You are all perverts, and we are going to kill you to save the world.
November 13, 2013 6:55 PM   Subscribe

How Jihadists Are Blackmailing, Torturing, and Killing Gay Syrians. Even between the plush sofas and mood lighting of one of Beirut’s hippest bars, Ram shook with fear as he relived his ordeal. He turned his large green eyes from me to the translator and then back to me again, speaking in a low voice, even though we were the only people in the room. "I think I was targeted for two reasons: because I'm a Druze, and because I’m gay," he said. "They told us, ‘You are all perverts, and we are going to kill you to save the world.'"
posted by treepour (16 comments total) 6 users marked this as a favorite
 
That's horrible, to make an understatement.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:49 PM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


They can cut all the flowers, but they cannot stop the spring. - Archbishop Oscar Romero
posted by rtha at 7:56 PM on November 13, 2013 [9 favorites]


Holy crap. What a horrible thing to read.

Actually, it brings to mind the things which were expressed toward me as fantasies of how to treat gay men here in the US when I came out in the early 1990s by Christianists.

Those things, however, rarely actually happened in real life here, then.

That they are happening over there, now, is reprehensible.
posted by hippybear at 8:04 PM on November 13, 2013 [3 favorites]


This is just awful. Syria has stopped being about getting rid of Assad and is now just another excuse to show how terrible at can be to each other.
posted by arcticseal at 8:05 PM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


It's sadly reminiscent of this piece about gay torture and killing in Iraq, previously on Metafilter.
posted by en forme de poire at 8:13 PM on November 13, 2013 [2 favorites]


"They told us, ‘You are all perverts, and we are going to kill you to save the world.'"

Right back atcha', assholes!
posted by Vibrissae at 8:58 PM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


This is absolutely horrible. War brings out the most ignoble things in people.
posted by Katjusa Roquette at 9:35 PM on November 13, 2013


"What I really want to do is to rent a couple of big apartments in Beirut that we can use as safe houses, to help these guys get on their feet when they first arrive here. But first we need to find funding. It’ll cost around $1,500 per month to rent two places; this is an expensive city."

I love this idea tremendously. Two places for $1500/mo? There are studio apartments here that cost more than that. Ugh.
posted by gucci mane at 9:40 PM on November 13, 2013 [1 favorite]


if killing perverts saved the world you'd think it'd have worked by now
posted by This, of course, alludes to you at 1:37 AM on November 14, 2013


From what I understand, this is business as usual in most of the Middle East. It's a huge problem.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:28 AM on November 14, 2013 [3 favorites]


From what I understand, this is business as usual in most of the Middle East.

Then you're misunderstood.

While attacks against homosexuals in the Middle East have been on the rise and are fed by radical violent Salafists, it is FAR from 'business as usual' that homosexual men in the Middle East are routinely attacked and blackmailed. In many Arab socities, homosexual sex amongst men is done on the 'down low' and is unaffiliated with violence. For more information, cf. John Bradley's Behind the Veil of Vice. If you're going to make such a claim, please support it.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 5:18 AM on November 14, 2013 [7 favorites]




Just a note to mention that Bradley's book isn't very widely respected in my field, which has a partial focus on epidemiological issues among men who have sex with men in environments that aren't conducive to open access to healthcare information and services. Joe and Painforest are perhaps courting the opposing ends of an argument, with the reality being more fluid and complex currents tugging between them. Then again, adverse attention from an establishment (like your doctor, hospital, etc.) is very different from mob violence and is more common even in the west than is realized in the popular press, although it can and does lead to violence (e.g. a doctor may share privately disclosed information about a patient with a group that would have the intent to intervene in that person's life in some unwelcome way).
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 9:57 AM on November 14, 2013 [2 favorites]


Does your field believe that Bradley misrepresents his journalistic accounts? Or that he only presents an unrepresentative slice of reality?
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 11:44 AM on November 14, 2013


Ew. Ew. Ew. Those illustrations, along with just being really really bad, are also in really really poor taste. And I'm no shrinking violet. Just...gross, dude. Use your crayons to poorly draw sexual torture somewhere else please.

(Great [terrifying] article, though)
posted by Mooseli at 12:27 PM on November 14, 2013


While attacks against homosexuals in the Middle East have been on the rise and are fed by radical violent Salafists, it is FAR from 'business as usual' that homosexual men in the Middle East are routinely attacked and blackmailed.

It isn't routine in Syria, either, which is why it makes news. But it's happening often enough that even I'm aware of it, despite being neither Arab nor gay. I can't see how it could be any other way, given that most countries in the region have and enforce laws against homosexuality. Gays in Western countries were routinely attacked and blackmailed when it was illegal here; why should the Middle East be different?
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:07 PM on November 14, 2013


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