Recently, the student body at Brandeis has been confronted by several protests aimed at the terrible reality of sexual assault in America, as well as protests targeting immigration laws and racial profiling in Ferguson, Mo. In September, scores of Brandeis students attended the People’s Climate March in Washington, D.C. Overall, this has been a key year for student protest. The acceptance and support of these protests has been strong at Brandeis, which has become a point of pride for many. 

Many Brandeisians also supported the protests leveled at Vladimir Putin’s ludicrous “gay propaganda” ban, which targeted openly gay Russians with fines and harassment. These protests were important. They showed not only a growing American awareness of civil laws of other countries but also an increased cross-cultural empathy for the plight of lesbian gay bisexual transgender and queer individuals overseas. 

However, another protest, meant to call attention to the conditions of LGBTQ people in the Muslim world had an extremely minor presence at Brandeis and on college campuses in general and for the most part flew under our radar. A Brandeis student attempted to bring a protest movement to campus which would have involved hanging a stuffed dummy in a public area. This was to call attention to the public hangings of LGBTQ youths in Iran, Yemen and Saudi Arabia, but this attempt was rejected by the administration. When it comes to the laws concerning LGBTQ people in the Muslim world, colleges have been silent or at least highly reluctant to engage in protests that target Muslim countries. We should adamantly protest the persecution of LGBTQ individuals in all countries, and no one should be given a free pass on human rights.   

Protests against the persecution of LGBTQ people in Muslim countries, while extremely limited in the United States to begin with, primarily target the government of Iran by calling attention to the public hangings of LGBTQ individuals that have occurred periodically there. Since the Islamist government of Iran took power in 1979, they have murdered over 4,000 gay men and women for crimes amounting to no more than “engaging in same-sex activity.” This is greater than the undergraduate population of Brandeis, in comparison. Protest against these killings has been minimal and has even received backlash amongst left-wing groups. Prominent LGBTQ activist Leslie Feinberg called opposition to Iran following public executions “a misdirection of the LGBTQ struggle.” Amnesty International  “urged organizations to refrain from casting the incident as a gay issue.” Human rights groups have been notoriously lenient to throw their lot in against the Muslim world on issues of gay rights while still remaining very vocal against restrictions placed on LGBTQ people in Russia or the United States. 

This is unfortunate, because opposing the judicial murder of LGBTQ individuals is impossible without criticizing Muslim nations; of the seven countries which still use the death penalty against LGBTQ people, all are Muslim-majority. These range from underdeveloped, impoverished countries like Mauritania to Saudi Arabia, a wealthy, modernized country, where LGBTQ individuals face flogging, castration, torture or execution merely for being suspected of engaging in same-sex activity, while a second conviction carries a guaranteed death sentence. Laws like this are despicable by any standard and should be opposed vehemently regardless of religious influence. 

We should always support those movements within our society that attempt to bring about greater equality. These include the fights to legalize same-sex marriage, or prevent wage dis-crimination in the workplace. Simultaneously, however, we should also realize that these are goals which are far off for hundreds of millions in the Muslim world, who by and large fear for their own safety should their sexual identities become a matter of public record. 

It is of course true that Muslim nations are not the only nations in which homosexuality is illegal—other countries that outlaw homosexuality equally deserve our protest. And of course, not all followers of Islam are homophobic. But the plight of LGBTQ individuals in Muslim countries should be of grave concern to all Americans. Imagine a society in which an unelected government would arbitrarily arrest your friend or relative and publicly hang or torture him as an example to others to obey strict theocratic laws. While draconian policies like these impact LGBTQ individuals first and foremost, they more generally impact the entire society by creating an environment of fear and repression that is felt by all. Needless to say, we come from a position of great privilege that this is not our reality, and as such, we have a moral obligation towards the awareness and assistance of the condition of gay rights in foreign countries whenever possible.

A great place to start would involve questioning the foreign policy decisions of our own government with regard to human rights. Our government has put some economic sanctions on the governments of Russia and Iran, both countries with deplorable laws concerning same-sex couples. 

Yet, we continue to have strong economic ties with oil-rich governments like the United Arab Emirates and Brunei, to name a few, both of which have jailed or executed LGBTQ people, the latter by stoning. President Obama called the Sultan of Brunei his “good friend” during the latter’s most recent visit to the U.S., and pledged close economic cooperation with the repressive theocracy. 

A strong pro-Saudi lobby within the U.S. Congress maintains strong US support for a government which denies the rights of millions, while United States military backing has been crucial in propping up the governments of some of the  Middle East’s most repressive theocracies when it comes to gay rights, including Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. 

With regards to Vladimir Putin’s renewed crackdown on homosexuality, Obama stated “I have no patience for countries that try to treat gays or lesbians or transgender persons in ways that intimidate them or are harmful to them.” Yet on the issue of homosexuals in Brunei, Saudi Arabia or virtually any Muslim-majority country with economic ties to the U.S., Obama is silent. In this regard, President Obama has much in common with those who oppose the protests against Iran’s hangings and executions of gay people; strong-voiced against the persecution of gays until it be-comes difficult. For Obama, this difficulty is economic. For us at Brandeis, this difficulty is political correctness.  

Pointing out and criticizing the horrendous condition of LGBTQ people in Muslim countries, and opposing US economic support of all nations which persecute LGBTQ people, Muslim or otherwise, is a great way to show meaningful support for the LGBTQ movement worldwide. 

Of course, we must maintain that we oppose persecutions of LGBTQ individuals wherever it is felt, regardless of religion, and that this is not a movement which targets Islam specifically or makes generalizations. 

We must work with, and not against the  Muslim world to bring meaningful change to the lives of Muslim LGBTQ people, while remaining vigilant to work against our own biases whenever they spring up. However, we cannot ignore the affront to humanity which presents itself throughout the Muslim world when it comes to LGBTQ rights, and we cannot remain silent on this issue for reasons of political correctness or fear of being labeled Islamophobic. Working toward meaningful change often involves confronting hard or uncomfortable facts, which in this case involves the fact that in far too many Muslim-majority countries, there is widespread and deadly persecution of gays with direct legal backing.  If we, as a progressive democratic society, believe in total equality for LGBTQ people, we must oppose any affront to the civil rights of gays, and hold all nations to the same high standards.