Reading for PCVs Going to the Islamic World

Significant numbers of Peace Corps volunteers now serve in countries with large or majority Islamic populations in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Peace Corps applicants and nominees often ask us questions about homophobia, restrictive laws and similar issues in these countries. Such questions are not limited to just these countries.

We have heard from LGBT volunteers and former volunteers who generally have had few problems adjusting to Islamic cultures. Respondents have always suggested discretion, keeping your eyes open for the realities of gay life in such places, and letting local people make first connections (see Maureen Pritchard’s article about her experiences in Kyrgyzstan in this issue). Recent RPCV, Jay Davidson, Mauritania, has written about his own experiences in an Islamic Republic which proscribes the death penalty for homosexual activity (apparently never carried out – the death penalty that is, not homosexual activity).

In many countries in the developing world, gay and other human rights issues are either in very early stages of development or in some cases stalled and regressing. Perhaps the best clue of possible changes in the LGBT category of human rights is the status of women in a society. The more power and control women have over their own lives is usually a sign of more flexibility in gender and sexual identity roles.

I’ve just read two very good books and a very interesting magazine article that deal with gay issues in Islamic society.

The first is Brian Whitaker’s Unspeakable Love, Gay and Lesbian Life in the Middle East, University of California Press, 2006. Whitaker is British and gay and has lived in the Middle East as Middle East Editor of the Guardian newspaper. His book was inspired by the widely publicized raid by the Egyptian police on a floating gay nightclub on the River Nile in 2001. Later he met two men directly involved in the case. Through them and others, and he was able to talk with other gay men in Egypt and Lebanon. This coupled with other research and resources from the region forms the structure of his book.

His concentration is the Arab Middle East and North Africa, and as such would be of most interest to PCVs in or going to Jordan and Morocco. He focuses on how the attitudes toward homosexuality, women’s rights, and human rights in general are entangled in international politics, and how anti-western and anti-American feelings and defensiveness form real barriers to social progress.

A second book is Ian Buruma’s Murder in Amsterdam, Penguin Press, 2006. Buruma is a widely read writer of current political and cultural events. He was born and raised in the Netherlands, later moved to England, and has spent much time living around the world. He’s currently teaches at Bard College in New York.

Buruma explores the murders of two prominent Dutch citizens, openly gay politician Pim Fortuyn, and film maker Teo van Gogh. Both were vocal opponents of the immigration policies of the Netherlands and what they felt were the Dutch government’s failed policies of multiculturalism. Fortuyn was murdered by a Dutch animal rights activist, van Gogh by a radical young Dutch born Moroccan.

Anti-immigrant feelings in the Netherlands are not necessarily fueled by what we would describe as right wing or conservative political movements. Progressive Dutch citizens are very concerned by the growth of a Muslim immigrant community that politically and socially opposes traditional Dutch values, particularly women’s and gay rights, freedom of speech, and sexual freedoms. Buruma deals with the same dilemmas as Whitaker, the clash of religious, cultural, social and ultimately political rights. At his trial van Gogh’s murderer spoke openly of his hostility to democracy, Western cultural values and the power of anything other than Islam.

Much to my surprise, a first rate article about gay life in Iraq, Dying to Come Out: The War on Gays in Iraq, is in the February 2007 issue of GQ. It’s the issue with a dreamy-eyed Jake Gyllenhaal (our Jack Twist) on the cover. Writer David France tells gay Iraqi Ali Hili’s story.

Iraq was a place where many gay men lived with some security during the years of Saddam’s secular reign. Hili worked as a DJ in gay-friendly pubs in hotels like the Palestine and al-Rashid in Baghdad. Hili is part of a loose network of Iraqi exiles in London called Iraqi LGBT. They work to protect gays still inside Iraq. For the last year there has been a particularly brutal campaign waged against gays in Iraq. More than 40 have been killed mostly by people suspected of being Interior Ministry police. It’s a grim story, and as far as I know hardly written about in our country till now.

Am I trying to influence LGBT PCVs from serving in the Islamic world? Absolutely not! Here is a part of the world that most Americans and particularly gay Americans know nothing about. Like everywhere else in the world, our gay sisters and brothers are there, even if they don’t call themselves gay. And their lives are tough. We can’t work toward change and progress, unless we fully understand current realties. These three pieces of reading will help you do that.