It is illogical that the holiness of the ideology or belief created by human beings is more holy than human life itself.
In his fascinating book, Unspeakable Love (which I will discuss fully later on), Brian Whitaker puts forward the theory that the clash between liberal and religious attitudes towards sexual freedom is a clash between two ideas of "good." One set of beliefs holding that is "good" and one will arrive at emotional fulfillment by following your own subjective desires, the other that it is "good" and one will achieve fulfillment by following religiously ordained moral principles. However, reading Human Rights Watch's deeply shocking report "They want to Exterminate Us; Murder, Torture, Sexual Orientation and Gender in Iraq," I cannot see how any idea of "good" motivates that death squads of Mahdi Army, who track down and murder gay and effeminate men on the streets of Baghdad.
One sentence in particular is especially chilling. Since reading the report in January I have struggled to articulate what the sentence describers when talking about the project, a sense of disgust filling my mouth as I speak.. The sentence reads;
One of the tortures they used on him was a very strong glue to close his anus, after which he was given a laxative causing diarrhea that killed him.
Whilst this is particularly horrible, it is ultimately just another detail in the succession of kidnappings, executions, beatings, rapes and exhortations through which the report creates a sense of a country driving towards what is essentially a gay holocaust. Within the first few paragraphs of the report's body forty men are dead, and every interviewee knows of murdered friends and acquaintances. Anti-gay propaganda in Iraq justifies this as not only a moral, but a cultural, crusade;
The legacy of inherited beliefs regarding manhood and morality that characterize the Iraqi people must be transmitted. These ideals go against the feminization of boys and the practice of [men]
applying makeup, which have spread among many Iraqi youth, eliciting disgust.
I feel disgust when I read of these actions. Systems of good are lost behind systems of disgust, as these two perspectives look across at each other.
The irony is however that the Mahdi army are a very poor representation of the Islamic ideals they claim to be acting on. Shar'ia demands a trial, witnesses, a judge and some legal process even if homophobia lies behind it, and the Mahdi seem to pick and choose what parts of Islamic code they are more or less keen on;
A lot of the Mahdi Army are not there because they are religious. I know militiamen who drink, take drugs, have sex. They are there because their hearts are dead. They can just kill people without thinking twice. They are products of violence and they pass it along. They learned violence from poverty and from the time of Saddam, and it’s all they know.
The army itself grew up in the sectarian violence that mushroomed after the U.S. invasion, yet once the U.S. stepped up their forces to counter the insurrection the army dissolved back into the shadows of Sadr City. This lost them a lot of respect amongst the communities from which they came, and so cooked up this moral crusade is a way to re-establish authority.
The method has however back fired, with a majority of regular Iraqis viewing the murder with humane disgust, and with many families touched by grief following the murder of a relative or son (giving a sense of the scale of the killing).
Though families are not always so sympathetic. In tribal areas there is also the danger of patriarchal honour killing, which can be even more ruthless than the militias. One young man fled to Syria, where he believed himself safe and got a job at a hospital, only to arrive at work to find a gang of uncles waiting for him in the reception area with the intention of carrying him off and murdering him.
Escaping to neighbouring countries, where it is estimated two million Iraqi refugees currently reside, is still a dangerous option. These countries are usually equally dangerous places for LGBT individuals, and harbour homophobic legal practices themselves coupled with powerful state surveillance (as in Syria). The option of joining the 291,000 seeking asylum further a field through the UN is there, but the ability to be truthful as to reasons behind ones case is severely curtailed by local attititudes.
One positive glimmer of hope is the London based group Iraqi LGBT who support individual asylum cases and run safe houses in Iraq. However I recently saw a video interview with the group's founder on the Guardian Website in which he explained the project is currently on hold due to lack of funds.
The plight of Gay Iraqi's is exceptionally desperate, and as such I hope to bring awareness of this through the production.
Full Report; http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/08/17/they-want-us-exterminated-0
Iraqi LGBT website; http://iraqilgbt.org.uk/
Interview with Ali Hilli; http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/dec/13/iraqi-gay-rights
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