Gay middle east sex

Which countries impose the death penalty on gay people?

Around the world, queer people continue to confront 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 private, consensual gay sexual activity.

In many cases, the laws only apply to sexual relations between two men, but 38 countries contain amendments that include those between women in their definitions.

These penalisations represent abuses of human rights, especially the rights to freedom of utterance, the right to develop one's hold personality 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

Middle East

State

Domestic law[*]

Penalty

Ratified International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR)[†]

Ratified Optional Protocol to ICCPR[†]

Afghanistan

Penal Code 1976

BOOK TWO SECTION TWO CHAPTER EIGHT: Adultery, Pederasty, and Violations of Honour

Article 427

“(1) A person who commits adultery or pederasty shall be sentenced to long imprisonment.

(2) In one of the following cases engagement of the acts, specified above, is considered to be aggravating conditions:

a. In the case where the person against whom the crime has been dedicated is not yet eighteen years mature. …”

In Afghan legal terminology “pederasty” appears to refer to intercourse between males regardless of age.

Long imprisonment

24 Jan 1983

Egypt

The Law on the Combating of Prostitution and the Penal Code have been used to imprison queer men.Law 58/1937 promulgating The Penal Code

Article 98(f):

“Detention for a period of not less than six months and not exceeding five years, or paying a fine of 
not less than five hundred pounds and not exceeding one thousand pounds shall be the penalty inflic

Are You This? or Are You This? by Madian Al Jazerah; Ellen Georgiou (As told to)

Call Number: HQ75.8.A424 A3 2021

ISBN: 1787384659

Publication Date: 2021-09-01

When Madian Al Jazerah came out to his Arab parents, his mother had one doubt. 'Are you this?' she asked, cupping her hand. 'Or are you this?' she motioned with a poking finger. If you're the poker, she said, you aren't a homosexual. For Madian, this opposition reveals not who he is, but patriarchy, might, and society's efforts to fit us into neat boxes. He is Palestinian, but wasn't raised in Palestine. He is Kuwaiti-born, but not Kuwaiti. He's British-educated, but not a Westerner. He's a Muslim, but can't hug the Islam of today. He's a gay man, out of the closet but still living in the shadows: he has left Jordan, his home, three times in fear of his life. Madian has searched for acceptance and belonging around the world, joining new communities in San Francisco, New York, Hawaii and Tunisia, yet always conclusion himself pulled

19/07/2023

Written by Zineb Khelif 

Translated by Bertille Fitamant

If homosexuality remains a taboo in most contemporary societies, the connection 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, Combined Arab Emirates, Brunei, Iran) and it is illegal in all the other countries in the area. Local particularisms in truth diversify the study of the subject in each of the countries, but the choice made on the territory ranging from Morocco to the Arabian Peninsula is linked through Muslim and Arab identity 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 distinct to this area but it is one of the common denominators among the different cultures create there. The other similar aspect is the sign of colonisation, whose effort for independence on alternative scales continues to shape the various political and social landscapes. As a result, this part of the world has rigidified its laws and its relationship to homosexuality over the last few