# Does Islam drive homophobic violence? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 12, 2016, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202 "2016-06-12T18:11:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 34
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 12:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/662 "2016-07-03T00:30:26Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > That’s very obvious. > > I never attempted to “explain away” anything. That’s obvious. > [@Trinopus](#): > > You’re being remarkably obtuse here. You, yourself, have never come to grips with the vast majority of Muslims who are good, honest, peaceful, hard-working, sincere, devout, and good neighbors. You keep pointing to the minority who are terrorists, but you have failed to show why this should be generalized to be held against all of Islam. You’ve never come to grips with the hundreds of millions of Muslims who approve of the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy and that falls short of the good, honest peaceful title you bestowed. It does however, correlate with the high level of Islamic terrorism that is seen today. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/663 "2016-07-03T01:12:59Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > That’s obvious. If so, why did you accuse me of failing to do it? You aren’t even making sense in your two-word rebuttals. > [@](#): > > You’ve never come to grips with the hundreds of millions of Muslims who approve of the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy and that falls short of the good, honest peaceful title you bestowed. It does however, correlate with the high level of Islamic terrorism that is seen today. No one here has denied any of that. You keep using the word “correlate” as if it justifies this kind of guilt by association. The word doesn’t mean what you think it does. There is Islamic terrorism. Islam is not a terrorist religion. You keep arguing as if it is, but you cannot get away from blaming good people for things that they have never actually done. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 1:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/664 "2016-07-03T01:21:06Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > You’ve never come to grips with the hundreds of millions of Muslims who approve of the death penalty for apostasy and blasphemy and that falls short of the good, honest peaceful title you bestowed. It does however, correlate with the high level of Islamic terrorism that is seen today. meh Someone goes out with a clipboard and asks a bunch of people how they feel about a particular law in the context of their religion What they say certainly is of interest to social observers. Of course, looking at the actual way that the laws are enforced presents a totally different picture. There are tragic and terrible occasions when LGBT people or apostates in Muslim majority countries are persecuted. On the other hand, such persecution is sufficiently rare, (unless one believes, as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed, that there are no homosexuals in Iran), that when they are tried and convicted of those crime, their punishment makes it into the western news media. If all those Muslims actually believed that they needed to enforce their beliefs, the executions of apostates and homosexuals would be so frequent that they would never be reported outside their local papers, (the way that murders are reported in the U.S.). It is nonsense pointing to polls showing answers to questions and claiming that those societies are pursuing a particular path when those societies are rarely even bothering to carry out the trails or punishments that the polls indicate. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/665 "2016-07-03T02:03:57Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > You keep using the word “correlate” as if it justifies this kind of guilt by association. The word doesn’t mean what you think it does. There is a direct correlation between religious instructions to kill people for for the “sin” of blasphemy/ apostasy/homosexuality and the killing of people for it in the name of the religion. > [@Trinopus](#): > > There is Islamic terrorism. Islam is not a terrorist religion. You keep arguing as if it is, but you cannot get away from blaming good people for things that they have never actually done. I would call killing someone for the sins listed above a bad thing. So, the hundreds of millions of Muslims who approve of this are either non-Muslims and Mohammad didn’t make the laws or the opposite is true. There is no logic in absolving the religion from the acts based on a numbers game when hundreds of millions of Muslims approve of such laws. It’s not a handful of people. It’s millions of people. It’s odd that you acknowledge Islamic terrorism exists but disavow the words/laws of the creator of that religion. There is nothing vague about the instructions. They cannot be interpreted any other way. They can only be ignored. You confuse this acknowledgment as a condemnation of Muslims. It’s an acknowledgement of the cause of Islamic terrorism which means it has to be dealt with on a religious level. that is a catch-22 because it’s blasphemous and the penalty for that is severe. ---
**Author:** ![Magiver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/4491bb/32.png) [@Magiver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Magiver)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/666 "2016-07-03T02:06:33Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > meh > Someone goes out with a clipboard and asks a bunch of people how they feel about a particular law in the context of their religion What they say certainly is of interest to social observers. OMG, how can you say this in the face of all the Islamic terrorism going on in the world? How many attacks since the start of this thread? You just “meh’d” those killings. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 2:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/667 "2016-07-03T02:25:49Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > There is nothing vague about the instructions. They cannot be interpreted any other way. They can only be ignored. We’ve hit bedrock here on an interpretation issue of your own. Namely, you’ve decided that when somebody interprets Muslim scripture in a way that supports violence and oppression, they’re obeying the “literal” “instructions”, and when somebody interprets Muslim scripture in a way that opposes violence and oppression, they’re “ignoring” it. As **coffeecat** noted, “Lev. 20:13 says to execute men for having sex with men”. If Christians and Jews don’t execute men for having sex with me, then by **Magiver** reasoning, that’s because Christians and Jews are merely ignoring that instruction. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/668 "2016-07-03T02:34:46Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > There is a direct correlation between religious instructions to kill people for for the “sin” of blasphemy/ apostasy/homosexuality and the killing of people for it in the name of the religion. . . . So, everyone who opposes abortion is a terrorist, because they’re “correlated” with clinic bombings and doctor snipings. Guilt by association is an ugly moral system. ---
**Author:** ![coffeecat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/coffeecat/32/3405_2.png) [@coffeecat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coffeecat)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 2:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/669 "2016-07-03T02:34:54Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > There is a direct correlation between religious instructions to kill people for for the “sin” of blasphemy/ apostasy/homosexuality and the killing of people for it in the name of the religion. . . . It’s odd that you acknowledge Islamic terrorism exists but disavow the words/laws of the creator of that religion. There is nothing vague about the instructions. They cannot be interpreted any other way. They can only be ignored. I typed “islam apostasy” into a search engine and easily found [this article](http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/05/islam-saudi-apostasy-201458142128717473.html) which can and does interpret the instructions another way. Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/670 "2016-07-03T02:58:04Z")
I’m a little scared to jump into this, especially after 17 pages of shouting, but I never have had much sense, but I would make the argument that Islam does help promote homophobic violence, in that Islam (as well as Christianity and Judaism, but Islam is the focus here), does contain prohibitions against homosexual sex and a link of homosexual sex with immorality and that those teachings have been used by Muslims throughout history to help justify violence against gays and lesbians. Please note what I’m not saying here. I’m not saying that all, or even most Muslims support violence against gays and lesbians. I’m not saying that interpretations of Islam that oppose violence against gays or lesbians don’t exist or are less valid interpretations of Islam that support violence against gays and lesbians. I’m just saying that Islam has helped contribute to homophobia. \ ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/671 "2016-07-03T02:59:26Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > It’s odd that you acknowledge Islamic terrorism exists but disavow the words/laws of the creator of that religion. There is nothing vague about the instructions. They cannot be interpreted any other way. They can only be ignored. Completely false, as demonstrated by the many verses in the Quran which directly contradict verses cited by the pro-violence Muslims. And demonstrated by the millions of Muslims who do, in fact, interpret them in another way. You can pretend that Islam is unique in this way, but it’s not. It’s just like Christianity and Judaism – there are plenty of verses that could be cited to support violence, and plenty of verses that could be cited to support peace. Why are Jews, in general, so much more peaceful and tolerant than Christians? Do you really think the Old Testament is that much more peaceful and tolerant than the New Testament? ---
**Author:** ![nachtmusick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac91a4/32.png) [@nachtmusick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nachtmusick)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/672 "2016-07-03T03:15:13Z")
> [@coffeecat](#): > > I typed “islam apostasy” into a search engine and easily found [this article](http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/05/islam-saudi-apostasy-201458142128717473.html) which can and does interpret the instructions another way. > > Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk Magnificent. I also typed “islam apostasy” into a search engine and also came up with the exact same Al Jazeera article. Surely the creator is sending us a message. Sadly, on my particular search the Al Jazeera article came up five hits down. The first hit was Wikipedia, and the second hit was Former Muslims United. Former Muslims United started off with this: “If you convert you die” I thought that was a buzzkill, so I didn’t read any more. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/673 "2016-07-03T03:31:40Z")
> [@Magiver](#): > > OMG, how can you say this in the face of all the Islamic terrorism going on in the world? How many attacks since the start of this thread? You just “meh’d” those killings. You are (deliberately?) conflating terrorist acts with acts that you claim are being carried out by Muslim governments. You are so bent on demonizing Islam (while refusing to recognize that Islam is not a monolith), that you cannot even keep track of which argument you are supposed to be making from one post to the next. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/674 "2016-07-03T03:35:42Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > I would make the argument that Islam does help promote homophobic violence, in that Islam (as well as Christianity and Judaism, but Islam is the focus here), does contain prohibitions against homosexual sex Yes, we know. So are you agreeing that Christianity and Judaism **also** promote homophobic violence? It’s not in dispute here that homophobic religious extremists very commonly use their extremist interpretation of their religion to justify their homophobia. Since almost all religions contain some kind of prohibitions against homosexual sex, this is a pretty routine tactic for homophobes to employ. The point is that you can’t argue that homophobic violence committed by followers of one religion is due to that religion’s scriptural prohibitions against homosexual sex, **unless you also account for the fact that followers of _other_ religions, which _also_ have scriptural prohibitions against homosexual sex, currently commit _less_ homophobic violence**. Because otherwise your argument is completely fallacious. It’s like trying to claim that monkeys live in trees because they have long tails, while disregarding the fact that kangaroos **also** have long tails but **don’t** live in trees. [QUOTE=Captain Amazing] I’m just saying that Islam has helped contribute to homophobia. [/QUOTE] Nobody here is in the least denying that some interpretations of Muslim doctrine have been used to facilitate homophobia, just as some interpretations of Jewish and Christian doctrines have been used to facilitate homophobia. Where the irrational Islamophobic bigotry comes in is in the attempts to argue that homophobia on the part of Muslims is **directly attributable to Islam itself because of its scriptural prohibitions of homosexuality** , while simultaneously claiming that homophobia on the part of, e.g., Christians and Jews is **not** directly attributable to Christianity and Judaism, **even though those religions _also_ contain scriptural prohibitions of homosexuality**. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/675 "2016-07-03T03:39:36Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > meh > Someone goes out with a clipboard and asks a bunch of people how they feel about a particular law in the context of their religion What they say certainly is of interest to social observers. > > Of course, looking at the actual way that the laws are enforced presents a totally different picture. There are tragic and terrible occasions when LGBT people or apostates in Muslim majority countries are persecuted. On the other hand, such persecution is sufficiently rare, (unless one believes, as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claimed, that there are no homosexuals in Iran), that when they are tried and convicted of those crime, their punishment makes it into the western news media. If all those Muslims actually believed that they needed to enforce their beliefs, the executions of apostates and homosexuals would be so frequent that they would never be reported outside their local papers, (the way that murders are reported in the U.S.). > > It is nonsense pointing to polls showing answers to questions and claiming that those societies are pursuing a particular path when those societies are rarely even bothering to carry out the trails or punishments that the polls indicate. So if, say, 70% of Southern white folks say black people should be lynched, but only a tiny number of lynchings actually take place every year, should we shrug it off as, \*\*"Ah, they only \*\*say \*\*black folks should be lynched, but they rarely actually \*\*do **it?"** ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/676 "2016-07-03T03:46:10Z")
> [@nachtmusick](#): > > Sadly, on my particular search the Al Jazeera article came up five hits down. But that in no way contradicts **coffeecat** ’s rebuttal of **Magiver** ’s ignorant and false assertion that Muslim doctrines “cannot be interpreted any other way” (than the way he chooses to interpret them). Because **coffeecat** easily found a counterexample, namely, an interpretation of Muslim doctrine on apostasy which is **different** from the interpretation that **Magiver** claimed was the only one possible. The issue is not how many Google hits this particular article on this interpretation happens to have received: the issue is that **Magiver** was flat-out wrong in asserting that such an interpretation cannot possibly exist. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/677 "2016-07-03T03:57:21Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > So if, say, 70% of Southern white folks say black people should be lynched, but only a tiny number of lynchings actually take place every year, should we shrug it off as, \*\*"Ah, they only \*\*say \*\*black folks should be lynched, but they rarely actually \*\*do **it?"** Of course nobody is suggesting that we should “shrug off” lynchings or any other form of terrorist violence. But what we **should** do, in your hypothetical case, is to **reject bigoted assertions that it’s the mere fact of being a Southerner that causes one to support lynchings of black people**. We know from the history of race relations in the US that there were many white Northerners who supported lynchings, and many white Southerners who opposed them. While it’s true that support for lynchings was much more prevalent in the South, that was the outcome of a long and complex political and cultural history which resulted in widespread racist and violent **interpretations** of white Southernness. Assuming that living below a certain North American latitude, **in and of itself** , makes a white person pro-lynching is nothing but bigoted Southophobia. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/678 "2016-07-03T04:23:45Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > So if, say, 70% of Southern white folks say black people should be lynched, but only a tiny number of lynchings actually take place every year, should we shrug it off as, \*\*"Ah, they only \*\*say \*\*black folks should be lynched, but they rarely actually \*\*do **it?"** If you want to make that argument, you are free to do so. That is not what happened in the historical record, so I would not defend that sort of odd claim. ---
**Author:** ![nachtmusick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ac91a4/32.png) [@nachtmusick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nachtmusick)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/679 "2016-07-03T04:35:43Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > Completely false, as demonstrated by the many verses in the Quran which directly contradict verses cited by the pro-violence Muslims. And demonstrated by the millions of Muslims who do, in fact, interpret them in another way. > > You can pretend that Islam is unique in this way, but it’s not. It’s just like Christianity and Judaism – there are plenty of verses that could be cited to support violence, and plenty of verses that could be cited to support peace. > > Why are Jews, in general, so much more peaceful and tolerant than Christians? Do you really think the Old Testament is that much more peaceful and tolerant than the New Testament? It is not just like Christianity in this way, nor is it like Judaism. Christianity does not have the doctrine of Jihad, and Islam does not have the concept of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. Obviously some followers take upon themselves the role of speaking for God, and obviously they have to accept the zeitgeist of the moment when they do so, but it is both their desire and their mandate to hew as closely to the doctrines as they can. The doctrines are, in short, that Jesus was a hippy and Mohammed was a conqueror. No not most Christians or Muslims are even aware of the details of their faith, but their are millions who are, and therefore the details matter. They believe, and they believe with such fervor that they will commit their lives to the church, to the mosque, or to suicide. Of course many Jews also believe, but their belief does not ask their death or the death of apostates. The doctrine of martyrdom does ask this, and it is no coincidence that this doctrine has consequences. Blame those who send the martyrs to their deaths all you want, but they march as ordered because they believe. Do not tell me that they don’t believe. They say so and they say so and they say so. Why on earth would anyone accept the facile whitewash that you offer when the actors themselves fall all over themselves to explain their motives? Implicate Christianity equally all you want - that is no skin off my hide. But don’t give me your sanctimonious charges of bigotry for recognizing the abject truth that radical Islam wants you to understand in the very worst way. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 4:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/680 "2016-07-03T04:44:39Z")
Nachtmusick care to answer [#654](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=19450203#post19450203)? CMC fnord! ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2016, 4:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202/681 "2016-07-03T04:57:06Z")
> [@nachtmusick](#): > > . . . Christianity does not have the doctrine of Jihad . . . Christianity had something called “Holy War,” almost exactly the same as Jihad. Look at the Reconquista of Spain in the late 1400s. > [@](#): > > . . . and Islam does not have the concept of rendering unto Caesar what is Caesar’s. . . . Many modern Islamic nations have secular courts, and elected parliaments. They do, in fact, separate Caesar from Mohammed. Of course, the separation isn’t total – but neither is it total in some “Christian” nations. The U.S. still has a great number of lawmakers trying to ban abortion on Christian religious grounds. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202.md?page=33) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-islam-drive-homophobic-violence/757202.md?page=35)