[130] Kovalewsky, Coutume contemporaine, p. 340.
[131] Merker, Die Masai, p. 208. The Masai, however, slaughter at once any bullock or he-goat which is noticed to practise unnatural intercourse, for fear lest otherwise their herds should be visited by a plague as a divine punishment (ibid. p. 159).
[132] Warner, in Maclean, Compendium of Kafir Laws, p. 62.
[133] Rautanen, in Steinmetz, Rechtsverhältnisse, p. 333 sq.
[134] Lang, ibid. p. 232.
[135] Felkin, in Proceed. Roy. Soc. Edinburgh, xiii. 723.
[136] Monrad, op. cit. p. 57.
[137] Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, p. 135.
Muhammed forbade sodomy,[138] and the general opinion of his followers is that it should be punished like fornication—for which the punishment is, theoretically, severe enough[139]—unless the offenders make a public act of penitence. In order to convict, however, the law requires that four reliable persons shall swear to have been eye-witnesses,[140] and this alone would make the law a dead letter, even if it had the support of popular feelings; but such support is certainly wanting. In Morocco active pederasty is regarded with almost complete indifference, whilst the passive sodomite, if a grown-up individual, is spoken of with scorn. Dr. Polak says the same of the Persians.[141] In Zanzibar a clear distinction is made between male congenital inverts and male prostitutes; the latter are looked upon with contempt, whereas the former, as being what they are “by the will of God,” are tolerated.[142] The Muhammedans of India and other Asiatic countries regard pederasty, at most, as a mere peccadillo.[143] Among the Hindus it is said to be held in abhorrence,[144] but their sacred books deal with it leniently. According to the ‘Laws of Manu,’ “a twice-born man who commits an unnatural offence with a male, or has intercourse with a female in a cart drawn by oxen, in water, or in the day-time, shall bathe, dressed in his clothes”; and all these are reckoned as minor offences.[145]
[138] Koran, iv. 20.