Homosexuality

This is the first podcast in a long series on homosexuality in Sudan. Mideast Youth talks to Ali, a single gay Sudanese man living and working in the Gulf. When Ali started his blog, black-gay-Arab, he was only trying to find himself. Three years later, Ali has a lot of followers and writes about his identity [...]

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6 Iraqi gay people were executed by machine guns in Sader city in April 2009, this makes the number of executed gays in Iraq reach 10 after 4 other executions in March in the last few weeks, 25 boys and men are reported to have been killed in Baghdad because they were, or were perceived [...]

That homosexuality is an illegal and (harshly!) punishable act in almost all Muslim-majority countries is an established fact, and a change in legislation anytime in the foreseeable future is as possible as a cow jumping over the moon. But even in countries where homosexuals don’t face the risk of prosecution, the lifestyle in itself is [...]

After Iman’s post about Parvez Sharma’s new film Jihad for Love…I started thinking about Muslim attitudes towards homosexuality…obviously it is a taboo subject and certainly not something that is accepted by society. In Islam it is generally regarded as completely forbidden- as is the case amongst most religions however one can not but help notice [...]

While Bahrain is considered one of the more tolerant nations in the Middle East, especially in comparison to its Gulf neighbours, homosexuality remains a crime there.
However, Al Menbar bloc, not content that the penalty of fines, imprisonment or deportation acts as a sufficient deterrent, called on tougher measures to “stamp out homosexuality”.
The proposal – which [...]

An Egyptian court convicted five men Wednesday on charges of homosexual behavior and sentenced them to three years in prison, officials said.
Ramadan, a lawyer with the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, said the five men were abused and tortured over the past several months to “extract confessions” from them.
- The AP
It still escapes me why [...]

This is a controversial website, I don’t think anyone can argue that we’re all wise and level-headed moderates with no biases or personal influences. We never claimed that we’re preachers who know right from wrong in this world, we simply engage in discourse in order to learn more about ourselves and those around us. And [...]

A few months ago, a young homosexual couple from Morocco contacted us noting that Mideast Youth does a good job of defending all kinds of rights, whether those of religious minorities, migrant workers, or sex slaves, and they asked a vital question:
“What about us?”
So I immediately wanted to consult our team on having a gay [...]

Very few crime stories of a similar nature get published in our local newspapers. Until they are picked up by the international media, that is. The story of a 15-year old Swiss-French victim of homosexual rape, Alexandre Robert, made big headlines all over the world. Here, it got shyly buried between inadequately [...]

My good Friend Emma sent me this link to an interesting article from the Washington Post about a young Muslim preacher from Egypt named Moez Masoud, who is adopting rather a modern approach of preaching Islamic values. He has his own TV show on Iqra’a , the religious channel part of the Arab Radio & [...]