Why Germany will not cut aid over gay Bill

Tight situation. The German government is taking advice from gay rights activists and will not cut aid to Uganda due to the anti-gay Bill now before Parliament even as other countries stopped funding donor projects over rampant corruption. A German official says they have been convinced that aid cuts do not produce the desired results, writes Eriasa Mukiibi Sserunjogi from Berlin.

During the Nazi rule, he said, almost 30,000 men were sent to jail for homosexual practices while the more unfortunate ones ended up in concentration camps.

Lesbians were exempt, Mr Wachsmann added, “Partly because sexist Nazi leaders saw female homosexuality as rather more harmless and ‘curable’.”

Germany has since recognised gay rights and gay couples can enter a contract comparable to civil marriage. The German Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Guido Westerwelle, is openly gay, and so is the long-serving Mayor of Berlin, Mr Klaus Wowereit.

But homosexuality is still a difficult subject even in Germany. A journalist said one is likely to encounter anti-gay tendencies the deeper they delve into German villages. Also, some religious groups in Germany have not yet accepted gays. One such group is the Catholic Church, which rejected the foreign office’s invitation to participate in the conference on “Homosexuality and religion.”
But the conference broke new ground in another way by featuring an openly gay Muslim cleric from South Africa. He is probably the first in the world to argue that homosexuality and Islam can be compatible.

Until 10 years ago Muhsin Hendricks preached the orthodox Islamic gospel as an imam at Claremont Main Road Mosque in Cape Town, South Africa.

Educated as an Islamic theologian in many places, including Pakistan, Mr Hendricks taught that God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah over homosexuality.
As an imam, he wed heterosexual couples regularly and, he married and fathered three children.

But he would walk out on his family and marry a fellow man. Mr Hendricks said he got tired of pretending to be a “different person to who I really am.” And for the sake of his peace of mind, he was prepared to face the fallout that was sure to result from his declaration that he was gay.

He has received threats from all over the world, he said, but remains unfazed. “They can kill me if they want to,” he added, “The world is a cruel place anyway.” Gay marriages are legal in South Africa and in his small mosque at his activist organisation, The Inner Circle, he said, he has wed nine gay couples.

Mr Hendricks says he decided to declare his sexuality when in 1998 a lesbian girl in his mosque committed suicide because she had been told she could not be Muslim and lesbian. He sought to understand the Koran more, he said, particularly regarding the story of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Mr Hendricks said every story has a context and that mainstream Islamic interpretation of the story of Sodom and Gomorrah lacks context. So why did God destroy the condemned cities? Mr Hendricks said it was not because of gays but because people were having non-consensual sex with animals, women, slaves and men. “It was a question of rape,” he said.

Then what about Sharia, the Islamic law? Doesn’t it prohibit and prescribe severe punishment for homosexuality?

“Sharia is not divine,” Mr Hendricks said, “It is derived from Koranic sources but with the interpretation of man.” He said the quality of Sharia law is determined by the interpretation of the Koran and he deems the mainstream interpretation regarding homosexuality as wrong.

He narrated a story of an incident which he said happened during the time of Prophet Mohamed. That asked for an order to kill a man who exhibited homosexual tendencies, the prophet said: “Leave him alone because he is a person who prays and I was forbidden to kill anyone who prays”.

Mr Hendricks hadn’t carried his book of Hadith and I had none to check it out. Hadith are the sayings of Prophet Muhamed.

Opposing interpretations
Mr Hendricks was not the only one at the conference preaching unorthodox gospel. Rev. Michael Kimindi from Other Sheep Africa Church in Kenya was another. He argued that the gospel has to aim at “preaching love instead of hate” and that it is “wrong” for religious leaders to condemn gays.