For months, Arabic-language channels have been broadcasting confessions of terrorist suspects that have at once increased ratings and raised suspicions that the statements may have been coerced or staged.
But Sheik Zana's confessions, delivered in Kurdish, stand out because he and his followers had a habit of videotaping not only what appear to be horrific murders and rapes, but also sex among themselves and with the young men whom they were trying to recruit for their cause....
Among the elements of the Arabic-language confessions that some viewers regard as suspicious are stock admissions by the supposed terrorists that they are gay. Because gay sex is haram, or forbidden, in the Koran, some critics have suggested that the speakers have been induced to make those statements to embarrass themselves.
So on the surface, it seems that one of two things is going on: either (a) a group of gay extremists has been carrying out terrorist activities in the name of Iraqi Kurdistan and/or Islam, or (b) a group of non-gay extremists, which has been carrying out terrorist activities in the name of Iraqi Kurdistan and/or Islam, has finally been caught and forced to confess that they're homos, just to drive the proverbial nail a little deeper into their collective coffin during their prosecution.
From the story in the NYT (one of only three English-language articles I can find on this particular topic), it seems that a considerable segment of Iraq's population is going with Option B, despite the fact that there's apparently all this video footage of Kurdish Guys Gone Wild. In an act of willful blindness eerily reminiscent of the nutty refutations surrounding Gameel el-Batouty and the crash of EgyptAir 990 nearly six years ago, devout Muslims are happy to fall back on one of their favorite syllogisms:
Muslims are forbidden from X.
Y is a good Muslim.
Therefore, Y cannot be guilty of X.
And although no one's made the logistical jump just yet, it's only a matter of time until someone blurts out the traditional fourth line:
Therefore, the recent incidents of X are part of a plot by Israel and Mossad.
But for me, what's really troubling is not the ludicrousness of the denials, nor the lack of discussion in these articles about the complex issues surrounding homosexuality in Islam, including the lingering distinctions between homosexuality and sodomy. No, the problem is that it calls to mind similarly freakish leaps of faith I witnessed growing up as a Southern Baptist, and I realize that I may have been guilty of some blind-eyed assessments of my own. For example:
Southern Baptists are forbidden to drink alcohol.
My mother is a good Southern Baptist.
Therefore, my mother can't be an alcoholic.
You know, that "opiate of the people" guy may have been onto something....
