Iftekhar:

[foreign language 00:00:39]

Iftekhar:

The Quran is very specific on the issue of homosexuality. It is very clear, you know, it say that this is not a part of the natural order.

Iftekhar:

"He said to his people, 'Do you commit lewdness such as no people in creation have ever committed before you? For you practise your lust on men in preference to women.'"

Kyriell :

This whole business of claiming a gay identity is a new thing in the world. Same sex relations have been going on in Islamic history for centuries. In the 19th century, homosexuality was something that someone did and not something that someone was.

Kyriell :

Like other Muslims who figured out that they're gay or lesbian, I struggled with sort of reconciling a gay sexual identity with the Muslim religious identity. However, like many others, I think I just rejected it out of hand as a teenager and I was kind of like, "Well, this is a religion that doesn't want me. I'm a person who doesn't want this religion." And so I left it.

Arslan:

Homosexuality is wrong because the Quran says so. If I believe in the Quran, how can I be okay with my sexuality? After a lot of soul searching, I realised that there is no god. Because if there was a god, he would have answered my prayers after a years of prayers and suffering. So that's when I became an atheist.

Kyriell :

I was born and raised in New York City, towards the tail end of Elijah Muhammad's Nation of Islam. And my father was an imam with a huge mosque in the Bronx;

Kyriell :

As the oldest son of the imam, I was expected to uphold traditional values and do all the right things in every situation. But none of that really changed the fact that I liked boys. I told my mom when I was 15. actually, she found out. She was not pleased. My Dad, on the other hand, he was upset for a different set of reasons. I think, as an imam, his kids were supposed to be the good ones. You know, we were supposed to be the model children. There was a matter of sort of public embarrassment if other people were to find out that his oldest son was a homo.

Arslan:

I am not out to my family yet.

Arslan:

Well, of course they want me to get married, but I am not going to marry, and I'm not going to get into a fake marriage and make some poor girl's life miserable. How can you live this double life? On one hand, you believe in God and then you sleep with men. I mean, if you believe in Islam, then definitely you will have to give up all of those desires and live like a good Muslim. Well, of course, if you want to go to heaven. And if you want to burn in hell like me, you can give that all up and say goodbye to God and the Quran and everything else that goes with it and live your life.

Iftekhar:

Okay. Most of the Muslim scholar that I know of, I feel their minds have been more influenced in what happened in the days of the Crusades, you know? And their minds are frozen frozen in that era. But right now we are living in the 21st century. So there is a challenge now on the part of the Islamic scholars to do the interpretation of the Quran really in relation to the events that are happening right now.

Iftekhar:

The Islamic teaching goes this way. They said, "God has created a man and a woman in his image." Because this combination is the only competition that creates children, or fruits. Like [inaudible] men don't create fruit. [inaudible] women don't create any fruit.

Kyriell :

After a couple of years of searching, I found myself sort of thinking of myself as a Muslim again. I kind of feel like it's futile to fight with straight Muslims about my inherent right to exist. I mean, I have better ways to waste my time. I think that a far better use of my energy is to live a righteous life and to live by example and sort of say that, "Yes, one can be gay or lesbian and be Muslim and do good things in the world."

Kyriell :

What human being can tell me that I can not have a relationship with God. Who the hell gave them the right for someone to claim, be he Muslim, Jew, Christian, that I have no right to it because of my sexual identity is bullshit, and I reject it. We are who are, and nothing is really gonna change that.