❌
not new
❌
not Western
❌
not against religion
1400+
years of Islam
without a criminal article
vs
90
years of Soviet
criminal law
5% of the historical record on these lands
Babur — your countryman, openly in love with a boy
1499
Andijan · Fergana Valley
Babur is 16. He falls in love with a boy named Baburi at the Andijan bazaar. Writes about it openly in his memoirs — the Baburnama. Twenty-seven years later he becomes emperor of India and founder of the Mughal dynasty, which will rule for 300 years.
"I was so lost and afflicted that I could not look him in the face."
"May none be as I, humbled and wretched and love-sick; / No beloved as thou art to me, cruel and careless."
"May none be as I, humbled and wretched and love-sick; / No beloved as thou art to me, cruel and careless."
— Baburnama, Thackston translation (Modern Library, 2002)
1506
Babur on the Herat court
On Sultan Husayn Bayqara's court: "one cannot stretch out a leg without touching a poet's backside." Male courtiers taking young men as favourites is ordinary aristocratic practice, noted without scandal.
The sultan and his slave — a love canonised for 500 years
XI
century · Ghazni (mod. Afghanistan/Iran)
Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni (r. 999–1030) and his Turkic slave Ayaz. Court poets Farrukhi Sistani and ʿUnsuri wrote of this love. Saʿdi, ʿAttar, Rumi retold it for 500 years. A model, not a scandal.
"When clipped, the cypress doth most trim appear."
— ʿUnsuri, XI c., on Mahmud cutting Ayaz's curls
— ʿUnsuri, XI c., on Mahmud cutting Ayaz's curls
Your language does not mark gender
Gendered
Russian: он пошёл / она пошла
English: he / she / it
English: he / she / it
You cannot say "I loved them" without revealing the beloved's gender.
Genderless
Uzbek: u (he/she)
Kazakh: ол
Kyrgyz: ал
Turkmen: ol
Persian / Tajik: او (u)
Mongolian / Buryat: тэр
Kazakh: ол
Kyrgyz: ал
Turkmen: ol
Persian / Tajik: او (u)
Mongolian / Buryat: тэр
One word for all. Gender is not grammatically marked.
In a ghazal the beloved — jon, dilbar, yor, maʿshuq — is grammatically genderless. For a thousand years of Persian and Turkic poetry the beloved could be male or female, and the language itself never forced a decision. Censorship came later, through Russian and English translators who had to pick "he" or "she." They usually picked "she." That is how male love vanished from the historical record in translation.
Encyclopædia Iranica: "From the dawn of Persian poetry through the twentieth century, homoeroticism formed almost the only amatory subject of Persian ghazals."
National poets — who wrote about men
1441–1501
Alisher Navoi
Herat · Timurid court
National poet of Uzbekistan. Never married, no concubines, no children (as Babur and Khwandamir note). 3,150 ghazals in Chagatai Turkic. The beloved in them is a young man, not a maiden. A close friend of Sultan Husayn Bayqara.
1640–1711
Boborahim Mashrab
Namangan · Balkh
Qalandar Sufi, rebel poet. Verses on intoxication and male beauty. Executed by the Khan of Balkh for his poetry. In Uzbekistan, a folk saint.
Islam was not against you
4
eyewitnesses required
under sharia = effectively impossible
under sharia = effectively impossible
1858
Ottoman decrim.
75 years before England
75 years before England
~0
documented executions
in CA khanates
in CA khanates
taʿzīr
Hanafi school:
not ḥadd (not death penalty)
not ḥadd (not death penalty)
The Qur'anic story of Lot (Sodom), as many Islamic scholars argue, condemns violence and the violation of hospitality, not love. The Bukharan, Khivan, and Kokand khanates practised Islamic law for a thousand years — with not a single documented execution for a same-sex act. Modern "Islamic homophobia" is a 1970s Wahhabi import, not classical Islam, and certainly not the Hanafi tradition of Central Asia.
Khaled El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800 (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
Buddhism was not against you either
The Dalai Lama · Larry King Now · 6 March 2014
"It's OK. I think it's individuals' business… If two people, a couple, really feel that way, it's more practical, more satisfaction, and both sides fully agree, then OK!"
The Five Precepts and the Vinaya do not single out same-sex acts. The third lay precept prohibits "sexual misconduct" (kāmesu micchācāra) — classically defined as sex with a minor, a married person, a betrothed person, or a person under religious vows. Same-sex love is simply not named in the canon.
Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), the founder of the Gelug school, is the source of the Tibetan rule against male–male sex — in his Lamrim Chenmo. This is a 15th-century Tibetan monastic specification, not a teaching of the Buddha.
Tsongkhapa (1357–1419), the founder of the Gelug school, is the source of the Tibetan rule against male–male sex — in his Lamrim Chenmo. This is a 15th-century Tibetan monastic specification, not a teaching of the Buddha.
Japan — Tendai and Shingon monasteries: wakashūdō — the codified love between senior monks and younger novices (chigo) — was not a marginal practice but mainstream until the Meiji era. Buddhist monasteries, male love, same Asia, same religion — for a thousand years.
Shamanism — gender was always fluid
Baksy
Turkic peoples
A shaman who could take female spirits and cross-dress during ritual.
Böö · Udgan
Mongols, Buryats
Male and female shamans. Cross-gender ritual dress is documented in ethnographic literature.
"Soft men"
Chukchi (Siberia)
Male shamans who took male husbands and wore women's clothes. Documented by Bogoraz (1904).
Across Inner Asia there is a millennia-long tradition in which gender is not biology but ritual role. A shaman could be male, female, or between. This was sacred, not deviant.
Bacha — public institution, not a secret
Eugene Schuyler, U.S. diplomat, in Turkistan (1876): "the batcha is a recognised institution throughout the whole of the settled portions of Central Asia, though most in vogue in Bokhara. They occupy the place which public women do in other countries."
Tashkent, 1872: during a cholera epidemic, mullahs declared public dance haram; the Russian colonial administration made the ban formal. A joint action of colony and conservative clergy.
1909, Tashkent Exposition: two bacha performers — Hadji-bacha (16) and Sayid-bacha (10), both from Margilan — danced publicly at an imperial Russian exposition.
Tashkent, 1872: during a cholera epidemic, mullahs declared public dance haram; the Russian colonial administration made the ban formal. A joint action of colony and conservative clergy.
1909, Tashkent Exposition: two bacha performers — Hadji-bacha (16) and Sayid-bacha (10), both from Margilan — danced publicly at an imperial Russian exposition.
A caveat. Bacha was originally an artistic tradition of adult performers. Present-day Afghan bacha bazi has degenerated into child abuse — we are not defending that. Our point is narrow: in the long 19th century, same-sex cultural practice was visible in public squares, not hidden.
How homophobia arrived
Before 1832
1400 years of Islam · 800 years of Buddhism · thousands of years of shamanism. No specific criminal article.
1832 — Tsar Nicholas I
Article 995 of the Russian Criminal Code: 4–5 years of hard labour.
1860–1881 — Russian conquest of Central Asia
Tashkent 1865 · Samarkand 1868 · Khiva 1873 · Kokand 1876 · Ashgabat 1881. Russian criminal law now applies to Central Asia too.
1922 — The Bolsheviks decriminalise
RSFSR repeals the tsarist article. But the Central Asian SSRs keep their anti-sodomy articles as "feudal survivals."
7 March 1934 — Stalin. Article 121.
Up to 5–8 years in the labour camps. ~25,688 convictions by 1993. Enforced across every union republic.
1937–39 — Stalin and the Buddhist clergy
18,000 Buddhist lamas executed in Mongolia, many of them Buryat. 746 monasteries liquidated. The same wave as Article 121.
1993 — Russia decriminalises
The brief Yeltsin window. Mongolia decriminalises the same year.
1998 — Kazakhstan · Kyrgyzstan · Tajikistan
Five years behind Russia. Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan do not decriminalise.
2013 — Russia: "gay propaganda" law
The first post-Soviet wave in reverse.
2023 — Russia: "LGBT extremism" + trans ban
On 14 August, Kyrgyzstan copies the 2013 Russian law. Tajikistan has kept a police register of 367 LGBT citizens since 2017.
The parallel British export
🇬🇧 British wave
1533: Buggery Act (Henry VIII)
1860: Section 377 IPC (India)
1871: Criminal Tribes Act — targeting the hijra community for elimination
→ exported to 60+ countries, where these laws still apply
1860: Section 377 IPC (India)
1871: Criminal Tribes Act — targeting the hijra community for elimination
→ exported to 60+ countries, where these laws still apply
🇷🇺 Russian wave
1832: Nicholas I, Article 995
1934: Stalin, Article 121
2013: Putin, "propaganda"
→ UZ, TM still criminalise
1934: Stalin, Article 121
2013: Putin, "propaganda"
→ UZ, TM still criminalise
Today
🇰🇿
Kazakhstan
decrim. 1998
🇰🇬
Kyrgyzstan
decrim, 2023 prop.
🇺🇿
Uzbekistan
Art. 120 · up to 3 years
🇹🇯
Tajikistan
decrim, 2017 registry
🇹🇲
Turkmenistan
Art. 135 · up to 2 years
🇲🇳
Mongolia
decrim. 1993
hate-crime 2015
hate-crime 2015
🇷🇺
Russia
2013 + 2023 extrem.
⚔
Buryats · Tuva
under RF law
Russia, 2023: the Supreme Court declared the "international LGBT movement" extremist. By June 2025, 20+ criminal cases had been opened; first convictions in 2024. The ruling applies across the entire Russian Federation — including Buryatia, Tuva, and Kalmykia.
This is not a betrayal of tradition.
Tradition was there. Islam, Buddhism, and shamanism on these lands — 1400 years without a specific criminal article.
Article 121 is not tradition. It is Stalin. Your "culture" is 90 years of Soviet law — not 1400 years of poetry and saints.
Article 121 is not tradition. It is Stalin. Your "culture" is 90 years of Soviet law — not 1400 years of poetry and saints.
You are not alone. You never were.
Sources and further reading
• Wheeler M. Thackston (tr.), The Baburnama: Memoirs of Babur, Prince and Emperor (Modern Library, 2002)
• Khaled El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800 (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
• Dan Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
• Scott Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam (Oneworld, 2010)
• Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards (University of California Press, 2005)
• Adeeb Khalid, Islam after Communism (University of California Press, 2007)
• Eugene Schuyler, Turkistan (1876) — Library of Congress, archive.org
• Encyclopædia Iranica: "Homosexuality iii," "Ghazal," "Farrukhi Sistani," "Yāsā"
• Human Rights Watch, This Alien Legacy: The Origins of "Sodomy" Laws in British Colonialism (2008)
• Caroline Humphrey & Urgunge Onon, Shamans and Elders (Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Manduhai Buyandelger, Tragic Spirits (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
• The Dalai Lama, interview with Larry King on RT America, 6 March 2014
• Khaled El-Rouayheb, Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500–1800 (University of Chicago Press, 2005)
• Dan Healey, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia (University of Chicago Press, 2001)
• Scott Kugle, Homosexuality in Islam (Oneworld, 2010)
• Afsaneh Najmabadi, Women with Mustaches and Men without Beards (University of California Press, 2005)
• Adeeb Khalid, Islam after Communism (University of California Press, 2007)
• Eugene Schuyler, Turkistan (1876) — Library of Congress, archive.org
• Encyclopædia Iranica: "Homosexuality iii," "Ghazal," "Farrukhi Sistani," "Yāsā"
• Human Rights Watch, This Alien Legacy: The Origins of "Sodomy" Laws in British Colonialism (2008)
• Caroline Humphrey & Urgunge Onon, Shamans and Elders (Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Manduhai Buyandelger, Tragic Spirits (University of Chicago Press, 2013)
• The Dalai Lama, interview with Larry King on RT America, 6 March 2014