Source: Huffington Post
By Carol Kuruvilla
Anti-Muslim activists often attempt to foment hatred against Muslims by claiming that Islam is inherently anti-queer.
While homophobia certainly still exists in American Muslim communities, as a whole, American Muslims are slowly becoming more accepting of homosexuality.
And notably, they’re doing it at a faster rate than white evangelical Protestants.
A Pew Research Center survey conducted this year found that 52 percent of U.S. Muslims say homosexuality should be accepted by society. In contrast, only 34 percent of white evangelical Protestants believed in 2016 that homosexuality should be accepted by society.
The rate at which white evangelicals are shifting their views is slower than the rate for Muslims. White evangelicals shifted their views by 11 percentage points between 2006 and 2016. Muslims’ acceptance of homosexuality shot up by 25 percentage points between 2007 and 2017.
Urooj Arshad, a queer Muslim activist who is a member of the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity, told HuffPost that Muslims’ support for the LGBTQ community may hinge on a common experience that both groups share ― being victims of discrimination. Queer Americans and Muslim Americans have both been harmed in recent years by policies and rhetoric that threaten the safety and wellbeing of their communities. As a result, Arshad said, it isn’t surprising to her that Muslims are beginning to accept homosexuality.
Categories: America, Homosexuality, Muslims, The Muslim Times, USA