Question
Homosexuality has been condemned in the Abrahamic faiths. Some Islamic Scholars have often termed it as an anomaly because, according to them, it goes against the fundamental “scheme” of God, which is based on a heterosexual framework of building the family unit. Some have only condemned engaging in homosexual behavior, referring to Qoum e Lut (they were punished for engaging in homosexual activity), excluding any feelings of attraction one may have towards someone of the same sex to be unpunishable.
Sexuality is not a choice for an individual. If no one “chooses” to be gay or straight, then why does Islam give a “cold shoulder” towards sexual minorities? Isn’t it unfair and inhumane towards someone to be forbidden from seeking same-sex relationships just because they are not heterosexual (a choice they never made in the first place) as some would say the purpose of the entire heterosexual framework is for mankind to reproduce?
Answer
You have put two claims together. The first is that sexual orientation is not chosen. The second is that prohibiting same-sex relationships is therefore unfair and inhumane — particularly since, on your reading, the heterosexual union is valued mainly for reproduction, which not every marriage produces anyway.
Both claims deserve a serious answer rather than a dismissal, and the second one deserves it more than the first.
The prohibition is about an act, and it binds everyone
Before anything else, a point that is almost always missed, and which changes the shape of the discussion.
Islam has no category of “the homosexual” — no class of person about whom it issues a verdict. It has directives about sexual conduct, and those directives fall on everybody without exception.
The clearest demonstration is this: anal intercourse is not permitted within a heterosexual marriage either. A husband and wife are bound by three restrictions — no intercourse during menstruation, no anal intercourse, no oral intercourse — grounded in the Qur’anic directive: “and do not approach them until they have cleansed themselves… approach them in the manner the Almighty has directed you” (2:222). Beyond these, as Shehzad Saleem notes in his treatment of marital intimacy, everything else is left to the taste and inclination of the couple.
Consider what follows. A married man, attracted to his own wife, in a bond lawful in every other respect, has no licence for this act. The prohibition attaches to the act itself and to what sexual union is for — not to the desires of whoever performs it, and not to any group of people.
This meets your charge of unfairness directly. Islam has not written a special rule against a minority. It has drawn a boundary that runs through everyone’s life, and it asks the same restraint of a married man that it asks of anyone else. What is true — and should be said plainly rather than glossed over — is that this boundary costs some people far more than others. A man who cannot lawfully marry the kind of person he is drawn to is being asked for something much harder than what most people are asked for. That is a real weight, and no honest answer should pretend otherwise.
What the prohibition rests on
The Qur’an’s framing is that men were created as spouses for women and women for men, and that same-sex relations abandon what God created:
“In the whole world, to males you go, and leave what God has created for you…” (26:165-166)
The reasoning is about design and purpose. Sexual union has an end — the pairing of the sexes, the continuity of the human race, and the family in which children are raised and their emotional needs met. Javed Ahmad Ghamidi grounds the prohibition primarily here, in fiṭrah, the purposive nature God gave human beings, rather than in the Lot narrative alone. The limits around intimacy exist to protect human dignity and to preserve that institution.
Lesbianism is not addressed by a separate explicit text. As Asif Iftikhar argues in Renaissance, the prohibition extends by the same reasoning: if men are created as spouses for women and women for men, then the same transgression of the created order is involved, with the general directives of modesty (24:31) supplying corroborating indications.
One clarification, because it is a frequent source of confusion. Contemporary psychiatry does not classify same-sex orientation as a mental disorder, and this is sometimes offered as though it settled the matter. It does not, because the two are answering different questions. A clinical classification asks whether a condition causes distress or impairs functioning. The religious claim is about what human sexuality is for. A diagnostic manual is not equipped to answer a question about purpose — that is precisely the sort of question it sets aside.
On whether orientation is chosen
There is no “gay gene.” The largest genome-wide study conducted, covering roughly half a million people, found no single variant of large effect — only many variants of tiny effect, together explaining a modest share of the variation, with the researchers themselves warning against treating their findings as predictive of any individual. Identical twins, who share their entire genome, are concordant for same-sex orientation far below 100%; careful studies put it well under half. Whatever that indicates, it is not genetic determination.
But neither is it simple choice. Most people do not experience their attractions as selected, and deciding to stop feeling them does not generally work. That much should be conceded frankly, because denying it to someone who is suffering is both untrue and cruel.
The distinction that actually matters is the one Naima Siddiqui draws in Renaissance: predisposition is not compulsion. As she puts it, sexual orientation “may not be a choice, but does it mean that the person loses control over whom he should have sexual relation with?” Her comparison is to alcohol use disorder — a condition with genuine biological loading, in which we nonetheless continue to distinguish the disposition from the drink taken. Shehzad Saleem makes the same move, writing to a man who insisted he was born this way: “if the problem is genetical as you seem to claim, then even this does not give you the license to go ahead.”
So the honest position is this. Your attractions may well be unchosen. What does not follow is that they are irresistible. Moral agency operates in the space between an impulse and an act, and nothing in the science closes that space.
Why “unchosen” cannot carry the weight placed on it
Suppose we granted the premise entirely — that orientation is wholly involuntary. The argument still would not reach its conclusion, because nobody actually holds the principle it depends on.
The principle is: an unchosen desire, acted on between consenting adults, cannot be morally objectionable. Test it. If inclination alone established moral acceptability, what principled objection could be raised against paedophilic or incestuous desires? A person with a compulsive disposition to steal did not choose it either, yet we offer treatment rather than reclassifying theft. A man predisposed to rage did not select his temperament, yet no legal system treats that as licensing assault.
Let me be exact about what this argument does and does not claim, because the comparison is easy to hear as an insult and has often been deployed as one. It is not a claim that these things are morally equivalent, and not a claim that people who experience one are like people who experience another. It tests an argument form, not a class of persons. If “I did not choose this desire and the conduct is consensual” genuinely establishes permissibility, it licenses far more than anyone advancing it is prepared to accept.
And in practice nobody accepts it. Asif Iftikhar has pointed out that Western legal systems criminalise incest between consenting adult siblings — unchosen desire, no third party wronged, no offspring where contraception or infertility is stipulated — while holding that consent is what determines sexual morality. Those societies retain boundaries that consent alone cannot explain, drawn from some further conception of what sexual relations are properly for. That is, structurally, the same kind of claim Islam is making. The disagreement is over content, not over form.
The conclusion is not that anyone is a hypocrite. It is that the question cannot be settled by establishing where a desire comes from, since every party already accepts that some unchosen desires must go unacted upon. What remains is the real question: which limits are the right ones, and on what basis. And that is a question about purpose.
Feeling and doing are not the same thing
You noted that some scholars condemn only the act and not the attraction. That distinction is correct, and it is fundamental rather than a concession.
God does not burden a soul beyond its capacity. (2:286)
There is no blame on you for the mistakes you make unintentionally, but only for what your hearts have deliberately intended. (33:5)
A person is accountable for what he chooses, not for what he finds in himself. A desire nobody summoned, cannot explain, and would gladly be rid of is not itself a sin. Shehzad Saleem’s formulation is exact: “it is not a sin to be afflicted with a problem, but it sure is one not to make an effort to get out of it.” He adds a qualification that should not be dropped — where something genuinely exceeds a person’s capacity, accountability is proportionate to the free will actually available. That is not an evasion; it is 2:286 applied honestly.
Ghamidi describes life as an examination in which every person is handed some particular weakness to contend with, and places this struggle among the ordinary ones: the discipline required here is of the same kind required of a merchant who will not cheat. The married man drawn to someone other than his wife, the person who cannot marry for years — each is carrying something. This is not a separate category of humanity. It is the ordinary human condition of wanting what one may not have, in a form that happens to be heavier and lonelier than most.
On punishment and on law
Here a point of some importance, which is often lost in heated exchanges: the Qur’an prescribes no specific punishment for this offence. Iftikhar acknowledges this plainly. There is no fixed revealed penalty of the kind that exists for certain other offences.
What follows is that questions of legal penalty belong to a society’s own legislative process, arrived at through consultation, and that legitimate differences exist among qualified scholars on both severity and enforcement. What emphatically does not follow is any licence for private individuals to appoint themselves enforcers. The destruction of Lot’s people was God’s own judgement on a nation directly addressed by a messenger, following itmām al-ḥujjah — the conclusive communication of truth — as with the peoples of Noah, Hūd, Ṣāliḥ and Shu’ayb. It was exercised in the messenger’s own era, and God did not delegate it to anyone.
A Muslim society is entitled to legislate in accordance with its own moral foundations, as every society does. I would not press that point further than it goes, however. That a community may draw a boundary does not by itself show the boundary is right — the case for it has to rest on the reasoning set out above, not on the bare fact of legislative authority. And I would withdraw the suggestion, in my earlier answer, that those who disagree might seek jurisdictions more congenial to them. That is not an argument, and to someone genuinely wrestling with this it reads as a dismissal. It deserves to be dropped.
How such a person must be treated
This obligation is not a footnote to the position. It is part of it.
Ghamidi condemns hatred, harassment and organised campaigns against individuals outright. Whatever a person’s conduct, they are to be met with dignity, kindness and respect. He goes further, expressing regret that religious scholarship has so often failed exactly here — substituting harsh judgement for compassion and constructive dialogue, and so failing the people most in need of guidance.
The tradition supports him. Concealing a fellow Muslim’s failing rather than broadcasting it is a virtue the Prophet (sws) repeatedly commended. The Qur’an condemns those who love that indecency should be spread about the believers (24:19), and forbids mockery, insulting names and the hunting-out of others’ faults (49:11-12). Someone who confides such a struggle is extending a trust; betraying it is itself a sin, whatever the betrayer imagines about the other’s standing with God.
Ghamidi offers one further piece of practical counsel worth repeating. Where the person you are speaking to does not share this faith, do not simply assert that the act is a sin. Reason from the wisdom behind the directive — cleanliness, the continuity of the human race, the integrity of the family. An assertion persuades no one who does not already accept its premise.
In closing
This is not a juristic verdict, and it is not offered as one. What I have set out is the reasoning as I understand it: that the prohibition attaches to acts and binds everyone, married couples included; that it rests on the purpose of sexual union rather than on hostility toward any group; that the scientific claims on both sides are weaker than advertised and in any case cannot settle a question about purpose; that an unchosen inclination is not itself a sin while a chosen act is another matter; that the Qur’an fixes no penalty here and no individual may act as enforcer; and that the duties of dignity and concealment owed to such a person are as binding as anything else in this discussion.
What you conclude for your own life, and how you stand before your Lord, is between you and God. And whoever is carrying this should know that the door is not closed to him:
Say: O My servants who have wronged their souls, do not despair of God’s mercy. Surely God forgives all sins. He is the Forgiving, the Merciful. (39:53)
References
- Asif Iftikhar, Lesbianism and Islam, Renaissance, Aug 2011
- Asif Iftikhar, Trivializing Homosexuality, Renaissance
- Naima Siddiqui, Genetic Compulsion and Homosexuality, Renaissance, Feb 2021
- Shehzad Saleem, Homosexuality, Renaissance, Sept 2000
- Shehzad Saleem, Genetic Homosexuality, Renaissance, Feb 2001
- Shehzad Saleem, Islam on Sexual Intimacy Between Husband and Wife
- Shehzad Saleem, Predicament of a Gay Person
- Javed Ahmad Ghamidi, Selected Essays — “Itmām al-Ḥujjah of the Messengers”
I hope this helps.
Regards,
Mushfiq Sultan
Al-Mawrid
