Middle eastern gay
Which countries impose the death penalty on gay people?
Around the world, queer people continue to face discrimination, violence, harassment and social stigma. While social movements have marked progress towards acceptance in many countries, in others homosexuality continues to be outlawed and penalised, sometimes with death.
According to Statistica Research Department, as of 2024, homosexuality is criminalised in 64 countries globally, with most of these nations situated in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. In 12 of these countries, the death penalty is either enforced or remains a possibility for secret, consensual same-sex sexual activity.
In many cases, the laws only apply to sexual relations between two men, but 38 countries possess amendments that include those between women in their definitions.
These penalisations represent abuses of human rights, especially the rights to freedom of expression, the right to develop one's own individuality and the right to life.
Which countries enforce the death penalty for homosexuality?
Saudi Arabia
The Wahabbi interpretation of Sharia law in Saudi Arabia maintains that acts of homosexuality should be disciplined in the sa
Everything you need to know about entity gay in Muslim countries
When the US supreme court ruled in favour of same-sex marriage last year, the White House welcomed it with rainbow-coloured lights and many people celebrated by adding a rainbow tint to their Facebook profile.
For the authorities in Saudi Arabia, though, this was cause for alarm rather than celebration, alerting them to a previously unnoticed peril in their midst. The first casualty was the privately sprint Talaee Al-Noor educational facility in Riyadh which happened to hold a rooftop parapet painted with rainbow stripes. According to the kingdom’s religious police, the institution was fined 100,000 riyals ($26,650) for displaying “the emblem of the homosexuals” on its building, one of its administrators was jailed and the offending parapet was swiftly repainted to correspond a blue rainbow-free sky.
The case of the gaily painted school shows how progress in one part of the world can own adverse effects elsewhere and serves as a reminder that there are places where the connection between rainbows and LGBT rights is either new or yet to be discovered.
In Afghanistan, only a few years ago, there was a craze for decorating cars with ra
19/07/2023
Written by Zineb Khelif
Translated by Bertille Fitamant
If homosexuality remains a taboo in most contemporary societies, the relationship to it in the Arab-Muslim world is particular. Out of twelve countries where homosexuality is punishable by death, six are Middle Eastern countries (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, United Arab Emirates, Brunei, Iran) and it is illegal in all the other countries in the area. Local particularisms in fact diversify the study of the subject in each of the countries, but the decision made on the territory ranging from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula is linked through Muslim and Arab customs and by models of similar hegemonic masculinities on many points, such as virility and the position of patriarch, i.e. of a dominant. This patriarchal reality is not unique to this area but it is one of the common denominators among the alternative cultures found there. The other similar aspect is the mark of colonisation, whose struggle for independence on diverse scales continues to shape the various political and social landscapes. As a result, this part of the earth has rigidified its laws and its relationship to homosexuality over the last few
Gay Middle Eastern Men's Assist Group
Mohammad
Palestinian Jordanian