2016:
Ayatollah Khamenei claimed that “there is no worst form of moral degeneration than [homosexuality].” He warned them that the West’s sexual freedoms will not stop at legalization of homosexuality and will one day lead to legalized “incest and even worse.”
https://www.instagram.com/p/BGZ69wtOj8K/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36276965
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/gay-mullah-flees-iran-for-conducting-same-sex-weddings-a7073301.html
June 8, 2016: A Muslim gay cleric who conducted same sex weddings in secret in Iran has been forced to leave the county after receiving death threats from fellow religious figures.
Homosexuality is banned in Iran and punishable by execution under the country’s strict Sharia law. Minors can receive 74 lashes for homosexual activity, while women can receive 50 lashes if convicted of lesbianism and face the death penalty after a fourth conviction.
In April 2014, Iran’s Supreme Leader described homosexuality as “moral bankruptcy” and “libidinous behaviour”, while in September of the same year, the Iranian Speaker of Parliament called homosexuality “modern Western barbarism”.
With homosexuality taboo in Iran, Taha, the gay mullah, attempted to keep his sexual orientation hidden, but was exposed after he began conducting gay weddings.
Speaking to the BBC, Taha said: “Yes, I conducted gay weddings. The last few months were very difficult. The authorities questioned me several times about my choice of friends.
“They were saying I am a cleric and I shouldn’t be meeting gay men. The other mullahs were suspicious about my sexual orientation and threatened me with death.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/03/why-c-fam-the-catholic-fundamentalists-you-ve-never-heard-of-just-cozied-up-to-iran.html
July 3, 2016: C-FAM, the far-right-wing Center for Family & Human Rights—formerly known as the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute—which focuses on international anti-LGBT advocacy.
.......
At the UN, these groups have formed an unholy alliance with the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan, and several African nations to advance a radical “family” agenda that favors what they call the “natural family” and denies any recognition to everyone else: single-parent families, LGBT people, and, most of all, women. Last year, these 25 countries formed an umbrella, the Group of Friends of the Family (GoFF)
http://dailym.ai/2dVM0HX
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/717691/Shaykh-Hamza-Sodagar-radical-islamic-kill-gays-speech-london-kuffar-Ahlulbayt-Islamic
https://www.memri.org/tv/hizbullah-sec-gen-nasrallah-warns-against-legalization-gay-marriage-lebanon-defends-early
https://www.memri.org/tv/hizbullah-sec-gen-nasrallah-warns-against-legalization-gay-marriage-lebanon-defends-early/transcript
18 March 2017:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/03/why-c-fam-the-catholic-fundamentalists-you-ve-never-heard-of-just-cozied-up-to-iran.html
July 3, 2016: C-FAM, the far-right-wing Center for Family & Human Rights—formerly known as the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute—which focuses on international anti-LGBT advocacy.
.......
At the UN, these groups have formed an unholy alliance with the likes of Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Pakistan, and several African nations to advance a radical “family” agenda that favors what they call the “natural family” and denies any recognition to everyone else: single-parent families, LGBT people, and, most of all, women. Last year, these 25 countries formed an umbrella, the Group of Friends of the Family (GoFF)
http://dailym.ai/2dVM0HX
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/717691/Shaykh-Hamza-Sodagar-radical-islamic-kill-gays-speech-london-kuffar-Ahlulbayt-Islamic
Oct 5, 2016:
US-born radical Shaykh Hamza Sodagar – who has dubbed non-Muslims "kuffars" and released a video detailing "one of five ways" to kill homosexuals – is speaking at the Islamic Republic of Iran School in London which started on October 4 and runs until October 12.
In his depraved video, Sodagar details different “punishments” for homosexuals, calling for their beheading and for them to be set alight.
He also advocates throwing gay people off cliffs, tearing down walls on top of homosexuals and even suggests killing them by combining each method.
The inflammatory speech is believed to have been recorded sometime in 2010.
His intolerant views are compatible with strict Sharia law, which deems homosexuality as a crime.
https://www.memri.org/tv/hizbullah-sec-gen-nasrallah-warns-against-legalization-gay-marriage-lebanon-defends-early
https://www.memri.org/tv/hizbullah-sec-gen-nasrallah-warns-against-legalization-gay-marriage-lebanon-defends-early/transcript
18 March 2017:
Hizbullah Sec.-Gen. Nasrallah Warns against Legalization of Gay Marriage in Lebanon, Defends "Early Marriage"
Hizbullah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah took a stand against efforts to legalize same-sex marriage in Lebanon, saying that homosexuality "defies logic, human nature, and the human mind." In his address, delivered on March 18, the "Muslim Women's Day," and broadcast on Al-Manar TV, Nasrallah criticized the "culture of opposition to early marriage," saying that proponents of this culture were "unknowingly serving Satan and the devils." "The response should be the spreading of the culture of early marriage."
Hassan Nasrallah: "There are societies abroad that were ruined by homosexuality, and now they are exporting it to Lebanon and to the Arab and Islamic world. They want to legalize same-sex marriage in the parliament. Homosexual relations defy logic, human nature, and the human mind. These relations... Some people say: 'But this is about freedom of choice. What's the problem?' No, this is a big problem. A big problem. In Lebanon and elsewhere, everybody - the Muslims, the Christians, and the non-religious... Anyone who cares about his society and about the purity of humanity must take a stand against this kind of enterprise.
[…]
"[They] are trying to spread - even in our own society - a culture of opposition to early marriage. There was a time when early marriage was accepted. Now there are people who say that early marriage is wrong, that early marriage has negative ramifications... Do these people know better than Allah, who created Mankind, and demanded this, through His prophets, culminating with the Prophet Muhammad? Do they know better than the Creator of Man whether or not early marriage serves the interests of Mankind? They may argue that there are cases of divorce following early marriage. But I can present you with more cases of divorce, following marriage at the age of 20, 30, or 40. This cannot serve as proof. This cannot serve as proof. On the contrary, those who spread the culture of opposition to early marriage in our society are unknowingly serving Satan and the devils. They are also serving our enemy by causing the moral ruin of our society. The response should be the spreading of the culture of early marriage."
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/04/21/gunshots-fired-as-30-men-arrested-in-iran-accused-of-being-gay/
21 April 2017: Iran has arrested more than 30 men accused of being gay at a party, it has been reported. According to reports, dozens of men were arrested at a private party in the Esfahan province.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/04/21/chechnyas-president-i-will-eliminate-the-gay-community-by-the-start-of-ramadan/
21 April 2017: Chechnya’s president: I will eliminate the gay community by the start of Ramadan
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/25/europe/russia-chechnya-gay-men-journalist-hiding/
25 April 2017:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/muslim-council-secretary-general-resign-gay-son-wedding-vancouver-canada-ali-reza-paul-siddika-shia-a7844756.html
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/07/15/a-muslim-mom-attended-her-gay-sons-wedding-now-shes-being-punished-for-it/
15 July 2017: Secretary General of North American Shia organization forced to resign after attending her son's gay wedding
https://twitter.com/maasalan/status/908279045456056321
14 Sep 2017:
Iran continues with arrests of #Telegram channel admins, arresting 6 running pages that "promote homosexuality"
https://iranwire.com/en/features/5880
17 Feb 2019: An Iranian student has gone on trial for “acting against national security by normalizing homosexual relationships.”
https://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/04/21/gunshots-fired-as-30-men-arrested-in-iran-accused-of-being-gay/
21 April 2017: Iran has arrested more than 30 men accused of being gay at a party, it has been reported. According to reports, dozens of men were arrested at a private party in the Esfahan province.
http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2017/04/21/chechnyas-president-i-will-eliminate-the-gay-community-by-the-start-of-ramadan/
21 April 2017: Chechnya’s president: I will eliminate the gay community by the start of Ramadan
http://edition.cnn.com/2017/04/25/europe/russia-chechnya-gay-men-journalist-hiding/
25 April 2017:
A prominent Russian reporter who revealed horrific details of a crackdown on gay men in Chechnya has told CNN she is in hiding after receiving death threats.
Elena Milashina, a journalist at the Russian-language Novaya Gazeta newspaper, said she abandoned her apartment in Moscow and plans to leave Russia altogether after Muslim clerics in Chechnya delivered a fiery sermon calling for "retribution" against her and other journalists.
http://www.urdu.shiitenews.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=46922:2017-05-04-13-17-39&Itemid=239
4 May 2017:
http://www.urdu.shiitenews.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=46922:2017-05-04-13-17-39&Itemid=239
4 May 2017:
تبصرہ: علامہ راجہ ناصر عباس جعفری
لبرل ورلڈ آرڈر کو اسلام ناب سے خطرہ هے .ایسا اسلام جسکی جڑیں کربلا سے ملتی هیں ،جو ظلم ستیز بهی هے اور مظلوموں کے حقوق کا داعی بهی ،جو حیات طیبہ کی طرف دعوت دیتا هے ،جب کہ لیبرل ورلڈ آرڈر جس زندگی کی طرف دعوت دیتا هے اسے امریکن یا یورپین لائف اسٹائل کہتے هیں جس کا سمبل لاس ویگاس هے .جہاں جوا هے اور شراب ،جہاں زنا هے اور هم جنس بازی ،آج هی جرمنی کی صدر اعظم انجیلا مرکل نے روسی حکومت سے کہا هے کہ هم جنس بازوں کے حقوق کا خیال رکهے ،ایسا نظام جس کا طبیعی نتیجہ یہ هے کہ بچے حرام زادے هوں.فیملی سسٹم نہ رهے ،پاک دامن اور عفت معاشرے سے ختم هو جائے .سنا هے
کہ آل سعود کا شہزادہ بهی ریاض میں بے حیائی کا بڑا مرکز بنانے جا رها هے
لبرل ورلڈ آرڈر کو اسلام ناب سے خطرہ هے .ایسا اسلام جسکی جڑیں کربلا سے ملتی هیں ،جو ظلم ستیز بهی هے اور مظلوموں کے حقوق کا داعی بهی ،جو حیات طیبہ کی طرف دعوت دیتا هے ،جب کہ لیبرل ورلڈ آرڈر جس زندگی کی طرف دعوت دیتا هے اسے امریکن یا یورپین لائف اسٹائل کہتے هیں جس کا سمبل لاس ویگاس هے .جہاں جوا هے اور شراب ،جہاں زنا هے اور هم جنس بازی ،آج هی جرمنی کی صدر اعظم انجیلا مرکل نے روسی حکومت سے کہا هے کہ هم جنس بازوں کے حقوق کا خیال رکهے ،ایسا نظام جس کا طبیعی نتیجہ یہ هے کہ بچے حرام زادے هوں.فیملی سسٹم نہ رهے ،پاک دامن اور عفت معاشرے سے ختم هو جائے .سنا هے
کہ آل سعود کا شہزادہ بهی ریاض میں بے حیائی کا بڑا مرکز بنانے جا رها هے
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/muslim-council-secretary-general-resign-gay-son-wedding-vancouver-canada-ali-reza-paul-siddika-shia-a7844756.html
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/07/15/a-muslim-mom-attended-her-gay-sons-wedding-now-shes-being-punished-for-it/
15 July 2017: Secretary General of North American Shia organization forced to resign after attending her son's gay wedding
https://twitter.com/maasalan/status/908279045456056321
14 Sep 2017:
Iran continues with arrests of #Telegram channel admins, arresting 6 running pages that "promote homosexuality"
https://iranwire.com/en/features/5880
17 Feb 2019: An Iranian student has gone on trial for “acting against national security by normalizing homosexual relationships.”
The charge was brought against Rezvaneh Mohammadi by Judge Mohammad Moghiseh on February 17.
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