Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East (review)

Pinar İlkkaracan's latest publication is a terrific collection, edited by a well-seasoned scholar and activist. İlkkaracan is a co-founder of the Coalition for Sexual and Bodily Rights in Muslim Society, which aims to protect "the right to non-conforming sexualities in Muslim societies" (9).

Rarely does scholarship in the Western academy pay due attention to Middle Eastern nations and societies' constructs of themselves. Often Western scholarship is conveyed with a Western cultural bias, or, conversely, scholars might study Western representations of the Muslim world, seeking to de-seat pernicious stereotypes. Specifically in the arena of sexual and human rights, there tends to be less awareness of and emphasis on what the people of the Middle East are doing. Instead, greater emphasis is placed on international non-governmental organizations (NGOs), which usually hail from the West, as beacons of (false) hope for the helpless and oppressed.

İlkkaracan's latest collection provides evidence of consistent local efforts found throughout the Middle East to address human and civil rights inadequacies. The collection also stands as evidence that scholars are engaging with the Middle Eastern nations' constructs of themselves in an effort to bring about social change through dialogue and greater public and political visibility. As such, Deconstructing Sexuality in the Middle East is an important publication that has earned a place for itself on the shelves of local and university libraries alike, given its unique contribution to a small but growing field of gender and sexuality studies of the Muslim world. Scholars researching or teaching in this area will consider the articles contained in this collection an invaluable resource.

İlkkaracan's collection is unique because, unlike previous decades of feminist activism in both the East and West, it addresses the rights of sexual and gender minorities as well as women's rights more broadly. In the past, particularly in relation to this region, feminist critiques of patriarchal oppressions were limited by a presumption of heteronormativity, and the rights of gay and lesbian, as well as of transgender and intersex persons, were seen by many as undesirable additions to a movement that might otherwise have a chance at success. İlkkaracan signals a new and more inclusive approach to sexual and gender minority rights in the region from the onset. Her Introduction opens with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's edict that there are no homosexuals in Iran, which she sees as evidence of the contestations over gender and sexuality that are permeating the Muslim world. Ahmadinejad's assertion has great political import in its attempt to overlook the

extensive evidence of sexual relations between people of the same sex, and of transgender cultures, throughout these countries, even if the way these practices and cultures are labeled and understood varies from place to place, and may well differ from Western lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) identities and cultures.

(1)

The edited collection bravely confronts the dilemma of how to re-invigorate a human rights discourse within the Muslim world when the Western NGOs approach these shortcomings as emerging as a consequence of Islam. The collection appears to offer a resolution to this impasse, suggesting that an engagement with human rights issues in the Muslim world will need to consider the internal logic of Islamic law or traditions. The scholarship that follows İlkkaracan's Introduction addresses local perceptions of gender and sexuality, providing much needed insight into the Middle Eastern nations' diverse and varied constructions of gender and sexuality.

In Chapter 2 of the collection, Sherifa Zuhur offers an extensive and intensive survey of criminal laws in the Middle East relating to women and sexuality, covering legal dealings with adultery under shari'a, honor crimes, rape, incest and sexual abuse of children, sexual harassment, homosexuality, transsexual/transvestism, illegitimate children, abortion, reproductive technologies, and sex work/trafficking in women.

In Chapter 3, İlkkaracan discusses the impact that the European Union's human rights policy has had on shaping the Turkish penal code, preventing the introduction...