notes from the nice side of the fence

I had a phone conversation a few months ago with a Palestinian friend of mine who lives in the UK. from the few Muslim people I know, he is certainly one of the more devout - married young, doesn’t drink, prays, the works. I don’t usually find myself connecting with people of certain lifestyles, but this guy had such a fierce and thirsty intellect when I first met him, and combined with his profound all-round kindness his friendship was just irresistible. it’s a privilege to know him.

so we talked about this and that, and eventually the conversation steered to sexuality, as it does and has done before, which I’ve always felt was a kind of last frontier in our relationship - after all, if my drinking and swearing didn’t make me a dirty heathen, surely my man-on-man tendencies would, right? it was never so much a no-go zone in our chats, but more like a drop-by-but-don’t-stay-for-tea kind of zone. so that’s ok, you know, we all have our assumptions about each other. and then he says:

“you know, Shahaf, I’ve been thinking about this lately and I figured - I mean, Allah gives life to everything. nothing excluded. so if he gives life to those people [non-straights] it must mean that that’s the way it should be. so I’m fine with that.”

an internal “wow” put a very big smile on my face. this was music to my ears. what is, is. what do we get for arguing with it? what do we get for thinking we know why something is? the terror of facing an undesirable future. the hurtful manipulations we put our children through. the energy wasted on efforts to fight, to silence - against things that may only benefit, in the long run, from our attempts. but what my friend discovered was the other option. and as an afterthought to that initial “wow”, I thought, true Islam. this is true Islam, it is true surrender. surrendering to the will of God. true humility. and that’s not to say that he would not hurt if his son or daughter ever came out as gay, nor is it to say that he condones the idea of homosexuality. but evidently, this is a man who is awake to reality, and who is able to notice two things: that acceptance and support are not the same, and that accepting things makes a lot more sense than arguing with them.