Blog #6 Muslim Homophobia in Britain

Matt Palmer
2/25/2011
Blog #6


There is a distressingly pronounced intolerance of homosexuality in Great Britain, much it coming from the population. Events detailed in the piece include:

– A girl being told by a state-employed educator that her homosexual thoughts mean she will burn in hell.

– A gay man is stabbed eight times by a group of young Muslim men. When a sentence is handed down on one of the men, a gang of thirty men descend upon a gay bar and attack everyone there.

As the piece points out, there is more to British homophobia than the Islamic element, but a poll found that there are "literally no British Muslims who would say homosexuality is 'morally acceptable.'"

The author denounces the stance that human rights proponents and government officials take toward this. According to these two groups, the violence against gays is a kind of retaliation against the racism to which Muslims are frequently subjected. This is a false connection, argues the author, and it is inherently racist to assume that Muslims are so simple that they simply need an arbitrary outlet for their anger at being a victim.

This is a disturbing piece, not only because of the violence involved, but also the practice of making the Muslim aggressors out to be the victims. It's a dangerous slope to what I would call "over-tolerance," the acceptance of unacceptable behavior to avoid more violence.