Pinker’s Chapter 7 supplement — criminalization is a historical and global variable
Pinker begins with Britain’s prosecution and chemical castration of Alan Turing to make two boundaries explicit: state violence against gay people has deep Christian as well as Muslim histories, and a jurisdiction’s law is not evidence that every believer or citizen endorses it. He then treats decriminalization as a measurable retreat of government violence. The conceptual argument moves from religious or customary condemnation to autonomy: even persistent moral disapproval does not answer whether the criminal law may punish consensual conduct.
Figure 7-23 — Cumulative decriminalization of homosexuality in the United States and worldwide, 1785–2009. The international timeline draws mainly on Ottosson, with thirty-six countries that allowed homosexuality but lacked a dated reform omitted and seven dates added from Wikipedia. Pinker’s accompanying claims that almost 120 countries allowed homosexuality, about 80 criminalized it, and seven death-penalty jurisdictions remained are therefore a circa-2010 snapshot, not a current legal map. He notes concentration in Africa, the Caribbean, Oceania, and the Islamic world, but the graph does not isolate religion from colonial legal inheritance, regime type, institutions, public opinion, or regional diffusion. Current country claims require current legal sources. Chapter 7 synthesis · Attachment (file not included in this release) · Attachment (file not included in this release) · Attachment (file not included in this release)
| What is Islam’s position on the treatment of homosexuals? Islam goes beyond merely disapproving of homosexuality. Sharia teaches that homosexuality is a vile form of fornication, punishable by death. (It bears mentioning that this does not mean that every Muslim wants to kill every homosexual). |
| ### Quran Quran (7:80-84) - ”…For ye practice your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds… And we rained down on them a shower (of brimstone)” - An account that is borrowed from the Biblical story of Sodom. Muslim scholars through the centuries have interpreted the “rain of stones” on the town as meaning that homosexuals should be stoned, since no other reason is given for the people’s destruction. (Inexplicably, the story is also repeated in three other suras: 15:74, 27:58 and 29:40). Quran (7:81) - “Will ye commit abomination such as no creature ever did before you?” This verse is part of the previous text establishing that homosexuality as different from (and much worse than) adultery or other sexual sin. According to the Arabic grammar, homosexuality is called the worst sin, while references elsewhere describe other forms of non-marital sex as being “among great sins.” Quran (26:165-166) - “Of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males, “And leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing” Quran (4:16) - “If two men among you are guilty of lewdness, punish them both. If they repent and amend, Leave them alone” This is the Yusuf Ali translation. The original Arabic does not use the word “men” and simply says “two from among you.” Yusuf Ali may have added the word “men” because the verse seems to refer to a different set than referred to in the prior verse (explicitly denoted as “your women”). In other words, since 4:15 refers to “your women”, 4:16 is presumably written to and refers to men. |
| ### Hadith and Sira Abu Dawud (4462) - The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, “Whoever you find doing the action of the people of Loot, execute the one who does it and the one to whom it is done.” (This is a sahih hadith) Abu Dawud (4448) - “If a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death.” (see also 4447). Sahih Bukhari (72:774) - “T__he Prophet cursed effeminate men (those men who are in the similitude (assume the manners of women) and those women who assume the manners of men, and he said, ‘Turn them out of your houses .’ The Prophet turned out such-and-such man, and ‘Umar turned out such-and-such woman.” al-Tirmidhi, Sunan 1:152 - [Muhammad said] “Whoever is found conducting himself in the manner of the people of Lot, kill the doer and the receiver.” Reliance of the Traveller, p17.2 - “May Allah curse him who does what Lot’s people did.” This is also repeated in three other places. There are several lesser hadith stating, “if a man comes upon a man, then they are both adulterers,” “If a woman comes upon a woman, they are both adulteresses,” “When a man mounts another man, the throne of God shakes,” and “Kill the one that is doing it and also kill the one that it is being done to.” (Abu Dawud 4462 and al-Tirmidhi 1456) |
### Notes Gay men being rounded up for “processing” in the Islamic world, where homosexuals are demonized, banned, beaten, probed, forced into marriage, flogged, incarcerated, lashed, hanged, brutalized, stoned, thrown from roofs, tortured and shot. Homosexuals are beheaded, hanged and stoned in modern Saudi Arabia and Iran, where Muhammad’s laws are applied most strictly. Five other Muslim countries have the death penalty on their books for homosexual behavior. In the past, gays were burned. As one cleric recently put it, the only point of theological debate is not whether the homosexual should be killed, but how it should be done. (See also Fatwa Islamiyah, which advocates burning and stoning). Zafar Bangash, an imam and journalist who serves as the Director of Contemporary Islamic Thought and president of an Islamic Society chapter in Canada, has openly called for gays to be stoned to death: “My brothers and sisters, it is not time to live in coexistence with them. It is time for us to pick up the stones to stone these people to death for the abomination that they are committing.” In 2016, an educated imam in Tunisia explained that while it may seem harsh, there is no ambiguity in Islam: > God is very straightforward about this — not we Muslims, not subjective, the Sharia is very clear about it, the punishment for homosexuality, bestiality or anything like that is death. We don’t make any excuses about that, it’s not our law — it’s the Quran There are several places in the Quran where the story of Sodom is repeated, with emphasis placed on the destruction of the town for homosexual lewdness. Also, according to Serge Trifkovic: > Mohammed’s first successor Abu Bakr reportedly had a homosexual burned at the stake. The fourth caliph, Mohammed’s son-in-law Ali, ordered a sodomite thrown from the minaret of a mosque. Others he ordered to be stoned. One of the earliest and most authoritative commentators on the Koran, Ibn ‘Abbas (died 687) blended both approaches into a two-step execution in which “the sodomite should be thrown from the highest building in the town and then stoned. (source) Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi-Amoli of Iran said, in April of 2012, that homosexuals are inferior to dogs and pigs, since these animals do not engage in such acts (presumably). In November of that year, a cleric on British television stated, “What should be done to those who practice homosexuality? Torture them; punish them; beat them and give them mental torture.” A 2014 fatwa from the mainstream OnIslam.net proclaimed that homosexuality is “abnormal” and abhorrent” and confirmed that gays should be killed: “The punishment for men or women who are unwilling to give up homosexuality and therefore are rejecting the guidance of Allah Most High is in fact death according to Islam.” An imam invited to speak at a Florida mosque in 2016 said that killing gays was an “act of compassion”. Above all else, “you have to get rid of them.” In 2017, the leader of Chechnya openly proclaimed that he would defend the right of families to honor kill their gay members (in 2019, it came to light that several had died there under torture). In a prepared monologue on a Muslim Brotherhood TV channel in 2020, host Hala Samir explained that Muhammad’s companions disagreed only with whether gays should be burned alive, thrown to their deaths or stoned. She also took issue with the “gay” label, because it ‘sounds nice.’ Since the resurrection of the caliphate in 2014 (the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) dozens of homosexuals have been thrown from rooftops. Other have been stoned to death. Muslim identity groups, such as CAIR, did not offer a single denunciation of these serial murders. (They did condemn the 2016 massacre at a gay night club in Orlando, perhaps because the toll made it too conspicuous to ignore). Muslim political leaders in the West often imitate and form alliances with social liberals which sometimes include peripheral support for gay rights. Unfortunately, this appears to be more out of expediency and self-interest rather than genuine concern. There has never been any noticeable effort on the part of Muslim leaders in the West to relieve the plight of homosexuals in Islamic countries overseas - where their influence would surely carry more weight than that of their secular allies. See Also: No, The Council on American-Islamic Relations Does Not Like Homosexuals Gays Should Stop Defending Islam Western Muslim Leaders Speak on Homosexuality (Video) Why Do Western Gays Abandon Their Islamic Brothers? The Secret Gay History of Islam (Gay Star News) |