Sexual and Gender Diversity in the Muslim World by Hamzić Vanja

Author:Hamzić, Vanja
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: human rights law, Islamic law, Islam, sexual and gender diversity, Muslim world, Pakistan
ISBN: 9780857728838
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Published: 2016-03-29T16:00:00+00:00

Lessons in the Vernacular: How to Dismantle an Epistemic Bomb

Having ventured into the lifeworlds of Lahori sexually diverse and gender-variant Muslims, and having listened to their narratives of the past and the present, this chapter now turns to the five themes that sum up its primary intention: to locate a contemporary vernacular voice and agency in the larger (than life) genealogies and politics of international human rights law and Islamic law. The first story is, primarily, a cautionary tale of how not to intervene in the vernacular space in the present context. The other four stories briefly examine the limits and future potentials of (1) formal municipal law, (2) international law, (3) human rights and (4) Islamic law in Pakistan, as they relate to sexual and gender diversity.

The Spectacle of Intervention

Writing in the precarious environment of 1967 CE Paris, Guy Debord begins his widely influential book, The Society of the Spectacle, with the following thesis: ‘The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of [capitalist] production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that once was directly lived has become mere representation’.139 In a similar fashion, neo-liberal interventionism into ‘client’ societies – whether military, economic, political or ‘humanitarian’ – reveals itself in countless acts of spectacular representation. The (real) lives of the subjects of such representational acts are always already irrelevant; what matters is the spectacle itself.

On 26 June 2011 CE, the then Deputy Chief (and later Chargé d'Affaires) of the US Mission to Pakistan, Richard E. Hoagland, hosted ‘Islamabad's First Ever Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender (GLBT) Pride Celebration’. The event was publicised at the US Embassy's official website, as a gesture of ‘support for human rights, including LGBT rights in Pakistan, at a time when those rights are increasingly under attack from extremist elements throughout Pakistani society’.140 Fauzia described the chaotic aftermath of this seemingly benevolent ‘celebration’:

We had the protests [against the ‘pride celebration’] all week and then for a month. Editorial upon editorial upon editorial, in newspapers in English and in Urdu. ‘American agenda in harbouring support to these deviants’. ‘We really need to bring back the proper Islam’. ‘America is making everybody gay’. ‘It's another way for them to take over our nation and corrupt us’. You know, that language, that discourse. I mean, it was an Eid for everybody, for the homophobes.

The event shocked and outraged all the collectives of sexually diverse and gender-variant Muslims in Pakistan that I have been in touch with. Jamila summed up the general sentiment:

Oh my God! That was horrible! It's become like a landmark for us. It outed us in ways that are absolutely unacceptable. I've had conversations with the people from the [US] Embassy. I got invited to that event. I didn't go and the woman called right after this became the news. She called me generally and I happened to be in Islamabad so I went and had a chat with them. I have no problem with the US Foreign Service doing its own gay pride in an embassy.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.