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A review by stevendedalus
Desiring Arabs by Joseph A. Massad
3.0
An exhaustive, interesting overview of how homosexuality and sexual deviance have been treated by Arab writers. However, Massad always seems to elide confrontation.
He recognizes the colonial filter that has so influenced modern Arab depictions of gayness as a societal threat, and provides details over and over again. He also nods at the dangers of western imposition of LGBT culture on a different society that can view it as a parallel to colonial rule.
But his arguments for gayness being a historically acceptable part of underground Arabic culture as long as it didn't disrupt society feels like a very subtle distinction, and all the subsequent examples of Western paradigm-poisoned Islamist thought overwhelm his earlier points. It's all a very thin point that is sloppily made under the weight of picked referents.
It is a good starting point, but its broadness and spanning of eras makes it hard to sustain the exact argument of alternative homosexual lifestyles. It's an unformed foundation that a more pointed, honed book may work with.
The book works more as a compendium of modern Arabic-tinged homophobia than an argument for a different historical worldview.
He recognizes the colonial filter that has so influenced modern Arab depictions of gayness as a societal threat, and provides details over and over again. He also nods at the dangers of western imposition of LGBT culture on a different society that can view it as a parallel to colonial rule.
But his arguments for gayness being a historically acceptable part of underground Arabic culture as long as it didn't disrupt society feels like a very subtle distinction, and all the subsequent examples of Western paradigm-poisoned Islamist thought overwhelm his earlier points. It's all a very thin point that is sloppily made under the weight of picked referents.
It is a good starting point, but its broadness and spanning of eras makes it hard to sustain the exact argument of alternative homosexual lifestyles. It's an unformed foundation that a more pointed, honed book may work with.
The book works more as a compendium of modern Arabic-tinged homophobia than an argument for a different historical worldview.