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Mr & Mrs Inquirer wrote:how can you think queers are normal? the world is going soft on perverts next it will be ok for other types of perverts, the all mighty will send them all to HELL

In the eyes of GOD we're all one. regardless of who you are. God is sad for peeps like you. Be happy and Gay errr...

Biologically, homose.x.uality is deviant because you can't produce offspring. However, you see homose.xu.ality occurring in many animal populations on this planet - so biologically it seems that hom.se.x.uality will exist in a certain percentage of the population. If you look at things from a non-religious perspective, you can conclude that all humans are equal and it doesn't matter if they produce offspring or not. Even some married couples of the opposite s.e.x choose not to have offspring. So, let gay peope be! They have every right to be attracted to and fall in love with another human, and live their lives happily as a family unit. A family unit that is good for society is not necessarily one that is purely from opposite s.e.xes - more so a socially stable entity that is productive in society by working and contributing to the community.

how surprising the one finds such a large amount of queer supporters here.
Then there is the middle east quote of a woman for duty and a small boy for pleasure and a fruit for gratification

need one say any more.............. yur "Bunch of Fruits"

And after his statement he went home got out his copy of gay pride and dropped his trousers round his ankles - we have all seen his sort before.

Mr. and Mrs. Inquirer, I respectfully ask you to piss off and find some other internet forum to crap in. Don't let the door hit you on the way out.

I do like Woman dumber the better how about it

Just for you -

the we will leave to you and your cross dressing friends

Ciao, watch the door on the way out!

sniper420 wrote:

rvp_legend wrote:

mema wrote:I’v always wondered do gay ppl have faith (religiously).. since they r outcaste from most religions.

has any1 known a religious gay?

do the The Church Clergy count?

Ive yet to meet a Devout muslim gay anywhere in Europe, where the laws are more tolerant and there are less chance of being executed.

well have u heard of irshad manji.......the one who wrote trouble with islam?

Sniper,
Yep, i have. But i didnt think she was a devout. From my understanding her whole history was always about questioning and she had a Salman Rushdie- like tone to her...

Irshad Manji is very intelligent. I've seen her interviewed. http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/

kanelli wrote:Irshad Manji is very intelligent. I've seen her interviewed. http://www.muslim-refusenik.com/

Just went to visit that site and guess what, the good guys and girls at etisalat our doing a fine job protecting us from ourselves:

"We apologize the site you are attempting to visit has been blocked due to its content being inconsistent with the religious, cultural, political and moral values of the United Arab Emirates.

If you think this site should not be blocked, please visit the Feedback Form available on our website."

Click on the feedback form and:

Not Found
The requested URL /feedback was not found on this server.

Geez, bloody Etisalat. I can access it from a DIC area.

Here is some info about Irshad Manji from her website:

The New York Times has dubbed Irshad Manji “Osama Bin Laden’s worst nightmare.” She takes that as a compliment.

Irshad is the best-selling author of The Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her Faith. It has been published internationally, including in Pakistan, Turkey, India and Lebanon. In those countries that have banned The Trouble with Islam Today, she is reaching readers by posting free translations in Arabic, Urdu, and Persian on this website.

She also travels the globe to lecture about the liberal reformation of Islam. Her audiences include Amnesty International, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the United Nations Press Corps, the Democratic Muslims of Denmark, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, the International Women’s Forum, the Swedish Defense Research Agency, the Pentagon, the Jean Jacques Rousseau Institute, and universities from Cambridge to Notre Dame.

Currently, Irshad is a Senior Fellow with the European Foundation for Democracy. She writes columns that are distributed worldwide by the New York Times Syndicate. She is also making a feature film about Islam. Among the ideas it will showcase is “ijtihad,” Islam’s lost tradition of independent thinking.

As a social entrepreneur, Irshad has launched Project Ijtihad, an initiative to develop the world’s first leadership network for reform-minded Muslims. In that capacity, she was recently named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Oprah Winfrey honored Irshad with the first annual Chutzpah Award for “audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction.” Ms. magazine chose Irshad as a “Feminist for the 21st Century.” Maclean’s, Canada’s national news magazine, selected her one of ten “Canadians Who Make a Difference.”

And the Jakarta Post in Indonesia -- the world’s largest Muslim country -- identified Irshad as one of three women creating a positive change in Islam today.


Born in 1968, Irshad is a refugee from Idi Amin’s Uganda. In 1972, she and her family fled to Vancouver, where Irshad grew up attending public schools as well as the Islamic madressa. In 1990, she earned an honors degree in intellectual history from the University of British Columbia, winning the Governor-General’s medal for top graduate.

After graduation, Irshad became legislative assistant to a member of parliament, then press secretary to the Ontario Minister for Women’s Issues. In 1992, at age 24, she entered the media as National Affairs Editorialist for the Ottawa Citizen, the youngest person to sit on the editorial board of a Canadian daily newspaper. She left to take up the post of speechwriter for the first female leader of a Canadian political party.

From there, Irshad went on to write Risking Utopia: On the Edge of a New Democracy. Published in 1997, it chronicles how young people are re-defining democracy in an age of fluid media networks, shifting social values and flexible personal identities. Today, Risking Utopia is widely used by Canadian educators to re-imagine public schooling.

In 1998, Irshad began producing and hosting QueerTelevision on Toronto’s Citytv. This was the world’s first program on commercial airwaves to explore the lives of gay and lesbian people. She also negotiated the syndication of QueerTelevision through San Francisco-based web portal, planetout.com, making QueerTelevision among the first programs ever to be streamed entirely on the Internet. As such, it built a global audience quickly while circumventing state censors. It also won the Gemini, Canada’s highest broadcasting award, for best-edited general information show.

Despite her multi-media approach, books remain Irshad’s passion. With the release of The Trouble with Islam Today, Irshad’s ideas are capturing international attention. That means condemnation as well praise. As Indonesia’s Jakarta Post writes, “She not only has a funky hairdo, but The Trouble with Islam Today has caused much debate”. Here’s a sample of the debate:

Khaleel Mohammed, an imam and professor of Islam at San Diego State University: “Irshad wants us to do what our Holy Book wants us to do: End the tribal posturing, open our eyes, and stand up to oppression, even if it's rationalized by our vaunted imams… She remains obedient to the Divine Imperative: ‘O you who believe! Be upholders of justice, witnesses for God, even if it be against yourselves, or your parents and kin.’ (Quran, 4:135).”
Khaled Almeena, Editor, Arab News (Saudi Arabia): “This fraudulent book has now become a guide to Islam...”
Tarek Heggy, world-renowned author/lecturer based in Cairo: “I read the Arabic translation with a level of fascination and admiration that rarely occurs after a 45-year journey into Islamic study. Her book captivated me fully, touching my mind, conscience, and heart.”
Jane Mansbridge, Adams Professor of Political Leadership and Democratic Values at Harvard University: “All is not lost if people of Irshad Manji's capacity can carry a fresh and convincing message to the coming generation. I cannot urge her more strongly to maintain her frank, open and intelligent approach. This cause is, I believe, the most important new movement in several decades.”
Andrew Sullivan, TIME columnist who reviewed Irshad’s book for the New York Times and concluded: “If we survive this current war without unthinkable casualties, it will be because Irshad Manji’s kind of liberalism didn’t lose its nerve.”

And this is about her book. She has Arabic, Persian and Urdu copies online, which is also likely why the site is blocked.

The Trouble with Islam Today is an open letter from me, a Muslim voice of reform, to concerned citizens worldwide -- Muslim and not. It's about why my faith community needs to come to terms with the diversity of ideas, beliefs and people in our universe, and why non-Muslims have a pivotal role in helping us get there.


Irshad in Abu Dis, West Bank
Photo: Atta Awisat
The themes I'm exploring with the utmost honesty include:

the inferior treatment of women in Islam;
the Jew-bashing that so many Muslims persistently engage in; and
the continuing scourge of slavery in countries ruled by Islamic regimes.
I appreciate that every faith has its share of literalists. Christians have their fundamentalists. Jews have the ultra-Orthodox. For God's sake, even Buddhists have absolutists.

But what this book hammers home is that only in Islam is literalism mainstream.Which means that when abuse happens under the banner of Islam, most Muslims have no clue how to dissent, debate, revise or reform.

The Trouble with Islam Today shatters our silence. It shows Muslims how we can re-discover Islam's lost tradition of independent thinking -- a tradition known as "ijtihad" -- and re-discover it precisely to update Islam for the 21st century. The opportunity to update is especially available to Muslims in the West, because it's here that we enjoy precious freedoms to think, express, challenge and be challenged without fear of state reprisal. In that sense, the Islamic reformation begins in the West.
It doesn't, however, end here. Not by a long shot. People throughout the Islamic world need to know of their God-given right to think for themselves. So The Trouble with Islam Today outlines a global campaign to promote innovative approaches to Islam. I call this non-military campaign "Operation Ijtihad." In turn, the West's support of this campaign will fortify national security, making Operation Ijtihad a priority for all of us who wish to live fatwa-free lives.

That's the book. The question now becomes: What possessed me to write it? Once I tell you a little about me, I think you'll see where my own passion comes from.

Why I'm struggling with Islam


Irshad, Deeyah and Donya
As refugees from Idi Amin's Uganda, my family and I settled just outside of Vancouver in 1972. I grew up attending two types of schools: the secular public school of most North American kids and then, for several hours at a stretch every Saturday, the Islamic religious school (madressa).

I couldn't quite reconcile the open and tolerant world of my public school with the rigid and bigoted world inside my madressa. But I had enough faith to ask questions -- plenty of them.

My first question for my madressa teacher was, "Why can't girls lead prayer?" I graduated to asking more nuanced questions, such as, "If the Koran came to Prophet Muhammad as a message of peace, why did he command his army to kill an entire Jewish tribe?"

You can imagine that such questions irritated the hell out of my madressa teacher, who routinely put down women and trashed the Jews. He and I reached the ultimate impasse over yet another question: "Where," I asked, "is the evidence of the 'Jewish conspiracy' against Islam? You love to talk about it, but what's the proof?" That question, posed at the age of 14, got me booted out of the madressa. Permanently.

I carry a torch in one hand
And a bucket of water with the other
With these things, I will set fire to Heaven
And put out the flames of Hell
So that no one worship God
Out of fear of Hell
Or greed of Heaven.

- Rabia, Sufi Muslim heroine of mine
At this point, I had a choice to make: I could walk away from my Muslim faith and get on with being my "emancipated" North American self, or I could give Islam another chance. Out of fairness to the faith, I gave Islam another chance. And another. And another. For the past 20 years, I've been educating myself about Islam. As a result, I've discovered a progressive side of my religion -- in theory.

But I remain a hugely ambivalent Muslim because of what's happening "on the ground" -- massive human rights violations, particularly against women and religious minorities -- in the name of Allah.

Liberal Muslims say that what I'm describing isn't "true" Islam. But these Muslims should own up to something: Prophet Muhammad himself said that religion is the way we conduct ourselves toward others. By that standard, how Muslims actually behave is Islam, and to sweep that reality under the rug of theory is to absolve ourselves of any responsibility for our fellow human beings.

That's why I'm struggling. That's why I'm passionate. And that's why I call myself a Muslim Refusenik.

A Muslim Refusenik is...

By Muslim Refusenik, I don't mean I refuse to be a Muslim. If I did, why would I care enough to write a book that puts me on the front lines of anger, hate, even death threats? By Muslim Refusenik, I mean I refuse to join an army of automatons in the name of Allah. Many Muslims applaud Jewish Refuseniks -- those soldiers who protest the military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. In the same spirit of conscientious dissent, we've got to protest the ideological occupation of Muslim minds. An occupation perpetrated by our own mullahs, imams and civic leaders.


Irshad engaging Muslims in Rotterdam, Netherlands
In that spirit, I'm asking Muslims in the West a very basic question: Will we remain spiritually infantile, caving to cultural pressures to clam up and conform, or will we mature into full-fledged citizens, defending the very pluralism that allows us to be in this part of the world in the first place?
My question for non-Muslims is equally basic: Will you succumb to the intimidation of being called "racists," or will you finally challenge us Muslims to take responsibility for our role in what ails Islam?

The Trouble with Islam Today is a wake-up call for honesty and change on everybody's part. Through the book and this website, let's create conversations where none existed before.

Finally, about Project Ijtihad:

What's Ijtihad?
Support Project Ijtihad

If you embrace our vision to replace the jihadists with a new generation of “ijtihadists,” then join us. We are asking for your financial contribution – a contribution that will be tax-deductible in the United States. You can contribute with your MasterCard, Visa, or American Express.

Donate now!

Ijtihad (pronounced “ij-tee-had”) is Islam’s lost tradition of independent thinking. In the early centuries of Islam, thanks to the spirit of ijtihad, 135 schools of thought thrived. Inspired by ijtihad, Muslims gave the world inventions from the astrolabe to the university. So much of we consider "western" pop culture came from Muslims: the guitar, mocha coffee, even the ultra-Spanish expression "Ole!" (which has its root in the Arabic word for God, "Allah").

What happened to ijtihad?

Toward the end of the 11th century, the "gates of ijtihad" were closed for entirely political reasons. During this time, the Muslim empire from Iraq in the east to Spain in the west was going through

Start a huge, foolish, project
Like Noah.

It makes absolutely no
Difference what people
Think of you.
- Rumi, Muslim love poet

a series of internal upheavals. Dissident denominations were popping up and declaring their own runaway governments, which posed a threat to the main Muslim leader -- the caliph. Based in Baghdad, the caliph cracked down and closed ranks. Remember those 135 schools of thought mentioned above? They were deliberately reduced to four, pretty conservative, schools of thought. This led to a rigid reading of the Koran as well as to a series of legal opinions -- fatwas -- that scholars could no longer overturn or even question, but could now only imitate. To this very day, imitation of medieval norms has trumped innovation in Islam. It’s time to revive ijtihad to update Islam for the 21st century. That’s why I’ve created Project Ijtihad.

What's Project Ijtihad?


Irshad with gay and lesbian Palestinians at Jerusalem Open House (Posted with permission)
Project Ijtihad is our foundation to spur a reform in Islam — a reform that enables the emerging generation of Muslims, especially young women, to challenge authoritarianism and restore Islam’s tradition of critical thinking.

Our mission is to build the world’s first leadership network for reform-minded Muslims. And we will do that by creating a dynamic website on which Project Ijtihad will the most taboo-busting debates about – and within – the world of Islam. For example, can Muslims marry non-Muslims?

Along with the debate itself, we’ll have the debaters post their sources and recommendations for further reading. That way, those who are serious about reviving Ijtihad in Islam have a place to come and argue, reflect, think, analyze and argue some more.


Irshad with Whitney, Chicago
We hope to make the site such an educational goldmine that we’ll be able to partner with various schools, colleges, and universities to offer courses about Islamic reform. Today, everybody teaches Islam. The next step is to teach the reform of Islam. Project Ijtihad will work for that day.
What has Project Ijtihad already achieved?

We’ve translated the book into Arabic, Urdu and Farsi — and then posted it on this website for free-of-charge download. The number of times it has been downloaded can be gleaned by one fact: in Cairo recently, I was approached by as many young Muslims as I am in the major cities of Europe and North America. They thanked me for the book, for allowing them to read it for free, and for encouraging them to distribute it among their friends. This does not yet make a movement, but it does make for momentum...

More broadly, how's the response so far?


Irshad with Adel, Toronto
Based on my extensive touring and interaction with young Muslims around the world, I can report good news: the idea of a campaign to revive ijtihad is generating huge excitement. Young Muslims and their friends are expressing gratitude, relief, even love for my willingness to help them confront the extremists. There’s no doubt that some young Muslims detest me and my message of ijtihad. They tend to be the vocal and vitriolic ones. But everywhere I go, I’m quietly approached by Muslims, especially young women, who are desperate to know that it’s possible to dissent with mainstream orthodoxy while remaining faithful. The challenge now is to help transform that underground hunger for change into an above-the-ground phenomenon.
To contribute, please only use the online form above.

Salaam and thank you,

Irshad Manji, Chief Catalyst, Project Ijtihad

I got a lot of reading to do. Anyway, I'm learning. thanks kanelli!

Actually, I didn't know about her book but just might read it now. Apparently she has received many death threats - so hopefully nothing
happens to her.

kanelli wrote:Actually, I didn't know about her book but just might read it now. Apparently she has received many death threats - so hopefully nothing
happens to her.

Thanks for the posts Kanelli, very informative for those who dont know Irshad Manji

Manji is very intelligent. very elequent, very articulate. And trendy too

i think she does write with good intentions and has tonnes of good points to make. She has fallen victim of some hijacking however by rightwing groups, such as Daniel Pipes who used her to forward his own agenda. Unforunately many interpreted things the wrong way in the Muslim world and hence the death threats increased.

Also, she points out that the treatment of women in Islamic countries is appaling, which is true and many extremists (more power extremists than religion i think) hate her for questioning it. thereore leading to an additional band of death threats.

So her basic theme is something i agree with.
I do not think project Itjihad is something which is something people warm too. I think we have to understand how Islam is the grand sized religion it is today. The Quran hasnt been modified since inception, so that should stay that way.
What needs to change is terrible attitudes which have crept into many.

Science, Education, Humility and forward thinking appraoches were what made Islam the forward moving religion when all others were struggling. They did it cohesively with Non Muslims, Chrisians + Jews to prove that people cab live together.
The Jew Bashing really started after creation of Israel and the Injustice of Palestinians. Jews were previously invited into Muslim Lands after the Spanish inquisition so there was hardly much Tension of the scale it is now as they are regarded as Monotheistic.
So Jew Bashing is a political situation, just as Anti Semi tism was in Europe.
Some Education, and Justice for the Palestinians will firmly kill off this politically motivated hatred.

Anyway MY 2cents!

btw, Irshad Manji from my understanding is not Devout.

So i dont sidetrack this anymore, my previous post was that i didnt know any devout muslim homosexuals.... anyone?

Good post rvp_legend. I don't really get the last sentence though.

kanelli wrote:Good post rvp_legend. I don't really get the last sentence though.

The site censored the word, so what was left was a very ambiguous statement to say the least!

what i was supposedly meaning was
"So i dont sidetrack this anymore, my previous post was that i didnt know any devout muslim G A Y s?.... anyone?"

shafique wrote:Should practicing gays be killed? Islam doesn't ordain that punishment, so no.

article wrote:The punishment awaiting such people in the Hereafter has already been
explained, but what about their punishment in this world?

Since such type of behaviour was previously totally unknown to the Arab
people, there is no record of any such incident having occurred during the
time of Rasulullah (sallallahu alayhi wasallam) or that he was faced with a
case of this nature. However, it has been confirmed that Rasulullah
(sallallahu alayhi wasallam) said,

'Kill the one who sodomizes and the one to who lets it be done to him.'
(Tirmizi)

http://www.islam.tc/ask-imam/view.php?q=3056


http://uk.news.yahoo.com/27062006/325/s ... birth.html

Sexual orientation of men determined before birth
Tuesday June 27, 05:44 AM



NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A man's sexual orientation appears to be determined in the womb, a new study suggests.

Past research by Dr. Anthony F. Bogaert of Brock University in St. Catherines, Ontario and colleagues has shown that the more older brothers a man has, the more likely he is to be gay. But it has not been clear if this is a prenatal effect or a psychosocial effect, related to growing up with older male siblings.

To investigate, Bogaert studied 944 gay and straight men, including several who were raised with adopted, half- or step-siblings or were themselves adopted. He reasoned that if the relationship between having older male siblings and homosexuality was due to family environment or child-rearing practices, it would be seen whether or not a man's older brothers were biological or adopted.
Bogaert found that the link between having older brothers and homosexuality was present only if the siblings were biologically related -- this relationship was seen between biological brothers who were not raised together. The amount of time that a man was reared with older brothers had no association with sexual orientation.

"These results support a prenatal origin to sexual orientation development in men and indicate that the fraternal birth-order effect is probably the result of a maternal 'memory' for male gestations or births," Bogaert writes in his report in PNAS Early Edition.

A woman's body may see a male foetus as "foreign," Bogaert explains, and her immune response to subsequent male fetuses may grow progressively stronger.

"If this immune theory were correct, then the link between the mother's immune reaction and the child's future sexual orientation would probably be some effect of maternal anti-male antibodies on the sexual differentiation of the brain," he suggests.

Other lines of research also support the sexual orientation-maternal immune response link, he notes.

This is some interesting research. I thought there was a lot of evidence for that anyways but still interesting...and its a politically relevant issue.

It's only in the early phases of course and will require significantly more prof before it can be taken as "fact". But the more evidence that s.exual orientation is biological, the better.

And this definitely opens up a new area for study. Hopefuly more objective resarch can be done into this kind of correlation so that we can identify the causality that, ultimately, must be there.

From a political perspective especially, this is particularly good news.

Queer fun is forbidden in Muslim cultures; in certain Islamic countries it is regarded as a criminal activity punishable by death.

The opposition they will face from orthodox Muslims was in evidence at a city centre mosque where Muslim leader Ajaf Shaikh insisted such conduct was sinful.
"Anybody acting in these kind of activity will go to the hell. And the Muslim culture and religion is totally against this kind of activity. And Muslim religion don't allow these kind of activities,"