The fallacy of “Islamic gay marriage”

The fallacy of “Islamic gay marriage” February 20, 2011

Posted by Rasheed Eldin in Media, Queer Muslims.
42 comments The BBC has an article today promoting a radio programme about “British gay Muslims… joining the global fight for equality and seeking gay Islamic marriage”. If the programme is like the article, it will contain lots of emotions and baseless opinions, but nothing from a credible Muslim scholar.

Asra and Sarah decided upon a ‘nikah’ – a Muslim matrimonial contract. Whilst nikahs have traditionally been the reserve of heterosexual Muslims, Asra and Sarah were aware that other gay Muslims had followed this route and the couple decided to investigate further.
“A few friends said you don’t really have to have an official Imam, but you need someone who is knowledgeable enough about the Qur’an to do it. Fortunately, one of our friends was, and she offered to do it. She’s a lesbian herself, and she said we could do it in her home.” [...]

The short ceremony was conducted in Arabic, and additional duas – prayers – were read and the marriage was essentially no different from the nikahs performed for straight Muslim couples all over the world.
But the Islamic faith vehemently rejects homosexuality, and the fact this nikah was for a gay couple is highly offensive to the majority of Muslims – including Asra’s own parents.

Offensive is hardly the point.
Their so-called “nikah” is in fact fundamentally different from an actual nikah performed for a man and woman.
One of the essential conditions of a nikah is that the two people be marriageable to one another. A member of the same sex is not, in the Qur’anic paradigm, a marriageable partner. That is even if we don’t point out that homosexual relations are a sinful abomination.
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