Sex Between Men in Early Muslim Discourses

Autorentext

Sara Omar is an assistant professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at Georgetown University and was awarded a fellowship at the John W. Kluge Center, Library of Congress. Her work traces the legal and social genealogies governing words, concepts, and the practices that they encode. Omar has previously published articles in journals including Islamic Law and Society, Journal of the American Oriental Society, and Journal of the International Qur'anic Studies Association.

Klappentext

Throughout Islamic history, Muslim jurists have prohibited sex between men. Yet, this prohibition was not based solely on scriptural commands. Tracing a genealogy of Muslim discourses across the first five centuries of Islam, this study situates liw within wider debates about the body, gender, morality, medicine, and religion. Sara Omar examines changing interpretations of the Lot narrative, the evolution of ad th traditions, and the gradual formation of Islamic legal frameworks. Through close readings of legal, exegetical, medical, and ethical texts, the book uncovers deep disagreements over evidence, authority, culpability, and punishment, revealing a tradition marked by contestation rather than consensus. Omar engages Jewish, Christian, and Hellenic intellectual legacies to shows how early Muslims negotiated the boundaries of nature, desire, and the permissible. Accessible yet analytically rigorous, the book offers new perspectives on Islamic law, sexual ethics, and the historical roots of contemporary debates.

Inhalt

Introduction; 1. Qawm L : an inhospitable people; 2. Shifting interpretations: the making of a Qur nic prooftextt; 3. The formation and transformation of legal Liw ad ths; 4. Contesting Liw punishments; 5. The hermeneutics of analogical reasoning (Qiy s) and nature ( ab ); Conclusion; Glossary of terms; Bibliography; Index.