Homosexuality in Islam

"All the legal schools [of Islam] regard sex between males as unlawful... When we turn from the question of sex between males to that of love or attraction between males, the picture is a little different. There are a number of indications that the Prophet was not insensitive to the attractiveness of other males... there is no evidence that [the Prophet] regarded the attraction itself as foreign to his own nature, rather the contrary. In fact later writers, such as Ibn al-Farid, assumed that the Prophet himself loved another man, namely his Companion Mu'adh ibn Jabal. The Prophet is reported to have said, "O Mu'adh, truly I love thee" (Arberry 1956:53n24). Ibn al-Farid takes this relationship as a paradigm of chaste love between males.

Romantic love between males, provided it is chaste, appears to have had an accepted place in Islamic cultures, in a way it has rarely if ever had in Judeo-Christian ones"

--- Muhammad and Male Homosexuality / Jim Wafer in Islamic Homosexualities: Culture, History, and Literature (ed Will Roscoe, Stephen O. Murray)


"It is sufficient for a good Moslem to abstain from those things which Allah has forbidden, and which, if he choose to do, he will find charged to his account on the Day of Resurrection. But to admire beauty, and to be mastered by love - that is a natural thing, and comes not within the range of Divine commandment and prohibition"

--- Ibn Hazm, Andalusian theologian


"Abdal-Hakim Murad [a Sunni theologian]... accepts "homosexuality as an innate disposition" in some (though not all) cases... Murad stresses that there are no circumstances under which an individual with homosexual "tendencies" - which he likens to the impulses of a pyromaniac "mental pateitn" - can lawfully act on his or her desires. The only religiously acceptable option for someone with a homoerotic orientaton is permanent chastity: Murad sees it as a test from God. His stance coincides with the Muslim Women's League statement"

--- Sexual Ethics and Islam: Feminist Reflections on Qur'an, Hadith and Jurisprudence / Kecia Ali


Christopher van der Krogt, Lecturer in History and Religious Studies at Massey University:

"Scriptures and later writers usually referred only to particular sexual acts and did not raise the issue of personal sexual orientation."

(Homosexuality and Islam: What does the Qur’an actually say about gay people?)


In other words, just like in Christianity a distinction is drawn between homosexual desires and homosexual acts (what are truly condemned).