QUESTION: Brother Imam could you please comment on Pope Francis’s recent comments on homosexuality? He said “Homosexual people have a right to be in a family. They're children of God and have a right to a family. Nobody should be thrown out or be made miserable over it.”
ANSWER: He didn’t just mention homosexuality. He mentioned families and that is the emphasis of his statement in my opinion.
Evildoers have culpability in the world for the evil that exists, not the innocent. That evil that bullies its way upon the innocent by way of confused language, misguidance, and wrong or irrational behaviors is not charged as sin to its intended and real victims. Are we to charge the victims of confusion, or should the Deceivers who vow to deceive with misguidance in this world be the ones indicted?
This world’s confused language and behavior environment has in many respects overwhelmed our nature-based senses for a true human morality that is both international and universal. Many in offices of public leadership do not know what a true human being is or what a human being was fashioned to be. High offices are infected. This ignorance also infects our public institutions similar to the behavior of a virus. We want to build an immunity and our natural design enables that immunity. It protects against this world’s horrors of oppression upon the essential ingredient of man’s inherent excellence.
I am speaking of oppression of human intellects which leads to the misguidance of human souls, and then a general corruption of the human culture which should, if it were healthy, sustain that universal morality recognized by all nations of just men. This is the backdrop of the many wars that have been waged upon the human being’s original morality and man’s design as G’d made him and her. The enemy of man orchestrates these wars behind the many masks of oppressive schemes.
The question and reality of homosexuality -which is a mask in many ways, as such, is not the major concern as much as misunderstanding or no understanding of what a natural human being and natural human communities are intended to be by the Lord-Creator Who fashioned us. The Qur’an and the Prophet’s teaching categorizes classes of misconduct, but to my knowledge does not venture to label such behavior specifically. Further, it is virtually impossible to prove such behavior according to Islamic standards of privacy and decency. This principle informs, or should inform our rational mind that there is something else that G’d intends to be our primary concern.
I am in no way inclined to question or necessarily comment on the Pope’s statement. His institution of leadership and the platform from which he speaks and leads is well-established in this present world as a force and voice for goodness and justice. That is how I regard his leadership. He is a man working for the dignity of all human beings on this earth. Therefore, I know he is a target and as long as he and the Catholic people hold to obedience and duty to G’d and service to mankind and peace for human society, they will be targets in this world to be warred upon by vile and evil forces. Such is also the case for correct Muslim leadership. And by correct I am referring to Muhammed the Prophet’s manner.
There is the demand on us from our Islamic commitments of faith and in service to the integrity of Islamic community and its sincere following, that is the following of Muhammed the Prophet -the prayers and the peace be upon him, to answer the issue at hand. I also have the obligation of serving the Muslim-American group of which I am a member and a leader, and the good relationships of my group to our neighbors and our fellow Americans. I serve them upon the credibility of Islamic teaching in the tradition of our late leader Imam W. Deen Mohammed. He was a peace-maker in this world looking for the opportunities to build the bonds of trust and honor and the regard of mutual respect under the authority and standing of commitment to the Islamic way of obedience to G’d and to His Messenger. It follows then that I am also a servant of the true report of Islam in this world, and to Truth. The Holy Qur’an says:
ءَامِن إِنَّ وَعْد اللهِ حَقٌّ
“Hold to Faith! For the promise of Allah is true.”
My intent is to honor these commitments with this answer to your question.
We are to treat the family unit with respect for its intended sanctity. We come to this world by Allah’s Will and Purpose and the act of our parents. Is there any other union that produces generations of humans? We are to regard parents and children as the well-spring of healthy community. “No injustice to a parent on the guilt of a well-raised but errant child, and no injustice or mistreatment to the orphan taken from the natural protections of family.” This is straight Qur’an teaching and also the bedrock of Islamic family law. Islam restores the natural way and argues for it and defends it in all of its upright invitations to universal decency. Belief in G’d and dignified behavior is the golden rule of faith.
As a Muslim leader addressing this question from the requirements of Faith, I would not risk negotiating what is or what is not, or who is or who is not, entitled to G’d’s protections in the family unit. Allah says that He created the family unit and from it comes blood ties and the proper humanization of this world. The Prophet stood for the orphan as an indication and proof of Faith. The orphans are those made unfortunate due to their circumstances or their being cast out from the protection of families and communities. The African-American people have been an orphaned people. And this Tradition of Islam that I speak from, with its honorable emphasis, was cast from and within our orphaned predicament in America.
One Muslim nation witnessed the birth of America but ignored the oppressed human plight of its slaves who were also Muslims. The point being that we can miss the great Islamic commitment even while believing we possess the authentic Islamic label. You will have to study these references to fully appreciate what I am pointing at here. We are not named disruptors and protesters in the Qur’an, unless it is the protest for the common human respect due to all of the children of Adam.
So, I protest the scheme of the enemy of man and the enemies of families!
Allah says that we are named Muslims both in what was given to Muhammed and what preceded him. The life we point to is the Original life. It is this life upon which Muhammed ascended and Islam is built. Therefore, with the Pope, we Muslim-Americans call for the strengthening of families, the primary unit of civilized peoples and their history of civilized achievements. That is what I see as the most important matter in the Pope’s statement. If families are healthier, then that which is properly human becomes guaranteed.