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struwwelzeter · 3 years

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So I read your reply to Nyarisu's comment on Lionheart and I'm really intrigued by your comments about how people understand punk compared to what it was initially. Could I possibly ask you to expand on this? Pretty please?

Yes you could! This is a very (very?) personal point of view and I know a lot of people will disagree, but here goes nothing, I guess. If you disagree with me (and somebody will), that’s fine, but I will not engage with anything that’s not a constructively put argument. I’ve spend too much time thinking about this for a “I don’t like what you’re saying and that’s why you’re wrong” anon to change my mind. Just putting that out there - with love 💜.

The thing is, especially on tumblr but I think just in generally aswell, the idea of punk is presented as this ... Robin Hood kind of thing. Beat the system, stand up to bullies, live your own truth, all of that, but it always is presented as something that is supposed to come from a ... dare I say, nice place? Like those pictures of people in studded and sprayed leather jackets rescuing puppies. All of that, you know? And I don’t want to say that is wrong, because it isn’t, and I love the idea of that, it’s just not the entire truth.

Especially in the early to mid 70s, when arguably punk started, there was a lot of fatigue between an old and stuffy establishment and the lovey, dovey peace and love “let’s all be happy” movement of the hippie scene. I was at Force Attack in 2006, which is a punk festival (and possibly dirtiest place in the world) that got established in the early 90s and went on til 2008 (?), and even then some of the “death to hippies” sentiments ran pretty deep. And I know the counter argument to that will be a well meaning “well, that’s not real punk,” the problem is that I think it actually partly is. (Please keep the partly in mind for the rest of this argument.)

The problem with having the exact choice between “get a good job, built a nice house, think of what the neighbours will say, and don’t ask me about what I did in the war” and “we’re all a big part of one human family, and isn’t nature beautiful, lets all make peace, and btw we would have never done what our parents did” is that both models aren’t a sustainable life style for everyone. That’s why you get alot of people saying this is all fake bullshit, and they start being purposely offensive. This is why you get alot of Swastikas around the sex pistols, you get all these artists singing about suicide and incest and rape. It’s not that uncommon for some of those early acts to play with Nazi imagery, or claim that homosexuality is disgusting (despite the scene always being full of LGBTQ+ people), or idk, thinking it’s fun to piss on someone while they’re asleep. It’s alot of outcry, of saying life actually is this shitty and disgusting and I am gonna be that because in a way you will hate me either way. And it’s not always nice. Disdain and hate and petty selfishness are common human emotions and many of them are low and unhealthy, and honestly not nice or helpful or inclusive, but they are there, and I think alot of that early spirit was just about stopping to pretend that they don’t exist.

I think a reason for why we don’t think of the scene that way anymore is that many people very quickly outgrew that, and said “actually, we’re better than that, that’s not who we actually are. I sadly can’t find that interview right now, but Die Ärzte are actually a good exemple of that and they even admit it themselves, that there was a sense of “enough with the happy hippie bullshit, let’s disgust them” and then later going “uhmm - maybe that went a bit far.” I mean offensive or not, but ultimately a scene that is centered around artistic expression always ends with that question of creation, maybe like “if the world isn’t like what we want it to be, how do we make one we like?” - and then you end up with having to come up with answers that are more than just destruction. And then it turns into something else - something that I think is alot more like what tumblr seems to think punk is. And that’s a wonderful thing. Still - a side of punk, whatever that is, has always been what people like GG Allin (please read the wiki for context) have taken and pushed to the limits, and it just - isn’t nice. And here is where things get a bit tricky.

Because against that backdrop, things like John Lydon (Johnny Rotten) suddenly being a dirty old Trump supporter aren’t that surprising anymore. And then you get these 20 year olds “cancelling” the Sex Pistols, and I think there is just a bit of ... missing the point going on. I’ve read a comment on here recently, that basically said something like Richard should stop supporting the Sex Pistols (because he has that album in the back of the studio), and it’s just ... asking for a history to be erased that has rightfully been made obsolete but has still happened and was necessary at the time. You can take any of these early bands and pick their lyrics apart and find something that from our perspective now is disgusting, mean, exclusive, or outright racist. Songs about Fucking? Part of that record is a mysogynisy shitshow, something they were very aware of even at the time, and they still did it anyway because being disgusting was part of the point. The thing is though, the Sex Pistols were hugely influential, and alot of the positive things that grew out of that wouldn’t have been possible if kids like young Richard, or any of the bands you love that were influenced by them, wouldn’t have gotten that moment of “finally a place where I can put all of my petty hate”. It matters, and just because that moment is overcome, it doesn’t mean it should be forgotten, or stops existing in the people that lived through it.

I understand that the question of how much we should justify things with “it was the time” and how we deal with the result is an ever ongoing debate and their are many good arguments for why maybe we shouldn’t try to defend the wrongs of the past that way, and I want to point out that while I rarely agree on that in the first place (because I understand history as a natural learning curve where people aren’t perfect at the first try and it’s doing a disservice to humans just doing their best, but I digress and that’s a bit of another duscussion), I want to point out that I don’t want to defend anyone, rather I want to say “actually, being that horrible was often calculated, part of the point, and if you don’t like it, just leave it, fight it or debate it, but don’t pretend like it was a “missstep” or just a few black sheep of a scene that was never as nice or perfect as you want it to be.” You don’t get to erase half of a movement simply because you wish it wouldn’t exist the way it does - or well. I guess in this case mostly did - past tense.

The ugliness is part of the story to me, and it’s actually the bigger part of why I love this scene. I don’t need “punk” to define my politics, I need it to soothe my soul, and so did many, I think. The Sex Pistols breaking happened 20 years before my time, but I still feel connected to that world, and in particular the ugly parts of it. I often feel like I look at the world, and there are people that seem honestly shocked by the idea that maybe sometimes I find doing the right thing really hard, that I want petty, self serving revenge, that I don’t find it easy to not be selfish and unkind or sometimes want to hurt people because I am hurting myself and see an opportunity to do that. Obviously those aren’t nice things and I don’t want to be that way, but are you honestly telling me you don’t feel that? I find that hard to believe, and it leaves me with an ongoing question of if I am just worse than most people or if most people are just more fake. Both scenarios are equally shit. The ugly side of punk provides - not an answer to that - but maybe a partial solution, at least for me.

Another discussion we have all the time is about how what we consume or allow in artistic expression is influencing how we act as people in real life and how we want the world to be. Where do we draw the line? What is still ok? If I put me entertaining ideas about murder on a canvas, is that still good? what if it’s racism? What if it’s rape? We argue alot about how providing a safe space in art for those feelings is actually preventing us from acting on it in real life, how it’s an outlet of something we would never actually want or do, but then where is the limit to that? I am putting this intentionally controversial, but if we admit that most of us grow up with internalized racism and mysogyny, by that logic, why can’t I paint something that is blatantly hateful if I have those feelings? Maybe that is my way of fighting it, you don’t have to look at it? Not saying that’s what I am doing or would want to do, but what if? For some people Rammstein singing about not wanting to be Angels is crossing that line, for some of us that line is drawn alot later. Who is right? Isn’t that just personal sensitivity? Can you honestly rationalise that? Isn’t it just processing our different levels of petty hate in different ways? I don’t have the answers to any of that, it’s just questions I often have and that I think have to do with this, because alot of the nasty bits in punk will justify it exactly that way, as artistic expression. Alot of it isn’t as political as this scene is made out to be, it’s simply asking those things. I personally relate to that alot, as someone who arguably would draw the line of “we should stop doing this” in art very, very, very late - and certainly later than my own personal comfort zone.

I’m not sure if any of this makes any sense at all. I hope it does - and if it doesn’t it’s probably because I don’t know either, or because I don’t want to fully blow this up into an essay (sorry, too late?) or because I suck at making a point, or maybe because we simply disagree. All I know is that I sometimes see these posts of “what is punk and what isn’t” and it leaves me with this taste of “you’re describing a utopia and it’s cute and I want that too, but it’s not everything punk as I know it is, and it feels like you don’t want to see something that mattered too - even if it was brutal and disgusting.” And everytime I see it I feel alien, like something that mattered to me so much as a teenager and young adult gets taken away from me and made into something so sleek and pretty it becomes something unattainable to be that I simply don’t manage to live up to in the way I would like. I guess that is a petty, selfish way of looking at it too.

«It's a repressive society where you can't be horrible, I'm not horrible, they made me horrible, I'm just honest.»

- John Lydon

#sorry for this getting out of hand

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will-iswriting-again · 7 years

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Squish

Title: Squish

Fandom: Sander Sides

Pairing(s): Logicality

Genre: Angst with a happy ending

Word Count: 2564

Warning(s): Weight Mention

Tag List: @irish-newzealand-idian-dutch

Finally finished @lamp-calm-sanders fic, so sorry it took so long (I say knowing full well this is sadly the shortest amount of time it has ever taken me to write a fic, I am so sorry) (also spent like and hour trying to fix this because tumblr hates the copy paste option)

~~~

Logan hadn’t always felt bad about his body. Logan hadn’t always looked at his chub with disdain or fantasized what it would be like to be skinny, he hadn’t always wondered what it would be like to not be fat. God, he hated that word, he hated it’s definition, the connotations it brought when he said it, he even hated the ugly way it seemed to roll off his tongue. But he hated that he hated his body even more. He knew he wasn’t unhealthy (He encouraged Thomas to eat healthily often and Logan was not much of a hypocrite) it was just how his body metabolized food and he understood that. He knew the other three loved him and his body but he still couldn’t stop the negativity he felt when he thought about it.

Like he said though, he hadn’t always hated his size, for most of his life the thoughts never dared cross his mind. He wasn’t really sure when they had started, when Thomas was younger he hadn’t minded his size, if anything he liked his body. And he knew the other sides had no problem. Roman didn’t really care, he could playfully quip with Logan no matter how skinny or fat he was. Virgil liked to act like it didn’t bother him but he secretly loved the comfort that came with Logan’s hugs that wouldn’t have felt the same if Logan were any skinnier (he had always taken pride in being the only one besides Patton who could calm the anxious trait down.) And Patton, of course, loved Logan’s size, when they were younger Patton would always gush about how adorable Logan was, calling Logan his favorite “squish.”

Squish (adj)- a way of describing someone who is smol (see card 37), loveable, and sometimes even physically squishy.

Logan pretended he thought it was annoying but he secretly loved the endearing nickname. A warm fuzzy feeling would erupt in his chest whenever Patton said it, his heart would swell and his cheeks would turn bright red (when he was older and could understand emotions better he defined this feeling as happiness.)

Happiness (n)- the state of feeling happy (showing or feeling pleasure/contentment)

But that all changed during Thomas’s teenage years. It had started off small, Thomas would watch a movie with his friends, the coined “fat kid” was always the butt of the jokes. Logan had brushed it off at the time, high school children were often harsh for the sake of it, there was nothing wrong with him, the cruelties of high school were to blame. Then Thomas’s chubbier friends would get picked on at school, Logan once again would brush it off as useless teenage bullying but now there was an inkling of doubt (what if they were right? What if he was the wrong one here, what if they were right) Then social media began to take off and everywhere Logan would people just like him endlessly picked on for no other reason than how big they were. They were accused of being lazy, fat, disgusting, unhygienic, unmotivated, wrong, bad, wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong

After careful data analysis and consideration Logan finally concluded that being fat was bad. If so many people hated it (hated him) then statistically it must be true. Fat was wrong, he was wrong.

If Logan was younger he would have talked to Patton or Virgil about it. He would have crawled in their beds and cried his feelings away until he felt better. He could’ve sobbed into Patton’s chest and laid his insecurities out as they cuddled in his bed. He could have leaned on Virgil’s shoulder as they watched rain trickle down the their windows, just enjoying the quiet content of it all.

But it was too late for that, they had grown distant as Thomas had gotten older. Virgil was much more controlling during high school, he knew all the horrible things kids in school could do and he just wanted to protect Thomas from it all. But the other sides never thought that was the right way approach to high school and soon it became a constant war of Virgil vs. everyone else. So it hadn’t really surprised Logan when the other’s bickering had grown so tiresome for the anxious side that he had decided he was done with it all and retired to his room. Patton had been upset at first but Virgil could still do his job and he came out eat when he needed to so eventually Patton relented. By the time Thomas started making vines Logan had only seen Virgil a handful of times.

And Logan, too, had become more distant, Patton and Roman were too emotional most of the time (this was when he missed his left brain bro... the name was Virgil’s suggestion) and he did not have the time or energy to deal with them. He and Roman started disagreeing more often, Roman’s outlandish ideas sometimes overpowering any logical thought. Patton, of course, tried to bond with him every once in awhile but each time Logan would brush it off, so yeah, Logan was not in any position to ask any of them for help.

So he dealt on his own, and he was good at it. He learned to bottle his emotions up into this tiny spot in his chest and never touch them again. Using that method he could cope with all his issues without any negative connotations for Thomas. He was fine.

Until he wasn’t.

~~~

“This one’s for you Patton!” Thomas exclaimed, phone in hand. It was a late Tuesday night and they had yet again been subjected to Sides Q&A. “What’s your favorite cartoon?”

“Ooh! It’s so hard to choose,” Patton gushed. “But if I have to choose I’d saaaaaay, Steven Universe but Legend of Korra is always a close second.” Patton said with a grin. It’d been a bad day for Logan, nothing particular had happened it was just one of those really bad days where the mirrors seemed to distort his image until he felt like he was looking at an ugly monster. It was one of those day where he didn’t want anyone to see him, it made him feel open and vulnerable and he couldn’t deal with that right now. Â It was just one of those days where he just wanted to lay in his bed and hide under the covers until the sun went away. But life was never exactly kind to Logan when exactly kind when he wanted it to be.

“Virgil, in your opinion, who gives the best hugs?” Thomas queried, breaking Logan from his train of thought.

“I don’t really have many options considering Patton’s the only one who hugs me but I guess I’d say Patton,” Virgil said, bitterness from his years of exclusion leaking through. Pain pierced through Logan’s heart, he used to be Virgil’s favorite hugger.

Longing (n)- a yearning desire for what once was or what could be

“I will make an effort in the future to engage in more comforting physical contact.” Logan managed to squeeze out of his chest, stoic as ever, determined to hide the swell of emotions threatening to break the surface.

“As will I!” Roman declared. “I shall become the best hugger you have ever seen Virgil dear.” Virgil rolled his eyes but everyone could see the light blush that dusted his cheeks.

“Ah! Here’s another one for Logan,” Thomas interrupted. “What’s your favorite vocabulary card?” The interests of the other three perked up. It seemed like Logan had hundreds of cards and they’d only seen a handful.

”There are many that I’ve grown fond of but at this time my favorite is Extra.” Logan replied, flipping the card out from his back pocket.

Extra (adj)- Someone who is over the top, flamboyant or dramatic when it is not necessary

“It was not only one of the easier ones to learn but it is also an adequate insult for Roman.” He said with a mischievous smirk. Roman feigned an affronted gasp.

“I’ll let you know,” He cried, hand over his heart “I take that as a compliment.” He said dramatically and sniffled.

“See, case in point. You are extra.” Logan said, pointing at him, earning a chuckle from Virgil and another gasp from Roman. Thomas chuckled but pulled up another ask.

“This one’s for all of you,” He said. “Who do you all think is the hottest?” Immediately, they all jumped in, putting in their thoughts.

“Noooo, I can’t choose we’re all beautiful.” Patton said in distress eyes bouncing to all of them wildly.

“Oh it’s me of course,” Roman said gallantly, striking a pose.

“Why are you forcing us to choose who is what society expects to be ‘hot?’”Virgil asked, shaking his head.

“I hate to say it, but I do agree with Roman,” Logan spoke up and everyone paused to stare at him, even Thomas, Logan rarely agreed with Roman, much less on frivolous things such as this. “While you all are beautiful in your own way, Roman is the only one who fits the societal version of a hot version and actively tries to maintain this image.” No one spoke for a moment, the air tense and uncomfortable. Everyone was staring at Logan like he’d just grown two more heads, he looked away, not used to so much attention on him at once. Finally, Patton broke the silence.

“You mean, we are all beautiful, you forgot yourself.” He whispered and Logan tensed, Patton was the type of person who just sort of knew when someone wasn’t feeling like themselves and Logan didn’t want Patton to know right now.

Intuition (n)- the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning

“Yes, yes, of course, merely a slip of the tongue,” Logan lied, his fingers tapping on his wrist to the beat of his nervous heart rate. “However, this question was shallow and I’d prefer not to take part in ones like these again, therefore I shall be going. Goodbye everyone.” He sunk out as quick as he could, he could hear the others saying their goodbyes and following behind him as he willed all his strength into not sprinting into his room and collapsing into his bed.

“Hey, Logan,” Virgil mumbled from behind, managing to catch him in the commons. “Umm.. sleep well.” He said, smiling softly, placing a comforting hand on his shoulder. It may not have seemed like much but Logan knew it was so much more, when he was ready he would go to Virgil and finally talk about what was bothering him but he wasn’t ready yet and Virgil understood that.

With that comforting thought, he finally made it into his room and collapsed on the bed, the metaphorical damn breaking as his chest seemed to cleave in two, silent tears leaking out as he curled in on himself, bringing his knees to his chest. But he surprisingly didn’t feel particularly bad, there wasn’t any of the usual uncomfortable ball of sadness weighing on his chest, instead there was nothing. But he didn’t feel good either. It wasn’t like the weight had been lifted, it seemed more like a pleasant numbing. If he was being honest, he didn’t really feel anything at all.

He could deal with that, not feeling was fine, Logan was perfectly okay with not feeling. It probably wasn’t healthy but it was something different from the aches that usually plagued him everyday and Logan could use every break he could get. Patton, on the other hand, was not fine with that and chose a very poor time to barge into Logan’s room.

“Hey, kiddo, I noticed you were feeling down earlier and wanted to know if-” Patton paused, noticing the strange emptiness of the room. “Logan?” Logan didn’t move, laying still in his void of nothingness, he wanted Patton to go away and take all his feelings with him, Logan did not need them right now, he couldn’t breathe when they were there and needed them to leave.

“Oh honey,” Patton cooed and hurried over to the bed to sit next to Logan, his hand resting soothingly on Logan’s knee. “Is this about the Q&A question earlier?” Logan hesitantly nodded numbly, staring right past Patton. It was useless lying to Patton, he’d pester Logan until he confessed if he didn’t.

“I-I was not feeling my best.” He managed to mumble, the salty sensation of his tears shocking him closer to reality.

“Why?” Patton asked softly.

“It.. reminded me that I-I do not have a.. d-desirable body type.” He said slowly and Patton frowned.

“Is it because you’re chubbier than us?” Patton asked and Logan nodded again, more tears flowing as a silent sob wracked through him. Patton frowned and turned to face the crying boy. “You know that your size has nothing to do with your beauty right?” Logan paused.

“B-But it does,” Logan said earnestly. “I have looked over so much data, and the data shows that fat people are ugly. So I must be ugly... It’s only logical thinking.” He trailed off at the end, looking away from Patton and focusing on a tiny speck of dust in his covers.

“Can you sit up kiddo? I want to prove you wrong.” Patton said after a moment, an unidentifiable look in his eyes. Logan frowned but relented, sitting cross legged across from Patton, who smiled and poked his arm.

“See these arms? You may only see flab, but I see that these arms are the same arms that give the best hugs in the mindscape, even Virgil will agree with me on this one.” Patton lightly squeezed his arm and Logan rolled his eyes.

“And this tum?” Patton lightly pinched a bit of fat around his stomach. “This is the cutest tum I have ever seen. Even if you don’t think so.” He gave Logan a quick tickle as Logan giggled slightly and squirmed away.

“And you said your body isn’t hot? Well we must be talking about different people because Logan baby those hips do not lie.” Patton whistled, gaining a small chuckle from Logan. “You are perfect just the way you are Logan, your size is beautiful and just the right size for you. Your size is a part of who you are, you wouldn’t be my favorite squish without it.” The childhood nickname sent Logan over the edge as he launched himself into Patton’s arms, sobbing as Patton cupped Logan’s head against his shoulder. He let years of anguish and self loathing overflow as he clung to Patton like a frightened child. Patton calmingly shushed him and whispers words of kindness into his ears as they fell back against Logan’s bed, content in each other’s arms.

Logan knew he’d always have bad days. He knew there would be times where he couldn’t stand to look in a mirror. There would be days he’d want to hide away and never let anyone in but he knew Patton and the other sides would always be there for him and in that moment, for Logan, that was enough.

Also, Logan lied, extra was not his favorite vocabulary word.

Squish (adj)- a way of describing someone who is smol (see card 37), loveable, and sometimes even physically squishy. (i.e Logan)

#thomas sanders #sanders sides #logan sanders #patton sanders #virgil sanders #roman sanders #tw: weight #sander sides fic #my little contribution to the anniversary today #logicality #angst with a happy ending

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eovinmygod · 7 years

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From www.newstatesman.com By Mehdi Hasan

As a Muslim, I struggle with the idea of homosexuality – but I oppose homophobia

I've made homophobic remarks in the past, writes Mehdi Hasan, but now I’ve grown up — and reconciled my Islamic beliefs with my attitude to gay rights.

’Tis the season of apologies – specifically, grovelling apologies by some of our finest academic brains for homophobic remarks they’ve made in public. The Cambridge University theologian Dr Tim Winter, one of the UK’s leading Islamic scholars, apologised on 2 May after footage emerged showing him calling homosexuality the “ultimate inversion” and an “inexplicable aberration”. “The YouTube clip is at least 15 years old, and does not in any way represent my present views . . . we all have our youthful enthusiasms, and we all move on.”

The Harvard historian Professor Niall Ferguson apologised “unreservedly” on 4 May for “stupid” and “insensitive” comments in which he claimed that the economist John Maynard Keynes hadn’t cared about “the long run” because he was gay and had no intention of having any children.

Dare I add my non-academic, non-intellectual voice to the mix? I want to issue my own apology. Because I’ve made some pretty inappropriate comments in the past, too.

You may or may not be surprised to learn that, as a teenager, I was one of those wannabe-macho kids who crudely deployed “gay” as a mark of abuse; you will probably be shocked to discover that shamefully, even in my twenties, I was still making the odd disparaging remark about homosexuality.

It’s now 2013 and I’m 33 years old. My own “youthful enthusiasm” is thankfully, if belatedly, behind me.

What happened? Well, for a start, I grew up. Bigotry and demonisation of difference are usually the hallmark of immature and childish minds. But, if I’m honest, something else happened, too: I acquired a more nuanced understanding of my Islamic faith, a better appreciation of its morals, values and capacity for tolerance.

Before we go any further, a bit of background – I was attacked heavily a few weeks ago by some of my co-religionists for suggesting in these pages that too many Muslims in this country have a “Jewish problem” and that we blithely “ignore the rampant anti-Semitism in our own backyard”.

I hope I won’t provoke the same shrieks of outrage and denial when I say that many Muslims also have a problem, if not with homosexuals, then with homosexuality. In fact, a 2009 poll by Gallup found that British Muslims have zero tolerance towards homosexuality. “None of the 500 British Muslims interviewed believed that homosexual acts were morally acceptable,” the Guardian reported in May that year.

Some more background. Orthodox Islam, like orthodox interpretations of the other Abrahamic faiths, views homosexuality as sinful and usually defines marriage as only ever a heterosexual union.

This isn’t to say that there is no debate on the subject. In April, the Washington Post profiled Daayiee Abdullah, who is believed to be the only publicly gay imam in the west. “[I]f you have any same-sex marriages,” the Post quotes him as saying, “I’m available.” Meanwhile, the gay Muslim scholar Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle, who teaches Islamic studies at Emory University in the United States, says that notions such as “gay” or “lesbian” are not mentioned in the Quran. He blames Islam’s hostility towards homosexuality on a misreading of the texts by ultra-conservative mullahs.

And, in his 2011 book Reading the Quran, the British Muslim intellectual and writer Ziauddin Sardar argues that “there is absolutely no evidence that the Prophet punished anyone for homosexuality”. Sardar says “the demonisation of homosexuality in Muslim history is based largely on fabricated traditions and the unreconstituted prejudice harboured by most Muslim societies”. He highlights verse 31 of chapter 24 of the Quran, in which “we come across ‘men who have no sexual desire’ who can witness the ‘charms’ of women”. I must add here that Abdullah, Kugle and Sardar are in a tiny minority, as are the members of gay Muslim groups such as Imaan. Most mainstream Muslim scholars – even self-identified progressives and moderates such as Imam Hamza Yusuf in the United States and Professor Tariq Ramadan in the UK – consider homosexuality to be a grave sin. The Quran, after all, explicitly condemns the people of Lot for “approach[ing] males” (26:165) and for “lust[ing] on men in preference to women” (7:81), and describes marriage as an institution that is gender-based and procreative.

What about me? Where do I stand on this? For years I’ve been reluctant to answer questions on the subject. I was afraid of the “homophobe” tag. I didn’t want my gay friends and colleagues to look at me with horror, suspicion or disdain.

So let me be clear: yes, I’m a progressive who supports a secular society in which you don’t impose your faith on others – and in which the government, no matter how big or small, must always stay out of the bedroom. But I am also (to Richard Dawkins’s continuing disappointment) a believing Muslim. And, as a result, I really do struggle with this issue of homosexuality. As a supporter of secularism, I am willing to accept same-sex weddings in a state-sanctioned register office, on grounds of equity. As a believer in Islam, however, I insist that no mosque be forced to hold one against its wishes.

If you’re gay, that doesn’t mean I want to discriminate against you, belittle or bully you, abuse or offend you. Not at all. I don’t want to go back to the dark days of criminalisation and the imprisonment of gay men and women; of Section 28 and legalised discrimination. I’m disgusted by the violent repression and persecution of gay people across the Muslim-majority world.

I cringe as I watch footage of the buffoonish Mahmoud Ahmadinejad claiming: “In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals . . . we do not have this phenomenon.” I feel sick to my stomach when I read accounts of how, in the late 1990s, the Taliban in Afghanistan buried gay men alive and then toppled brick walls on top of them.

Nor is this an issue only in the Middle East and south Asia. In March, a Muslim caller to a radio station in New York stunned the host after suggesting, live on air, that gay Americans should be beheaded in line with “sharia law”. Here in the UK, in February, Muslim MPs who voted in favour of the same-sex marriage bill – such as the shadow justice secretary, Sadiq Khan – faced death threats and accusations of apostasy from a handful of Muslim extremists. And last year, a homophobic campaign launched by puffed-up Islamist gangs in east London featured ludicrous and offensive stickers declaring the area a “gay-free zone”.

I know it might be hard to believe, but Islam is not a religion of violence, hate or intolerance – despite the best efforts of a minority of reactionaries and radicals to argue (and behave) otherwise. Out of the 114 chapters of the Quran, 113 begin by introducing the God of Islam as a God of mercy and compassion. The Prophet Muhammad himself is referred to as “a mercy for all creation”. This mercy applies to everyone, whether heterosexual or homosexual. As Tariq Ramadan has put it: “I may disagree with what you are doing because it’s not in accordance with my belief but I respect who are you are.” He rightly notes that this is “a question of respect and mutual understanding”.

I should also point out here that most British Muslims oppose the persecution of homosexuals. A 2011 poll for the think tank Demos found that fewer than one in four British Muslims disagreed with the statement “I am proud of how Britain treats gay people”.

There is much to be proud of, but still much to be done. Homophobic bullying is rife in our schools. Nine out of ten gay or lesbian teenagers report being bullied at school over their sexual orientation. LGBT teens are two to three times more likely to commit suicide than their heterosexual peers.

Despite the recent slight fall in “sexual orientation hate crimes”, in 2012 there were still 4,252 such crimes in England and Wales, four out of every five of which involved “violence against the person”. In March, for instance, a man was jailed for killing a gay teenager by setting him on fire; the killer scrawled homophobic insults across 18-year-old Steven Simpson’s face, forearm and stomach.

Regular readers will know that I spend much of my time speaking out against Islamophobic bigotry: from the crude stereotyping of Muslims in the media and discrimination against Muslims in the workplace to attacks on Muslim homes, businesses and places of worship.

The truth is that Islamophobia and homophobia have much in common: they are both, in the words of the (gay) journalist Patrick Strudwick, “at least partly fuelled by fear. Fear of the unknown . . .” Muslims and gay people alike are victims of this fear – especially when it translates into hate speech or physical attacks. We need to stand side by side against the bigots and hate-mongers, whether of the Islamist or the far-right variety, rather than turn on one another or allow ourselves to be pitted against each other, “Muslims v gays”.

We must avoid stereotyping and demonising each other at all costs. “The biggest question we have as a society,” says a Muslim MP who prefers to remain anonymous, “is how we accommodate difference.”

Remember also that negative attitudes to homosexuality are not the exclusive preserve of Muslims. In 2010, the British Social Attitudes survey showed that 36 per cent of the public regarded same-sex relations as “always” or “mostly wrong”.

A Muslim MP who voted in favour of the same-sex marriage bill tells me that most of the letters of protest that they received in response were from evangelical Christians, not Muslims. And, of course, it wasn’t a Muslim who took the life of poor Steven Simpson.

Yet ultimately I didn’t set out to write this piece to try to bridge the gap between Islam and homosexuality. I am not a theologian. Nor am I writing this in response to the ongoing parliamentary debate about the pros and cons of same-sex marriage. I am not a politician.

I am writing this because I want to live in a society in which all minorities – Jews, Muslims, gay people and others – are protected from violence and abuse, from demonisation and discrimination. And because I want to apologise for any hurt or offence that I may have caused to my gay brothers and lesbian sisters.

And yes, whatever our differences – straight or gay, religious or atheist, male or female – we are all brothers and sisters. As the great Muslim leader of the 7th century and son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad, Ali ibn Abi Talib, once declared: “Remember that people are of two kinds; they are either your brothers in religion or your brothers in mankind.”

Mehdi Hasan is a contributing writer for the New Statesman and the political director of the Huffington Post UK, where this article is crossposted

Mehdi Hasan is a contributing writer for the New Statesman and the co-author of Ed: The Milibands and the Making of a Labour Leader. He was the New Statesman's senior editor (politics) from 2009-12.

#homosexuality #society #religion #tolerance #love #lgbt #homophobia #love is love #gay rights #muslim

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