Opinion: How parental rights has co-opted some Muslim communities

Opinion by Edmonton Journal • 

Over 1,000 protesters with anti-LGBTQ groups took part in The 1 Million March 4 Children near the office of the Alberta Teachers, Association on Sept. 19, 2023. They were greeted with a few hundred counter protesters and a couple minor skirmishes ensued.© Provided by Edmonton Journal

Recently, a widely circulated statement from the Muslim Association of Canada defended Muslim protests against 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion in schools. In response, an open letter signed by prominent Canadian Muslim community leaders, educators, and professionals condemned these attacks against the 2SLGBTQ+ community.Ad

The differing approaches indicate that Islam is not a monolith. There are many diverse perspectives as some community leaders practise exclusion, whereas others stand in support of 2SLGBTQ+ communities and affirm sexual and gender diversity within the Islamic faith.

Through his investigative reporting, Canadian journalist Omar Mosleh reveals how prominent organizers of these so-called “parental rights” protests have utilized sensationalized stereotypes and extreme rhetoric equating teaching about sexual and gender diversity as a false equivalency to the genocide of the residential school system.

Another common framing attempts to position discussions about 2SLGBTQ+ identities as a form of sex education and indoctrination. These distortions deliberately conflate sexual identity and behaviour and position 2SLGBTQ+ identities as pathological and deviant sexual acts that infiltrate the minds of vulnerable children. The mantra of “ leave our kids alone ” becomes the battle cry for the total erasure of 2SLGBTQ+ identities, communities, and cultures in schools and society.

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The far-right populist movement has gained traction in Canada thanks to Conservative politicians who have seized political opportunism by jumping on the “parental rights” bandwagon to introduce policies targeting transgender and nonbinary youth and banning evidence-based educational programs like SOGI 123 from use in schools.

The current fight against 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion in schools has its roots in the history of sexual health education and the belief that parents should have the final say about how these “personal and private” issues are discussed publicly in schools. The great sex education debate can be traced back decades with the common far-right refrain that teaching about sexuality was akin to promoting pornography in schools and the widely held belief that by talking openly about sex, youth would have more of it.

In the 1960s, it was a common narrative that sexual health education was a communist plot , which still has roots today when “parental rights” protestors describe 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion in schools as a form of sexual Marxism . In the 1980s, with the onslaught of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, messages about sexual health education changed to focus on abstinence-only and promoted discourses of fear, shame, and stigma. In the 2000s, sexual health education moved beyond risk and reproduction to engage more comprehensive approaches , including issues of consent, intimacy, reproductive rights, and 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion.

Today, we see many cultural minorities in Canada being lured into protests against 2SLGBTQ+ inclusion in schools. Unlikely coalitions of Christian evangelicals, white nationalists, conservative Muslims, anti-vaxxers, and conspiracy theorists have coalesced together under the umbrella of a renewed “parental rights” movement. These factions are tenuously united together through forms of religious fundamentalism and anti-government extremism fuelled by populism with the mantra of “taking back” their divine rights and protecting kids from sinister forces.

The question is, what are they trying to “protect kids” from?

As the recent “ 1 Million March 4 Children ” protests have demonstrated, the manufactured enemy of the moment is the 2SLGBTQ+ community premised on the rallying call to stop the indoctrination and sexualization of children by “the elimination of Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) curriculum, pronouns, gender ideology, and mixed bathrooms in schools.”

What concerns us most is how some factions of the Muslim community have been actively co-opted into these discourses of hate and prejudice, which are counter to the teachings of the Islamic faith.

We echo the calls of progressive Muslim community leaders with the reminder of the Islamic teaching of la darar wa la dirar fil Islam , which translates to mean “there is no harm or reciprocating harm in Islam.”

Preventing Muslim youth from learning about sexual and gender diversity is not only a harmful disservice; it is not based on Islamic teachings. Historically, Muslim societies have comprised 2SLGBTQ+ individuals, albeit known by different names. Across space and time, these included the khuntha mushkil (intersex), mukhannthun (men with feminine traits), mutarajjilat (women with masculine traits), zarifat (courtly lady lovers), habaib (female beloveds), ghayr uli al irba (men without desire for women), amongst many others.

A turn to the past can help us understand the future need not be feared. Schools should be places of liberation, not bastions of prejudice and discrimination. Perhaps adults would do best to leave “our children alone” with the belief that God, Allah, or to whomever you pray has the best intentions for our children to be exactly who they are meant to be in all the wonder of diversity that exists in our world and faith.

Dr. Kristopher Wells is an associate professor and the Canada Research Chair for the Public Understanding of Sexual and Gender Minority Youth at MacEwan University. He also serves as editor-in-chief of the international Journal of LGBT Youth.

Dr. Junaid B. Jahangir is an associate professor of Economics at MacEwan University and co-author of Islamic Law and Muslim Same-Sex Unions.