This book, the first full-length study of its kind, dares to probe the biggest taboo in contemporary Arab culture with scholarly intent and integrity - female homosexuality. Habib argues that female homosexuality has a long history in Arabic literature and scholarship, beginning in the ninth century, and she traces the destruction of Medieval discourses on female homosexuality and the replacement of these with a new religious orthodoxy that is no longer permissive of a variety of sexual behaviours. Habib also engages with recent "gay" historiography in the West and challenges institutionalized constructionist notions of sexuality.

Exploring the contemporary dynamics of sexuality in the Middle East, this volume offers an in-depth and unique insight into this much contested and debated issue. It focuses on the role of sexuality in political and social struggles and the politicization of sexuality and gender in the region. Contributors illustrate the complexity of discourses, debates and issues, focusing in particular on the situation in Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Pakistan, Palestine and Turkey, and explain how they cannot be reduced to a single underlying factor such as religion, or a simple binary opposition between the religious right and feminists. Contributors include renowned academicians, researchers, psychologists, historians, human rights and women's rights advocates and political scientists, from different countries and backgrounds, offering a balanced and contemporary perspective on this important issue, as well as highlighting the implication of these debates in larger socio-political contexts.

Homosexuality is anathema to Islam – or so the majority of both believers and non-believers suppose. Throughout the Muslim world, it is met with hostility, where state punishments range from hefty fines to the death penalty. Likewise, numerous scholars and commentators maintain that the Qur’an and Hadith rule unambiguously against same-sex relations. This pioneering study argues that there is far more nuance to the matter than most believe. In its narrative of Lot, the Qur’an could be interpreted as condemning lust rather homosexuality. While some Hadith are fiercely critical of homosexuality, some are far more equivocal. This is the first book length treatment to offer a detailed analysis of how Islamic scripture, jurisprudence, and Hadith, can not only accommodate a sexually sensitive Islam, but actively endorse it.

A groundbreaking work which was first published in Beirut in the year 2000 by Riad el-Rayyes, I Am You (Ana Hiya Anti) is the only novel in Arabic which deals exclusively with the subject of female homosexuality in the Middle East. This critical translation of Elham Mansour's Lebanese novel provides a rare insight into the prevalent attitudes towards lesbianism in the Arabic mainstream, whilst also casting a light on that which is often hidden from the public gaze-the lives of some gay and bisexual women. This long awaited critical translation provides the English reader access to a novel which deals candidly and positively with one of the most important and taboo issues of contemporary Arab society--(homo)sexuality. The novel is translated and introduced by Samar Habib (author of Female Homosexuality in the Middle East) with a foreword by Rebecca Beirne (editor of Televising Queer Women: A Reader)--both critical commentaries help the reader situate the novel within a dynamic historical framework and a broader LGBTIQ context. "This book provides a narrative that depicts everyday lives of lesbians in the Middle East, moving beyond seeing victims of homophobic laws, in order to explore their desires and the possibilities for living life outside societal parameters. I Am You is unique in that it is the first novel published in Arabic to truly take up lesbianism as an issue, and I would argue, a cause. For indeed, it is a highly political novel, questioning every prevailing societal belief about homosexuality, and contending that homosexuality is a natural phenomenon. As the first text of its kind, I Am You will no doubt one day take its place as a lesbian literary classic, but, more importantly, it outs lesbianism in the Arab world (and specifically, in Lebanon), acting as survival literature, and perhaps, opening up a door for further lesbian representation in Arabic culture." - Dr. Rebecca Beirne, Author of Lesbians in Television and Text after the Millennium and editor of TelevisingQueer Women: A Reader

Arab cultural discourse has been slow to respond to changing sexual behaviour. The contributors to this collection pick up the slack, ranging across such disciplines as literature, history, sociology and psychology. Is Damascus the 'chastity capital' of the Middle East, where perceptions of wealth and class fuel female rivalries? How do gay men cruise in Beirut? How do young women in Tunis cope with both social pressures to become thin and family pressures to gain weight? What do Lebanese creative-writing students write about sexual practices versus public behaviour? The fresh, compelling research topi covered include masculinity and migration; colonialism and sexual health; fantasy and violence; and domestic workers and sexual tensions. 'Other people's sex lives have always been a source of fascination, and nowhere more so than in the Middle East ... Ground-breaking.' New Statesman

The first anthropological collection that reveals patterns of male and female homosexuality in the Muslim World The dramatic impact of Islamic fundamentalism in recent years has skewed our image of Islamic history and culture. Stereotypes depict Islamic societies as economically backward, hyper-patriarchal, and fanatically religious. But in fact, the Islamic world encompasses a great diversity of cultures and a great deal of variation within those cultures in terms of gender roles and sexuality. The first collection on this topic from a historical and anthropological perspective, Homosexuality in the Muslim World reveals that patterns of male and female homosexuality have existed and often flourished within the Islamic world. Indeed, same-sex relations have, until quite recently, been much more tolerated under Islam than in the Christian West. Based on the latest theoretical perspectives in gender studies, feminism, and gay studies, Homosexuality in the Muslim World includes cultural and historical analyses of the entire Islamic world, not just the so-called Middle East. Essays show both age-stratified patterns of homosexuality, as revealed in the erotic and romantic poetry of medieval poets, and gender-based patterns, in which both men and women might, to varying degrees, choose to live as members of the opposite sex. The contributors draw on historical documents, literary texts, ethnographic observation and direct observation by both Muslim and non-Muslim authors to show the considerable diversity of Islamic societies and the existence of tolerated gender and sexual variances.