Where are the pro-gay moslems?

Not only do Arabs know about and discuss cunnilingus and just about every other sex act imaginable, but the ones I met teaching in Qatar joke about it frequently. Heck…daily! This is in the only country in the world other than SA to be an official Wahabi state mind you.

One of my male students had a cellphone that had a little cartoon of fornication as a screen saver. Another (favorite!) 35-ish male student would greet me with a daily “How are your balls today, Teacher?” And then there was Hamad (there are many Hamads, but this guy was also a fave student) who told me in class about the chick he met in Bahrain. “She sucked me and swallowed, Teacher.” I was a little miffed at him… because he disowned knowledge of the past tense in English in order to get into an easier class level!

There is far more sexual activity, hetero- and homo-, in Muslim society than you would imagine.

The only other Muslim nation (the vast majority of the world’s Muslims non-Arab) that banned driving for women was Qatar and they repealed that in the mid-90s.

If you spend 30 minutes in a club in Abu Dhabi or Dubai and count the hookers, or watch a Lebanese music video, I’m pretty sure the notion that the full range sex acts are that foreign to Arabs or Muslims would be quelled.

How do they square that with their religious beliefs?

Through hypocrisy, I guess. Same way Christians do.

In a lot of cases that would be correct; I imagine any sex outside of marriage would be covered by hypocrisy… There are also some small movements of gay men and lesbians whose interpretations of Islamic law allow them to be gay, just as there are such movements in other religious traditions.

I should also note that identification as “gay” is different across cultures. I think being a ‘top’ helps you ‘not be gay’ in all-male sex acts, fooling around with other guys as a teen may be ‘exempt,’ etc. My understanding is that a similar dynamic operates in Brazil vis-a-vis transsexuals and “straight” men.

You can actually to my oberservation get tagged a homosexual or bi- in Qatar more from being clean-shaven all the time (beards or at least a 5 o’clock shadow being the style) than from having been orally serviced by another guy.

Go figure.

Crandolph: You can actually to my oberservation get tagged a homosexual or bi- in Qatar more from being clean-shaven all the time (beards or at least a 5 o’clock shadow being the style) than from having been orally serviced by another guy.

Landsakes, I bet that’s a direct survival in cultural memory of the typical homosexual sex roles of eunuchs (who don’t grow facial hair) in the medieval and early modern Ottoman Empire. As a historian, I gotta say, cool-o.

That being the case, you’ll be tickled to hear that there was a Turkish military outpost in Doha in the 19th and very early 20th centuries. Certainly the hinterlands of Turkish influence, but also a distinct possibility.

I’m flashing on Lawrence of Arabia . . . “You’re very fair. Are you Circassian?”