Gay Travels in the Muslim World
HARRINGTON PARK PRESS
Out in the World
Michael T. Luongo
Editor
Postcards from Heartthrob Town: A Gay Mans Travel Tales by Gerard Wozek
You Can Run: Gay, Glam, and Gritty Travels in South America by Jesse Archer
Gay Travels in the Muslim World edited by Michael T. Luongo
Gay Travels in the Muslim World
Michael T. Luongo
Editor
First Published by
Harrington Park Press, the trade division of The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street,
Binghamton, NY 13904-1580.
Transferred to Digital Printing 2009 by Routledge
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2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc., 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580. 2007 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, microfilm, and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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The development, preparation, and publication of this work has been undertaken with great care. However, the Publisher, employees, editors, and agents of The Haworth Press are not responsible for any errors contained herein or for consequences that may ensue from use of materials or information contained in this work. The Haworth Press is committed to the dissemination of ideas and information according to the highest standards of intellectual freedom and the free exchange of ideas. Statements made and opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect the views of the Publisher, Directors, management, or staff of The Haworth Press, Inc., or an endorsement by them.
Cover photos by Michael T. Luongo: King Abdullah Mosque in Jordan; Petra valley in Jordan; Border between Palestine and Jordan with mileage points to biblical sites.
Cover design by Kerry Mack.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gay travels in the Muslim world / Michael T. Luongo, editor.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN: 978-1-56023-339-8 (hard : alk. paper)
ISBN: 978-1-56023-340-4 (soft : alk. paper)
1. GaysTravelIslamic countries. 2. Islamic countriesDescription and travel. I. Luongo, Michael.
HQ75.26.I74 G39 2007
910.86'64091767dc22
2006036546
For Z.S., the Afghan poetess with the beautiful eyes,
who helped to open a new world for me
CONTENTS
Foreword
When my friend Michael Luongo asked me to write a Foreword to this book, I felt quite honored. In any other situation I might have felt insulted. It is that whole Oh, shit, Im being used by The White Man for the exploitation of my own people idea. But you see, I came to know about the book long before he even sent the first submission call. Michael, at the time, was working on his first book in the Out in the World series.
When Michael told me about his desire to put a book such as this together, I kind of felt scared, to be honest. It has been the practice of Western travel writers to somehow always make exotic whatever other people they wrote about, and certainly very few would argue that any other people have been more victimized by this practice than Muslims, for so long.
For the longest time, Europe did not take Muslims seriously. Even when Muslims were conquering many Christian-ruled lands in the Middle East and North Africa, Christendom thought, Nah, not those people. They cant hurt a fly. They are too primitive. It would be a long time before Christendom realized we were real people and that our old civilizations were neither dead nor forgotten by us.
At the same time, Michael is a friend, and I know the kind of person he is. I know very well he is not the kind of Western traveler who will exploit my people. I guess it was because he wrote about travel issues in the Muslim world for Huriyah and for other publications. His travel writings in post9/11 Afghanistan, Turkey, and the Arab world always left me educated about the current climate and situations of my own Muslim brothers and sisters.
However, what really pushed me to accept the project was that many (queer) Muslims contributed. It was not going to be those books. It was going to be a book of travel stories in the Muslim world by Muslims as well as non-Muslims. This book was certainly not going to be any ordinary book. I knew it would become something I would be proud to be part of.
Some of the stories ring true for me. Others are of unfamiliar experiences. But they are all really wonderful. The kohl-eyed, with a gutra on his head, topped off with an aghal, Western-born brother Rahal, in his piece Full Moon in AlAin, brings an immediate and erotic image of what was worn by many of the boys I met in the Arabian peninsula. There is something intoxicatingly beautiful about an Arab man who paints his eyes with kohl. It is not that he is a drag queen or even feminine, but the mixture of his masculinity and the touch of (external) femininity makes an affront of sorts in the culture, which I find beautiful, for everything abnormal is beautiful to me.
Both being either Muslim or gay is unique. But this brings me to a question: Why is it that people who dont even know us consider our stories and lives and desires and choices abnormal? It amazes me to no end that heterosexual scholars have the audacity to pass judgment in their (ever-condemning) fatwa about our sexualities. The only answer that I can think of is that they dont know us. And the only way I can think of to change this is for us to help them get to know us. After all, ignorance is bliss. And, damn it, with that ugly clich in my mind lets continue to disrupt that bliss!
Over the past couple of decades, queer Muslims have gained a visibility that we just did not have for a long time. The 1990s was a decade in which many movements came together. Queer Muslims marched in Turkey, asking for their rights. Support groups and organizations from all corners of the world, such as Salaam, Al-Fatiha, Lambda Istanbul, and Al-Fitrah, all opened their doors. Clerics and scholars from our own communities, such as brother Muhsin Hendricks of South Africa, sister Ghazala Anwar of the United States, and brother Omar Nahas of the Netherlands, all were out and about and spoke about their faith and sexuality.
In 2000, I founded Huriyah, the worlds first magazine for queer Muslims. With four friends from four corners of the world, although it took us a year to finally launch, this labor of love now has a worldwide English version (available free of charge from the Internet) and an Arabic version that reaches nineteen countries. When my friend Abu Omar in Egypt asked me, How are we going to reach all these people? referring to the estimated more than 150 million queer Muslims around the world, he underestimated the hunger of queer Muslims to be aware of one another all over the world. In less than three years, the magazine gained over 253 people in 72 countries.
