Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his government sure do love a gay panic. Their distaste for the gays goes so far, they banned a newspaper, Shargh, for publishing an interview with a “counter revolutionary homosexual activist,” Saghi Ghahreman.
Though the interview focussed entirely on Ghahreman’s poetry, the culture ministry deemed it inappropriate and shut down the liberal paper,
The main reason for the ban was an interview with a counter-revolutionary who promotes immorality. The press watchdog voted for the ban by examining an article which involves a counter-revolutionary person who promotes immorality. This person is a known element who even promotes immorality in her cyber publication.
Shargh‘s lawyers plan on fighting the paper’s prohibition. Mahmoud Alizadeh Tabatabai told Middle East Times:
Interviewing an individual cannot be a reason for closure when there is no vice in that interview. The reason for the ban is unlawful because the judiciary has not protested against the individual who was interviewed.
Further, Ghahreman kept her answers asexual. Her most explicit reference to sexuality came in the simple statement, “Sexual boundaries must be flexible … The immoral is imposed by culture on the body.” And, apparently, on the papers.
Tallskin
A further example of the hell being gay in an islamic country.
GoodBuddy
Islam at one point was the major cultural and intellectual center for civilization. At that time they were also a very tolerant society, allowing Jews and Christians to live there.
Many Islamacists long to return to those glory days. They don’t understand that being a major civilization requires toleration.
Tallskin
Goodbuddy, what you say is true up to a point. However, muslim “tolerance” of christians and jews was very profitable – they levied a poll tax on all christians and jews- indeed this tax on non muslims was a motivation for further conquests (that and the slaves they could legitmately carry away).
You can see that over time an occupied population, like the entire of north africa, there would be a strong economic incentive to convert to islam.
Non muslims were forbidden to work for the state and were, in spain, forbidden to ride horses, amongst other things. In occupied Spain there were frequent rebellions against the muslim overlords which were put down brutally at the point of the sword