In the month of October 2022, Yaqeen Institute published an article titled “Islam and the LGBT Question: Reframing the Narrative.” This research article was classified under politics and practical theology and contemporary ideologies. The article is based on a video presentation by Dr. Carl Sharif El-Tobgui on Blogging Theology with Paul Williams, which was held on July 17, 2022.
The subject of LGBT is something than many Islamic scholars of the modern era and throughout history have discussed within the realm of the Quran, Islam’s holy book, and Sunnah (the Prophet Muhammad’s ﷺ teachings). This research article deconstructs the modern academic and social approach to the topics of sexuality and gender. It calls for Muslims to “establish and advocate for the Islamic paradigm of gender and sexuality over and against modern and postmodern perversions, while also supporting those Muslims who acknowledge orthodox Islamic teachings, but who struggle with same-sex attracts and/or gender dysphoria, in their struggle to live lives of virtue in conformity with the will of Allah and the teachings of Islam.”
Yaqeen Institute LGBT Webinar Discussion with Dr. Omar Suleiman and Others
Yaqeen Institute has a number of other resources on the LGBT subject. Earlier in June, Dr. Omar Suleiman, Sheikh Mustafa Umar, Sheikh Ubaydallah Evans, and Sister Sarah Sultan spoke on a Yaqeen webinar titled Islam and the LGBT question. They discussed a number of issues including how to address LGBT issues as Muslims while remaining faithful. The talk explored Islam’s ethical framework, and how community leaders and members could and should offer proper support needed to our community in an ever changing world.
In a related article published on Yaqeen Institute by Dr. Omar Suleiman titled “Faithful Activism: A Sunnah Framework”, Dr. Omar Suleiman speaks on the calling of a Muslim. He writes, “We are called to uplift society by conveying the message of God verbally through dawah (preaching) and letting our actions speak louder than our words through khidma (service). At the heart of both of these things is sincere concern for the people. When the Prophet ﷺ stood up to make his initial call, he referenced his credibility with the people as being one who always wished well for them: I have cared for you in this life, so I clearly care for you in the afterlife. No one can claim to care solely for the welfare of others in the hereafter while neglecting them in this life.”
Deconstructing the Western Narrative and the Islamic Approach on Gender and Sexuality
While there are other research papers published on Yaqeen Institute about LGBT, the October publication is unique in that it deconstructs the Western framework in approaching the issue, and comparatively, the Muslim framework for approaching the issue. In conclusion, it puts forward that “Western liberalism unknots three dimensions of the human experience once recognized as being bound together by nature and religious law: sex, reproduction, and marriage/morality. At the same time, it conflates three things that ought to be differentiated: desire, action, and identity. If our desires transgress divine law, they should not be acted upon, they should not become our identity. Up until the recent past, religious morality had furnished social meaning, norms, and structure and disciplined desires by determining which of them should be actualized and which should not. In today’s liberal extremism – which has overtaken, eliminated, or disfigured nearly all traditions – the only sacred deity is the subjective desire of the nafs.”
