Islam in LGBTQ globalization: a queer approach to International Relations

Abstract

Contemporary hostility towards Muslims at the global level and the consolidation of Islam in the geopolitical context as an anachronic alterity to the West cannot be understood without addressing the dynamics of the LGBTQ globalization framework. Although this hostility has so far encompassed very diverse areas like the compatibility of Islam with democracy, the regulation of the visibility of Islam in the public space, and the institutionalization of Islam and its relation to immigration, currently there has been an intensification of a praxis of control over some Muslim subjects by contemporary nation-states. These practices have been accompanied by a certain rhetoric on antiterrorism, securitization, nationalism and patriotism, where the LGBTQ question has played a fundamental role. This phenomenon highlights the emergence of a specific form of Islamophobia—referred to as ‘queered Islamophobia’ in this article—related to what Puar (2007) coined as ‘homonationalism’ more than a decade ago to denounce an aspect of modernity marked by a convergence between diverse state practices, transnational LGBTQ politics and the emergence of new Islamophobic discourses nourished by the neoliberal instrumentalization of LGBTQ.

The homonationalist logic is underpinned by a culturalist discourse that promotes a dichotomous view of the world, where the West —modern, secular and LGBTQ friendly— finds itself face to face with its alter ego —orientalized, anachronistic, Islamic fundamentalist and LGBTQ phobic. This confrontation becomes effective through the transnational production of two antagonistic subjects.  National homosexual subjects can only exist outside the limits of religion embodying agency and resistance, and their national legitimacy is done at the expense of their depoliticization and their participation in the subalternization discrimination and criminalization of Muslim sexual-racial subjects. They, in turn, embody neo-Orientalist ideas that link Islam with a lack of agency, depravity and/or sexual repression and LGBTQ phobia, and seem to be invariably evaluated through the lens of LGBTQ Western neoliberal secularism. The theoretical construction of Muslim sexual-racial subjects and so-called Muslim homophobia is, at this time, central to debates on values and securitization in the West and is used to justify repressive antiterrorist measures within Western nation-states (Haritaworn, 2008).

Hostility towards gender and sexual diversity connected to Islam and/or Muslims has been conceptualized in different ways. Authors like Abraham (2010) refer to it as hegemonic Muslim homophobia, while Massad (2008) categorizes it as Islamic resistance to Western imperialism. In either case, it seems clear that the assumption of religiosity, in the Geertzian (1966) sense, constitutes a determining element when defining what a Muslim is —or is not— and explains their attitudes towards LGBTQ (Rahman, 2014). The problem is particularly acute considering the urgent need to address LGBTQ phobia as a compendium of geographical, cultural, sociopolitical, economic and legislative factors that goes beyond the strictly religious question. Indeed, the current rejection towards LGBTQ based on traditionalist interpretations of Islam —‘Islamicate LGBTQ phobia’ in short— and the growing institutionalized repression against sexual and gender minorities in Islamicate nation-states are part of a problem with many elements that cannot be understood without addressing some issues.

Firstly, the relationship between gender and sexual diversity in relation to the Islamic tradition is complex. The second question concerns the influence of colonialization and neocolonialization on the gradual transformation of the traditional forms of sex/gender diversity that developed in the historic lands of Islam, as well as on social perception and the legislation adopted regarding these forms in the aforementioned states. The emergence of sexual liberation movements in the United States and Europe in the 1970s entailed an ongoing process of homosexualization (Roscoe, 1997) through which contemporary globalized LGBTQ categories have spread around the world (Rao, 2015). When combined with the rise of Islamic fundamentalism and the emergence of Islamicate nation-states, this process has constituted a threat to the continuity of the traditional forms of sex/gender dissidence. This phenomenon would not have been possible without the construction of an invented tradition of Muslim homophobia that is being instrumentalized both in the West—through the disciplinary apparatus of nation-states—and in Muslim-majority countries—through certain forces linked to Islamic fundamentalism—with the common purpose of legitimizing control over the internal order of the societies of both frameworks (Rahman, 2015).

The main objective of this article is to review the state of the art of Islam in LGBTQ globalization by looking at the specific historical forms in which knowledge linked to each of these two axes is constituted, as well as the social practices, forms of subjectivities and power relations inherent to such knowledge from the point of view of surveillance, control and banishment strategies. This exercise will be materialised through the analysis of the two hegemonic oppositional positions of Islam and gender and sexual diversity—one of Islamicate LGBTQ phobia and the other of queered Islamophobia—through which Muslims in general and LGBTQ Muslims in particular are subalternized, discriminated against and criminalized today both in the West and in Muslim-majority countries. To that end, the present article proposes a queer approach that aims to contributes to international studies—and the contemporary debates within them—in which LGBTQ issues in relation to Islamic tradition are largely missing. In this regard, while the connections between race, ethnicity, religion, religion, class, gender, sexuality, state and nation have been addressed by certain disciplines of the social sciences, there is still reluctance to take queer contributions into account and, even more so, to frame them within the umbrella of the recently named field of Queer International Relations (Weber, 2016). For the purpose of this work, and without wishing to provide here a specific definition of a queer approach, what is really at stake in any queer research is not so much a specific methodological proposal, but rather a substantial political commitment to place gender and sexuality at the forefront of social science analysis, challenging, in so doing, the hegemonic orders denounced in their research.

The queer approach is understood here, therefore, in the sense of moral and political commitment and counter-hegemonic denunciation, rather than in terms of disloyalty to conventional academic methods to which certain queer theorists refer. The article is structured in four sections: introduction, theoretical-methodological approach, discussion and conclusions. The introductory section clarifies from a critical anthropological perspective the relevance of the reconceptualization of religion as a category of analysis when approaching the study of Islam. The section on theoretical and methodological approach reflects on the implications of putting queer studies and international relations in conversation. The first discussion heading, focusing on Islamicate LGBTQ phobia, reflects on the relationship between sexual and gender dissidences, Islamic tradition and Muslim identity, as well as on the influence of colonization and neo-colonization on the current state of these dissidence within Muslim-majority countries. The second discussion heading, dealing with queered Islamophobia, delves into the framework of homonationalism and the consolidation of LGBTQ as a requirement for access to citizenship and as a civilizational marker of Muslim otherness. Finally, I present some brief conclusions and outline some possible future lines of research.