Islam and homosexuality?
... for they do not know what they are talking about!
Bismikaallahuma has tried to deal with my refutation of Asif Iqbal’s slanders against God’s true prophets, specifically his assertion that Daniel was a homosexual. The author of this particular response article goes by the name Pro-Pas. He begins his reply with:
In the usual vein of missionary tradition1, the missionaries have made a rather pathetic attempt at "refuting" one of our articles which shows the Bible perversion in encouraging homosexuality. Previously, we have shown in another exposition how the so-called "apostle" from Tarsus had displayed some homosexual tendencies. In the later part of this article, we will provide some examples of how the Christians have practised this particular teaching from the Bible in their day-to-day lives.
But we will come to that later. Our purpose here now is to refute the missionary's "reading into the text" and his vicious and belligerent attempt to "turn the tables" on Islam by claiming that the Qur'an and the Sunnah encourages homosexual behaviour. In the words of the missionary:
"…we will be using Iqbal’s own arguments against his god and his prophet, just as we did it the last time, when they attacked the Apostle Paul."2
RESPONSE:
It is rather apparent that this gentleman hasn’t bothered pondering over my reason for applying Iqbal’s method of biblical exegesis to Islam. He actually believes I claimed that Islam encourages homosexual behavior. Nowhere in this article did I state anything like that.
His response so totally missed the mark that one seriously has to wonder why. There are three possibilities:
(a) He only reacted emotionally to seeing somebody associating Muhammad and homosexuality and, without carefully reading the structure of the argument, he wrote against this unjust accusation, i.e. his emotionality and carelessness resulted in utter nonsense.
(b) He carefully read the paper, but he simply does not know what a PARODY is. The approach was too subtle, the structure of the argument beyond his ability of comprehension. In his view "turning the table," means claiming that Islam encourages homosexual behavior, because the Muslim article had accused the Bible of endorsing it. If you accuse our prophet of being a homosexual, I will accuse your prophet of being a homosexual, i.e. in his view my article was merely a tit-for-tat reaction, a crude revenge. However, in his view, the Holy Bible can legitimately be accused of this but Islam cannot, because Islam clearly condemns homosexuality. Therefore, I do not have a right to "turn the tables". This seems to be the real reason for what he wrote, i.e. an utter lack of reading comprehension.
(c) He has understood why I wrote what I wrote but simply doesn’t care. He deliberately repeats the lies and slander against the Holy Bible and treats my article as if I had actually accused Islam of promoting homosexuality.
The purpose of my article was to show that if a Muslim wants to distort what the Bible teaches about issues such as homosexuality then the same thing can be done to the Quran, but with even more damaging results.
Does the author admit that this Muslim method of eisegesis displayed in Iqbal’s article is dishonest and a deliberate perversion of what the Bible says? Not directly, but indirectly he does since it is apparent that he is irate with my applying this same reasoning to his prophet. This shows that he knows that this approach is reprehensible and nothing more than blatant deception. But does he reprimand his colleagues for daring to slander God’s true prophets in the manner in which they do? Not even close.
Again, is his support of Iqbal’s distortions deliberate, or merely Pro-Pas’ inability to see what is going on?
In fact, he so much as dares to repeat his team’s lies by saying that the Holy Bible allows for homosexuality and that Paul displayed homosexual tendencies! And yet he has the audacity to complain about me turning the tables against his book and completely ignores why I decided to interpret the Quran and Muhammad’s actions the way I did (i.e. to clearly show how perverted such an approach is).
Whatever the reason for it, it is simply pathetic to see this author’s complete failure to engage my arguments and deal with the issues that I had raised. All he could do is distort my points or simply ignore them since my intention wasn’t to prove that Muhammad was a homosexual. Rather, my intention was to show what would happen if we were to apply the same slanderous approach and lies of Iqbal regarding Daniel being gay to Muhammad and his religion.
He writes:
The missionary continues this humourous[sic] exposition by stating the following:
"In his haste to slander God’s true prophets Iqbal apparently forgot that Arabic is a cognate language of Hebrew and has similar words such as rahman and rahim. Both of these terms come from the same root from which we get the Arabic word for womb, rahm."
When speaking of cognates, the missionary is duly reminded that he seems to have forgotten his very rule when he brashly claimed in another article of his that ahad(un) means "one of…" and not simply "one", as it is understood by its dictionary definition. Indeed, when speaking about cognates, the Hebrew echad corresponds closely with ahad. This issue will be dealt with in another paper which will be forthcoming soon, insha'allah. The point here is that we find it amusing that the missionary is talking about cognates when it comes to the very disturbing fact about the Hebrew raHamim and the homosexual tendencies of Daniel according to the Biblical account.
In any case, the missionary himself is committing an "etymological fallacy", as he so loves to claim. The Hebrew cognate for the Arabic rahman is rachuwm, as was shown in another paper. Hence the missionary claim that the word "…come from the same root from which we get the Arabic word for womb, rahm" only exists in the missionary's mind in his usual rewriting of Semitic etymology, as it is tradition in the history of their lying polemics.
RESPONSE:
It seems that we need to teach the author to not just read our articles carefully so as to avoid making such egregious errors, but we need to also encourage him to read his own links carefully as well. It is apparent that he hasn’t even read the very article which he links to and which supposedly refutes me, since his own source actually proves I was right! Here is what it says:
The equivalent word for ar-rahman in the Hebrew WOULD BE "HA-RACHMAN", as found in Rivlin's Hebrew translation of the Qur'ân, 1:1:
In the name of God, Ha-Rachman, the Merciful[10] …
This is further collaborated when WE REFER TO THE ROOT WORD OF HA-RACHMAN, WHICH IS RACHUWM, in Strong's number 7349 and find the following:
rachuwm rakh-oom`; from 7355; compassionate:- full of compassion, merciful.[13]
Thus we see that rachuwm and rahma SHARE THE SAME R-H-M COGNATE, AND THUS WE HAVE ESTABLISHED a solid etymological connection between both words. Of course, there is another Hebrew word that is even closer to raheem (RHYM) than rachuwm is, and that is the exact Hebrew equivalent! Consider the following: …
4) Nowhere in Strong's or in the BDB/Gesenius lexicons do we find any correlation of RIMMON with the Arabic word ar-rahman or its root word rahma. The Hebrew equivalent for rahma is the word rachuwm. Both rahma (Ar.) and rachuwm (Heb.) SHARE THE SAME R-H-M COGNATE. (Source; capital and bold emphasis ours)
Let us now see what the root word of the Hebrew racham(im) is, the word which Iqbal said proved that Daniel was gay:
(Strong’s 07356)
racham {rakh'-am}
from 07355
n m
1) womb
n m abs pl intens
2) compassion (Source)
According to this dictionary, racham(im) COMES FROM THE VERY SAME ROOT (number 7355) AS DOES RACHUWM! So if rachuwm, racham(im), and rahma share the same R-H-M root then how in the world can I be accused of lying? More importantly the author has indirectly slandered his prophet for being a liar since he is the one that supposedly said that rahman comes from the same word for womb. Let me quote him once again:
Narrated Abu Huraira:
The Prophet said, "The word 'Ar-Rahm (womb) DERIVES ITS NAME FROM Ar-Rahman (i.e., one of the names of Allah) and Allah said: ‘I will keep good relation with the one who will keep good relation with you, (womb i.e. Kith and Kin) and sever the relation with him who will sever the relation with you, (womb, i.e. Kith and Kin). (Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Book 73, Number 17)Narrated 'Aisha:
(the wife of the Prophet) The Prophet said, "The word 'Ar-Rahm' (womb) DERIVES ITS NAME FROM 'Ar-Rahman' (i.e. Allah). So whosoever keeps good relations with it (womb i.e. Kith and kin), Allah will keep good relations with him, and whosoever will sever it (i.e. severs his bonds of Kith and kin) Allah too will sever His relations with him. (Sahih al-Bukhari, Volume 8, Book 73, Number 18)
Thus, if I am wrong then so was Muhammad!
Let us break this down step by step so that this time the author won’t miss it:
And if Bismikaallahuma’s "response" to my ahad paper is anything like this rebuttal, then there really won’t be much to refute. In fact, I have been eagerly waiting for this so-called response to be posted since I am quite confident by God’s grace that it will only end up strengthening my arguments and conclusions.
The author then says:
Yet the missionary concludes by stating:
"Applying Iqbal’s logic we must conclude that Allah and his messenger showed their mercy by having sexual relations with both male and female believers. Allah used Muhammad to show men his love by having his messenger engage in homosexual acts with them."
As amusing as the imagination of the missionary is, we must kindly remind him that the penalty for homosexuality is very harsh in Islam, and before we allow his imagination to run away with him, let us now kindly quote for him a hadith from the Prophet (P) who says the following about the punishment for homosexuals:
"Whoever gratifies his sexual urge with another (individual} of his own sex, the Almighty will not so much as look at him."
Now that we have seen the above hadith, we should kindly ask the missionary from where did he get his fatwa, and how will he reconcile this with the general Islamic opinion on homosexuality? We are hence strongly reminded of the following from Jalal Abualrub: When the Evangelist Becomes A Shaykh…
RESPONSE:
Again, the lack of reading comprehension on the part of Pro-Pas is incredible (or it is even worse, see option (c) above). Nowhere in this article did I claim that Allah and Muhammad ARE homosexuals. I said that IF Iqbal’s reasoning is correct, i.e. deriving homosexuality from the word rahamim because its root consonants are R-H-M, THEN the same would also hold for Allah and Muhammad since a similar word with the same root is used regularly for both of them. Moreover, if one then looks with this prejudice at some narrations about Muhammad one can easily find lots of further evidence for this misguided theory.
My paper only showed how ridiculous Iqbal’s theory is, and did so in two ways. First by direct refutation from the Bible and then by way of parody, i.e. by applying the same reasoning on the Quran and hadith. The Muslim reader was supposed to see, from the ridiculous implications, that the assumption could not have been right, i.e. Iqbal’s accusations are wrong since his assumptions lead to ridiculous conclusions. Therefore, Pro-Pas’ whole paper is void.
Nevertheless, let me correct some of his wrong statements. In the first place, Islam’s harsh treatment of homosexuality doesn’t help Pro-Pas’ case anyway since the Holy Bible is even more explicit in its condemnation of homosexuality but this still doesn’t stop his colleagues from coming to the erroneous conclusion that certain God-fearing prophets were homosexuals. So why should it be any different for Islam and Muhammad?
Moreover, we need to kindly remind him that the Quran fails to prescribe any kind of penalty for homosexuality. We need to further remind him that his own Muslim brothers have conclusively proven that those narrations prescribing "harsh" penalties for such behavior are fraudulent, forgeries concocted by Muslims without any Quranic or prophetic warrant: http://www.islamicperspectives.com/Stoning5.htm#Chapter5
We will let the author debate his Muslim brother Dr. Ahmad Shafaat on whether Islam does indeed prescribe any kind of punishment for homosexuality.
The author should also try to convince this Shia Muslim website that homosexuality is forbidden since they have provided documentation that many of the companions and early Muslims were actually sodomites and homosexuals:
http://www.answering-ansar.org/answers/private_lives/en/chap2.php
http://www.answering-ansar.org/wahabis/en/chap11.php
http://www.answering-ansar.org/answers/yazeed/en/chap3.php
http://www.answering-ansar.org/answers/yazeed/yazeed.pdf
http://www.answering-ansar.org/wahabis/devils_deception_of_nasibi_wahabis.pdf
And we need to remind him of our response to his Muslim brother Abualrub, The Shaykh who actually tried to pass himself off as a Bible exegete:
http://answering-islam.org/Responses/Abualrub/twoadams_ss1.htm
http://answering-islam.org/Responses/Abualrub/twoadams_ss2.htm
The author concludes by committing the fallacy of ad populum, or appealing to the masses, to try to discredit the Holy Bible. In so doing he ends up committing the fallacy of non sequitur since his conclusion does not follow from his argument or assertion. He focuses his attention on the fact that in nations that are supposedly predominately Christian, such as America, there are powerful political pressure groups which are trying to legalize same-sex marriages. This he blames on the teachings of the Holy Bible! On the contrary, it is precisely because these nations have abandoned their biblical roots that such gross and immoral practices are prevailing and spreading throughout the lands. Adhering to the Holy Bible leads to godliness and purity, not immorality and sexual perversion. It is the teachings of Islam which leads to sexual perversion, immorality, thievery, rape, and murder.
The fact is that there are no Christian nations in the sense of there being governments which rule according to the teachings of the Holy Bible. So instead of attacking the Holy Bible on the basis of what some nations or individuals do, the author needs to judge whether these actions are in conformity with the teachings of the Holy Bible. In other words, a person doesn’t judge either the Holy Bible or the Quran by the actions of the people but judges the actions of the people by what is written in these texts.
We would like to conclude this rebuttal with some friendly advise to MENJ. You need to get rid of your current team of writers since they are only causing your site embarassment upon embarrassment. Try to find some individuals who can actually write decent enough responses so as to avoid causing you such problems. In fact, your current policy of trying to crank out a response to us within 72 hours is severely backfiring against you, since the kind of materials you are producing is becoming nearly as bad as the material being produced by Osama Abdallah.
And indeed only the true Triune God knows best!
Sam Shamoun, with some input coming from Jochen Katz
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