RIGHTS-NETHERLANDS: Homosexual Imam Prays For Tolerance

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Pam van de Bunt

AMSTERDAM, Sep 17 1998 (IPS) - Muammar Kaya is a homosexual Turk who has been forced to flee because of his desire to practise as an imam, or Muslim leader.

“Praying is between me and God, love is between me and my boyfriend,” says 25-year-old Kaya. “Love and religion are two different things. So for me there is no conflict between Islam and my homosexuality.”

Kaya completed his training as an imam but was prevented from taking up the position in his hometown of Konya in south-west Turkey because of his sexual orientation.

“I have been threatened with death by the (Turkish) Imam Union as well as by fundamentalists,” he says. “In Turkey, they told me that because I am gay I have to pray not only behind everyone else but even behind the animals, as I am ‘worse than them’.”

In Amsterdam, where Kaya lives while waiting for a verdict on his request for asylum, he was recently given a chance to lead a Friday prayer service.

The ceremony was conducted at the city’s large pink ‘Homomonument’. The only such monument in the world, it is a memorial to homosexuals killed during the Second World War as well as to everyone persecuted because of their sexual identity.

“Instead of being right at the back of the congregation, I was able to be at the front of the prayers for the first time in my life. This is so emotional for me,” Kaya told IPS immediately after the prayers, his face still glistening with tears.

“It is not true that Islam rejects homosexuality,” he insisted. “The Koran does not speak about sex.”

Many Muslims interpret a Koranic story about the destruction of the people of Lot as proof that homosexuality is forbidden by Islam. But Kaya argues that homosexuality could not have been the cause. “If their city really disappeared because of homosexuals in their midst, why has Amsterdam not disappeared?” he asks.

The Friday prayers on the Homomonument were organised by the Independent Platform Of Turkish Homosexuals (IPOTH), partly as a gesture of protest against governments that refuse to grant asylum to homosexual refugees.

“We are here because in most Islamic countries homosexuals are not free,” says Cen Ariklar of IPOTH. “A lot of people in our countries are tortured, abused or even killed because of their sexual identity.

“We are also here to protest against those countries which are sending back homosexual asylum-seekers.” He claims that last year the Netherlands sent back 95 percent of homosexual asylum-seekers. The unsuccessful applicants’ home countries included Iran, Romania, Turkey and Zimbabwe.

“We are homosexual refugees and therefore need to stay — not for economic reasons but just to be free. We want to be free and we want to be loved. Allah has to prevent the Dutch government from sending us back and has to put pressure on those countries that are torturing us,” says Ariklar.

He claims to be one of the few homosexuals to have been granted asylum-seeker status in the Netherlands.

Not everyone at the prayers led by Kaya agrees with his position on homosexuality. “I believe that the Koran forbids homosexuality,” said 23-year-old Ersin Solmaz from Turkey, who now lives in Germany. “This made my life really difficult as I am both religious and gay.

“I constantly felt I was doing wrong and I even considered suicide. But I decided not to, because if you commit suicide you are sure to go to hell, but it is not so certain that is the punishment if you are a homosexual.”

Some Christians interpret the Biblical account of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorra, a similar story to the Koranic account of the fate of Lot, as proof of rejection of homosexuality.

But Professor A. Wessels, a leading theologian at the Vrije University in Amsterdam, observes that “the difficulty with the holy books is that they are already centuries old. I would say that the Koran neither speaks about nor condemns (homosexuality).”

However, Dr. Ghassan Ascha, an Islamic specialist at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, says that although the Koran is open about love and making love, it rejects homosexuality:

“The difference is that the Koran is much milder about this than the Bible and the Torah (the Jewish scriptures).” Whereas in Christianity, he says, the apostle Paul compares homosexuals with whorers, thieves and drunks, “in the holy book of the Muslims there are only two clear condemnations of homosexuality.

It says lesbians should be put under house-arrest for life and gay men should be punished, though the punishment is not specified. However, a homosexual who shows regret and improves himself will not be punished.”