At Spiegel Online, Juliane von Mittelstaedt and Daniel Steinvorth report on the wave of homophobia sweeping Islamic countries and the “moral panic” it’s creating:
More than anything, it is the politicization of Islam that has led to the persecution of gays today. Sexual morals are no longer a private matter. They are regulated and instrumentalized by governments.
“The most repressive are secular regimes such as those in Egypt or Morocco which are under pressure from Islamists and so try to outdo them with regard to morals,” says Scott Long of Human Rights Watch. “In addition the persecution of homosexuals shows that a regime has control over the private lives of its citizens—a sign of power and authority.” For several years now a sense of “moral panic” has been systematically fomented in many Muslim countries.
Iran is a case in point, where homosexuals have been persecuted on a more or less regular basis since the Islamic revolution. Since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been in office there has definitely been an increase in this persecution despite the fact that Ahmadinejad never grows tired of emphasizing that there are no homosexuals in his country.
Read the full article here.
(HT: James Moser)