Islamic homophobia is an issue that goes beyond terrorist groups like Hamas. While the Quran’s language regarding homosexual and bisexual behavior is somewhat ambiguous, the hadiths, the canonical sayings and teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, contain many straight forward prohibitions. In practice, this results in both official and extrajudicial persecution of LGBT people throughout the Muslim world. LGBT Palestinians face extreme ostracism, are sometimes forced to flee as refugees, and even risk being kidnapped and beheaded. The authorities also ban the activities of LGBT rights groups. And it isn’t just LGBT Palestinians who are oppressed by Hamas in Gaza. The oppression of women is an intrinsic feature of Sharia law. Human rights researchers rank the Palestinian territories among the worst places in the world to be a woman. For Western activists ostensibly concerned about marginalized groups to effectively support Hamas's continued rule over Gaza and to deny Israel the right to self-defense against the terrorist organization is hypocritical in the extreme.
The leftist claim that British imperialism is to blame for the present-day Islamic homophobia is quickly debunked by comparing how LGBT people are treated in Gaza versus how they were treated in Britain last century. True, same-sex behavior was once criminal in the UK, but that law was repealed in 1967. Some LGBT individuals were persecuted by the British government in the recent past—most famously Alan Turing, who was chemically castrated and subsequently committed suicide. This is deeply shameful. But no one was strung up on a crane or had his head sawn off for having sex with another man. The oppression LGBT people face in Gaza is not the result of Hamas helplessly following the century-old statutes of the defunct British Empire.
The land that today encompasses Israel and the Palestinian territories was controlled by the British from 1918 until 1948. The British attempted to create two states, one for Israelis and one for Palestinians, but the Palestinians rejected the proposal. As a result, the British turned one of the states over to the Israelis, who promptly faced a war from seven different Arab countries and territories—a war which they won.
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