Dutch, gay and Muslim : identity formation and the issue of belonging

(1)

1

Dutch, Gay and Muslim: identity formation

and the issue of belonging

Name: Chaimae Azmi Student number: 10842578 MSc Sociology Track : Migration and Ethnic Studies. First reader: Raheel Dhattiwala Second reader: Myra Bosman 10 July 2017, Amsterdam Word count: 17923

(2)

2

Abstract :

Over the last few years, right wing political parties have been gaining momentum throughout the West. The victory of Donald Trump in the United States and Brexit are notorious examples of this growing popularity. In the face of the growing Islamophobia, Right wing populist parties are targeting Muslims and using gender equality as well as gay rights to further shun out Muslim Communities and brand Muslim culture as backward, intolerant and homophobic. In the Netherlands, this neo-culturalist discourse, which posits Muslim culture and Dutch culture at opposite ends of the spectrum, is also proliferating in the media and the political scene. For Dutch gay Muslims, the position they are put in becomes difficult. The debate that wishes to “save” them from their alleged repressive culture also silences them by forcing them to choose one of their identities over the other. Moreover, the very existence of ‘gay Muslims’ is wiped out by this discourse which does not allow any room for the co-existence of their dual identity: gay and Muslim. This research focuses on the lived experiences of Dutch gay Muslims: the way they experience the relationship between religion and homosexuality, and the ways through which they form and negotiate their identities, and manage to fight for visibility in their own Muslim communities and in the Dutch society.

(5)

5

Chapter 1 : Introduction:

This thesis is about second generation gay1 Muslims in the Netherlands and the way they experience the relationship between religion and homosexuality in their particular environment. This topic is important in the current Dutch political and social landscape where an exclusionary discourse is currently taking place. In fact, this discourse is proliferating all over the West and especially Europe. The discourse, which places Islam and homosexuality at opposite ends, and considers that the Muslim culture is incompatible with homosexuality, whose tolerance is supposedly a European value, is an argument for the alleged incompatibility of Islam with western values. Gay Muslims growing up in a western context posit themselves exactly in the middle of these two allegedly incompatible cultures. Thus, the culture clash debate has a silencing effect on them because it ignores their intersectional existence , and oftentimes supresses or downgrades one or more of their identities (El-Tayeb 2012, Jivraj & jong 2011).

The case of the Netherlands is important to study because the Netherlands is in fact perceived as one of the most tolerant countries in the world towards homosexuality, and also has quite an important Muslim migrant population. Indeed, the Netherlands has been a land of immigration since the 1960s. Moroccans and Turks, who are primarily of Muslim faith, started migrating to the Netherlands in the mid-1960s as guest workers and in the 1980s, their families started to join them in the Netherlands. More than just the Muslim immigrants, there are also other migrant groups from old colonies of the Netherlands, such as Suriname, Indonesia, etc. The Muslim community in the Netherlands is majorly composed of Moroccans and Turks. Because of this, the Netherlands has gone through multiple integration approaches and policies throughout the decades (Scholten 2011).

(6)

6

Uitermark (2012) discusses the ascendance of culturalism in the Netherlands: it was the growing mistrust in political institutions’ ability to effectively punish transgression and reward conformity that led to increasingly more people, mostly from a lower social class, to turn towards right-wing populists such as Geert Wilders. Culturalism is the idea that western culture is better than other cultures, particularly the Muslim culture, using the argument that the west protects gender equality and tolerates homosexuality. Indeed, it is the right wing political discourse that brands the culturalist discourse, promising to enforce cultural norms. This being said, culturalism is not conservatism. “Dutch culturalist celebrities”, as Uitermark calls them, denounce cultural inequality through the use of liberal issues such as gender equality and homosexuality. While Uitermark acknowledges that culturalists are not only politicians, but also academics and intellectuals, he does nuance the growing power of Culturalism: The resonance power of this discourse is limited and it is thus not yet hegemonic, nor in the West nor in the Netherlands.

Following Uitermark, Mepschen & Duyvendak (2013), I will use the term neo-culturalism in this research to distinguish contemporary exclusionary discourses from past culturalist traditions, which did not necessarily use gender and sexual politics to exclude a particular community. The neo-culturalist discourse is dangerous because it uses sexual progress in order to create an imagined backward and homophobic Muslim identity, as opposed to an imagined progressive European identity, thus bringing together progressives and pragmatists who are deeply attached to sexual rights and feminist values (Uitermark et al. 2013). Moreover, one-off incidents of homophobia by Muslims are perceived to be in opposition with the Dutch ‘tradition of tolerance’ (Mepschen et al. 2010). For example, when Khalil El-Moumni, a Moroccan imam said on Dutch national television back in May 2001 that homosexuality is a dangerous and a contagious disease, a big national commotion led to

(7)

7

an intervention by the Prime Minister in which he reminded Muslims to respect Dutch tolerance of homosexuality.

On the other hand, it is true that the Netherlands has an open relationship with homosexuality characterized by a history of legal openness. Indeed, the first homosexual rights movement was founded as early as 1912, and homosexuals could enter the army in 1973, the same year the homosexual movement was recognized. In 2001, the Netherlands was the first country in the world to allow same sex marriage and adoption rights. The Netherlands is also a traditionally protestant country, and it has been shown that traditionally protestant countries tend to be less homo-negative2 and show less support for discrimination against homosexuals, than the traditionally Christian countries (Gerhards, 2010). In fact, religiosity has been positively linked with negative attitudes towards homosexuality (Barringer, Gay & Lynxwiler 2013; Harbaugh & Lindsay 2015; Souza & Neto 2015). Jackle and Wenzelburger (2015) try to link homo-negativity with religion and religiosity. They come up with a ranking of religions that promote the most negative attitudes towards homosexuality, with Islam ranking in first place, followed by Catholicism, Protestant free churches and orthodox Christianity. Religions such as Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism are the least homo-negative. At the end of the scale, there is Atheism.3

Despite legal openness in the Netherlands, homosexuality remains a private matter compared to heterosexuality in the Netherlands and comparatively less religious groups may still be homophobic. There is no queer visibility and anti-gay slur and bashing are still very common in the Netherlands (Hekma 2002). It is interesting then to ask why is homosexuality still confined to the private sphere and subject to a certain bashing, even in the Netherlands, the European country that shows the least homo-negative attitude towards homosexuals, alongside Sweden and Denmark (Gerhards, 2010). By implication, this would mean that

2_{professing negative attitudes towards homosexuals.}

(8)

8

religiosity alone cannot explain homo-negativity, other factors must come into play that make homosexuality a frowned upon act.

There is extensive scholarship on the emergence of the neo-culturalist discourse and the proliferation of the culture clash debate in the West and also in the Netherlands particularly. This being said, the literature found in the context of the Netherlands focuses mostly on policies and their effects and the qualitative research that has been done also focuses mainly on the native Dutch views on the Muslim population in the Netherlands and sometimes more specifically on the native Dutch gays’ views on the Muslim population and attitudes towards them (Duyvendak et al. 2016). There is a substantial lack of scholarship and academic research on the experiences of Dutch gay Muslims themselves. For this reason, I believe that this thesis is important because it gives visibility to that particular population and counters the silencing effect that the neo-culturalist discourse has on them. Moreover, the fact that these are second generation Dutch gay Muslims gives a unique account of their personal experiences between religion and homosexuality in The Netherlands, the country in which they were raised and whose nationality they bear, while also coming from a Muslim background, an origin that is constantly attacked by the proliferating neo-culturalist discourse. I believe their particular experiences and ensuing identity formation and integration process will give interesting findings to further enrich the scholarship on the so-called clash of cultures.

A lot has also been written about queer or gay Muslims and the necessity of looking at the intersectional and hybrid identities in order to understand their identification processes. Indeed, because of the multi-dimensionality of gay Muslims’ social reality, I suggest to engage with the matter through intersectionality, a theoretical approach in which the core idea is that there are numerous systems of power, such as race, gender, class, age, sexuality, ability, citizenship, that intersect and coproduce inequality in distinctive social experiences.

(9)

9

Intersectionality suggests that these systems of power cannot be understood in isolation from one another (Collins & Chepp 2013). In the case of second generation gay and lesbian Muslims, their identity cannot be understood with the sole focus of gender, or sexuality, or ethnicity, or religious belonging, or citizenship. It is important to take into consideration the multidimensionality of their social world. This is a relevant criticism to the concept of primordialism (Smith 1998) which sees collective identity as stemming from a myth of collective ancestry. In other words, individuals believe there is a form of extended kinship, and according to this scheme, organize themselves into communities. Moreover, since my research will focus solely on second generation gay Muslims, it will be interesting to see how do second generation gay and lesbian Muslims identify themselves with regards to their communities and to the societies, and to see which dimension of their identities, if any, prevails (sexual, ethnic, national, etc.).

With this background in mind, the research question that I suggest answering is : How do Dutch second generation homosexuals from a Muslim background experience the relationship between homosexuality and religion?

Sub-questions of this question will be:

• How do they negotiate their different identities (religious, sexual, national, etc.)? • Is their sexual orientation a gate for a better “integration” and more acceptance from

the native Dutch population? Or do they suffer from double discrimination, a first stigma within their own community due to their sexual orientation, and a second stigma due to their ethnic origin/religious belonging within the broader Dutch society?

• What is their own relationship to religion? Do they reject religion once they come out as gay or are they able to conciliate the two?

(10)

10

• Is the neo-cultural discourse, which considers Islam to be incompatible with western values, challenged by homosexuality within second generation Muslims? If so, how?

It is to be noted that I will focus solely on second generation lesbian and gay Muslims in the Netherlands and that my research will not include bisexual, transsexual or queer4 Muslims. 5

4_{Throughout this research, the term queer will be used to refer more broadly to non-heterosexuals.} 5_{I expect the personal experiences of gay and lesbians Muslims to be particularly different from those of}

bisexuals who may have more leeway to fit in the heteronormative Muslim community, and also from transsexuals because the mainstream position of Islam towards transsexuality may differ from the one towards homosexuality.

(11)

11

Chapter 2: Theoretical Framework

I. Identity and Intersectionality:

Verdery (1996) discusses the fundamental theories put forward by Fredrik Barth (1969) in his book “ethnic groups and boundaries”. Barth makes a clear distinction between ethnicity and culture, ethnicity is a form of social organization, and is not in fact defined by culture. Ethnicity thus is a form of social organization that helps maintaining group boundaries through a dichotomization of behaviours. Barth argues as well that it is self-identification, rather than having a particular cultural background, that leads to ethnic identifications and identities. Verdery (1996) further elaborates on that by arguing that modern nation states restrict the freedom for self-identification. This is due to the underlying ideal in modern nation states that identities are fixed and unique. For ethnic minorities, this would mean that the choice is particularly restricted because the modern nation-state allows them to have one identity of a kind: one ethnicity, one nation, one gender, etc. The idea that identities are fixed and unique also pertains to the concept of primordialism, which is a theory that considers that it is when individuals believe they are tied through blood, creating thus a sense of common ancestry that they group themselves in communities and create a collective identity (Smith 1998). Numerous literature has criticized the primordialism concept, arguing through empirical evidence that ethnic groupings are situational and vary overtime, depending on macrostructures such as modernization (Bates 1974, Eller & Coughlan 1993).

Moreover, gay and lesbian Muslims’ multiple identities, sexual and religious, put them in a stigmatized position. Indeed, homosexual Muslims who live in more traditional homo-negative countries may suffer from discrimination from the general population, and

(12)

12

homosexual Muslims living in a western country, for example Dutch born gay Muslims in the Netherlands, may suffer from double discrimination, a first discrimination due to their sexual identity from within their own community and an additional layer of oppression due to their ethnic or religious belonging. It is interesting to look at how, in their underprivileged position, gay Muslims may still find a way to challenge the main dominating discourse. It is what Scott (1990) calls hidden transcripts. He argues against the assumption that the dominated group will eventually share the same values and opinions of the dominant group, an assumption that is a direct consequence of theories of ideology and hegemony. According to Scott (1990), the dominated group, in this case the gay Muslim population, is capable of formulating their own criticisms of the social relations in which they interact.

Rahman (2010) suggests that gay Muslim identities challenge the idea that western and eastern cultures are incompatible and antithetical. Indeed, the opposition between West and East, ascribed in the neo-culturist discourse, puts Islamic culture at the opposite end of gender and sexual equality. Rahman suggests that intersectionality in this case is important in analysing this discourse. Intersectionality, as defined in the introduction, allows us to pay attention to how particular identities, in this case the gay Muslim identity, are located at the intersections of social hierarchies. Studying the gay Muslim identity as an intersectional identity is a direct opposition to the idea that cultures are mutually exclusive, rather they overlap. Rahman uses queer theory and intersectionality in discussing the matter of gay Muslims because intersectionality in feminist theory asks us precisely to look at gender with race and class as they are always mutually constitutive. Moreover, theories of intersectionality consider that sexuality plays a role in the identification of hierarchies of oppression. Consequently, intersectionality theory would allow us to frame the matter of gay Muslims within not only the racialization and class position of Muslims and the consequent

(13)

13

gendered and sexual identities, but also within western gendered sexualities and the consequent racialized Muslim culture.

As a matter of fact, using an intersectional approach in the study of homosexuality within different ethnic groups has been fruitful in better understanding communities. For example, Wekker (1996) discusses a constructionist view of homosexuality within black women in North America and Suriname. She distinguishes between two expressions of homosexuality: Mati-ism, which pertains more to Afrocentric, working class features; and black lesbianism, pertaining more to Eurocentric and middle class features. In this case, we see the importance of combining the multidimensionality of the social order and combining the intersectionality of class, ethnicity and sexuality in order to understand expressions of homosexuality within a particular community.

There is one particular case that shows the importance of intersectionality: the Dutch Homo-Emancipation Policy between 2008 and 2011. This policy aimed at promoting visibility and speakability of homosexuality within particular groups of the population, and although not specified, it is clear that the target was Muslim communities (Jivraj & Jong 2011). However, this homo-emancipation policy worked out more for Christian groups rather than Muslim Communities. Jivraj & Jong (2011) argue that this policy reproduces a homonormative model of a visible queer coming “out”. Homonormativity is a concept that sheds light over how a particular “norm” of homosexuality is prevalent, marginalizing other forms and expressions of homosexuality. Sexuality in Western history came to be invented through the act of speaking about it. This is one of the reasons that could explain why this policy worked within Christian groups and not Muslim groups. Indeed, it is because sexuality in the western culture is much more spoken about in the public sphere that Christians could benefit from this policy. Whereas, for Muslim communities, where sexuality in general is a taboo subject that belongs to the private sphere, the policy which aim was to make gay

(14)

14

individuals ‘come out’ in public, did not work. Jivraj & Jong (2011) also argue that the Dutch homo-emancipation policy had a silencing effect on the queer Muslim community because it forced them to be placed “in the middle”. Their task as negotiators was to launch the discussion within their own communities, thus exacerbating the opposition between a gay friendly West and a homophobic Islam. There is also a power dynamic in the dialogue which, instead of emancipating queer Muslims, forces them to step out and alienate themselves from the rest of their community. They have to let go of their Muslim identity in order to be homosexual, in the sense that native Dutch people will not consider them as “queer Muslims”, but they will rather say “you’re not really Muslim then”. This power dynamic and this homonormative paradigm tend to erase queer Muslim identities.

A number of scholarship has been conducted on the identities and experiences of queer Muslims in a Western context. Abraham (2010), for instance, focuses on two key issues that Australian lesbian, gay and bisexual Muslims face. The first one is the hegemony of Muslim identities on the one hand and the hegemony of queer identities on the other hand. The maintenance of the hegemony of these two identities erases the possibility of a queer Muslim identity. What Abraham means by the hegemony of these two identities is that there is one hegemonic heteronormative Muslim identity as well as one hegemonic homonormative queer identity. The hybrid identities of Australian queer Muslims put them in the middle, thus erasing their own Muslim queer identity and forcing them to choose either one of the two. The hegemonic rigid conception of these two identities is due to the political landscape of a western society where multicultural communities are tightly managed(Abraham 2010). The second concern of Abraham is analysing how Australian queer Muslims resist on the one hand, the islamophobia that comes from within queer communities, as well as the homophobia that comes from Muslim communities. There are two strategies that emerge: a

(15)

15

first strategy that is private and personal and that presents itself as spiritual, and politically liberal and the second approach is more public, politically radical and explicitly religious.

The first approach which is the private and spiritual one is adopted because according to Abraham’s research participants, in order to conciliate between one’s religious identity and sexual identity, you have to acquire the higher understanding of spirituality and go beyond the religious practice which is established by religious institutions. However, Abraham argues that this strategy is not the best when it comes to the viability of queer Muslim identities, because this tolerant political liberalism agrees with the western claim that wants to assimilate Islam and render it harmless so it can fit in the broader liberal capitalist hegemony. The second approach adopted by Australian queer Muslims, on the other hand, is public and more explicitly religious. It challenges the stable cultural borders because rather than modifying Islam, Abraham’s respondents also want to change what being queer and what being Australian means through, in fact, incorporating Islam in the Australian culture, rather than assimilating. Indeed, assimilation is what the broader Australian society expects from the Muslim population. Thus, this second strategy is better at not only countering the prejudice faced by queer Muslim communities from the Muslim communities and the queer communities, but also at countering the limits of Australian liberal multiculturalism which offers limited private diversity due to the recent right-shifting politics that aim for public conformity (Abraham 2010).

Khan (2010) focuses on the case study of second generation gay Muslims in the United States. She discusses the homophobia they encounter within their own communities and the subsequent feeling of ostracization. Indeed, within not only the first, but also the second generation Americans from a Muslim background, the community represents group solidarity and plays a central role in their lives. Gay Muslims encounter homophobia, which Khan specifies as cultural and non-religious, from within their own communities. This homophobia

(16)

16

is cultural because it is not only based on religious rhetoric of Muslim leaders but also on the already existing homophobia in the American culture itself, which American Muslims draw many of their gay-bashing insults from. In many cases, gay Muslims’ families do not accept their dual identity as being both gay and Muslim and seek to cure their children or even threaten to cut financial support. As a result, many gay Muslims opt to keep their sexual identity secret because they fear the repercussions or they do not want to disrespect or bring dishonour to their families. This puts gay Muslims in a difficult position, riddled with self-loathing and sometimes even suicide attempts. However, Khan discusses the emergence of younger American heterosexual Muslims who have a more open-minded attitude, specifically American-born Muslims who are today trying to launch the debate on issues of gender and sexuality and who constitute a more supportive community for American gay Muslims. As for the queer community, American gay Muslims once again do not necessarily obtain social acceptance because of their Muslim identity. Indeed, they are constantly asked questions about their own practice of Islam, hate crimes, women oppression, etc. These questions suggest that there is an incomprehension as to why they choose to retain their religious faith while also being gay. Khan (2010) indicates then the American gay Muslims are more likely to join organizations that specifically cater to their dual identity because meeting people with the same intersecting identities allows them to build connections and have a community of their own and thus emotional support. This growing network of support is what allows today American gay Muslims to come out and accept themselves as not only gay, but also Muslim and reconcile between their joint identities.

Khan (2010) also discusses the double discrimination that gay Muslims in the West face, because they are indeed discriminated based on their religious belonging and their ethnicity (non-white) by the white American society and yet face another layer of oppression due to their sexual orientation. The latter manifests not only in the broader society but also among

(17)

17

their own communities in which they are not accepted leading to a certain emotional distress and a subsequent reduced participation in formal congregations.

It will be interesting to look at the strategies that gay Muslims in the Netherlands adopt to counter the possible double discrimination they may be subjected to, as well as the neo-culturalist discourse. Another relevant focus that will be explored is the possible existence of networks of support for Dutch gay Muslims, as well as the types of people that constitute this network of support.

II. Religion and homosexuality

Religion can hardly be ignored when evaluating the homo-negativity of a country. Stulhofer & Rimac (2009) find that indeed, modernization processes, economic development and urbanization lead to a higher tolerance of homosexuality. However, persisting religious traditions can undermine the modernization effect. Indeed, traditionally Roman Catholic countries were found more homo-negative than the traditionally Protestant countries (Stulhofer & Rimac 2009). However, while religious traditions were a significant factor when comparing between countries, religion became insignificant when modernization indicators were taken into consideration in the country-level homo-negativity.

That said, Aksoy and Gambetta (2016) discuss the increase of veiling amongst highly educated middle class urban Muslim women. Aspects of modernization such as education, a safe economic position, growing up in an urban area, are expected to lead to less religiosity. Thus, religious behaviours such as veiling are expected to lessen amongst highly educated middle class urban women.. Aksoy and Gambetta argue that amongst highly religious Muslim women, modernization in fact leads to an increase of veiling. This is only true for highly religious women because for less religious or the averagely religious women, the

(18)

18

classical theories of religion which argue that religion decreases in the face of modernity are confirmed. Aksoy and Gambetta argue that modernization leads to more contact outside of the family and the community through education and employment. For this reason, their community might believe that they are at a greater risk to abandon their religion. For highly religious women, who care about their reputation, veiling then becomes a two-fold strategy: first, to control their own selves or impulses against the temptation of modernization effects, and second, to signal their piety and religiosity to their community. Thus, for Aksoy and Gambetta (2016), the occurrence of religious behaviours such as veiling in Europe is, in fact, a consequence of integration because it signals that there is more interaction with natives and more exposition to modernization through education and employment. This, in turn, leads to a more obvious signalling of one’s piety through religious behaviours such as veiling.

Returning to the topic of the relationship between religion and homosexuality, there is also a link between homo-negativity, negative attitudes towards homosexuality, and the three Semitic religions; Islam, Christianity and Judaism. In these three religions, there is a conflict between homosexuality and the mainstream religious dogma. In fact, Meladze & Brown (2015) found that gay men who identify with and practice Abrahamic faith (Muslim, Christian or Jew) have more internalised homo-negativity compared to non-religious gay men. Moreover, in all of the three religions, there are two groups of gay men who were initially religious, the first one managed to conciliate between their religious belonging and their sexual identity, and the second group abandoned religion due to being unable to conciliate the internal conflict.

Islam ranks first as a religion that promotes the most homo-negativity, and that is because of three major factors: First, the holy scripture because it contains a direct religious ban on the act of homosexuality, based on the conservative interpretation of the holy text, in this case the Quran. Second, most Muslim religious leaders who have a strong influence on

(19)

19

their followers have a negative view towards homosexuality. Finally, the fundamentalist subgroups of Islam are more strongly pronounced than their liberal counterparts (Jackle and Wenzelburger 2015).

Jackle and Wenzelburger (2015) find that religiosity impacts homo-negativity on two different scales, from a microstructural and a macrostructural perspective. In the microstructural sphere, the religious individual is more likely to be homo-negative if he is extrinsically motivated, meaning that he is heavily influenced by his surroundings and the views of religious leaders and the most common attitude towards homosexuals. In the case of Islam, this attitude would be highly homo-negative. From the macrostructural perspective, the legal framework on homosexuality of a particular country also impacts the homo-negativity of its overall population. Indeed, S. Jäckle and G. Wenzelburger (2015) find that “the more legal rights granted to homosexual people, the more positive attitudes the general population has toward homosexuality.” In fact, Most Islamic countries have criminalised homosexuality. Even so, individual behaviours are not necessarily consistent of such legal frameworks. At the same time, when these individuals come to a country like the Netherlands, they might find it easier to break away from social norms of their home country.

However, not only religion has an impact on the homo-negativity of individuals or of the overall population. It was also found that factors such as age, gender, education, income and marital status influence the homo-negativity of an individual. Finally, another interesting finding is that post-communist countries tend to be significantly more homo-negative. This would explain for example the situation of China, a prime example of a country that is not religious but that still holds on to conservative views of the family where homosexuality is stigmatised (Choi &Luo 2016). In the case of China, the marginalization and stigma against homosexuals is not related to religion, but rather to economic factors and patriarchal norm.

(20)

20

There are countries where religion plays an important role and where gay movements were able to thrive, voice their opinions and advocate for their rights, a prime example of that would be the United States. There has been a trend in the US throughout the last decades through which the general public has been more open to gay and lesbian civil rights (Adler 2012). This growing social and religious openness towards homosexuality shows that a religious country such as the US is capable of recognizing homosexual rights and showing openness even within religious groups.

In his review article on homoeroticism and homosexuality in Islam, Schmidtke (1999) states that while the Quran does in fact explicitly condemn homosexual acts, a clear punishment is not indicated. Some traditions of the Prophet show more tolerance towards homoerotic desires, other traditions say that the Prophet has said to condemn and kill both the active and the passive partner. Despite this, homosexual practices remained frequent in the Islamic world throughout history. Homoerotic sentiment as opposed to homosexual practice (as a sex act) was considered to be normal (Schmidtke 1999). The current political landscape opposing Islam to the West provides an incentive to use issues of homosexuality for mutual denigration: On the one hand, the West uses sexual rights and homosexuality in order to point out the “backwardness” of Islam, and Muslim countries consider the decriminalizing of homosexual practices a sign of the decaying culture in the West. A consequence of this battle, especially in the more conservative Islamic states, has been a growing tendency to repress homosexual practices or any attempt to form a movement for gay rights in the Muslim countries as these are seen as signs of westernization.

Abdulhadi (2010) also discusses sexuality in Islamic scripture which is comprised of not only of the Quran, the holy book, but also the Prophet's sayings, called the Hadiths. The Hadiths were not actually written by the prophet but are based on spoken reports of his sayings and habits collected after his death. Abdulhadi indicates that the Quran itself is very

(21)

21

ambiguous about homosexuality and that the supposed condemnation of homosexuality is not so clear cut. It is only after Muhammad's death and then his successors as Muslim leaders taking hold of the power that the condemnation of homosexuality became explicit in the Arab and Muslim societies, Abdulhadi gives the example of Abu Bakr who was the first caliphate and the first person to target homosexuals and ostracize them, ordering their burning. However, during the centuries that followed, there is inconsistency from the Muslim leaders in their attitudes towards homosexuals, with many of them being open to sexual diversity and tolerant of homosexuality. During the Ottoman dynasty (1218-1922), the sexual diversity that thrived in the Arab world was well-documented mainly because of European travellers who exoticized the Arab world. Despite this sexual openness, much of the documentation was a product of European fantasies rather than reality and that is why it would be speculation to say that homoeroticism is deeply rooted in the Arab or Muslim culture. Abdulhadi then discusses the influence of the colonial period on the Arab world’s views on homosexuality. Indeed, the Victorian code of morality that prevailed in Europe back then considered any sexual desires that did not lead to reproduction as sinful, thus condemning homosexuality. It is during this period that a heteronormative model that rejected homosexuals developed in the Arab and Muslim world (Abdulhadi 2010). After colonial time and the defeat of Marxist ideologies, there was a rise of new Islamist movements that were unknown to the Arab world previously. This led to increasing rigidity in the most conservative Islamic interpretations. Abdulhadi also agrees with Massad (2002), whose ideas will be discussed in the next section, that neo-colonial forces and that the discourse of ‘Gay international’ led to further ridigification of social codes.

It will be interesting to see the relationship of gays and lesbians that come from a Muslim background, to religion and see if they provide for example a different interpretation

(22)

22

of the sacred book and can in fact conciliate between Islam and Homosexuality. it would be a strong case against the argument of homophobia within Islam and neo-culturalism.

III. The context of Neo-culturalism:

Yorukoglu (2010) discusses the particular case of queer Turkish organizations in Berlin. In fact, lesbian and gay Germans with a Turkish background complain of the overall assumption that they cannot be gay, Turkish and Muslim at the same time. There is the assumption that Turkishness is inherently incompatible with homosexuality, and when they can conciliate between the two, the society then considers that they have successfully assimilated. Yorukoglu identifies two LGBTQ organizations aimed at people with a migrant background. The first one is MILES, part of the Lesbian and Gay federation in Germany and sponsored by Berlin’s Senate’s Education, Youth and Sport Administration. MILES considers that assimilation is the only route towards tolerance of homosexuality and that the issue of homophobia within the Turkish community is cultural, thus considering the Turkish culture itself to be homophobic. The second organization Yorukoglu identifies is GLADT, Gays and Lesbians from Turkey - Berlin Brandesburg. GLADT disagrees with MILES and considers that homophobic acts perpetrated by the Turkish community are not ethno-specific and that branding the issue as cultural is a form of discrimination and racism. While both of these organizations are run by Turkish-Germans, MILES is however part of the biggest gay and lesbian organization in Germany. Ahmet Iyidirli, a Turkish German Democratic Party member considers that defining homosexuality and homophobia in culturalist terms is an issue because it leads to an othering process in which difference becomes abnormal. In other, words, when homosexuality is considered part of the Western or the German culture and homophobia part of the Turkish or the Muslim culture, the two communities and cultures are

(23)

23

separated with the underlying idea that there is no difference within these communities: all Germans are tolerant of homosexuality and all Muslims or Turkish are homophobic. The focus should thus shift to considering difference within each community and giving a voice to the “others of the other”, in this case gay Muslims, because it shatters the perceived image of homogeneity within communities (Yorukoglu 2010).

Yorukoglu (2010) also discusses the ascendance of the neo-culturalist exclusionary discourse in Berlin using gender and sexual equality and specifically tolerance of homosexuality. Financial loss prompted the city government of Berlin to start focusing on the promotion of the city through the lens of cultural diversity and eventually, depict Berlin as one of the most open and tolerant cities towards homosexuals. Although it is true that Berlin invested in targeting local gay residents and attracting gay tourists, Yorukoglu (2010) indicates that this marketing strategy hides the fact that in not only right-wing newspapers but also in the mainstream ones, homosexuality is still condemned. The German parliament only approved gay marriage on the 30th June 2017 and homosexuality is still very much only tolerated in the private sphere. It is thus through a racialized discourse on tolerance that the creation of the other is made possible, masking through that very same process internal differences and disarticulations within each community. Yorukoglu (2010) explains that this discourse became quite hegemonic in the western world, with the European Union now highlighting tolerance towards homosexuals as a European value.

This division between “us” and “them” is part of the exclusionary politics that is a result of the growing neo-culturalist discourse. Like the above-mentioned examples shows, even when Muslims come out as homosexuals, they are somehow constrained to choose one identity over the other, reinforcing the division between sexual openness and Islam. Roodsaz (2015) for instance discusses transgressive sexualities within Dutch Iranian youth, a Muslim community, and the way their attachment to liberal sexualities is a way to overcome

(24)

24

limitations in their everyday life. Transgressive sexualities are sexualities that break the social norm of their community. The Dutch Iranian youth are applauded for their transgressive liberal sexualities because coming from a Muslim background, they are seen as victims who were able to break free of their allegedly restrictive culture. This victimization of Muslims and the systematic applause of transgressive liberal sexualities could contribute to the exclusionary politics and further fuel the neo-culturalist discourse.

Talking about this victimization, Massad (2002) identifies what he calls “Gay international”, missionary tasks of LGBTQ organizations that seek to free gay and lesbian Muslims from their alleged repressive social worlds. He argues that Gay international seeks to impose a western view of homosexuality, and stabilize the perceived instability of Muslim men’s desires. However, Arabs and Muslims do not necessarily want to constrain themselves and be identified as homosexuals or gay, and the west, by opening a previously non-existent discourse on homosexuality, is in fact hetero-sexualising the Arab world by trying to force a western sexual binary. Moreover, this new discourse actually incites Muslim countries, who maybe did not have anti-homosexual laws before, to adopt anti-homosexual legislation in response to it. Massad (2002) notes that this is “the process through which homosexuality was invented in the West”6.

In the Dutch context, Bracke (2012) discusses how gender and sexual politics were pushed to the forefront with the clash of civilization in the 1990s, and became an important part of the national and cultural identity politics. The primary focus was on Muslim women, aligning feminism with right wing discourses, and placing them as victims in need of emancipation from their allegedly repressive culture. In the beginning of the twenty-first century, the US “war on terror” pushed this rhetoric further with a new public attention to gay rights through once again, ‘rescue narratives’. The new public attention towards gay rights is

6_{Massad, J. (2002). Re-Orienting Desire: The Gay International and the Arab World. Public Culture, 14(2), p.}

(25)

25

what Puar (2008) calls Homo-nationalism: While homosexuals and queers had a marginal position in the society before, liberal politics are now incorporating gay and queer subjects in the nation-state. Indeed, while heteronormative ideologies are still dominant in the society, homonormative ideologies are also being incorporated to a lesser degree but with enough importance in order to further alienate orientalised terrorist bodies, particularly Sikhs, Muslims and Arabs. In the case of women’s emancipation, the dichotomy between ‘the modern secular self’ and ‘the religious other’ has been proven wrong through scholars and activists who showed that these two identities are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and that secular politics can in fact undermine women’s rights (Bracke 2012). However, in the case of homosexuality, there is a hegemonic conception that gay identity is tightly linked to secularism, and thus deconstructing the dichotomy between the secular and the religious in the case of homosexuality is more difficult.

Abdulhadi (2010) criticizes Red Wockner's article "Iran, the Middle East and North Africa : homosexuality in the Arab world and Muslim world" and describes Wockner’s article as an orientalist and oversimplified approach to the Arab and the Muslim world, which claims that the only way for homosexuals to be saved from the barbaric and homophobic Arab and Muslim communities is through the Western model of gay liberation. This being said, while Abdulhadi rejects Wockner’s rescue narrative through transporting a western gay liberation model to the Arab world, he also disagrees with Massad, who according to him does not offer any possibility for liberation from the social order. Abdulhadi indicates that sexual freedom in the Arab and Muslim world can be achieved once freed from the colonial legacy and the neo-colonial interventions (which rescue narratives are part of), as well as from dictatorships and socio-economic hierarchies. Thus, Muslims and Arabs wishing for sexual freedom need to build ties from within their own communities first in order to achieve

(26)

26

a transformation of the social codes and norms, before turning to the international or the western community.

(27)

27

Chapter 3: Methodology:

The focus of this research will be second generation Dutch gay Muslims and the way they experience the relationship between homosexuality and religion in their own particular environment. I focus particularly on second generation gay Muslims because first generation gay Muslims are not born and raised in the Netherlands and thus might experience the relationship between religion and homosexuality in a different way than Dutch born gay Muslims whose identity formation and integration process is more embedded in the Dutch context. I also chose the second generation specifically rather than the third generation because the latter might still be too young to interview in the Netherlands. As for ethnicity and gender, I decided not to delimit this because of the time limit constraint and practical concerns such as not knowing which pool of respondents I can access.

Thus, a qualitative method of research was conducted through semi-structured interviews with second generation Dutch gay Muslims. This allowed an in-depth insight into their own experiences of the relationship between religion and homosexuality and consequently their identities negotiations. As well as gaining knowledge about their own position towards the neo-culturalist discourse that thrives in the West and in the Netherlands today and that opposes two joint parts of their identity.

(28)

28

I. Data collection :

For this research, only 8 interviews were conducted. Indeed, while the initial aim was for a higher number of interviewees, the sensitivity of the subject made access to a bigger pool of interviewees in the constraining time frame of the fieldwork (6 weeks) difficult. In order to come in contact with the eight people interviewed, I first started with my own acquaintances, which proved to be the quickest way to set up meetings for interviews. Indeed, because my acquaintances are close friends with the first people that I interviewed, scepticism about my research and my intentions were uncommon, and setting up interviews was a quick process, albeit extended in time because of the respondents’ availability. From the first people I interviewed, I then pursued a snowballing technique which allowed me to reach a number of 7 interviewees.

As for Maruf, the empowering platform for Dutch queer Muslims and the founder of the European Queer Muslim network, setting up an initial meeting with one of the board members in order to gain a broad insight on the experiences of Dutch gay Muslims in the Netherlands and the work of Maruf proved to be quite difficult because of the availability of the board members. It took a few weeks before being referred to one of the volunteers of Maruf with whom I had an initial interview regarding Maruf and the ways in which they empower gay Muslims in the Netherlands. We then scheduled a second meeting during which my semi-structured interview was conducted with the focus of their own personal experience as a second generation gay Muslim in the Netherlands, thus enabling me to reach the number of 8 people for my qualitative data. Each interview was very deep and insightful and I believe that makes the relatively low number of interviews conducted and the empirical findings collected relevant for future research.

(29)

29

The interviews were either held at school, at home, or at a café, and a quiet but cosy place was oftentimes chosen . Interviews lasted between 32 minutes and 1 hour 37 min, while most of them were around 1 hour. The interview questions were divided in three parts: a first general part focusing on the age, ethnicity, childhood and education, a second section focusing on identity negotiation and social network, and a final part on religiosity and the respondent’s own relationship to Islam.7

Gaining the trust of the interviewees was relatively easy because of the fact that I also come from a Muslim background, albeit growing up in a different non-western environment. Coming from the same culture allowed the interviewees to touch on subjects such as their parents’ upbringing without feeling the need to explain certain customs or particular behaviours that might be different for the native Dutch. Moreover, not being part of the gay and lesbian or more broadly the LGBTQ community myself, oftentimes I found myself sharing my own personal relationship with Islam and my own internal conflict and difficulty of conciliation between my Muslim background and certain aspects of the person that I want to be, and explaining that this conflict is what created the initial desire to conduct this particular research topic. I believe that this also allowed me to create a certain bond with my interviewees and make them feel safe in sharing their own experiences.

I decided to refer to the eight people I interviewed in an alphabetical order8 :

A; Man, 27 years old, Muslim Turkish parents, works in The Hague. B; Man, 22 years old, Muslim Turkish parents, student in Amsterdam. C; Woman, 26 years old, Muslim Turkish parents, student in Amsterdam D; Woman, 24 years old, Muslim Moroccan parents, works in Amsterdam.

7_{An interview guide can be found in appendix 1}

(30)

30

E; Woman, 36 years old, Muslim Turkish father, Christian Indonesian mother, works in Amsterdam.

F; Man, 22 years old, Muslim Turkish parents, student in Amsterdam.

G; Man, 24 years old, Muslim Palestinian father, Muslim Lebanese mother. (Came to the Netherlands when he was 4 months old)9, student in Utrecht.

H; Man, 28 years old, Muslim Turkish parents, student in The Hague.

Most of the research participants are highly educated. One way to explain this is the fact that I may have created an initial filter because I do not speak Dutch and needed to conduct the interviews in English. Moreover, the snowballing technique gave me access to people who are part of the same circles.

Moreover, one other aspect shared by most participants is that they are, to varying extents, activists. This might prove to be an issue and to a certain degree, it might be the case that I could only access this pool of participants because of the fact that they are already empowered and involved in the Muslim LGBTQ circles. However, through my interviews and the subsequent findings, I argue that their social involvement as activists is part of their identity formation process and empowerment. This will be discussed later on in more details in the findings .

9_{The only participant who was not born in the Netherlands. Since he came to the Netherlands at a very young}

age (4 months old), I decided to include him with other second generation Dutch gay Muslims since he is raised in the Netherlands and also holds the Dutch nationality.

(31)

31

II. Data analysis:

All interviews were transcribed and uploaded to Atlas ti for coding. I followed a constructivist grounded theory (Ong 2012) approach in analysing my data. The Constructivist grounded theory considers that social reality is not only constructed by the participants, but that the data collected and its ensuing analysis is a result of the researcher’s own interpretation of the data. Moreover, the initial literature review is not imposed on my data but is used constructively.

Indeed, I used interpretation to initially code the interviews transcribed through line-by-line coding. This type of open coding allows me to pay attention to my respondents’ views and accounts of their own social reality and to minimize the imposition of my own preconceived beliefs in my data and to sharpen and specify my use of sensitizing concepts (Ong 2012). With this method, I quickly ended up with a number of 187 quotations and 30 codes10 on Atlas ti.

The next step after that was to categorize the codes. The 6 big themes that emerged were: • Identity negotiation and formation

• Empowerment through Islam • Social network

• A double stigma

• Homosexuality in the Muslim communities • Neo-culturalism: Influence of neo-culturalism

(32)

32

In order to further categorize and organize the findings, I then turned to my research question and then merged the raw themes with each other and came up with three final themes to discuss in the empirical findings: Identity formation and negotiation, social network and double discrimination.

III. Ethical considerations:

The process of coding, the subsequent analysis and findings required the interpretation of the stories relayed by the Dutch gay Muslims interviewees. My own perspective and views are thus undeniably part of the research. I am aware of the fact that the quotes and their subsequent interpretations can prove to be troublesome and that interviewees themselves may disagree with them even after they have agreed with their display. Thus, I acknowledge that all interpretations for all the quotes that were selected and explained are mine. Furthermore, generalizations were necessary in order to draw conclusions and have solid themes and frames. It may have been the case that the uniqueness of the stories relayed by the respondents was reduced to themes in order to further interpret them and come up with solid findings.

(33)

33

Chapter 4: Empirical findings:

I. Identity negotiation and formation

1. A multi-cultural identity but a Dutch civic identity

Dutch gay Muslims are the children of migrant parents who have not only grown in the Netherlands but also bear their parents’ origin ethnicities. They are often referred to with hyphenated identities such as Turkish-Dutch or Moroccan-Dutch. The gay Muslims that were interviewed for this research all had complex identification processes. First, their identity changed through time the more knowledge they gained and the more they became aware of the social structures that were around them. Their identity formation is the result of a process that starts from childhood and the elements that surrounded them in their upbringing, such as family and friends. It begins to change when they leave their parents’ home, go to bigger cities, get to know other people, and get confronted by the way the rest of the society sees them. The Dutch affiliation is quite strong among the respondents and that is because when they look at things in the bigger framework, they are aware of the fact that they adopt a Dutch way of living that makes it easier for them to interact with other Dutch people than with people from other countries. They are Dutch in their mannerisms and in their way of doing things and interacting with people. For this reason, their Dutch identity is first and foremost a civic identity. For example, A used to consider himself more Turkish than Dutch until he got the opportunity to go to Turkey:

(34)

34

“The funny thing is two years ago, I had the opportunity to get an internship in Turkey, in Istanbul actually. And until then, I always thought okay I’m Dutch-Turkish, but I’m quite proud of my Turkish roots, and I would consider myself more Turkish than Dutch. But when I got the opportunity to have an internship in Istanbul (…) I met actually the Turkish mentality, and it was something else … it is so different from how I grew up, and our values are so different. I would consider myself right now more Dutch than Turkish, and it’s not about my culture, it’s not about my colour, it’s not about my roots, it’s not about my parents, it’s more about the mentality. I am a Turkish person with a Dutch mentality. And I believe that makes me more Dutch than Turkish.”

Indeed, like A, the other participants could relate to the Dutch Identity and most of them, despite emphasizing their dislike of placing their different identities in a hierarchy, placed the Dutch identity first compared to their ethnic origin. B did not hesitate when asked the question “how Dutch do you feel?”:

“That’s funny because I feel very Dutch, I grew up here, I learned the Dutch language before I learned the Turkish language. (…) Yeah so, I’ve always felt really Dutch but also with Turkish roots, I never neglected my Turkish roots but that’s because that’s what shapes me, who I am. I can see a difference between me and a person who is like completely Dutch but I don't consider myself less Dutch than the person sitting next to me.”

So, the Dutch affiliation is a strong element that shapes the respondents’ identity but this Dutch identity or affiliation is to be distinguished from culture. For instance, what A refers to as the Dutch mentality is a way of living, for him distinct from culture:

(35)

35

“Dutch mentality, it’s in the details. If you say to a Turkish person in Turkey, if you have an appointment, let’s say on a Friday evening, they won’t show up at time, or they will show up next Monday, and they will say: Yeah, but we couldn't meet on Friday, so I demand that we see each other in the morning”. It should be according to their schedule because they weren’t able to be present on the actual appointment. It’s just respecting other people’s time, respecting their privacy. It’s so normal for my parents that their parents or their brothers and sisters enter the room without knocking, but I have been telling them for years, like guys don't do that, if you see my door is closed, it means I don't want be bothered, and if you need something, if you want to ask something, you need to knock on the door. And this is a quite extreme example, but what I’m trying to say is besides respecting other people’s time, it’s also their privacy.”

It is this Dutch respect of time and privacy that A identifies with and that is what makes him more Dutch than Turkish. In that sense, the Dutch identity for the respondents manifests itself as a civic identity because they participate in and expect the norms of the Dutch civic society. Civic identity in this case, is not to be confused with culture because when the term “culture” enters the discussion, the respondents tend to feel very close to both their parents’ culture in which they have been raised and to their environment’s culture which is the Dutch culture. They do not wish to make a choice because it would be downgrading one culture compared to the other.

C goes one step further and for her, through being Turkish-Dutch, culture is fluid and she participates in creating both the Dutch and the Turkish culture:

(36)

36

“Well when you’re talking cultures, it’s really … I wouldn't say problematic, but it becomes problematic. Because then, someone has to explain to me what exactly, what box and what concepts do belong to the Turkish culture, and what box and concepts do belong to the Dutch one. And then, you’re asking me to pick either of them. Point is culture is always fluid within the years, and when I express myself in an environment, such as Amsterdam or such as Istanbul, the things I see and feel and do over there, you know, it identifies me or I taste the culture and I walk in that and I try to accumulate culture. But then, you’re talking about boundaries which cannot be sketched down in … Well it can be sketched down in demographics but when you talk about the emotional culture, where is the demographics in there? So, what to me is Turkish culture? I don't know. What to me is Dutch culture? I still don't know. So, I have a certain culture maybe and maybe I have an ideology but it’s not bound to the ethnical way of labelling myself. So, when you say okay, do you have more feelings for the Dutch culture or the Turkish culture, I think people try to say, you know in Turkey, you can’t be outspoken about everything whereas in the Netherlands, you have the freedom of speech and I’m like the same freedom of speech is downgrading my ethnicity, or downgrading people from my religion or downgrading black people so what freedom of speech are you talking about? Are you talking about the west or the Netherlands? So, there’s like pros and cons in every political situation of a country and then maybe, culture as well. And that’s why I’m not ready to pick one, and maybe not even willing to pick one. So, the question is, do I bear culture? I think I bear one, I’m not sure to which one it is attached to.”

Culture is defined as the characteristics, beliefs, behaviours such as language, customs, rules and values that are common to a certain group, community or society, but the respondents would disagree with this classical definition because for them, culture is not set, culture is fluid and they have a say in what culture can be, they can create culture themselves.

(37)

37

Perhaps this is due to the prominence of the culture clash debate today, but culturally defining one’s identity was problematic for my respondents. Indeed, while the other respondents did not express themselves as strongly as C when it comes to identifying more with one culture over the other, there was an overall unwillingness to hierarchize between cultures and thus to give one more importance than the other. They are multicultural, their roots are part of who they are, part of their social reality. Their parents’ culture makes their identity formation more complex than that of the native Dutch person because they identify with multiple cultures and multiple ethnicities, and it’s in that sense that they are multicultural. This being said, the Dutch civic identity is a strong component of their identification, and if they have to hierarchize, Dutch identity will come first because they believe they function as Dutch people in a Dutch society and they function as Dutch people with the rest of the world.

Most of the time, when discussing migrant’s integration, culture is a major part of the discussion. However, when we consider the respondents identity formation in terms of civic identity rather than cultural belonging, it could be argued that the respondents of this research are well integrated in the Dutch society because they identify with the Dutch civicness and way of living more than with any other nation’s way of living.

2. The Muslim identity and the gay identity: reconcilable

a. An initial conflict:

When it comes to the other identities of the respondents, such as the gay identity and the Muslim identity, there is an initial collision. When considering their gay identity, there are two dimensions to take into consideration in order to have a comprehensive view on how

(38)

38

they negotiate this particular identity, the first one is self-acceptance and the second one is social acceptance. When talking about negotiating identities, I will first focus on self-acceptance as social self-acceptance comes later on in the analysis. Most respondents became aware of their different sexual orientation at quite a young age, that is between 11 and 17, and only two of them were able to accept that part of their identity almost immediately and conciliate it with their Muslim identity. For the rest of the respondents, the conciliation was not that easy. There is an initial clash, an internal conflict that puts them in a very difficult position. This conflict is a direct result of the fact that they are unwilling to let go of their Muslim identity and they cannot just be “straight”. For many of them, this internal combat in addition to the fear of disappointing their families puts them in a very complicated state of mind that oftentimes leads to depression, and in some cases even suicidal thoughts.

D describes this initial internal struggle and the way her different identities collided:

“It was very bad because the first two years, I struggled with accepting myself because I knew that was something considered bad and until that time, I was pretty religious and I would pray occasionally but when I found out, I turned my back against religion, I wasn't praying anymore and I wasn't looking forward to Ramadan because I found out that everybody said that if you’re gay then you’re going to hell, you’re going to burn and god hates fags, god hates gays. So, I never felt it that way in my heart, I didn't believe that my own god would hate me for who I was but I had this very deep internal struggle with my religion and with my environment. Because these identities collided you know, being gay, being religious, being Moroccan. You know, it collided. They couldn't go together or at least that’s what I thought at that age.”

(39)

39

D’s quote summarizes what other respondents have gone through and as she points out, she never felt it in her heart that god would hate her for being gay, and the other respondents felt the same way. Indeed, despite everyone around them saying that homosexuality is a sin in Islam, most chose to focus on the basic message of Islam as a religion and that message according to them is respecting one another, doing good around others and for others and that they are all god’s children. It is for this reason that there was a sense of incomprehension as to why god would hate them, and it is also for this reason that completely letting go of Islam and branding it as evil because the environment around them is saying Islam hates homosexuals was difficult to achieve.

b. Self-acceptance through the empowering role of Islam:

In fact, most respondents were only able to overcome this stage of deep internal conflict through conciliating both identities, and thus conciliating homosexuality and Islam. The ways in which they achieved that was through studying Islam, delving into the topic, identifying where exactly does their religion condemn homosexuality. Through research, and through discussing the topic with other people, they reach the conclusion that Islam itself is not against homosexuality and that they can be gay and Muslim, and thus they become empowered. They use the sacred text itself to defend themselves against the mainstream discourse that considers homosexuality a sin in Islam, they study it and come up with religious counter arguments that paint a different image of Islam, a homo-tolerant Islam. This is what I refer to as the empowering role of Islam.

E, who struggled for a long time with her colliding identities, describes the way Islam helped her get up and fight for her rights, fight for her own visibility:

(40)

40

“There was a moment of time where religion was holding me back, but also eventually religion was my drive to stand up for myself, because religion is telling me to stand up for myself. Also, my religion is telling me that I’m made like this, that I’m his child too, whether I’m gay or not. Also, atheists people have a certain grace from Allah, why can’t I? so eventually, religion was also my drive because all the questions that I was having, the arguments were not matching. I did a lot of Ijtihad11, just considering myself and intellect and talking and just making sense. So eventually, it was my drive to stand up for myself. I also felt teared apart and hurt personally back in the day, why don't I deserve to have a relationship with god? why can’t god accept me? And in South Africa, I felt fully accepted, I was like okay, it’s okay for me to be gay and Muslim. Because the Quran says that we are created in diversity. So, no, I never left my religion, I just put aside that one topic (homosexuality in Islam). I don't know what to do with it so I’m gonna leave it. I never stopped believing in God or taking distance from God. even when I quit praying, it didn't make me leave religion, it was just that prayer thing you know.”

When E talks about South Africa, she refers to a program that she participated in alongside 6 other Dutch gay Muslims, a program led by a gay imam called Muhsin Hendricks. The program is separated in three segments. The first segment is about identity, intersectionality, and culture, in other words using intersectionality in order to identify the different components of one’s own identity and then differentiating between culture and religion. The second segment is about basic knowledge of Islam and the third segment focuses on the topic of homosexuality within Islam. At the end of this program, E finally felt like she could be herself, that she could be gay and Muslim. As a matter of fact, this program

(41)

41

is also offered within Maruf, the platform for Dutch queer Muslims. Indeed, they empower gay Muslims in the Netherlands through this very same process, sometimes giving them the opportunity to go to South Africa and meet Muhsin Hendricks, and also providing workshops about homosexuality and Islam. The goal is to introduce them to a different Islam, an Islam that accepts them.

Most of my respondents have in fact come in contact with Maruf in one way or another. Some are very close friends with the board members, some are volunteers in the organization. That is because they themselves have participated in workshops and they themselves have only been able to truly accept who they are and become fulfilled and liberated once they have delved in Islam and found that Islam can be homo-tolerant and that it is possible to be gay and Muslim.

Indeed, according to the respondents, nowhere in the Quran is homosexuality condemned. In the hadiths, there are certain passages, however, the hadiths were written by men who reported on the words and habits of the Prophet Mohammed after his death. They are thus dismissed by the respondents. As for the Quran, the condemnation of homosexuality is based solely on the story of the prophet Lot (Sodom and Gomorrah). To this story, all the interviewees agreed unanimously that homosexuality is not the reason why the city was burned down. The reason is because people in the city were extremely inhospitable and used rape as a means of torture to the guests that were passing by their city. It was not a case of love between two men, but a case of abuse and torture.

Dutch, gay and Muslim : identity formation and the issue of belonging