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Journal of Lesbian Studies

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Naming to Empower: Lesbianism in the

Arab Islamicate World Today
a
Sahar Amer
a
Department of Asian Studies , University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill , Chapel Hill , North Carolina , USA
Published online: 14 Sep 2012.

To cite this article: Sahar Amer (2012) Naming to Empower: Lesbianism in the Arab Islamicate World
Today, Journal of Lesbian Studies, 16:4, 381-397, DOI: 10.1080/10894160.2012.681258

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 Journal of Lesbian Studies, 16:381–397, 2012
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 1089-4160 print / 1540-3548 online
DOI: 10.1080/10894160.2012.681258

Naming to Empower: Lesbianism in the Arab

Islamicate World Today

SAHAR AMER
Department of Asian Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill,
North Carolina, USA
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After a brief review of the proliferation of newly coined Arabic

words to speak about LGBTQIA (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgen-
der, queer, intersex, and ally) identities, this article interrogates
the facile imitation of Western labels and questions their useful-
ness in the context of Arab societies and cultures. It demonstrates
that the assumptions that underlie the creation of new wordlists
overlook and ultimately erase the very rich tradition on alternative
sexual practices that has been prominent in the Islamicate world
at least since the ninth century. Salvaging this tradition and its
accompanying terminology on homosexuality challenges the claim
that homosexuality is a Western importation, and renders the re-
course to English categories superfluous. Moreover, uncovering the
forgotten Arabic cultural material on alternative sexualities offers
contemporary Arab gays and lesbians a rich and empowering in-
digenous heritage, as well as home-grown modes of resistance that
are poised to challenge homophobic attitudes and policies in the
Arab world, and the hegemony of Western sexual and cultural
imperialism.

KEYWORDS Arab lesbians, cultural imperialism, empowerment,

fourth generation feminism, hybridity

In July 2009 the Arabic translation of Gay Travels in the Muslim World, a col-
lection of stories penned by gay Muslim and non-Muslim authors, edited by
U.S.-based photojournalist Michael Luongo and published by the Lebanon-
based publisher, Arab Diffusion, was met with uproar in the Arabic-speaking

Address correspondence to Sahar Amer, Department of Asian Studies, University of North

Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB # 3267, 113 New West, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3267. E-mail:
samer@email.unc.edu

381
 382 S. Amer

gay community. The key issue hotly debated pertained to the decision to
render the word “gay” in the title by the Arabic “shādh,” a term that means
abnormal, odd, strange, perverted, or deviant; hence making the Arabic title
read as “Perverted Travels in the Muslim World.” With homosexuality being
a taboo topic throughout the contemporary Middle East, the use of the pejo-
rative word “shādh” was decried for reinforcing prevailing prejudice among
Arabs and Muslims about homosexuality. How to shatter prejudice and bring
out into the open lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and
ally (LGBTQIA) issues in Arabic when, as numerous gay-rights groups in
the Middle East have pointed out, there is not even a commonly understood
nonpejorative word to describe it in the Middle East?
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Similarly, the publication in May 2009 in Lebanon of Bareed Mista3Jil:

True Stories—the first collection of lesbian Arab/Lebanese stories published
by the advocacy organization Meem—also raises from the outset the question
of the translation of words pertaining to lesbianism. In their introduction,
the anonymous editors of the collection point out that all of the stories were
written in English because the various authors of Bareed Mista3Jil (also all
anonymous) could not find words to articulate their sexuality in Arabic. They
state: “The words didn’t exist to express exactly what we wanted them to,”
and that they “struggled with euphemisms and scientific words to describe
sexuality terms versus crude slang that differs in different regions of Lebanon”
(Bareed Mista3Jil, 2009, p. 6).1 Bareed Mista3Jil is thus written and published
in English and is still awaiting an Arabic translation. Clearly, and as the editors
of this collection point out, “Arabic as a language has not adapted itself to
create new words or a more comfortable use of existing words to describe
things related to sexual expression” (p. 6).
The concern over terminology and the translation of terms related to
lesbianism and homosexuality that the editors of Bareed Mista3Jil or the
controversy over the title of Gay Travels in the Muslim World raises, gives
us a glimpse of the struggle that Arab gays and lesbians continue to meet in
asserting their identity in the face of persecution and prosecution. It also ex-
plains why, in a society and political system that wages violence against the
Arab LGBTQIA community by excluding them from discourse, by treating
them as the “unviable (un)subjects” who belong to the “domain of unthink-
ability and unnamability,”2 an increasing number of Arab gay and lesbian
groups and websites have rallied for resistance. They have endeavored to
coin a new Arab LGBTQIA glossary that offers a less pejorative and more
empowering vocabulary to speak about a topic which remains unspeak-
able in the Middle East or is addressed only in negative terms. More often
than not, the new terminology that Arab gay rights groups urge everyone to
adopt is modeled on the Western LGBTQIA vocabulary that functions as the
hegemonic cultural idiom throughout the Middle East and that is extolled
for offering a less judgmental, more inclusive, and accepting vocabulary for
same-sex orientations. But is this new lexicon truly more liberating both to
 Naming to Empower 383

the culturally specific and to the global context of contemporary gay and
lesbian Arabs and Muslims? In other words, should Western labels for ho-
mosexuality and lesbianism be simply used and appropriated by the Arab
and Muslim gay and lesbian community, or should the latter not endeavor to
find its own meaningful voice—which in this early twenty-first century can
only be both local and global—that is truly hybrid?

ARTICULATIONS OF QUEER SEXUALITIES IN ARABIC

A quick review of prevailing terms referring to lesbianism and homosexuality

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reveals a dearth of vocabulary in Arabic denoting the sexual identity or gen-

der orientation of gays, lesbians, and transgendered Arabs. Equally impor-
tant, the terminology that continues to circulate in Arabic to this day remains
negative, derogatory, and judgmental. While homosexuals and lesbians use
“an underground lingo” to invoke their sexuality, their expressions are little
known among heterosexuals, and because of the vital need to protect their
anonymity, this lingo remains for the most part concealed, unexplored, and
unindexed until today (Bareed Mista3Jil, 2009, p. 6). This means that, often,
Arab gays and lesbians who are struggling to come out in the Arab world
not only feel extremely socially lonely and isolated, but they also do not
even have the most basic linguistic tools to name what they are feeling or
thinking. As a matter of fact, several lesbians in Bareed Mista3Jil report that,
initially, their biggest impediment to understanding their sexual attraction to
other women was the fact that they did not even know how to label what
they felt. One of them writes: “Growing up, I don’t remember ever using the
word ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian.’ In fact, I don’t remember using any term to describe
homosexuality. I didn’t even know that ‘louti’[sic] meant ‘faggot’; I assumed
it was just another curse word” (Bareed Mista3Jil, 2009, p. 161). Many do not
learn the term “lesbian” until their late teens or twenties, through the media
(Western), or when speaking to a psychologist.
One of the challenges of this present study has been precisely to learn
and compile a glossary of commonly used Arabic words for lesbianism and
homosexuality. My research thus far has revealed that the Arabic words
customarily used for a male homosexual continue to be:

• Shādh: pervert
• Lūt. ı̄: from the story of Lot in the Quran
• Khawal: originally, a male transvestite dancer who was considered to be a
respectable substitute for female dancers in the nineteenth century; today,
the term is used to refer to an effeminate man
• Mukhannath: An effeminate man
• Walad biskilitta (Egyptian Arabic): literally, a bicycle boy, an image of
sexual behavior
 384 S. Amer

• H. assāss (Moroccan Arabic): literally, a person who feels deeply, an effem-

inate man
• t. abaj (Lebanese Arabic): someone who bends over (to be fucked)
• Biyinik (Lebanese Arabic): literally, a person who gets fucked, a passive
homosexual
• Biyshaghil t. ı̄z. ū (Lebanese Arabic): literally, someone who makes use of his
ass

As for lesbians, the most commonly used Arabic words are the female version
of some of the male terms just cited, such as:
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• Shādha: Feminine form of shādh

• Lūt. iyya: Feminine form of lūt. ī

But also:

• Sūh. aqiyya (from the verb sah. q, to grind, a metaphor for lesbian sexual
behavior): A woman who has sex by grinding
• Qa`r`ala qa`r (Egyptian Arabic): Literally ass over ass
• Dhakar: A male
• Sharmūt. a: A whore
• Mistarjil: A person who behaves like a man
• Ikht el rijel (Lebanese Arabic): Literally, sister of men; this term refers to
butch women; it is used as a compliment
• Hasan sabī (Lebanese Arabic): Tomboy3

All of these terms are slang and vulgar, and they are regularly used in a
disparaging manner by much of Arab society. In fact, the Arabic terms used to
refer to lesbians do not just describe a nonnormative, unacceptable sexuality,
but they are also associated with other misconceptions that Arab society
often has about lesbians, namely, women who are addicted to drugs and
alcohol and who are promiscuous (hence the use of the term sharmūt. a, or
prostitute).4 Not surprisingly, the labels for “lesbian” and their fixed negative
meanings are the first hurdle that Arab lesbians must confront when they
attempt to proclaim and assert their gender orientation and sexual identity.
The first story in Bareed Mista3Jil addresses this issue squarely:

Lesbian is such an ugly word to me. It makes me cringe—especially the

French version that is more often used in Lebanon “lesbienne” (with an
elongated “ieeeen”). Ugh. Even worse was the word “dyke.” But it’s still
all good compared to “sou7aqiyyeh.” That one really makes me want
to vomit. I don’t know if it’s the word itself, or the meaning associated
with it, that horrible disgusting image of lesbians in people’s minds was
entrenched in my mind too for so long [. . .]. So, I couldn’t call myself a
 Naming to Empower 385

lesbian. I refused to [. . .]. I was always angry when gay women had to
be referred to as lesbians. (Bareed Mista3Jill, 2009, p. 34)5

Words have powerful meanings associated with them and rather than de-
scribing reality, they create it, shape it, and give it meaning. As the editors of
Bareed Mista3Jil point out, one of the first steps facing the Arab LGBTQIA
community has to be “about re-thinking these terms in Arabic, . . . and de-
constructing the images associated with them. [Gays and lesbians] need to
present the public with alternative words and images” (Bareed Mista3Jill,
2009, p. 36). For Arab gays and lesbians, claiming and asserting their sexual
identity is a matter first and foremost of reclaiming their language: “Arabic is
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our language too, and languages are alive. People give meanings to words,
and people can change the meaning of words, or invent new words alto-
gether, or simply refuse using offensive words. We need to challenge the
dictionary in our heads” (p. 36).
Not surprisingly, therefore, Arab LGBTQIA organizations, since their in-
ception, have endeavored to replace commonly used negative Arabic terms
with positive ones, to coin a new vocabulary to express homosexuality.6 In
the tenth issue of the online magazine Bintelnas (July 2003), Bassam Bassam,
who translated articles for the magazine from English and French into Arabic,
adds a “Translator’s Note” in which he offers what he calls “positive expres-
sions” in Arabic for terms such as queer, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender,
and intersex among others. His reasons for developing such a glossary echo
those of the editors of Bareed Mista3Jil. Bassam urges the reader to adopt
the phrase “junūsiyya mithliyya” to name homosexuality.7
Mithliyya, here, means “same,” presumably referring to the first part of
the word “homosexuality” (that is, homo); so “junūsiyya mithliyya” literally
means “the same sexuality,” “sexual sameness,” or “the same gender.”8 Based
on this alleged positive term, a gay man is dubbed a “mithlı̄” (a masculine
“same”); a lesbian is a “mithliyya” (a feminine “same”); “queer” becomes
“ahrar al-jins” (literally, “free of gender”); LGBTQIA becomes M.M.M.M.
(mithliyya, mithlı̄, mozdawij, moghayyir). Clearly, the vocabulary adopted,
proclaimed, and heralded as positive and liberating is intended to empower
gays and lesbians by offering them a positive self-reflection, a less degrading
vocabulary to speak about their orientation and identities, and (because the
Arabic words are modeled on English terms) an international community to
which they can belong.
And yet, the lobbying for the phrase junūsiyya mithliyya to denote
homosexuality has yet to gain currency among contemporary Arab gays (and
straights),9 and is insufficient to challenge the invisibility of Arab gays and
lesbians. It is well to remember that the expression junūsiyya mithliyya had
been coined from Arabic translations of Freud that were made in the 1950s.10
And when Freud used the word Homosexualität over a hundred years ago,
he was constructing it as a mental illness, a pathology of deviancy requiring
 386 S. Amer

long-term psychoanalysis, aversion therapy, and at times even electroshock

in order to be “cured”—a situation that the U.S. gay rights movement has
combated at least since 1924, and with a political edge during the 1969
Stonewall riots.11 In the West, the category of “homosexuality” (from the
German Homosexualität) was viewed as a clinical diagnosis of mental illness
at least until 1973 when, after decades of intense lobbying by Western gay
advocates, it was removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of
Mental Disorders (DSM). Even so, today the term “homosexuality” is still
often invoked in U.S. public discourse, as a point of reference for much
homophobic rhetoric. I thus question the liberating potential of coining an
Arabic phrase based on the very term that has been used in the West to
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designate a mental illness and that continues to be appropriated by antigay

groups to embolden in-group/out-group divisiveness.
The newly introduced Arabic words junūsiyya mithliyya, mithlı̄, or
mithliyya to address the taboo topics of homosexuality, gays, and lesbians,
respectively, are not the only ones to have currency in the Arab world to-
day. In a deliberate effort to avoid using Arabic terms such as shādh, lūt. ī,
or Sūh. aqiyya, considered to be derogatory and oppressive, some Arabs are
adopting the nontranslated English and French words for gays and lesbians
even as they converse in Arabic. Hence, it is not uncommon to hear an Ara-
bic conversation peppered with “homosexuel,” “lesbienne,” “homosexual,”
“queer,” “gay,” “lesbian,” or “dyke.” The recourse to foreign words when
speaking Arabic is not a new phenomenon. It represents one of the legacies
of colonialism and remains a distinctive hallmark of Western-educated Arabs,
a mark of privilege, urban sophistication, and social class. This means that
the use of Western terminology to speak about homosexuality leads to the
exclusion of poor and working-class Arab gays and lesbians who may feel
doubly alienated by foreign cultural semantics and categories. What begins
as an effort to include, to empower, and to challenge traditional views of ho-
mosexuality ends up silencing other voices which could potentially deepen
and enrich our consciousness about the varied lived experiences of gays and
lesbians in the Arab world.
The recourse to Western terminology, like the literal translation of West-
ern concepts related to homosexuality into Arabic, ends up asserting a pri-
marily monolithic Western sexual identity— itself a problematic construct
and under much controversy in academic and activist circles12—and pro-
moting it as universally valid for all sexual minorities. The question that I am
raising here is not whether naming should take place (I strongly believe that
it must), or even whether Western discourses on sexuality are relevant to the
Arab world (I firmly believe that they are relevant). Rather, what I interrogate
is the almost exclusive reliance by Arab activists on Western terminology and
Western paradigms of same-sex sexuality. What I object to are the kinds of
names that are selected by Arab gay activists to speak about homosexuality,
and how these names fail to empower and delay much-needed social change
 Naming to Empower 387

in Arab societies today. By adopting foreign terms and gender categories that
mimic Western sexual politics and by dressing sexual preference in foreign
linguistic garb, Arab gay activists unwittingly end up supporting a culture
of shame that ultimately undermines Arab identity and leads to the further
isolation of Arab gays and lesbians from their own sociohistorical and literary
traditions.13

LESBIANISM AND THE MEDIEVAL ARABIC LITERARY HERITAGE

The assumptions that underlie the creation of new linguistic registers to

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replace some of the negatively charged Arabic vocabulary on lesbianism

and homosexuality overlook and ultimately erase the very rich tradition
on alternative sexual practices that have been prominent in the Islamicate
world at least since the ninth century. My research into comparative me-
dieval French and Arabic nonnormative sexualities has indeed revealed that
gender-bending has always been part both of the Arabic language and of
Islamicate societies (Amer, 2008). It has highlighted the unsuspected survival
of a wide range of medieval Arabic treatises on eroticism that depicted al-
ternative sexualities openly, without shame, and considered them as one of
the multiple facets of human sexuality in general. This tradition of Arabic
homoeroticism is particularly noteworthy because it is far more tolerant than
is commonly imagined given the current political reappropriation of Islam by
fundamentalist regimes. Because they do not shy away from painting men
and women who are involved in same-sex relationships in explicit terms,
and at times with unexpected agency over their sexual lives, the medieval
Arabic works on eroticism have the potential to become powerful models
of resistance and culturally significant sources of Arab gay pride for con-
temporary Arab and Muslim gays and lesbians. It is my contention that it is
precisely this largely unexamined and understudied body of medieval Arabic
literary and belle-lettrist works on eroticism that can serve the interests of
gay rights groups in the contemporary Arab world and allow them to ex-
plore non-Western ways of being gay, while asserting their sexual identity
in culturally meaningful terms.
My research into medieval Arabic erotology and homoerotic literature
has unveiled an extensive lexicon of terms related to sexual expression that
could be reclaimed by Arab gay and lesbian activists and the Arab LGBTQIA
community in general. Because lesbianism is an even greater taboo than male
same-sex relations in the Arab world, I will focus here on terms denoting
lesbianism that could be considered by Arab lesbians and for which a more
comfortable use could be developed. All the Arabic terms discussed below
have been culled from medieval adab literary sources; they all thus have
an Arab or Islamicate lineage and offer a culturally pertinent reservoir from
which the specificity of contemporary Arab homosexuality can be articulated.
 388 S. Amer

The terms most frequently used to denote a lesbian in medieval Arabic

erotic treatises are all variations of the word sūh. āqiyya which one Lebanese
lesbian from Bareed Mista3Jil, as discussed above, considered to be the most
offensive of all. They are: sāh. iqa, sah. h. āqa, and musāh. iqa. Even though these
expressions are considered disparaging in contemporary Arab societies, I will
suggest that such shame words can also be reclaimed as markers of positive
identity for Arab lesbians. Such a strategy would parallel that adopted by
Western LGBTQIA advocates as early as the 1920s and especially in the 1980s
and 1990s when Queer Nation, for instance, borrowed tactics and insights
from the black power and feminist movements to reclaim shame words
(queer, faggot, dyke) for self-empowerment. And, in contrast to Western
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queers, Arab lesbians would have a long indigenous literary and cultural
tradition from which to draw in order to validate their experiences, challenge
existing social attitudes, and ultimately effect much-needed political and
institutional change.
The power of reclaiming the historical Arab past to assert the legitimacy
of Arab gay and lesbian identities in the contemporary Arab world should
not be underestimated. For, after all, “names can be more than tags; they
can convey powerful imagery. So naming—proposing, imposing and accept-
ing names—can be a political exercise” (Martin, 1991, p. 83). To call Arab
lesbians musāh. iqāt is culturally meaningful: it places Arab lesbians within
their own cultural context, reconnects them to their heritage and solidly an-
chors the present to the past. This past ought not to be associated simply
with violence and persecution, but ought also to evoke a sense of lesbian
pride among contemporary Arab lesbians. Let us recall that in medieval Ara-
bic literary writings as in adab literature, sāh. iqāt (lesbians) were associated
with love and devotion, and at times were known to form exclusive and
reciprocal relations. As a matter of fact, the origin of lesbianism, according
to popular anecdotes in the Arabic literary tradition, is regularly traced back
forty years before the emergence of male homosexuality to an intercultural,
interfaith love affair between an Arab woman and a Christian woman in pre-
Islamic Iraq. The earliest extant erotic treatise in Arabic, Jawami`al-Ladhdha
(Encyclopedia of Pleasure) from the late tenth century tells us the story of
the first lesbian couple, the enduring love between Hind bint al-Nu`mān,
the Christian daughter of the last Lakhmid (Byzantine) king of Hira in the
seventh century, and Hind bint al Khuss al-Iyādiyya from Yamāmā known
as al-Zarqā’ and reportedly the first lesbian in Arab history (al-Kātib, 1997,
p. 88).14 In the Encyclopedia of Pleasure, this lesbian love story is praised
and presented as evidence of the greater loyalty and devotion that women
have for their female partners compared to heterosexual men’s attachment
to women.15
If the relationship between Hind and al-Zarqā’ is the one most often
cited in the Arabic erotic tradition on lesbianism, it is not the only lesbian
relation in Arabic literary history. In fact, in al-Fihrist (The Catalog), al-Nadı̄m
 Naming to Empower 389

(d. ca. 995) listed the names of twelve lesbian couples who were known in
the tenth century but about whom nothing else has been preserved. Because
al-Nadı̄m lists every Arabic book of which he was aware, we know from his
inventory about the existence of twelve works dating before the end of the
tenth century that were devoted to named lesbian couples. All the titles
given are named after characters, presumably the lesbian couples whose
story each book tells. These works are: the Book of Rı̄h. āna and Qoronfil
(literally, the Book of Basil and Clove); the Book of Ruqayya and Khadı̄ja;
the Book of Mo’ı̄s and Zakiyya; the Book of Sakı̄na and al-Rabāb (of Calm
and the Mistress of the Household); the Book of al-Ghat. rı̄fa and al-Dhulafā’;
the Book of Hind and bint al-Nu `mān (of Hind/India and the Daughter of
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al-Nu`mān, undoubtedly the couple described above); the Book of `Abda

al-`Aqila and `Abda al-Ghaddāra (of the Wise Slave Girl and the Treacherous
Slave Girl); the Book of Lu’lu’a and Shātira; the Book of Najda and Zu` ūm;16
the Book of Salma and Su` ād; the Book of S.awāb and Surūr (of Justice and
Happiness); the Book of al-Dahmā’ and Ni`ma (of the Dark One and the Gift
from God) (al-Nadı̄m, 1971, p. 366).
According to medieval Arab physician al-Samaw` ūlī ibn Yahyā (d. 1180),
a great number of Arab lesbians were writers, poets, scholars, even Quranic
reciters (n.d., p. 87).17 They thus belonged to the best educated, most so-
phisticated, and most respected spheres of their societies. Any one of these
lesbian characters could become a role model for contemporary Arab les-
bians and any of their names could be adopted and adapted to name female
homosexuality in the Arab world, in the same way as the name of the poet
Sappho was used to coin “sapphism” or the name of the Greek island of
“Lesbos” led to the creation of the word “lesbian.” Instead of shunning the
terms sah. q and sāh. iqa, and rather than adopting the words “dyke,” “lesbian,”
“lesbienne,” or even the newly coined Arabic mithliyya, Arab lesbians stand
to gain a great deal from reclaiming and proclaiming local constructs from
their own literary history as culturally meaningful voices to challenge current
negative social attitudes and to assert proudly their identity as Arab lesbians.
It should be pointed out that the terms sah. q and sāh. iqāt or an adapta-
tion of the name of one of the twelve lesbian couples, are not the only op-
tions available to contemporary Arab lesbians. Medieval erotic treatises reg-
ularly also use the words zarīfāt—witty, elegant courtly ladies-lovers—and
h. abā’ib—beloveds, to refer to lesbians.18 In fact, these are precisely the two
terms selected by al-Nadīm to refer to known lesbians during his time, indi-
cating that, by the end of the tenth century, there was already a conscious
effort to expand the lexicon referring to female homosexuals (1971, p. 366).
These zarīfāt and h. abā’ib include the ghulāmiyyāt from ninth-century Bagh-
dad (the ghulāmiyyāt is the name given to slave girls in the Abbasid court
of al-Ma’mūn, one of Harūn Al-Rachīd’s sons, who cross-dressed as boys—at
times even with painted mustaches); some of the cross-dressed characters
from Alf Layla wa Layla or the siyar al-Sha`biyya (popular epics);19 Princess
 390 S. Amer

Wallāda (d. 1087 or 1091), daughter of Muhammad III (r. 1024–25), also
known as al-Mustakfi, the caliph of Cordoba (the capital of Islamic al-Andalus
in modern Spain), who was known to have had one male and one female
lover (Abdūs and Mohja) in addition to her famed love story with Andalu-
sian poet Ibn Zaydūn;20 and the most famous ninth-century qāynas (slave
singers) mentioned in Abu al-Faraj al-Isbahānī’s Kitāb al-Aghānī,21 namely,
Bathūl,22 `Inān (d. 841), Fadl (d. 875), and `Arib (d. 890).
For contemporary Arab lesbians, asserting themselves as the twenty-
first-century zarīfāt, h. abā’ib, or even ghulāmiyyāt would unquestionably
be a politically powerful action. Such a gesture was courageously made by
one Arab organization that has adopted a variation on the term h. abā’ib
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as its group name, namely, the group Ah. bāb, a suborganization of the Gay
and Lesbian Arab Society (GLAS), which currently has four different chapters
worldwide (New York City, Los Angeles, Lebanon, and Egypt).23 Because the
words zarīfāt, h. abā’ib, or ghulāmiyyāt have no negative connotations, in
fact, no sexual connotation in Arabic today, they may be usefully reclaimed
to validate lesbian experiences and empower Arab lesbians, all the while an-
choring Arab female homosexuality within its own cultural context. Salvaging
the medieval Islamicate erotic tradition and its accompanying terminology
on homosexuality and promoting it as a rallying banner for contemporary
Arab gays and lesbians challenge the claim that homosexuality is a Western
importation, and renders the automatic recourse to monolithic English and
Western categories superfluous. Moreover, uncovering the forgotten Arabic
literary and cultural material on alternative sexualities offers contemporary
Arab gays and lesbians a rich and empowering culturally specific and mean-
ingful heritage, as well as homegrown modes of resistance that are poised
to challenge homophobic attitudes and policies in the Arab world, and the
hegemony of Western sexual and cultural imperialism.

TOWARD A HYBRID AND INTERCULTURAL

ARABIC QUEER THEORY

I am not naively advocating that a facile or simplistic adoption of medieval

Arabic terminology related to homosexual expression can by itself redress
all, or even most of the issues of discrimination and human rights abuses that
contemporary Arab LGBTQIA individuals face. A call for a return to medieval
literary history and the adoption of medieval sexual paradigms, no matter
how tolerant they may have been at times, would be tantamount to nothing
less than a fundamentalist vision, a non-Western nativist position. And my
intent is certainly not to paint a nostalgic picture of a monolithic, blissful,
tolerant Arab past, before Western imperialism, when Arab gays and lesbians
lived openly, side by side with straight individuals in absolute harmony.24
 Naming to Empower 391

Such a view would not only be inaccurate, but also of limited value and
significance to the global context in which the contemporary Arab LGBTQIA
community lives.
Indeed, we cannot ignore the fact that, today, Arab gays and lesbians
exist in an international global community with increased exposure to West-
ern popular culture from which many first learn about their sexual identity
(via Western media and the Internet). We also cannot dismiss the fact that
the very notion of gay rights was born in the West and only later did its
momentum spread to the developing non-Western world. Last but not least,
we must remember that the elaboration of queer theory—itself a Western
paradigm—despite its limitations, has led to productive discussions that have
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been particularly beneficial to our nuanced understanding of alternative, non-

conforming sexualities all over the world. The Arab LGBTQIA community
has certainly benefited from all of these (Western) developments and it is in
great part owing to them that it has been able to organize and assert itself,
at the grassroots level, in many Arab countries.
In this early twenty-first century, the sexual and social identity of the
Arab LGBTQIA community is a hyphenated one. It is anchored both in
local traditions and interdependent with global realities. Whether living in
the diaspora or not, Arab gays and lesbians are part of a global community
where the West has been at the forefront of theoretical debates over queer
identity and at the vanguard of human rights activism. Arab gays and lesbians
are also heir to a rich legacy of writings on homoeroticism with which they
are often unfamiliar because it has been censored and occulted at least
since nineteenth-century debates over modernity.25 These writings, and the
lexicon of sexual desire that they include, possess significant social and
political implications for gay rights activism worldwide. Because it portrays
non-Western ways of being gay, the Islamicate tradition on homoeroticism
promises to be especially useful to Arab gays’ struggle for acceptance in that it
provides Arab society, and the Arab LGBTQIA community and their families,
with a culturally meaningful framework for understanding nonnormative
sexual and gender identity.
Recognizing and adopting only one side of their hyphenated identity
(be it the Arab or the Western part) is damaging because it promotes a
clash-of-civilizations position: cultural authenticity vs. Western imperialism.
By embracing their hybridity and interculturality, the Arab LGBTQIA com-
munity stands to participate fully, as actors (and no longer as reactors) in
the elaboration of a new global LGBTQIA discourse that would validate
their experiences as Arabs and as citizens of an interconnected community.
Only then will Arab gay and lesbian organizations be in a position to effec-
tively support their members and produce much-needed social and political
change.
Interestingly, Arab lesbians have been active advocates in the endorse-
ment of the essentially hybrid nature of their identity. Indeed, let us recall
 392 S. Amer

that the Web producers of the online magazine Bintelnas discussed earlier
have adopted the linguistically and culturally hybrid name of Mujadarra
Grrls to describe their intercultural identity. This is how they explain their
choice: “We chose the name Mujadarra Grrls because it reflects our heritages.
‘Mujadarra’ represents the traditions that nourish us and connects us to where
we came from. ‘Grrls’ represents the influence of late twentieth-century ur-
ban U.S. culture on our lives.”26 The choice of the Arabic mujadarra and the
modified English spelling of the word girls highlight the hybrid dimension of
Arab gays, lesbians, bisexual, and transgender individuals. The word “grrls”
affiliates these Arab lesbians with the fourth generation of feminists who are
seeking to update and reinvent Western feminism, paying particular attention
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to the diversity of women and the range of their experiences and orienta-
tions. Grrls represent the younger generation of women who are striving to
remind us of the limitations of middle-class, white, and heterosexual femi-
nism that was characteristic of earlier generations.27 In the early twenty-first
century, the new wave of feminists includes not only an array of ethnic and
racial backgrounds (including, in this case, Arabs and Arab-Americans), but
also women who exhibit a range of sexual preferences. The specific choice
of mujadarra (in Mujadarra Grrls) is also important not only because food
is a key aspect of Arab culture, but especially because mujadarra (a pop-
ular Arabic dish made of rice, lentils, and fried onions) is a dish composed
of various elements. It thus stands as a felicitous metaphor for the mixed
ethnic origins of the individuals the website is intended to serve. The di-
versity of Arabs is thus highlighted, just as is their common heritage, and
their association with the evolving global feminist movement. Just as the
various ingredients in the mujadarra combine together into a harmonious
assemblage, Arab gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals become
whole and harmonious when they embrace their hybridity.
The affirmation of the essentially hybrid nature of Arab gay and lesbian
identity is again openly voiced in one of the stories from Bareed Mista3Jil
where the narrator calls for a rejection of a monolithic definition of homo-
sexuality as imposed by Arab society’s heteronormativity. She decries the
fact that Arab society has hijacked flexible sexual terms and imposed upon
them absolute and single meanings; she calls for the adoption of a hybrid
linguistic identity that encompasses both Western theoretical paradigms and
Arabic cultural registers:
Queer theory calls for a bigger fluidity of sexual identities. It refuses to
push people into the labels of gay/straight [. . .]. I love queer [. . .]. In
Arabic, it translates into “ghareeb al atwar” (which also means “strange”
or “peculiar”) and also into “shazz” [sic] (deviant). I love the word “shazz!”
[. . .]. So yes, ana shazzeh. (Bareed Mista3Jill, 2009, p. 115)

The Lebanese lesbian’s understanding of the implications that queer the-

ory can have for Arab homosexuals and her resulting enthusiastic ratification
of the term shādh are a powerful statement of the advantages of hybridity
 Naming to Empower 393

and an insightful understanding of the unquestionably intercultural nature of

the Arab LGBTQIA identity. The appeal to (Western) queer theory and the
reappropriation of the Arabic term shādh have allowed this Lebanese woman
to affirm her sexual orientation and her lesbianism proudly and openly by
reclaiming the Arabic language. One must add that, while queer theory (a
Western paradigm) is indeed what has permitted this Arab lesbian to proudly
assert her sexual identity, it has not done so by imposing itself on Arab cul-
tures and by erasing its specificities. Rather, the adoption of queer theory as
a model for inclusive social justice has afforded the Arab lesbian from Bareed
Mista3Jil the opportunity to embrace her Arab lineage and in so doing to
reclaim the Arabic language to address her nonconforming sexuality.
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The interweaving of queer theory with the Islamicate tradition on erotol-

ogy holds tremendous potential for gay rights activism throughout the Arab
world and the Middle East. Thanks to it, Arab gays and lesbians no longer
need to feel or believe that the only way to articulate their sexual and gen-
der identity is solely through Western terms. Likewise, Arab society can no
longer claim that homosexuality is a Western importation that must be com-
bated, defeated, and eradicated just like colonialism had to be. Instead, Arab
gays and lesbians, like Arab society at large, can begin to unlearn patterns of
internalized homophobia which is one of the most enduring and damaging
legacies of Western imperialism. By embracing aspects of the Arab literary
past and by reclaiming a culturally meaningful terminology that is sensitive
to their own social and cultural background, they can enter into productive
dialogue with the Western LGBTQIA community, and participate on equal
footing in international debates about gay and human rights. The search
for a suitable Arabic terminology—rooted in Arabic and Islamicate classical
sources and benefiting from developments in (Western) queer theory—is a
valuable contribution to the construction of an affirmative Arab LGBTQIA
identity, and to the global discourse about queer identity. It is thus a search
with not only local implications, but crucial global ones as well. The benefits
of this wider global, hybrid, and intercultural conversation between Mid-
dle Eastern and Western gays and lesbians promise to revolutionize queer
theory, challenge cultural binarisms, and promote new culturally sensitive
paradigms of sexual expression.

NOTES

1. The title of this collection translates to “Express Mail” or “Mail in a Hurry.” The editors chose
this title to reflect “both the urgency of getting these stories across and also the private nature of the
stories-like letters written, sealed, and sent out to the world” (Bareed Mista3Jil, 2009, p. 10).
2. Judith Butler describes thus the operation of oppressive regimes (1993, p. 312).
3. This terminology is culled from Bareed Mista3Jil, from contemporary Arabic literary works,
and from personal conversations. I have purposefully left out a few terms to protect the privacy of gays
and lesbians living in the Arab world today. The reader may also usefully consult the glossary of terms
circulated by the group Aswat in 2008, entitled Mustala7at Assasiya Fi al-Hawiya al-Jinsiya (al-hawiya
 394 S. Amer

al-jinsiya [sexual identity] is another term worthy of consideration). See http://www.aswatgroup.org/

content/publications.
4. This association is mentioned on several occasions by various lesbians interviewed in Bareed
Mista3Jil (2009); see esp. pp. 147 and 157.
5. I have kept the transliterations found in the original.
6. The development of a new Arabic lexicon for homosexuality has begun with Arabs in the
diaspora, especially those living in the West because of their greater freedom to organize and the support
they are able to receive from other human rights organizations. But their example has been followed by
other LGBTQIA associations within the Arab world.
7. Both Bassam Bassam’s glossary and his “Translator’s Note” are available on the Bintelnas
website, http://www.bintelnas.org/10muqadeema/transl-eng.html. I am reproducing here Bassam’s own
transliteration of Arabic terms.
8. Bassam does not explain the linguistic formation of junūsiyya mithliyya. It is still unclear to
me whether the word junūsiyya is Bassam’s transliteration of jinsiyya (one finds regularly the expression
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jinsiyya mithliyya just as al-mithliyya al-jinsiyya), or whether it is a conscious adoption of the term
al-junūsiyya, which was coined by Omar Nahas (founder of the Yousuf Foundation). Omar Nahas (1997)
had proposed the term junūsiyya (in contrast to jinsiyya) to speak positively about homosexuality in the
Arab world.
9. The lack of widespread appeal is evident in the fact that the editors and narrators of Bareed
Mista3Jil, writing some seventeen years after the list proposed by Bassam, are still struggling with
terminology. One could also point out that while Alaa Al-Aswany opts for the use of the term shādh in
the Yacoubian Building (2004) because it is the one best known in Egyptian and Arab society, Elham
Mansour does not consistently use the words junūsiyya mithliyya in her novel Ana Hiya Anti (2008),
even though her novel has been heralded as the most explicit and tolerant depiction of lesbianism in
contemporary Arabic literature.
10. The expression al-jinsiyya al-mithliyya (like al-mithliyya al-jinsiyya) was used by Sayyid Qutb
to speak about Da Vinci’s alleged homosexuality as discussed by Freud. Qutb did not use the term shādh,
which would have been more common in his time. See Joseph Massad’s discussion of the use of Arabic
terms for homosexuality (2007, p. 126). For an example of the unusual use of the term mithliyya without
reference to homosexuality, see Jurj al-Tarābīshī, cited in Massad (2007, p. 37).
11. A timetable of the U.S. Gay Rights’ Movement is available online at http://www.infoplease.com/
ipa/A0761909.html. It is worth recalling that, when homosexuality began to be considered as a mental
illness in the nineteenth century, it was thought at the time to be an improvement over the then prevalent
biblical view of homosexuality as an unnatural sexuality, a sin against nature and against the will of
God.
12. The notion of a fixed gender or sexual identity has been challenged by Judith Butler who has
usefully pointed out that “identity categories tend to be instruments of regulatory regimes” and are “sites
of trouble” (1993, p. 308).
13. While I believe that the recourse to English or French terminology to express sexual preference
in Arab cultures is inappropriate, I disagree with scholars (like Joseph Massad, for instance) who view
homosexuality as a category to be a foreign import, inapplicable therefore to non-Western societies.
14. The Lakhmid dynasty evolved from a pre-Islamic Bedouin tribe into a kingdom in the late
third century CE and became a vassal of Sassanian Persia in the seventh century. Hira is a city near Kufa
in the south of present-day Iraq.
15. This anecdote already appeared in the tenth-century work of Abbasid historian, poet, and
musicologist Abu al-Faraj al-Isbahānī (d. ca. 972), Kitāb al-Aghānī (1927, 2:31–32). It was later repeated
by others, including al-Rāghib al-Isfahānī (fl. ca. 1000), Muhādarāt al-Udabā’ wa-Muhāwarāt al-Shu`arā’
wa-l-Bulaghā’ (1961), cited in Rowson (1991, p. 68). It was also included in al-Yemenī (d. 850), Rushd
al-Labīb ila Mu`āsharat al-Habīb (2002), translated by Samar Habib as “On the Mention of Grinding and
Grindings” (2007, p. 67).
16. Sometimes this couple is known as Rughum and Najdā. See al-Yemenī, in Habib (2007, p. 68).
17. Al-Samaw`ūlī ibn Yahyā wrote about the physiological causes of lesbianism. See Jacquart and
Thomasset (1988, p. 124).
18. Al-Tifāshi uses the term zarifāt in his thirteenth-century treatise, Nuzhat al-Albāb fī mā lā
Yūjad fī Kitāb (literally, A Promenade of the Hearts in What Does Not Exist in Any Book) (1992, p. 236).
The term zarīfāt is close to the playfulness and joy implicit in the term “queer”; it may thus become a
particularly apt choice for contemporary Arab lesbians.
 Naming to Empower 395

19. See my analysis of cross-dressed heroines in Alf Layla wa Layla (Amer, 2008, chap. 3).
20. There is a heated debate among scholars as to whether Wallāda may be considered a lesbian
in the medieval Islamicate world. While Philip K. Hitti (1968), Abū Khalīl (1993), Stephen Murray and
Will Roscoe (1997, p. 99) considered her a lesbian, Rowson takes the opposite view, stating that there is
insufficient evidence for making any assertions about her lesbianism. Rowson summarizes the debate in
his forthcoming book on male homoeroticism in the medieval Islamicate tradition. I would like to thank
him for sharing parts of his unpublished manuscript with me.
21. On Kitāb al-Aghānī, see Kilpatrick (2003) and Guidi (1900).
22. On these slave girls, see Habib (2007, p. 26). These slave girls (like the zarīfāt and habā’ib)
are examples of what I have called elsewhere “lesbian-like women” (Amer 2008, chaps. 4–5; 2009). Much
information about the education of slave girls (qāynas) can be found in al-Jāhiz’s Risālat al-qiyān (1980),
which survives only in one manuscript, Istanbul MS Damad 949, fols. 177v–188v. The Arabic text has
been edited and translated into English by A. F. L. Beeston (1980) and into French by Charles Pellat
(1963, esp. p. 145). See also some histories of Muslim women written in the Middle Ages, such as Ibn
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al-Sā` ı̄ (1196–1275) (1968). While al-Sā` ī discussed primarily aristocratic women, Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūtī
(1445–1505) treated slave girls from all sections of society in al-Mustazraf min Akhbār al-Jawārī (1989).
23. On this organization, see their official website, http://www.glas.org/ahbab/. It should be
pointed out that Ahbāb does not address itself exclusively to the Arab (gay and lesbian) community.
24. This view promulgated by orientalist-leaning critics has been dubbed an “Islam de jouissance”
by Frédréric Lagrange (2008).
25. On these debates over modernity and the consequences they have had in suppressing homo-
erotic literary texts, see Massad’s careful analysis (2007, esp. chaps. 1–2).
26. This explanation is posted on the Bintelnas website, http://www.bintelnas.org/aboutus.html.
27. In a useful article questioning the existence of lesbian identity in Arab culture, based on the
premises of Western feminist discourse, Iman al-Ghafari reminds us that “the feminist discourse that turns
lesbianism into a political choice is not liberating. Instead, it puts lesbians in a troublesome position
where they have to play a major role in fulfilling the desires and fantasies of some heterosexual feminists
at the expense of their true lesbian desires” (2002–03, p. 87).

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CONTRIBUTOR
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Sahar Amer (Ph.D., Yale University) is Professor of Asian Studies and Adjunct
Professor of French and Global Studies at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill. She is particularly interested in cross-cultural encounters, gender
and alternative sexualities, contemporary Arabs and Muslims in the diasporas
(Europe and the United States) and postcolonial identities. She has published
Esope au féminin: Marie de France et la politique de l’interculturalité (Rodopi,
1999), and Crossing Borders: Love between Women in Medieval French and Ara-
bic Literatures (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), awarded the 2009 Aldo
& Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies by the MLA. She is
currently completing a book entitled What Is Veiling? forthcoming with the Uni-
versity of North Carolina Press. She has co-edited three volumes (Yale French
Studies, Contemporary French and Francophone Studies, and New Francogra-
phies) as well as one art catalog. She is recipient of several national awards,
including a National Humanities Center Fellowship and a Fulbright.