In August 2005, the United States was party to negotiations regarding the wording of the Iraqi constitution. The United States sanctioned the results, which included a change making Islam “the” rather than “a” main source of Iraqi law. Sharia Islamic law calls for homosexual people to be killed.
Some time around October 2005, the Ayatollah Sistani, writing in a question-and-answer section of the Arab-language version of his official Web site, issued an antigay fatwa. He was asked, “What is the judgment for sodomy and lesbianism?” He replied, “Forbidden. Punished, in fact, killed. The people involved should be killed in the worst, most severe way of killing.”
Reports from gay Iraqi refugees in London who maintain contact with people in their homeland say that Sistani’s fatwa is being carried out. The Badr Brigade is said to be particularly active in antigay persecution. According to the refugees and the Iraqis with whom they are in communication, identifiably gay people are attacked in the streets and beaten to death as surrounding crowds cheer on the killers. The same sources report that unmarried men approaching the age of 30 are given one month to marry a woman and then, if they fail to do so, they are murdered.
It is also reported that identifiably gay people, afraid for their lives, are hiding in the homes of sympathetic friends and relatives, much as Ann Frank sought refuge from the Nazis. They claim that even when Iraqi gays seek safe haven in the Green Zone in Baghdad, they are mocked and turned away by American soldiers. While tangential to the antigay pogrom, further reports say that Badr Brigade members also are killing people perceived to have violated Islamic law—for example, unveiled women and people who don Western dress or listen to Western music.