Deadly Religiosity

Seen on the picture is a 14-year-old boy, hanged in a Baghdad suburb after being accused of sodomy and homosexual behaviour. According to a new report published in the UK, executions of alleged homosexuals are common in Middle Eastern countries and regions ruled by Islamists.

”Detailed and reliable figures concerning Iranian executions for Lavaat (sodomy) are hard to come by, as the government rarely gives out information concerning its criminal justice system. It seems particularly reluctant to provide statistics on sodomy cases, much as Britain and Europe were reluctant to reveal the true scale of executions in the days when sodomy was a capital offence.
Homan, an Iranian lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) exile group, estimated that around 4,000 people had been executed for Lavaat from 1979 until the mid-1990s. An attempt to set up a gay organisation in the early 1980s led to 70 executions. Around 100 gay people were sentenced to death following one raid on one private party in 1992.
A very large number were executed, or rather lynched without trial, as the Ayatollahs began to hijack the Iranian Revolution by the end of 1979. Those killed reportedly included foreign visitors. That year gay activists from the Lavender Crescent Society in San Francisco were taken from the airport in Tehran shortly after their arrival and summarily shot dead. Gay and bisexual men were quite literally hanged from trees at that time. Executions of lesbians took place as well. Additional ’smokescreen’ charges, such as rape and kidnap, were rarely made, seemingly because there was very little international interest or protest at these widespread killings of LGBT people. Since the world did not care much about the execution of queers in those days, the tyrants in Tehran felt no need to disguise their actions and motives.”

Simon Forbes of the British gay and lesbian human rights group OutRage! has written a report based on information gathered from sources inside Iran. His research reveals:

Lynchings by Iran’s security forces, and ”honour killings” by families in the south western province of Khuzestan
Secret hangings in prison
The method of hanging is designed to cause slow, agonising strangulation
Internet entrapment of gay Iranians using foreign-based online gay dating agencies
A pattern of framing gay people on charges of kidnap, rape and paedophilia
Claims of rape are sometimes made to save the family’s honour or to save the passive partner from execution, and are part of an Iranian government propaganda offensive to scapegoat and demonise gay people
Comparisons with Saudi Arabia, where it is also suggested that bogus rape charges are levelled against gay men
Hypocrisy of the mullah’s attitudes towards the abuse of young girls, the rape of both males and females in custody, and widespread sodomy in religious colleges

Why many religious people are so determined to make life horrible for homosexuals, I do not know for sure. What I do know, however, is that neither the Bible nor the Koran promotes this kind of homophobia. There are passages that some interpreters say condemn men engaged in sexual intercourse with each other, but the holy books do not endorse systematic abuse of these men. So, if I were to speculate, I think many religious people enjoy their homophobia because they are cowards—they risk nothing when they put blame on a marginalised minority group.

If you are able to read Dutch, I would like to recommend a superb book on Islam and homosexuality: Islam en homoseksualiteit by Omar Nahas.