Words: Gary Kelly.

Can you believe the headline of this article? Really though, can you? It’s 2019.

But it gets worse, Brunei, a small Islamic fiefdom is not only implementing the death penalty for people expressing love to each other. It is death by stoning. You read that correctly, people are going to throw rocks at other people for the ‘crime’ of expressing love to each other. That is it, it’s just love, same as any other kind of love. I don’t even want to differentiate between heterosexual and homosexual. Love is love. But I had to for the headline because it wouldn’t scan right in your news feed and you probably wouldn’t have got your head around it at a glance.

And that is just it, the oppression of LGBTQ people is becoming all to normalised, and it absolutely stinks. You know what else I struggled with? The fact it’s another story of this kind relating to Islam. As a person on ‘the left’ there are these calculations that are made. Is this ‘helpful’ to write about it?

Here’s the thing: Gay people from April 4th can be stoned to death because they express their love for one another. On the planet we live on. This is our home, all of our homes. Disgraceful is not even the word. There are no words for such barbarism that truly encompass the feelings i’m experiencing right now.

Now, i’m not saying that the people in Birmingham who are boycotting the No Outsiders lessons because they seem to want to deny the existence of gay people or that it’s possible that gay people can also be Muslim are ‘all the same as this’. That is just preposterous. And lets have it right, I know for a fact there are millions of Muslims who like you and I find this kind of thing barbaric also.

However, there seems to be something insidious whereby religious fanatics seem to think it’s okay to not only marginalise LGBTQ people like they are some kind of disease, further, in places like Brunei, Iran, Saudi Arabia, same sex relationships can be punishable by execution. All based on this insidious interpretation of Sharia Law.

I worry about this in the current climate, it concerns me after the Christchurch terrorist attack. It’s grist to the mill for far right nutters to shoot up a mosque, because it’s ‘all Muslims’ to blame. Bad actors will already be fanning the flames. Not all Muslims feel this way, but that won’t matter for bad people with an agenda.

You know what else is worrying? The British Army prop up The Sultan of Brunei’s regime, 2000 troops are stationed there. You can imagine the likes of the artist formerly known as Tommy Robinson, Stefan Waxy-Lemon keeping that fact right out of his inevitable manipulation of this in his next post on whatever social media platform will still have him.

British troops are there to satisfy the big oil conglomerates, it was Davis Cameron himself who agreed to extend their stay there. A suggestion is that one thing we can do is put pressure on the British government to withdraw the troops, but can you see that happening when a No Deal Brexit looms? Liam Fox can barely get a deal signed with The Faroe Islands so it’s unlikely they are going to do anything to piss off The Sultan. Mental turbo rich 1788 room palace having ultra-homophobic bastard that he is.

What goes through somebodies mind, when they are swimming in more oil dollar than anyone could spend in as many lifetimes as rooms he has in his palace, to think:

“I’m bored, i’m sick of polo, high end escorts and sniffing beak on the quiet as that’s not part of Islam, shush everybody. What should I do? I know, stone the gays to death. I’ll do that. That’ll be great. The Brits won’t do anything, we have them over a barrel. Well 2 million barrels of crude a day to be precise”.

What we do know is this. If our government does nothing about this then we know for a fact that they treat our troops as expendable oil mercenaries. To whore around to the highest bidder, whatever the cost to life. As long as rich bastards get richer then who cares about the cannon fodder, sorry I mean our troops. More respect needs to be shown to our Armed Forces. A huge amount of respect needs to be shown immediately to our LGBTQ community.

Troops out now.

Anyone fancy starting a petition?

I felt properly conflicted writing this, the right have colonised this space, the calling out aspects of Islam space so to write the facts makes me somehow feel like i’ll be judged as some kind of far right fanatic. Fuck that though, to not call this out is cowardice of the highest order. Read what i’m about write twice, slowly, then read it again:

LGBTQ people can be stoned to death in a country, on our planet, because of the mad bastard who is implementing a law which is his interpretation of Islam. 2000 British troops prop up his regime on behalf of oil conglomerates.

Now read that again.

If you are on ‘the left’ and are feeling squeamish about this and thinking about looking the other way by not calling this out, lest you are somehow called Islamophobic then I think you are a coward. If you are thinking of somehow playing slippery chess and transferring that cowardice onto people who in good faith are trying their best from a left wing perspective to call out rampant homophobia, by misrepresenting what they are saying and/or outright calling them Islamophobic.

Then I think you are the worst kind of coward.

Don’t think by wrapping yourself in that rainbow flag once a year at Pride that it somehow makes you right on and unproblematic. This, this today, people being stoned to death for expressing love for one another is the sharp end. You don’t get to waive other people’s rights with those flags. You have to stand up for people. That is what being an ally is.

Now, go and speak the truth, on your timeline, in the pub, in your mosque, round your friends house, in your church, wherever you can. Even if your voice shakes.

Our people need us.