It’s an exciting time for marriage equality campaigners all over the world now, including in the UK.
In May 2013, the House of Commons passed the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill for England and Wales with 366 votes in favor and 161 against. In June, the House of Lords backed equal marriage by rejecting an amendment aimed at wrecking the Bill by 390 votes to 148.
The Equalities Minister, Maria Miller, has now announced that the first same-sex weddings can take place from 29 March 2014.
We at Imaan, a British-based support group for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and intersex Muslims, are often asked by other LGBTQI groups to support their equal marriage campaigns. Indeed, we are often reminded of how important the Muslim voice is, given the emerging religious dynamics around the campaign. Just what are these dynamics, though, and what exactly is our position in light of these dynamics?
Firstly, there are some surprises amid the more general religious backlash against the equal marriage bill. For instance, in the House of Commons session, five out of the eight Muslim Members of Parliament voted in favor of gay marriage. Only one voted against, while the remaining two abstained.
In the House of Lords session, however, out of 14 Church of England diocesan bishops, nine – including Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby – opposed gay marriage by voting in favor of the wrecking amendment, whilst the remainder abstained.
Outside parliament, there appears to be increasing anti-gay marriage mobilization from Christian and Muslim leaders. In January, more than 1,000 Roman Catholic clergy in England and Wales signed a letter to The Daily Telegraph saying the passage of gay marriage legislation would persecute British Catholics. In May, more than 500 British imams and Muslim leaders wrote a similar letter, claiming such legislation would discriminate against Muslims and other religious groups.
Before this, in April, Anglican Mainstream executive secretary Chris Sugden and Majid Katme of the Islamic Medical Association spoke at an anti-equal marriage rally in Trafalgar Square.
No matter how politically-correctly these oppositions to gay marriage are phrased, they all smack of homophobia. This is why Imaan is proud of all the MPs and peers, especially the Muslims, who had the courage and congruence to support same-sex marriage.
Yet, while Imaan has no truck with homophobia, and while we support marriage equality in principle, in truth this campaign is not one of our priorities.
Through existing legislation on civil partnerships, LGBTQI British Muslims can actually enjoy something as close to marriage as possible – legally and religiously.
Muslim marriage is not sacramental, like Catholic marriage, and neither does the ceremony have to take place in a mosque, the way Christian weddings need to take place within religious premises. As long as there is an Islamic marriage contract (nikah nama) signed by the two spouses in the presence of two witnesses, the religious aspect of the marriage is fulfilled.
According to this model, it is not even necessary for the marriage to be officiated by an imam or qadi (Islamic judge), although there is a tiny minority of imams and qadis in Europe and North America who do conduct same-sex nikahs.
Of course, there are many LGBTQI Muslims who still strongly support the symbolic significance of same-sex marriage. It is just for many of us, some caveats apply.
For example, on one level, it appears as though the campaigns for or against gay marriage are proxy battles for the church’s place in British society. Thus, homophobic Christian organizations such as Anglican Mainstream are happy to woo homophobic Muslim organizations such as the Islamic Medical Association to join their battlefront, and this is a two-way romance.
Furthermore, for many LGBTQI Muslims, the ability to have a nikah is what overrides whether its civil concomitant is labeled ‘marriage’ or ‘partnership’. In other words, Imaan’s priority is to build bridges between us and other Muslim communities and groups in order to make these nikahs increasingly possible.
The good news is there are growing networks and friendships between Imaan and other British Muslim organizations. The bad news is that no matter how promising or exciting our work together gets, we are all still affected by a wider climate of Islamophobia and racism.
For example, Imaan is now one of the patrons of Tell MAMA, a national project for measuring and monitoring anti-Muslim attacks. This is because LGBTQI Muslims are often recipients of the twin prejudices of Islamophobia and homophobia. Tell MAMA recognizes these two prejudices are often intertwined, just as religious and sexual identity is often inseparable for LGBTQI Muslims.
According to Tell MAMA’s logic in documenting hate incidents, intra-Muslim dynamics are important, too – they look out, for example, for anti-Shi’a violence from Sunni Muslims and other kinds of intra-Muslim tensions. This project is therefore a multi-layered attempt to tackle the complex dynamics of anti-Muslim hatred, whether it is perpetrated by non-Muslims onto Muslims, or by Muslims onto other Muslims.
Yet, Tell MAMA has been dismissed by some as being part of an ‘Islamophobia industry’ and for being quasi-apologists for Islamist terrorism on British soil.
In the face of arguments such as these, it becomes doubly difficult for LGBTQI Muslims to refute the charge we have ‘imagined’ the anti-Muslim attacks we, our communities and families face.
It becomes even harder for some of us to articulate we face Islamophobia and racism even within the gay scene. For many LGBTQI Muslims then, countering Islamophobia and racism becomes more urgent than campaigning for gay marriage.
This is not meant to excuse the very real homophobia we face within our communities and families. Many LGBTQI Muslims face the untold horrors of forced marriage, domestic violence and youth suicide because of homophobia justified in the name of ‘Islam’. In Imaan’s case, we also provide extensive support for LGBTQI Muslim asylum seekers who, again, face a combination of racism, Islamophobia, homophobia and xenophobia when they arrive on these shores.
So it is ironic when some of our LGBTQI counterparts get annoyed with us, for example, for not accepting certain speaking engagements to give the ‘Muslim perspective’ on same-sex marriage.
How do we politely say that, sometimes, we are fed up with tokenism? How do we tell other LGBTQI individuals that yes, our sexual identity is integral to who we are, but so is Islam and therefore we’re not into dissing Muslim leaders just for the sake of it? How do we stress, again and again, this matters, given how ‘Islam’ is used in such dramatically different ways around the world, from far-right anti-immigration campaigners in Europe to authoritarian Muslim governments?
So, what’s the ‘LGBTQI Muslim perspective’ on gay marriage? We can only speak for Imaan. The short answer is, in light of all this, yes, we support same-sex marriage, but we also have other, more pressing priorities.