Tuesday 16 December 2008

Islam's Intolerance is the Fault of the West

Now, as the question why young men with a "migration background" beat German pensioners to a pulp, is safely and satisfactorily answered, the question why young men with a "migration background" beat homosexuals to a pulp needs similar processing. This is done by one Hans Peter Pökel who is introduced as somebody who "does research in the field of gender images in the classical Arab literature" and who "works at the institute for Semitic and Arabic studies at the Freie Universität Berlin" in yesterday's Tagesspiegel, a major Berlin newspaper, considered to be on the more conservative side of the political spectrum. Arab sexuality, Pökel says, is...
...paradoxically ... very much Westernized. With Colonialism, Victorian prudishness was imported to the Orient and there was that mixture of fascination and disgust with the allegedly sensually-wimpish, lascivious Orient. This is a cliché that is fought in Arab countries even today by showing specific strictness and turning sexuality into a taboo generally. And the prosecution of homosexuals is very often quite cruel. For that, the authentic Islamic tradition can hardly be hold responsible, but those who are aiming to see their own rejection justified by the religious sources.
But hey! Pökel can more than just blame the West ex cathedra for some less-than-perfect circumstances in Muslim countries. Muslims really, deep down and when nobody is looking, are very tolerant of gay sex because...
...the penetrating man is even today not really seen as homosexual, a view that is, by the way, not typical Islamic, but part of the culture in the entire Mediterranean. An adolescent is not seen as a man and therefore sex with him is not seen as anything blameworthy. But he will become taboo as soon as the first sign of a beard becomes visible and he will then be expected to marry.
Yes, you are reading this right. This scholar of Arabic studies is not just justifying sex with children, but taking it as a positive sign of tolerance towards homosexuals in Muslim societies.

So we know now, that the reason for the hanging, stoning and flogging of homosexuals (and presumably for the hanging, raping, flogging and stoning of little girls, women and generally everybody who has somehow caused the wrath of the basically tolerant Mullahs, not to speak of the decapitations and mutilations) is not Islam, "but those who are aiming to see their own rejection justified by the religious sources". I am sure Pökel (whose name equals the German word for "pickle" and generates most appropriate Google ads) can explain as well why our own "Westernized" sexuality and prudishness does NOT hang homosexuals but allows something like that...

... and then vilifies those who say that a lifestyle illustrated by the above pictures does nothing to further the cause of homosexual "families".

How absolutely debased and rotten to the core is a man... correction: is a medium... correction: is a society whose media publishes a justification of sex with children with the ultimate goal of excusing Islam of what it is.

To be fair, judging from Pökel's qualifications, it must have taken the Tagesspiegel and editor-in-charge Andrea Dernbach some time until they found somebody in the deepest bilges of academia ready and willing to forward something like the above.



First posted here. Read the still topical earlier entries at Roncesvalles: Volker explains what makes the world go round, Islam Is Mercy and If the Mullah Isn't Watching....