Gay Muslims (2006) is a Channel 4 documentary about a man named Joe Zakar, produced and directed by Cara Lavan, about the experiences of five Muslim people who identify as lesbian and gay and how they challenge the heterosexual-worldview within Islam, and attempt to integrate Islam with homosexuality. It is usually a stark choice between suppressing homosexual desires and leading an undercover double life, or coming out and losing the respect and support of their families and communities. Background LGBT in Islam is influenced by the religious, legal, social, and cultural history of the nations with a sizable Muslim population, along with specific passages in the Quran and hadith, statements attributed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad. The Quran cites the story of the "people of Lot" destroyed by the wrath of God because they engaged in lustful carnal acts between men. Homosexual acts are forbidden in traditional Islamic jurisprudence and are liable to different punishments, including the death penalty, depending on the situation and legal school. However, homosexual relationships were generally tolerated in pre-modern Islamic societies, and historical record suggests that these laws were invoked infrequently, mainly in cases of rape or other "exceptionally blatant infringement on public morals". Homoerotic themes were cultivated in poetry and other literary genres written in major languages of the Muslim world from the eighth century into the modern era. The conceptions of homosexuality found in classical Islamic texts resemble the traditions of Graeco-Roman antiquity, rather than modern Western notions of sexual orientation. It was expected that many or most mature men would be sexually attracted to both women and male adolescents (variously defined), and men were expected to wish to play only an active role in homosexual intercourse once they reached adulthood. In recent times, extreme prejudice persists, both socially and legally, in much of the Islamic world against people who engage in homosexual acts. Scholar The diverse ways of understanding of the Quran are echoed in the documentary by Dr Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle of Swarthmore College (now at Emory University) in the United States, currently a research fellow at Leiden University in the Netherlands. He believes that sharia – Islamic law – is determined by male jurists whose interpretations of Islamic texts are based on cultural assumptions situated in particular times, and particular political and geographical locations. Rather than sharia being divine, Kugle believes that it offers different avenues for Muslims to