Ahmadinejad and the Homosexuality He Seeks to Deny

[Emit]

An Indian Muslim man's personal jihad:

Parvez Sharma
Ahmadinejad and the Homosexuality He Seeks to Deny

Mahmoud Ahmadi Nejad, the "humble" former mayor of Tehran, has now been thrust on the international stage and if most of the media in the West is to be believed, he is positively Hitlerian.

Not particularly blessed with the dashing good looks I associate with so many Iranian men, the president's refusal to wear the illegal tie (that great symbol of Western imperialism) with his suits gives him at least that "air of debonair," as an Iranian homosexual friend of mine pointed out (Being particularly randy, my friend admits to having a secret crush on the president. I look at him speechlessly, and blame it on the Iranian national condition of taarof).

I am not surprised at Mr. Ahmadi Nejad's denial of homosexuality in the country he tries hard to rule. I expect nothing less of him or any other leader, really, in the so-called Middle East.

Unfortunately, this former mayor falls easily into the post-September 11 trap and satisfies the hunger that Americans have for "Evil." There seems to be no better caricature of the other side of the Good vs. Evil world now as persistent in the American mind as post-1979 Iran. New York's right-wing tabloids feed this hunger and proclaim "the evil has landed" barely minutes after his plane touches down.

Clearly George Bush's ridiculous simplification of the world into the good guys and the bad guys, into black and white, seems to have worked considerably in many parts of the nation formerly known as "the land of the free." ...

~snip~

Clearly the homosexuality he seeks to deny is alive and (sometimes) thriving from Shiraz to Tehran to Isfahan and wherever else he may choose to look. Homosexuality, a "condition" as natural as heterosexuality, has thrived as long as Islam has, and has often spread rapidly through Islamic lands with the blessings of rulers, artists, poets, musicians, Sufi mystics and many others. Mr. Ahmadi Nejad, so occupied with trying to make sure that America's overextended Marines do not enter fairest Persia, clearly has had little recourse to his own nation's remarkable history, from around 559 BCE onward, in making his claim that Iran is homosexual-free. He would need to travel outside Tehran for just a few hours and pay homage at Hafez's grave in Shiraz -- to realize that this man, the poet known as the "soul of Iran" to this day had a more nuanced understanding of the persistence of same sex love in Persia. He would also need to re-visit the portions of his constitution that make homosexuality 'punishable by death' and that are frequently used to torture those whose existence he denies.


What Mr. Bollinger has done successfully is to give much fodder for the "Evil Satan" mills, running on borrowed time in recent years; what Mr. Ahmadi Nejad does so well is keep the well-oiled machine of Iran-phobia and Islamophobia running rapidly in this nation, America, that I have chosen to call home. It is clear that the sometimes tragic and sometimes comical events at Columbia were peopled with many who have never visited Mr. Ahmadi Nejad's Iran, and that their knowledge of the country is mediated largely by the hysterics of the mainstream Western media. The friendly folk at Fox and friends of course have continued to supply their ignorance in frenzied fashion during this short 'visit'.

~snip~

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/parvez-sharma/ahmadinejad-and-the-homos_b_66209.html

I posted on Parvez Sharma's interview on NPR yesterday: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=1959763&mesg_id=1959763

Here's more excerpts from his latest entry at Huffington:

~snip~

Clearly, in these times of the slickly packaged and devastatingly ignorant "War on Terror," the desire for nuance, for understanding, has been lost. Knowledge and intellectual curiosity are clearly undervalued; to vilify and demonize Mr. Ahmadi Nejad in the absence of any real understanding of the context from which he comes is all too easy. The kind of "Evil Satan" rhetoric that has been drummed up for a quarter of a century in Iran finds its perfect mirror in America today. The religious extremism found in parts of Iran is no different than the kind that has crept into the American psyche.

I must, however, thank the Iranian president profusely. He has unintentionally, and probably through some hurried, bungled translation, given me the perfect platform to get audiences to engage with A Jihad for Love. I have always known that this documentary would be presenting Islam's unlikeliest storytellers: gay and lesbian Muslims. I also now have in him an unlikely spokesperson/ publicist to kick-start many new discussions about homosexuality within our communities. In the last 48 hours, after I published a feature for The Huffington Post, I have been deluged by emails from both Iranian and non-Iranian friends and strangers alike. We have hotly debated the semantics of what the President actually said. The consensus at this point seems to lie on his denial of the existence of openly gay people in Iran.

As I have filmed A Jihad for Love, I have struggled to explain the difficulties of language to many, including the mostly American production team I have worked with in New York. Iranian culture resembles India's, where I grew up, in many ways; Persian was in fact the language of the Mughal courts only a few hundred years ago. As I have taken my camera to many parts of the many different worlds of Islam, I have only been able to confirm what I always knew. The terminologies of "liberation theology" or even identity constructs, social or political, like "gay," "lesbian," "bisexual," "transgender," "intersex," "queer," etc., that seem to inform so much of the endless debates in the air-conditioned corridors of Western academia or the endless conferences organized by diasporic Muslims and their friends, are of little if any consequence on the streets of Delhi, Lahore, Dhaka, Cairo, Shiraz, or Jeddah. Homosexuality has not only been tolerated but sometimes even openly celebrated in Islamic societies for more than 1,400 years. This is not the kind of homosexual persona that we adopt in the West. A language of affirmation is woefully absent. Marriage -- and let's be clear: marriage of the heterosexual kind -- is not a choice, but a societal and familial obligation. Marching down Main Street holding banners of identity politics and affirmation is certainly not a desirable outcome of any so-called "liberation." Invisibility is the identity often preferred by the majority and I have examined that very "jihad" by taking my camera into that world of "invisibility." This film took six years to make for a reason. The fact that the lives of diasporic Muslims are absent from my film was a clear but difficult choice. And indeed that would be a different, equally worthy project.

What is critical, however, is that we as Muslims not allow the mediators in the Western media and, indeed, our Islamic extremist brothers -- certainly a minority in my opinion -- to define our Islams for us. I usually shun the simplifications of terms like "terrorist" and "fundamentalist." For me, the violent minority that claims to speak for my religion does not adhere to the fundamentals of my faith. The ridicule that the elected president of a nation of more than 70 million, branded a "cruel and petty dictator," has been subjected to by the smallest minority of arrogant opinion makers is appalling. Clearly the war drums are beating again and in the sadly black-and-white American mindscape of today, this nation's overextended troops continue the ill-informed crusades of their leaders. These are troubling times, yet for artists, as in all times of dissent and repression, the atmosphere is rich and full of possibility. My struggle, my jihad as I define it for myself, keeping all Qur'anic tenets in mind, grows stronger. That jihad is to continue to avoid the easy trap of being an apologist for my faith, and to also rightfully criticize what I know is deeply wrong within it. We Muslims are members of the world's fastest growing religion, indeed the second largest. Many of us have been misunderstood and unheard for too long, and many of us will need to wage critical jihads within ourselves and our own communities to decide who will speak for all of our different Islams.

~snip~

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/parvez-sharma/my-jihad-in-america-and-_b_66684.html

I think listening/reading to what Parvez Sharma has to say is very insightful when attempting to discuss homosexuality in the Muslim world. He explains what one might expect -- that it took six years to make his film and he details why, and how this was managed. But, he also touchess upon how Westerners need learn a few things about the complexity of the issue -- that homosexual issues in the Muslim world cannot necessarily be defined in Western terms.

Here's his blog site: http://www.ajihadforlove.blogspot.com/

And here he is on The Hour, George Stroumboulopoulos of the CBC in Canada, with an excerpt of his movie: http://www.cbc.ca/thehour/video.php?id=1719

[MADem]

1. He was on The Hour (Canadian show) last night... nt

[Emit]

2. Yes, I posted a link to that interview in my OP

:hi:

[Crazy Dave]

3. My father was in Iran in the early 70's during the Shah's regine

And said that homosexuality was definitely there, that it was very popular, and it was very open. He said many advances were made at him during his short assignment there. He had made friends with an Iranian family and they told him that the men in Iran greatly out numbered the women at that period in time. The 10 year Iran vs, Iraq war took care of that in the years that followed.

[Emit]

4. Sharma discusses homosexuality in terms of "almost a rights of passage...

for people sometimes" when discussing homosexuality in various Muslim countries -- he then refers to the common segregation of the sexes and adds, "What are you going to do..."