Sodom And Gomorrah – The Rape Of Palestinian Men

By Junaid Jahangir, New Age Islam 25 January 2025 Concerns in war are rightfully expressed on the most vulnerable - women and children. But we cannot ignore the men who too bear the casualty of occupation, apartheid, or genocide. In October last year, video testimonials surfaced on the sexual abuse of Palestinian men in Israeli prisons. They are reminiscent of male rape and sexual abuse in the Abu Ghraib prison after the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Additionally, sexual abuse of Palestinian males (both men and boys) under Israeli authority seems to be a systemic issue. They also reflect the conduct of Sodom and Gomorrah or the people of Lut according to the exegetical literature. Male rape can result when others are systemically dehumanized and subjugated in an asymmetrical power relation. This happens when society becomes so extreme that human suffering is rationalized or at best casually ignored. In such cases, the exegetical literature shows that structural overhaul of the system is warranted. Similarly, a lesson from critical economics is to address power with countervailing power, as in the case of labour unions against large corporations. The Analogy With Sodom And Gomorrah According to Professor Hershey Friedman, the wealthy states of Sodom and Gomorrah were opposed to foreign migrants. Xenophobia was institutionalized. Alluding to Ezekiel 16:49, he states that the cities were destroyed because of their subjugation of the strangers, the needy, and the poor. This involved torture on a procrustean bedthat led to death. Similarly, while many Muslims view same-sex relationships as the “emblematic sin” of the people of Lut, the Qur’an situates their conduct in the context of inhospitality and highway robbery. Even the Islamist exegete Maududireferences several incidents from the Talmud on the people of Lut in his commentary. He mentions that they robbed poor travellers of their belongings, withheld food, and left the dead naked without shrouds. He adds that they threatened Luṭ and his daughters with expulsion if they offered kindness to the travellers. Thus, the picture that emerges from the exegetical literature is akin to the Abu Ghraib prison and more recently Israeli prisons with male rape and torture that resulted in death. This includes the use of starvation as a weapon of war, the subjugation of naked Palestinian men on display, and preventing the UN from offering life-saving support. The Economics Of Crime And Discrimination The harms of male rape cannot be adequately captured through the standard economic approach on crime. This approach was led by Nobel Laureate Gary Becker and popularized through the Freakonomics books. According to Becker, fraud and theft do not involve social costs, as resources are simply transferred from the victim to the criminal. However, Ben Giffordcritiques Becker’s approach that this is not true for crimes like rape and murder where the benefit of criminals does not offset the suffering of victims. The testimony of sexually abused Palestinian men with blood flowing from their naked bodies confirms that crime goes beyond mere transfer of resources to inflict harm on human wellbeing. Similarly, Professor Emeritus John Komloscritiques the Becker model of discrimination, which is used to show that competition can eliminate discrimination from the free market. The idea is that discriminating employers would be driven out of the market by competitors who hire the best employees regardless of their racial attributes. However, Komlos argues that there can be organized pressure from society and the threat of violence from vigilante groups like the Klu Klux Klan, which undermines the results of the Becker model. Thus, government intervention is required to correct for racial discrimination. In the Palestinian context, discrimination results in violence by extremist settlers in the West Bank. Against this backdrop, individual voices like Rabbi Arik Aschermanwho call out settler violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank are muffled. Discriminatory societal attitudes are not easily overturned without government institutions and intervention. However, the problem is that the far-right Israeli government is complicit. Overall, systems and institutions are difficult to change by individuals. Cultural Attitudes Can Change The dehumanization of Palestinians as “animals”and their children as “little snakes”from higher Israeli officials is not easily overturned. However, distinguished economist Ha-Joon Chang argues that cultural attitudes can change. He notes that the cultural stereotype of thieving Germans and lazy Japanese shifted over time to industrious and hardworking people. What is required are proper institutions and systemic change. In a biblical context, despite the lies spread by Potiphar’s wife (wife of Azeez in the Qur’an) that he tried to seduce her, the system allowed Joseph to become Pharaoh’s advisor in Egypt. His personal religion and racial attribute simply did not matter, and xenophobia was contained. This suggests that provided the system in place is non-discriminatory, injustice can be rectified. Overall, cultural attitudes can be changed with the proper institutions, so that racism or xenophobia against Palestinians can be reversed. This means rejecting ethno-racial states that relegate some groups to second class citizens with limited civic rights. However, such a change requires that intrinsic morality not be corrupted, otherwise people persist in supporting discriminatory systems and states with the approval of their own conscience. Corruption Of Morality Harvard professor of Philosophy, Michael Sandel reminds us that morality can be corrupted when guilt and shame are undermined by financial incentives. This is why we witness the rationalization of the market for human organs and babies or the proliferation of naked bodies on OnlyFans. In the Palestinian context, political and economic interests have led Gulf Arab leaders to pay lip service to human rights in Palestine. In the context of Sodom and Gomorrah, this corruption of morality is noted through the brazen rationalization of the people of Lut when they argued against him that “they are a people who would keep pure”. Thus, if intrinsic morality is corrupted and that corruption is deeply entrenched and rationalized then sometimes a radical overhaul of society is required. The Ahmadi exegetical literature (a sect constitutionally marginalized in Pakistan) draws out exactly this lesson from the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. The Ahmadi exegesis draws a metaphorical connection between the earthquake that inflicted Sodom and Gomorrah and the radical overhaul of the Meccan social order with the Prophet Muhammad. The idea is that like the overthrowing of Sodom and Gomorrah upside down, the wealthy Meccans slid down the social scale and the poor migrants ascended the social order. Countervailing Power The exegetical literature showcases the need for structural change in society against prejudice, xenophobia, and discrimination. Based on critical economics, the response to power is countervailing power. Thus, policies like the living wage, drug price caps, and wealth taxes on the Top 1% are instituted to counter the power of large corporations and the wealthy elite. In the context of Palestine, countervailing power means pushing for radical change against imperial or messianic interests that keep the Palestinians subjugated. Thus, calls for radical change on Palestine have been noted amongst several critical economists. For instance, the French economist Thomas Piketty has called for sanctions on Israel, economic anthropologist Jason Hickel has called out imperial colonialism in Palestine, the Greek economist Yanis Varoufakis has pushed back at weaponized victimhood, and the Indian economist Jayati Ghosh has called out “colonial expansion and genocide” in Gaza. Likewise, Economists for Palestine, International Society for Ecological Economics, and the student-led organization Rethinking Economics, have all issued statements in solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinians. To recapitulate, the rape of Palestinian men is reminiscent of Sodom and Gomorrah where strangers were dehumanized and subjugated. This calls for meeting power with countervailing power through collective civic efforts to call out systemic racist and discriminatory attitudes, resist weaponized victimhood, and push for radical change against the status quo. ------ Junaid Jahangir is the co-author of Islamic Law and Muslim Same-Sex Unions. With Dr. Hussein Abdullatif, a paediatric endocrinologist in Alabama, he has co-authored several academic papers on the issue of same-sex unions in Islam. He contributed this article to NewAgeIslam.com. URL: https://www.newageislam.com/islam-politics/sodom-gomorrah-rape-palestinian-men/d/134427 New Age Islam, Islam Online, Islamic Website, African Muslim News, Arab World News, South Asia News, Indian Muslim News, World Muslim News, Women in Islam, Islamic Feminism, Arab Women, Women In Arab, Islamophobia in America, Muslim Women in West, Islam Women and Feminism