Although lacking religious legitimation, it has generally been the case in Islamic societies that, as long as the obligations to extend the family (through marriage and procreation) and to support it are met, and as long as a man is discreet, tolerance is extended to those who practice same-sex sexual relations.

The requirement of four reputable adult eyewitnesses in order to prosecute acts of same-sex sodomy is rarely met, and death penalties are consequently a fairly remote threat. The implicit accommodation to males enjoying love and sex with boys, males, and infidel males depends upon a widespread and enduring pattern of collective denial in which the condition for pursuing either age-stratified or gender-defined homosexuality is that the behavior never be publicly acknowledged. That is, there is a strong will not to know what fathers, husbands, and brothers do, as long as they fulfill their familial duties.

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Female Sexuality

What some see as Islam's being "sex-positive" does not extend to females. Sexual relations between women within harems or in female bathhouses (hamam) has been more supposed than observed. There is nothing about female-female sexual relations in the Qu'ran. Later mentions of educated women choosing not to submit to males and seducing attractive young females exist, but are not numerous. Some instances of husbands shrugging off information about wives' dalliances with other women also exist.

Women have only recently become visible at all in literature about Islamic societies. Whatever woman-woman sexuality occurs remains invisible, as in media from within Islamic societies. Representation even of married heterosexual conduct is heavily censored in current Islamic states. Published ethnographic literature on "lesbians" in Islamic societies is also non-existent, although there is one article (by Unni Wikan) on a transgendered role, the khanith of Oman.

Located on the Mediterranean coast of Egypt, Alexandria has, by virtue of its decadent sensibility and the tributes of numerous writers, achieved a reputation for tolerance, but recently it has turned away from Europe and towards Mecca.

Indian thought towards same-sex eroticism and gender variance was more tolerant in the past than it is today.

The apparent invisibility of homosexuality in the visual arts of Islam is no indication of its absence in the culture.

The expression of male homoerotic sentiment is one of the dominant themes in classical Arabic literature from the ninth century to the nineteenth.

Over a period of two millennia, sodomy has been by turns condemned and celebrated in Persian literature.

Today's glbtq spirituality movements must be seen as part of a long history in which gender-special people were considered sacred to their tribe or family because of their obvious spiritual gifts.

Although evidence of his own homosexual leanings is inconclusive, in his lifetime Sir Richard Burton was regarded with suspicion because of his knowledge and understanding of same-sex sexual activity.

Two of the seven chapters in Ghazali's sixteenth-century pornographic allegorical work "The Repellers of Troubles and the Remover of Anxieties" extol homosexual anal intercourse.

Much of the sexuality in the lyrics of the great Persian poet Hafiz is homoerotic and infused with a homosexual mysticism.

The Persian Gay and Lesbian Organization (PGLO) advocates for civil and human rights for Iranian glbtq people around the world.

The Persian poet Rumi, who originated the "whirling dervish" order of Sufis, developed passionate relationships with other men and mixed spirituality with eroticism in his love poetry.