Islamic Homosexualities : : Culture, History, and Literature / / ed. by Will Roscoe, Stephen O. Murray.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Archive eBook-Package Pre-2000
• MitwirkendeR: Allyn, Eric,; Crompton, Louis,; Dickemann, Mildred,; Khan, Badruddin,; Mujtaba, Hasan,; Murray, Stephen O.,; Naqvi, Nauman,; Roscoe, Will,; Wafer, Jim,; Westphal-Hellbusch, Sigrid,
• HerausgeberIn: Murray, Stephen O.,; Roscoe, Will,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [1997]; ©1997
• Year of Publication: 1997
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

The dramatic impact of Islamic fundamentalism in recent years has skewed our image of Islamic history and culture. Stereotypes depict Islamic societies as economically backward, hyper-patriarchal, and fanatically religious. But in fact, the Islamic world encompasses a great diversity of cultures and a great deal of variation within those cultures in terms of gender roles and sexuality. The first collection on this topic from a historical and anthropological perspective, Homosexuality in the Muslim World reveals that patterns of male and female homosexuality have existed and often flourished within the Islamic world. Indeed, same-sex relations have, until quite recently, been much more tolerated under Islam than in the Christian West. Based on the latest theoretical perspectives in gender studies, feminism, and gay studies, Homosexuality in the Muslim World includes cultural and historical analyses of the entire Islamic world, not just the so-called Middle East. Essays show both age-stratified patterns of homosexuality, as revealed in the erotic and romantic poetry of medieval poets, and gender-based patterns, in which both men and women might, to varying degrees, choose to live as members of the opposite sex. The contributors draw on historical documents, literary texts, ethnographic observation and direct observation by both Muslim and non-Muslim authors to show the considerable diversity of Islamic societies and the existence of tolerated gender and sexual variances.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- PART I. Introduction to Islamic Homosexualities -- CHAPTER 1. Introduction -- CHAPTER 2. The Will Not to Know -- CHAPTER 3. Precursors of Islamic Male Homosexualities -- CHAPTER 4. Muhammad and Male Homosexuality -- CHAPTER 5. Woman-Woman Love in Islamic Societies -- PART II. Literary Studies -- CHAPTER 6. Vision and Passion -- Chapter 7. Corporealizing Medieval Persian and Turkish Tropes -- Chapter 8. Male Love and Islamic Law in Arab Spain -- PART III. Historical Studies -- Chapter 9. Male Homosexuality, Inheritance Rules, and the Status of Women in Medieval Egypt -- CHAPTER 10. Homosexuality among Slave Elites in Ottoman Turkey -- CHAPTER 11. Male Homosexuality in Ottoman Albania -- CHAPTER 12. The Balkan Sworn Virgin -- CHAPTER 13. Some Nineteenth-Century Reports of Islamic Homosexualities -- CHAPTER 14. Gender-Defined Homosexual Roles in Sub-Saharan African Islamic Cultures -- PART IV. Anthropological Studies -- CHAPTER 15. Institutionalized Gender-Crossing in Southern Iraq -- CHAPTER 16. The Sohari Khanith -- CHAPTER 17. Male Actresses in Islamic Parts of Indonesia and the Southern Philippines -- CHAPTER 18. Two Baluchi Buggas, a Sindhi Zenana, and the Status of Hijras in Contemporary Pakistan -- CHAPTER 19. The Other Side of Midnight -- CHAPTER 20. Not-So-Gay Life in Pakistan in the 1980s and 1990s -- CHAPTER 21. Two Islamic AIDS Education Organizations -- CHAPTER 22. Conclusion -- Appendix -- Authors -- Index