CAIRO – Gay rights activists have historically often been outspoken and highly
visible homosexuals – San Francisco city supervisor Harvey Milk, for example, or Israel’s
first openly homosexual member of parliament Uzi Even. Not only is
Egyptian journalist, now author, Ahmed Saad soft-spoken and unassuming, but he
is also a devoted Muslim and, he says, a heterosexual.
Aged just 20, with
delicate features and a thin build, Saad initially appears more like a pensive
young scholar than a passionate gay rights activist in a conservative Muslim
society. Yet he says he seeks to defend gay men, even though his attitude toward
homosexuality is hardly liberal.
Hostility towards homosexuality has deep
roots in Islamic culture and tradition, and many Muslims believe that it
constitutes a crime warranting execution. Saad asserts, however, that this
attitude represents a blatant misunderstanding of Koranic text: “God,” he
insists, “sentenced the homosexuals to death [at Sodom and Gomorrah] only after
they refused his guidance.”
From Saad’s point of view, refusal to change
is the true transgression – not homosexuality itself. He believes that every
homosexual deserves a second opportunity to be straight.
“DON’T FORGET
that homosexuals exist among those closest to you and need your help,” implores
Saad as an author’s note in his first book,
Shab Takaya, published by Al-
Alamiya last month. (The title translates literally as “pillow boy” and is a
derogatory term for homosexuals; the author uses it as a criticism of the
society that stigmatizes them.)
The story begins when a young boy named Haytham
is mysteriously found hanging from a rope in his room as part of what initially
appears to be suicide. As the tale progresses, the novel’s nameless protagonist
– a journalist like Saad himself, whose speech Saad says reflects his own views
– seeks to uncover details surrounding Haytham’s death. Saad uses his
protagonist’s journey to explore – and condemn – the treatment of homosexuals in
Egyptian society.
Yet the extent to which Saad actually defends
homosexuals remains a matter of interpretation, which explains why since the
book’s publication, Saad has received threats and insults from heterosexuals and
homosexuals alike. His book argues for societal acceptance of homosexuals and an
end to stigmatization.
Nonetheless, Saad envisions an Islamic society
that treats homosexuality as a curable illness. “Society has a critical role to
play in treatment,” writes Saad’s anonymous protagonist, as “any disease,
whether physical or psychological, demands support from society and especially
from the patient’s close relatives.” Without “the right kind” of support, “the
patient’s frustration grows” until he surrenders himself to the
disease.
Convinced that their lifestyles are unhealthy and go against
God, Saad said in a recent interview that most homosexuals would seek treatment
if provided a supportive atmosphere and the opportunity to do so. As to the
minority who refuse treatment because they believe in exercising what the West
calls individual liberty, most can be disabused of such ideas, he argued. For
the remainder, his words were harsh: “As Sodom and Gomorrah’s homosexuals were
executed for failing to heed God’s words, so should homosexuals be ‘stoned to
death,’ as decreed by Islam, if they refuse to change.”
“The homosexual
does not live alone by himself in society,” asserted Saad, whose small build and
reserved demeanor bely the determination with which he conveys his message. “If
[a homosexual] is freely left to practice his sexuality openly and without
shame, he endangers society in its entirety. He will influence children and
infect them with his disease.”
The young author is not an easy
conversationalist. But once he gets going, he expresses himself articulately,
choosing his words carefully and employing an elevated standard of colloquial
dialect readily identifiable as belonging to media personalities and the
educated elite.
Yet Saad does not hail from elite society. He comes from
Minya, a city in Upper Egypt, and currently lives with his aunt in Cairo’s
Mattariya area, a place known (though this is true for most of the city) for its
poverty. He came to Cairo to attend a government trade school and work as a
journalist at an Egyptian youth magazine called Shabab Masr (Young
Egyptians).
GOVERNMENT PERSECUTION of homosexuals in Egypt is well
documented. International criticism reached a climax in 2001 when 52 men
were arrested aboard a boat in what become known as the “Queen Boat affair.”
Forced to undergo beating and forensic examinations, they were vilified during
trials that followed as Egyptian media sources revealed their real names and
addresses while branding them as agents against the state. In the end, under
international pressure, 23 men were handed three-year jail sentences and the
rest were acquitted.
However, many argue that homosexuals face the most
danger in Egypt not from the government, which is primarily concerned with
preserving its survival, but rather from society, where they risk blackmail,
assault and murder, even by the members of their own families.
What
stands out about Saad’s book, then, is that it highlights social – rather than
governmental – persecution, an element of homosexual abuse that often goes
unnoticed in developing countries.
Nevertheless, Saad’s story is not the
first to deal with the plight of homosexuals in Egyptian society. His
pleas for greater, albeit emphatically limited social tolerance echo ones made
in Mostafa Fathi’s bestseller, Balad al-Awlad (Country of Boys), published in
late 2009, though Fathi defended homosexuals using secular notions of individual
liberty, not strict interpretations of Islam.
Nor is Saad the first to
call for a gentler approach to homosexuality in the name of Islam. Faisal Alam,
a Pakistani American, gained widespread attention in the West when establishing
the Al-Fatiha Foundation in the US in 1998. The organization helps gay Muslims
come to terms with their sexuality in the context of Islam, while promoting what
its mission statement calls “Islamic notions of justice, peace, and tolerance.”
In 2001, members of Al-Fatiha were sentenced to death in a fatwa issued by
Al-Muhajiroun, an international organization that seeks to restore an Islamic
caliphate.
GETTING HIS book published was not easy. Saad spent months
approaching major publishing houses and bookstores, one by one. All
rejected his book for the same reason: the taboo nature of its subject matter,
even though the Fathi book had succeeded in breaking the barrier when
introducing the subject to Egyptian audiences one year earlier. Fathi’s
determination in the face of widespread rejection had led him to create a new
publishing company, Shabab Books, to publish his book. Saad, for his part,
eventually landed a contract at Al- Alamiya, but the few stores that then agreed
to carry it have generally failed to put it on display. To purchase
Shab Takaya,
indeed, one must ask for it by name or topic.
Saad said he based his
characters on what he saw and heard from people he met through
manjam.com, a
dating site popular among gay Egyptians. Since he could not present himself as a
journalist because no one would agree to talk with him, he said he pretended to
be gay himself – a deception he considered “the only way possible” to meet gays
in person and learn about their lives.
The experience taught him, the
author said – in what may seem particularly antiquated from a Western
perspective – that society “causes young men to be gay.”
All of his
story’s gay characters trace the origins of their homosexuality to being
abandoned by their parents, provided an improper upbringing, influenced by their
peers or raped.
The boy Haytham’s homosexuality, for example, stems from
a father who provides “no tenderness” and whose “harshness grows year after
year.” His mother, for her part, “exists merely as a vehicle to give birth, for
she lacks any principles of upbringing.”
After one of Haytham’s
schoolmates “whispers into his ear... convincing him that [homosexual] behavior
was permissible,” Haytham’s conversion to homosexuality was
complete.
According to Saad’s protagonist in the book, homosexuals may be
divided into “those who surrender to the matter, and those who see the matter
from all its medical, societal and religious aspects. The former proliferate in
the West, where they are free from religion and “the morals connected to it, and
the surrender to instinctive takes hold.” The latter, see “homosexuality
as an infestation patiently dealt with by patient and doctor.”
In heroic
struggle, “they expel efforts, endure suffering, beckon God’s aid and hope for
his reward,” a reward that is virtually guaranteed as those who fail to succeed
nevertheless find redemption: “They do not despair, no matter how small their
measure of success, for the mission brings them closer to God.”
The
problem with Egyptian society, according to Saad, is that its pervasive
intolerance precludes homosexuals from seeking help; “If I tried to change,”
says one of the story’s characters, Mahmoud, “mine would become the second hazy
murder case. I would be buried next to Haytham.”
“We know that
homosexuals possess the capacity to change, because every sin in Islam has a way
of avoiding it,” asserted Saad, fervently opposing what he labels a
predominately Western view that people are born with a fixed, unalterable sexual
preference. “Every problem in Islam carries a solution.”