In February 2003, I wrote an article for IslamOnline.net on homosexuality in Islam. I had just begun my career as a writer. I won’t say journalist. It took me a couple more years to learn what journalism truly is. In this article, I used science, and biased science at that, to demonstrate why Islam prohibited homosexuality. My approach was not scientific and it was not that of a good journalist. It was very bad writing.
Since then, I have studied journalism and I have learned more about science. Years ago, I asked the editors at IslamOnline.net to remove that article from the website, and they have. I explicitly explained that the article was biased and it did not represent the values I had come to hold dear to me. Unfortunately, the article was propagated elsewhere so although the original article no longer exists online, references to it and copies of it do exist.
It is very difficult, in a world where everything is now online forever and ever, to distance oneself from one’s former selves. I have had many former selves and I expect to have more as I go through life and learn.
Since 2003, my views on life and on religion have been changing tremendously. Right now I have more questions than answers on most things that were at one point in my life constants. I think that this is a normal, healthy process of maturation. As we grow older, we realize how little we actually know. And we come to question things we long took to be givens.
If I could remove all references to my 2003 article on homosexuality in Islam, I would. But I can’t. What I can do is to acknowledge that it was biased and lacked any level of scientific accuracy.
Inner Workings of My Mind 