Lut: Difference between revisions

The story of Lut in the Qur'an represents its apotheosis in all of the traditions in which it is found: by the 7th century, the original story of Lot, the single righteous man of Sodom who protected his guests even at the cost of his own begotten daughters virginity, has evolved into a tale simply demonizing homosexuality. Although the loss of the point of the original story is striking in the Qur'anic text, and the tasfirs which evolved surrounding it, which also build out the story by clarifying that the women of Sodom and Gomorrah were also homosexuals and thus also deserved to be destroyed, the transformation of the story of Lot into a condemnation of homosexuality is not without precedent: witness the English slur "sodomite", pointing like the Arabic "luti" to the sin of the people of Lot within the English-speaking Christian tradition.