En studie viser at homofobe holdninger er mye mer utbredt blant tyskere med muslimsk bakgrunn enn ikke-muslimer. Å være gay og muslim er en stor belastning.
“For us, for Muslims, it’s extremely difficult. When you’re gay, you’re immediately cut off from the family,” said Kader Balcik, a 22-year-old Turk from Hamburg. He had recently moved to Berlin not long after being cut off from his mother because he is bisexual. “A mother who wishes death for her son, what kind of mother is that?” he asked, his eyes momentarily filling with tears.
Hasan, a 21-year-old Arab man, sitting at a table in the club’s quieter adjoining café, declined to give his last name, saying: “They would kill me. My brothers would kill me.” Asked whether he meant this figuratively, he responded, “No, I mean they would kill me.”
“I’m living one life here and the other one the way they wish me to be,” Hasan said, referring to his parents. He said that he still planned to marry, but when he turned 30 rather than right away, as his parents wished. “I have to have children, to do what Islam wants me to do,” he said. “I would stop with everything in the homosexual life. I would stop it.”
En undersøkelse av 1.000 unge i Berlin mellom 14 og 20 år, utført av Kiel-universitetet, fant en korrelasjon mellom kulturell bakgrunn og synet på homofile.
when asked whether they would be disgusted by the sight of two people of the same sex kissing, 79 percent of respondents with a Turkish background said “yes.” Seventy-six percent of those with a Russian background also answered in the affirmative -- compared with only 48 percent of respondents with a German background.
A spokesperson for the German Association of Gays and Lesbians, Günter Dworek, said he was alarmed by the study’s findings.
“Homophobia is not a harmless misdemeanor,” Dworek told the AFP news agency. “It has negative effects on people’s ability to live together in society.”
The head of the study, Bernd Simon, said homophobia was likely even more prevalent in Germany as a whole since Berlin is known for its relative tolerance toward non-traditional lifestyles.
Masculine norms
Turkish people in parkBildunterschrift: Großansicht des Bildes mit der Bildunterschrift: Berlin has both large Turkish and large gay communities
The study revealed that male respondents of all backgrounds tended to be more homophobic than females.Two key factors appear to be ideas of masculinity and religion. The study underscored “the significance of traditional masculine norms and religiosity in the development of anti-homosexual attitudes,” Dworek said.
Men gay-muslimer finner pustehull i en by som Berlin som har lange tradisjoner med gay-kultur. Tyrkisk-ættede Fatma Souad arrangerer gay-disco i Kreuzberg en gang i måneden. Klubben er full, men mange er redd for å bli gjenkjent.
En av de mest spennende sidene er musikken, som mikser Balkan, Tyrkia og Levanten med moderne elektronika. Musikken viser at kultur kan blandes.
Gay Muslims party in Berlin, nervously
Study: Homophobia High Among Immigrant Children in Germany
