Furious Muslims condemn ‘lesbian’ studies course

THE Religion of Perpetual Rage has found something new to annoy it – an Islamic studies course at the University of Western Sydney which they claim is too sexually explicit, promotes lesbianism and derides the Koran as misogynistic.

According to The Australian:

Students, community members and the Australian National Imams Council have complained about the content of the course, Women in Arabic and Islamic Literature, being taught at the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies. They say it gives a negative view of women in Islam.

The imams’ council has circulated a petition recording its

Deep concern with regards to the course structure and content which involves repeated and unjustified attacks upon Islam.

Another group of nutty rug-butters, Muslims for Peace, has branded the centre as “evil” and demanded lecturer Samar Habib be dismissed and the course abolished. A bulletin on the Muslims for Peace website reads:

Now that its wicked nature should be crystal clear for all to see, Muslims should fear Almighty Allah and break all connections with this diabolical centre of Kufr (non-believers).

The course includes excerpts from The Perfumed Garden by Sheik Nafzawi, a book on Arabian erotica written in the 16th century and translated into English in 1886 that has been likened to the Indian Kama Sutra.

Dr Habib, who has written her PhD thesis on female homosexuality in the Middle East and has written an introduction in an erotic lesbian novel published overseas entitled I Am You, has been accused of promoting lesbianism.

Dr Habib has also been accused by Muslims for Peace of teaching that it is not obligatory to wear the hijab, that the Hadiths (sayings of the Prophet Mohammed) are just Chinese whispers and that Muslim scholars can be ignored because they are males.

The imams’ council does not believe the course represents the normative traditional Islam as practised by most of the world’s Muslim population.

ANIC president Sheik Moez Nafti wrote:

The subject’s emphasis on sexuality and its explicit sexual content is not reflective of normative Islam, which is what we thought the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies would attempt to portray.

Habib’s Female Homosexuality in the Middle East: Histories and Representations (ISBN: 0415956730, publisher, Routledge, 2007) is the first full-length study of its kind.

It dares to probe the biggest taboo in contemporary Arab culture with scholarly intent and integrity – female homosexuality. Habib argues that female homosexuality has a long history in Arabic literature and scholarship, beginning in the ninth century, and she traces the destruction of Medieval discourses on female homosexuality and the replacement of these with a new religious orthodoxy that is no longer permissive of a variety of sexual behaviours.