The Arab Tradition

Islam forbids homosexual acts. Stern punishments are prescribed for those caught engaging in them. Yet, through centuries of Arab culture, there has been a thread of homosexuality which most people were aware of. It was not approved of and marginal to devout mainstream society, but it was quite widespread.

This little poem gives a clue to how they saw transgressions from the straight and narrow:

They made excuses for my lawlessness
and called it folly:
in any case, it's been a lot more fun
than their grave melancholy!

One of the most celebrated poets in Arab literature was Abu Nuwas. He was a companion of the famous Harun al-Rashid, Caliph of Baghdad (786 - 809 CE) when that city was the centre of the magnificent Abbassid Empire.

One day, Abu Nuwas was visiting a friend. When his host excused himself briefly to go to the bathroom, a very good-looking young servant brought in some water. Abu Nuwas took advantage of the opportunity to give the boy a kiss. The servant wiped away the mark of the kiss with his hand, and the poet improvised these stanzas:

You who wipe away my kiss
from your cheek,
fearing if your master saw it,
it would speak

and he'd punish you; if I'd
only known this
fear of yours, beautiful boy,
I'd have kissed away my kiss.

There was a strong preference for teenage boys just after puberty. Their skin was smooth, they were hairless and beardless. There are plenty of anecdotes about such adult-youth liaisons, and this one below also adds a touch of panache. Wittiness is highly prized in Arab culture.

A man was caught in a compromising position with a teenager in the minaret of a mosque. Both of them had their pants down. "What were you doing?" the man was asked.

"I wanted to exchange the cord that holds my trousers up for the one that holds his up," he replied.

Most of the teenagers who were objects of desire had no homosexual inclinations, and they often resented the attention they received.

One day, a man was looking at a teenager, a boy whose pale, pure, radiant features were marked also by a kind of innate nobility. When he kept on staring, the boy challenged him: "God on high will call you to account for the low thoughts you're thinking of me!"

"God will call you to account, instead," retorted the man, "for the way you've knocked me over with one glance!"

When teenagers were in such demand, they would know they commanded a price. Hustling was a common activity.

A young servant was being reproached because of his manner of dressing. "Your master wears cheap clothing, and you go about dressed in fine fabrics! Where does your money come from?"

"How can you deny me the right to dress like this? Don't you know that the Royal Mint is located in my baggy trousers?"

Rich households kept male slaves for the sole purpose of sex. Such a slave was called a ghulam. It was a Persian practice that the Arabs adopted around the time of the caliph Harun al-Rashid.

An emir one day sent his personal servant to fetch one of the young slaves he owned. The man went to call the slave, who had just eaten a meal a little too abundantly seasoned with garlic.

"Come on," he said. "The emir has called for you. He's waiting for you in his reception room."

When the boy got up to follow him, the servant ordered: "At least wash your hands."

"You're just envious," jeered the slave. "You'll see how soon the smell of garlic will become as exquisite as that of amber or ambergris, compared with the stink of my shit!"

This points out that anal sex was extremely common, of the various kinds of homosexual sex. The anal role was also related to the relative social position of the partner. Furthermore, Arab society then, and even today, made a huge distinction between those who penetrated and those who received the penis. The one who penetrated was seen as the "man" and there was little social stigma to that. Playing the other role meant submission, and such persons were widely despised.

This is very different from the Western way of classification where both sides are stigmatised as homosexuals.

Complaints about homosexual acts came up before the courts regularly, and leaders and learned men had to preach morality frequently, as in the following story. There is everything Arabic about this tale: the witty language, the play of words, the double-meaning of the judge's speech. On the one hand it is about doing battle against temptation and Islam's enemies, and about subduing and administering the infidels' lands. On the other hand, you can read it to mean going to bed with young men. There is on the surface, obeisance to their religion, but underneath, the earthiness of life's pleasures.

A judge -- and in Islam, a judge is first a religious scholar -- was speaking to a congregation about virtue, when a troop of handsome teenagers came in and joined the listeners. The judge noticed them and addressed the throng thus: "Good people, join your voices to mine in prayer, for the number of our enemies increases ceaselessly!"

Then he cried out:

"O Lord, our God! Vouchsafe us unto the usufruct of their scapulae! O Lord, our God! Turn them upon their faces, confide unto us the administration of their nether regions, uncover for us the breaches in their defences and grant our lances potency to penetrate them!"

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