To enrich the existing debates on Islam and sexual diversity, in the present book, I seek the potential discursive spaces on homosexuality in modern Imāmī legal debates. I have undertaken this research on the thesis that modern Imāmī legal tradition on homosexuality is more flexible and dynamic than one might expect. To address this essential issue, I build the study around the following constructive question: what are the discursive spaces on homosexuality in contemporary reflections within modern Shiʿi legal scholarship? Responding to this central query, the study is premised on the notion that Imāmī legal sources consist of a tradition of sacred (textual) sources, intellectual reasoning, a vast stockpile of (often contrasting) interpretations of these sources, and a distinguished methodological repertoire called ijtihad. Following the same methodology, in this work, I describe, analyse, and critique such textual-exegetical and intellectual-rational discursive aspects concerning homosexuality.

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

An extensive collection of essays that examines the place of homosexuality in the contemporary and classical Muslim world. The place of sexual and gender minorities in the contemporary Islamic world is the subject of fascinating new directions in research and scholarly thought. Islam and Homosexuality gathers together 20 experts exploring these issues to provide an expansive look at the treatment of same-sex interactions in Muslim cultures today. Islam and Homosexuality offers one volume on the specific experiences of gay Muslims today and a second volume viewing the issue from a global perspective. Essays explore the lives of LGBTIQ persons in both Islamic nations and Muslim communities in non-Islamic countries. Additional writings explore the roots of homophobia in the theology of Islam, the various judgments against homosexuality in the different schools of Islamic law, and the potential scriptural basis for including LGBTIQ persons in the Muslim community. No other resource on the relationship between LGBTIQ persons and the world's largest religion covers the topic with anything approaching this work's range or depth.

Homosexuality is anathema to Islam – or so the majority of both believers and non-believers suppose. Throughout the Muslim world, it is met with hostility, where state punishments range from hefty fines to the death penalty. Likewise, numerous scholars and commentators maintain that the Qur’an and Hadith rule unambiguously against same-sex relations. This pioneering study argues that there is far more nuance to the matter than most believe. In its narrative of Lot, the Qur’an could be interpreted as condemning lust rather homosexuality. While some Hadith are fiercely critical of homosexuality, some are far more equivocal. This is the first book length treatment to offer a detailed analysis of how Islamic scripture, jurisprudence, and Hadith, can not only accommodate a sexually sensitive Islam, but actively endorse it.

The present book is a study of the discursive spaces on homosexuality in modern Shiʿi legal scholarship It offers a scholarly assessment of the Shiʿi legal-hermeneutical vectors demarcating the space between the two poles of prohibition and acceptance of homosexuality.

This book examines the religious lives of young adults growing up in inter-religious families in India. It explores complex questions of identity, social background, and religion in twenty-first-century India. The volume studies the religious commitments of young adults, analyses the identity formation process for a critical age group, and discusses the interpersonal dynamics within inter-religious families. Drawing on real life stories of mixed heritage – Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Christian, Jain, Buddhist, and Parsi – this volume will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of psychology, education, sociology and social anthropology, religious studies, politics, and other interdisciplinary studies.

This book highlights the lived experiences of gay Muslims in Malaysia, where Islam is the majority and official religion, and in Britain, where Muslims form a religious minority. By exploring how they negotiate their religious and sexual identities, Shah challenges the notion that Islam is inherently homophobic and that there is an unbridgeable divide between ‘Islam’ and the ‘West’. Shah also gained access to gay Muslim networks and individuals for his in-depth research in both countries, and the book investigates the different ways that they respond to everyday anti-homosexual or anti-Muslim sentiments. Amid the many challenges they confront, the gay Muslims whom Shah encountered find innovative and meaningful ways to integrate Islam and gay identity into their lives. The Making of a Gay Muslim will appeal to students and scholars with an interest in contemporary Islam, religion, gender and sexuality.

This innovative book outlines the great complexity, variety and difference of male identities in Islamic societies. From the Taliban orphanages of Afghanistan to the cafés of Morocco, from the experience of couples at infertility clinics in Egypt to that of Iraqi conscripts, it shows how the masculine gender is constructed and negotiated in the Islamic Ummah. It goes far beyond the traditional notion that Islamic masculinities are inseparable from the control of women, and shows how the relationship between spirituality and masculinity is experienced quite differently from the prevailing Western norms. Drawing on sources ranging from modern Arabic literature to discussions of Muhammad's virility and Abraham's paternity, it portrays ways of being in the world that intertwine with non-Western conceptions of duty to the family, the state and the divine.

In 2005, Iraq drafted its first constitution and held the country’s first democratic election in more than fifty years. Even under ideal conditions, drafting a constitution can be a prolonged process marked by contentious debate, and conditions in Iraq are far from ideal: Iraq has long been racked by ethnic and sectarian conflict, which intensified following the American invasion and continues today. This severe division, which often erupted into violence, would not seem to bode well for the fate of democracy. So how is it that Iraq was able to surmount its sectarianism to draft a constitution that speaks to the conflicting and largely incompatible ideological view of the Sunnis, Shi’ah, and Kurds? Haider Ala Hamoudi served in 2009 as an adviser to Iraq’s Constitutional Review Committee, and he argues here that the terms of the Iraqi Constitution are sufficiently capacious to be interpreted in a variety of ways, allowing it to appeal to the country’s three main sects despite their deep disagreements. While some say that this ambiguity avoids the challenging compromises that ultimately must be made if the state is to survive, Hamoudi maintains that to force these compromises on issues of central importance to ethnic and sectarian identity would almost certainly result in the imposition of one group’s views on the others. Drawing on the original negotiating documents, he shows that this feature of the Constitution was not an act of evasion, as is sometimes thought, but a mark of its drafters’ awareness in recognizing the need to permit the groups the time necessary to develop their own methods of working with one another over time.

The Palgrave Handbook of the Psychology of Sexuality and Gender combines cutting edge research to provide a thorough overview of all the normative - and many of the less common - sexualities, genders and relationship forms alongside psychological and intersectional areas relating to sexuality and gender.