Ash-Shu'araa (The Poets)

165. “Of all the creatures in the world, do you come to the males?”

166. “And leave what your Lord has created for you of your wives? Nay, you are a people transgressing (the limits)”

167. “They said: ‘If you desist not, O Lut! you shall surely be of those who are expelled’.”

For the act of forbidding the wrong, the current sins and unlawful things of every kind and in any time must be recognized and people must earnestly be urged to desist from committing them.

One of the unlawful things is sodomy.

The punishment of the person who commits it is slaughter.This deed is so hideous and indecent that even if a person has sexual intercourse with an animal, the flesh of that animal is religiously forbidden to be consumed.

Sodomy is a very mean, ugly and indecent action and it is unlawful. So, these verses criticize those people’s indecent deed and some of their immoral deviations, and since their most important deviation was sexual deviation and sodomy, Lut (as) emphasizes on this very issue and says:

“Of all the creatures in the world, do you come to the males?”

It means that although Allah has created so many members of the opposite sex for you and by a safe and right marriage you can have a pure and peaceful life, you have left this pure and natural bounty of Allah and you have polluted yourselves with this mean and indecent action.

Then Lut added:

“And leave what your Lord has created for you of your wives? Nay, you are a people transgressing (the limits)”

Lut wanted to tell them it was not a natural need, whether spiritual and bodily, that caused them to commit that deviated action, but it was disobedience and transgression that polluted them by such an indecency and shame.

Lut implicitly told them that their deed was like that man puts the good fruits, nutritious foods and safe natural things aside and goes to a poisonous, polluted, and fatal food. This is not a natural need, it is an insolence and inordinacy.

Then, the next noble verse implies that the people of Lut, who were engaged with lust, pride and haughtiness, instead of obeying this divine leader and following his advice eagerly and delivering themselves from that polluted pool, they stood against him.

The verse says:

“They said: ‘If you desist not, O Lut! You shall surely be of those who are expelled’.”

Those people told Lut that his words caused their thoughts to be confused and their peace to be disordered. They were not ready even to listen to him, and if he continued his job, his least punishment would be being expelled from his land.

In some other places of the Holy Qur’an we read that they fulfilled this threat and they ordered that Lut’s family to be expelled out of the city, because they were clean and did not commit sin:

“...they said: 'Expel them from your town: verily they are a people (who seek) to purify (themselves)’.”1

The misguided and deviated people sometimes reach a point that having piety and chastity is a fault among them and impurity and immorality is an honour for them. This is the evil end of a society that goes hurriedly towards corruption.

It is understood from the Qur’anic sentence:

“...you shall surely be of those who are expelled”

that this mischievous group of people had formerly expelled some pure persons whom they saw as troublesome for their ugly deeds. They threatened Lut, too, and said if he continued his way, his fate would also be like them.

It is explicitly explained in some commentary books that they urged to send the chaste persons out of the city with a very bad manner.¹

In some suras of the Qur’an, such as: Al-’A‘ra, Had, Al-Hijr, Al-’Anbiya, An-Naml, and Al-‘Ankabut, the explanation about the people of Lut and their hideous sin has been hinted to, but the content meaning of every one of them is different from that of the other. In fact, every one of them points to a different inauspicious dimension of this shameful deed.

Some Traditions

1- The holy Prophet of Islam in a tradition says:

“The odour of Paradise will not reach the one who is catamite.”3

2- Ali (as) in a tradition introduces the act of sodomy nigh to infidelity.²

3- Upon the philosophy of the prohibition of sodomy, Ali ibn-Mus-ar-Rida (as) in a tradition says:

“The reason of the prohibition of men for men and women for women is that this is spite of the natural sate that Allah has set for man and woman (and opposition with this natural innate nature causes the deviation of man’s soul and body) and it is for this reason that if men and women pursue sodomy, man’s generation will be ceased and the device of social life will become imperfect, and the world will be wasted.”5

From the view point of Islam, this action is so ugly and shameful that its punishment in Islamic jurisprudence doubtlessly is death. Even for those who act some levels lower than sodomy there have been considered some intensive punishments.

For example, the Prophet (S) in a tradition says:

“Whoever kisses a boy lustfully, on the Day of Hereafter Allah will rein him with a rein from fire on his mouth.”6

The punishment of the person who commits such an action is to be scourged 30 to 99 whips.

However, there is no doubt that sexual deviation is one of the most dangerous deviations that may appear in human societies, because its inauspicious effects can encompass all moral issues and drug man towards emotional deviation.