Gay middle eastern
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 ego 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
LGBTQ communities face threats in Middle East
Most of the people around him don't know he identifies as queer, the 20-year-old Iraqi student told DW. But life in his comparatively conservative southern city of Najaf is dangerous for him anyway.
"Once I wore a pink shirt and I was harassed, just because of the color," said Haiden, whose entire name cannot be published for his safety. "Sometimes people are harassed and even killed just because they don't look favor everyone else."
And, he said, things are getting worse for LGBTQ communities in Iraq. "We're already exposed to all kinds of harassment and attacked on a daily basis," he said. "And that's even before this law to criminalize homosexuality has been enacted."
'Severe penalties'
In July, Iraq's government announced that it was planning a law prohibiting homosexuality. Iraq is one of three Arab-majority countries in the Middle East that doesn't explicitly criminalize same-sex relationships. The others are Jordan and Bahrain.
If the law is passed, it would deliver Iraq into line with the rest of the region. Most other Middle Eastern nations outlaw gay intimacy more directly, punishing it with anythi
Was there no room for the queer individual in Arab history? Have people like us simply never belonged?
‘I’m sure you’ve heard about Sarah Hegazy,’ study the text on my phone. It was 2020; I was tying a red bandana around my face – for both aesthetic and pandemic purposes – en route to a BLM protest in the thick of Manhattan’s June. ‘You’re always checking in on me when something tragic happens in my community. I’d favor to extend the identical solidarity when something happens in yours. I’m here to talk if you want to.’
That text was how I found out that Hegazy, a 30-year-old Egyptian lesbian activist, had killed herself. I first heard of her in October 2017, when she was jailed by the Egyptian government for flying a rainbow flag at a Mashrou’ Leila concert – an edgy Lebanese rock band known for being openly queer. In Egypt, homosexuality is legally considered a form of debauchery, and in the aftermath of this concert the law was explicitly updated to sanction the promotion of homosexual behaviour in the media with up to three years in prison. For three months after her arrest, Hegazy was tortured at the hands of the Egyptian police, who electrocuted her and encouraged inmates to ph
Everything you need to recognize about being gay in Muslim countries
When the US supreme court commanded in favour of queer 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 run Talaee Al-Noor school in Riyadh which happened to contain a rooftop parapet painted with rainbow stripes. According to the kingdom’s religious police, the school 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 match a blue rainbow-free sky.
The case of the gaily painted school shows how progress in one part of the nature can have 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
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