Why plight of Iranian Gay teenager is not a religious issue

Despite Leviticus I feel a slight reluctance even  to include this story in a blog which is about religion.   This is not a religious issue.  While it is reasonable enough for biblical (or Koranic)  literalists to eschew and, in private, abominate homosexuality,  there is no scriptural or reputable moral authority whatsoever for executing the death penalty for consensual, often loving and loyal, relationships within the same sex. 

As for the Iranian sex-change industry,  it is beneath contempt to blackmail desperate young men into an operation which is neither relevant nor helpful to their particular need. This is not religion: it is cultural, political barbarity and should not be given the slightest quarter or sympathy, even by the most pious or homophobic citizen or overseas politician. The young man Kazemi's claim for asylum here is absolute and the UK government's attitude that if they are 'discreet' they are fine, is absurd.

Comments

[Alistair]

I agree with all of this, except the part about it not being religion. That is far too facile an approach, and utterly wrong.

As we heard from some Muslims in the recent argy-bargy about "supplementary jurisdictions" with Sharia in Britain, Islam is an entire way of life. It is altogether too convenient therefore to claim that for any given issue, the enmeshed strands of culture, politics and religion can be so readily and easily separated out, such that one may be blamed for an absurd excess while another may be entirely excused.

It brings to mind the changing sentiments of Blair before and after 7/7. Immediately after 9/11, he said the Twin Towers bombers were simply terrorists, not Islamic terrorists. But after 7/7, he said global terrorism was "based on religious extremism. That is the fact. And not any religious extremism; but a specifically Muslim version."

He also said in March 2006:

"Ministers have been advised never to use the term "Islamist extremist". It will give offence. It is true. It will. There are those - perfectly decent-minded people - who say the extremists who commit these acts of terrorism are not true Muslims. And, of course, they are right. They are no more proper Muslims than the Protestant bigot who murders a Catholic in Northern Ireland is a proper Christian. But, unfortunately, he is still a "Protestant" bigot. To say his religion is irrelevant is both completely to misunderstand his motive and to refuse to face up to the strain of extremism within his religion that has given rise to it."

And that last sentence is the key that should be applicable here.

Blair's speeches are on the 10 Downing Street archive. I can give URLs if anyone is interested

[Christopher]

Let's hope Jacqui Smith does the right thing in granting asylum to this young man. Sending him back to an almost certain death cannot be justified however you slice it. And when the government is wary of sending terrorists back to regimes where they might be tortured, how appalling is it that we even consider for one nano second sending someone back to a regime that punishes people for expressing love. If it is a sin so be it, but where religion has gone rotten is when it tries to turn sins into crimes where there is no victim and pass to the state the responsibility of punishing people; so-called "relaxing to the secular arm" was done during the Inquisition so the Church would not have blood on ITS hands. Punishment of homosexuality has been practised by secular non-religious regimes in the past to be sure but it seems only in a religious regimes today that a person can be physically destroyed for being gay.