Muslim Homophobia and the Roots of Western Rage

We can say with certainty that LGBT rights and identities are now regularly deployed in 'the West' as markers of their advancement over other cultures. European nations and the European Union are often at the vanguard of this political movement. Furthermore, it is clear that Muslim populations and governments are more homophobic than their western counterparts, thus legitimizing the west’s impulses to defend and promote LGBT rights. I argue, however, that the relationship between Muslim cultures and LGBT rights needs to be understood in a more complex way than this dichotomy suggests. Specifically, we need to recognize that LGBT politics is part of a triangulated process of homocolonialism that primarily reinforces western exceptionalism rather than serving the interests of queer identities and rights. LGBT politics is positioned at the vanguard of a contemporary Islamophobia that is the latest iteration of Orientalism - I suggest that the depth and extent of this Islamophobia is a form of cultural ‘rage’; an expression of cultural anger that is as uncontrollable as it is extreme. This rage is not uncontrollable because it is an emotion, but rather because it is an inevitability; a logical and politically legitimized reaction to the historically embedded sense of western cultural superiority. I end with a discussion of whether LGBT politics can be decolonized so that it challenges racism and Islamophobia whilst promoting sexual diversity, or whether its use against Muslim homophobias will continue to amplify and deepen the roots of western rage against the Muslim ‘other’.