Homosexuality, Adultery, or Marital Rape: Which is Worst?

                by Dr. Robert D. Crane

  The unique feature of human rights in Islamic law is that human responsibilities come first.  Human rights are the product of carrying out our responsibilities.  If every one observed the divinely ordained responsibilities, everyone would enjoy human rights.

      This is the essence of the maqasid al shari’ah, which are the duties to respect divine revelation, human life, human dignity (including both gender equity and freedom of religion), the family and community, private property in the means of production, political self-determination, and the right to seek knowledge.  These are known in classical Islamic thought (from the 4rd through 7th Islamic centuries), respectively, as seven huquq, namely, haqq al din, haya, karama, nasl, mal, hurriya, and ‘ilm.  The master of the art and the last of the great maqsudi scholars, Imam al Shatibi, taught that these are the product of human reason reflecting on divine revelation and therefore are always open to deeper understanding and formulation.

      The latest research by polling organizations shows that the clash of civilizations does not consist of differences in support for political and economic democracy.  In fact, popular support for such democracy is strongest in Muslim countries.  The clash consists rather in social morality, especially in sexual norms.  Here the Muslim populations have not changed over the centuries, whereas in America during the past half century a revolution in sexual ethics has practically eliminated the traditional American culture.

      Increasingly sexual deviance from the traditional norms of human culture has reached the point in America where homosexuality is no longer considered to be deviant, adultery is expected as part of normal married life, rape is considered to be a minor crime, and molestation of children upsets people if it is committed by Catholic priests.

      Homosexuality is considered now to be a genetic burden from which those with it cannot escape, which means that it is no longer considered to be a moral issue.  Perhaps the most interesting finding is that the mother’s allergic reaction or “maternal immune response” to male fetuses may change them so they no longer function as normal males.  The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada has funded a study of 944 Canadian men to determine whether the incidence of homosexuality increases from first-born to later born brothers.  The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has just published an article by Anthony F. Bogaert establishing that having several biological older brothers increases their chances of being gay.  This was the first study designed to rule out social or environmental effects.  S. Marc Breedlove of Michigan State University said that the difference from one brother to succeeding brothers of the same womb is caused by a
“prenatal factor” and that this finding “absolutely” confirms a physical basis for homosexuality.

      This raises the issue of moral responsibility for “alternative lifestyles” at least in men.  Brain imaging and other studies show genetic differences not only between sexes but within each sex as further evidence that homosexuality and lesbianism result from what some refer to as a “genetic burden.”

      This, however, is not the end of the story but only its beginning.  Can genetic engineering eliminate this problem?  Is it worth “curing” as a means to secure the survival of humanity, since only one in thirty men have the problem. 

      Many modern moral theologians, like Rabbi Michael Lerner, sometimes talk as if homosexuality is the number one problem in the world today, though he turns the argument around by claiming that the homophobes are the real problem simply because they consider that homosexuality is a burden.  One could equally argue, however, that it is such moral theologians in our dissolute culture who have turned it into a problem.

      One could argue that there would be less “homophobia” if the campaign to legitimize alternative lifestyles were not so triumphalist and aggressive.  Why don’t the gays simply admit that they are defective genetically and leave it at that.  We could then treat them as we would any other such group, i.e., with human rights like anyone else but not normative for humanity as a whole.  Are the gays causing their own social problems by insisting that they are normal?  Their insistence would seem to indicate that they are prejudiced against themselves, which is why they fight so hard to impose their own criteria of normality.

      My own view is that the predisposition to homosexuality may be physical, but it does not override the moral competence of such men to avoid such deviant behavior.  Their responsibilities to avoid such behavior are certainly less than those of men who are not so predisposed but who freely choose to be homosexual.

      Much more important in moral theology, known in Muslim circles as Islamic law, are the failings of those who are genetically normal and therefore heterosexual but act immorally in relations with the opposite sex.  Their responsibilities are far greater, and therefore so are their crimes.

  Adultery is always by free choice.  If the evidence is there, should it be criminalized with appropriate public punishments?  My own view has always been that a hundred lashes are much too little for adultery.  Nowadays, however, our culture has disintegrated to the extent that punishment for such a sex crime is considered to deny human freedom.  At the very least it is considered to violate the “separation of Church and State, which is a codeword for eliminating morality from public life.

  Much worse than adultery is marital rape, because the responsibility of a husband for the dignity of his wife is greater than any other responsibility in life.  This heinous crime is rampant especially among Muslims, as I have contended in earlier writings.  Many Muslim men even pervert the obvious meaning of daraba to mean not “divorce” but “beating,” as in beat your wife.  This is often dismissed as normal or even commanded by God.

  In Saudi Arabia, according to a friend of mine who studied Arabic with me there twenty years ago and recorded the stated causes of the public beheadings at the main square every Friday, forty percent of all the executions were of women who had killed their husbands.  In many cases, no doubt, the husbands were the ones who should have been executed.