Abu Nuwas Quotes

But Paradise would not be a bore for Muslims with different proclivities. Allah also promised his blessed that in Paradise, “round about them will serve, devoted to them, young male servants handsome as pearls well-guarded” (Qur’an 52:24), “youths of perpetual freshness” (Qur’an 56:17): “if thou seest them, thou wouldst think them scattered pearls” (Qur’an 76:19). But surely the Qur’an isn’t condoning homosexuality, is it? After all, it depicts Lot telling the people of Sodom: “For ye practise your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds” (7:81) and “of all the creatures in the world, will ye approach males, and leave those whom Allah has created for you to be your mates? Nay, ye are a people transgressing all limits!” (26:165). A hadith commands that “if a man who is not married is seized committing sodomy, he will be stoned to death.”6 Another hadith has Muhammad saying: “Kill the one who sodomizes and the one who lets it be done to him.”7 These strictures have worked their way into Islamic legal codes, such that two Saudis were so anxious to avoid a flogging or prison term that they murdered a Pakistani who witnessed their “shameful acts” by running over him with a car, smashing his head in with a rock, and setting him on fire.8 But the pearl-like youths of Paradise have given rise to a strange double-mindedness about homosexuality in Islam. The great poet Abu Nuwas openly glorified homosexuality in his notorious poem the Perfumed Garden:

Muistan vielä, kuinka kerran sinäkin tahdoit minua. Nyt sinä tahdot minun vain pysyvän poissa.

Auttakaa! Yö on pitkä, koti on kaukana, kumppani etäällä.

Menkää kertomaan tuolle joka pitää itseään filosofina: Jotain sinä tiedät mutta paljosta jäät paitsi.

An 1836 Arabic edition of the classic A Thousand and One Nights included a story of how Abu Nuwas seduced three youths, but when the edition was reprinted in 1930 the offending story was summarily dropped. Modern prudery nearly extinguished a rich tradition of Arabic homoerotic literature. While homosexual activity was ubiquitous in the Ottoman Empire of the nineteenth century, it would be an error to imagine the region as a homosexual paradise. A wide gulf yawned between practice and perception. A man was free to engage in homosexual activity at the hamman or in private, but he was also expected to marry and to produce children.