More fallout from the war: some Muslim allies of the United States may take this opportunity to crack down on gay men and lesbians in their countries. (World).

An Arabic saying, roughly translated, warns: "Beat the constrained, and it is the free who will be frightened."

In many Muslim countries oppressive rulers have long used their local gay and lesbian populations as public whipping boys to chill, all kinds of dissenting voices at home.

International human fights observers fear that the September 11 attacks on the United States and the subsequent U.S. bombing of Afghanistan--a Muslim country--could make gays and lesbians living in many of those Muslim countries the latest casualties of the terrorist attacks.

"A lot of governments stir up controversies in their own countries in order to deflect attention away from the government itself," notes Sydney Levy, a spokesman for the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, based in San Francisco. "Gay people are frequently the targets of this kind of government manipulation."

Under normal circumstances, human rights groups try to counter the violations by raising media attention and by pushing the international community to bring political pressure on offending governments to curb their abuses.

But with press attention focused on the war in Afghanistan, most news outlets have neither the interest nor the resources to cover human rights abuses of gay men and lesbians in the Islamic world, Levy says.

At the same time, in its willingness to "trade away everything" in exchange for getting skeptical Islamic countries to sign on to President Bush's war on terrorism, the United States is giving an implicit go-ahead to further human rights violations, he says. "Governments that join with the United States are going to read this as a green light to crack down on all kinds of dissent at home, including on gays and lesbians. The U.S. government isn't going to risk alienating governments of Muslim countries in order to save a few foreign homosexuals. It's highly likely we are going to see an increased insurgence in antigay activities."

He and others point to a current drama unfolding in Egypt as a perfect example of their fears.

In May, 52 men were arrested in a raid on the Queen Boat, a floating disco on the Nile known as a gay hangout. While foreigners on the Queen Boat were released, Egyptian men were rounded up, arrested, and jailed. Though Egypt has no specific law against homosexuality, the men were charged with committing "obscene behavior" and showing "contempt for religion." Some of those detained were not even on the boat at the time of the raid but were rounded up because they were suspected of being gay or simply because they were in the boat's vicinity. Many of the men may not be gay.

Imprisoned since their arrest, the men have reportedly been beaten and otherwise tortured. Their trials--which have been extensively covered in Egyptian newspapers since August--are expected to conclude sometime in November. Their eventual sentences cannot be appealed. A 15-year-old boy caught up in the scandal has already been condemned to the maximum three-year juvenile sentence for "indecency and debauchery." The adult men face possible prison terms of three months to nine years.

Over the summer, the plight of the 52 Egyptian men received a swell of worldwide media attention, and the trials were getting international scrutiny. In August a letter signed by 35 members of the U.S. House of Representatives--including two who are openly gay, Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Tanuny Baldwin of Wisconsin--was sent to Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, protesting the arrest of the men and their mistreatment in jail. Since September 11, however, barely a peep has been heard about the men. And Levy fears their chances of beating the charges against them or even receiving minimal sentences are slim.

Egypt is not alone. "Since September 11, we've received an increased number of incidents of gays and lesbians coming under government attack in Lebanon, Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia," says Ramzi Zakharia, a gay Palestinian living in Jersey City, N.J., and cofounder of the Gay and Lesbian Arab Society; Zakharia receives reports, primarily through E-mails, from gays and lesbians in those countries. "These regimes consider they now have carte blanche to crack down on anyone, and gays and lesbians are always at the top of their list of victims. They've signaled quite clearly to the United States to lay off on human rights objections in return for being part of the alliance against terrorism. So now there is this unspoken agreement to turn a blind eye."

Governments in many Islamic countries will likely use this reprieve from international pressure regarding human rights to appease the Islamic religious right in their own countries, explains Faisal Alam, a Pakistani-American Muslim living in Washington, D.C., who is founder of the gay and lesbian Muslim group AlFatiha. "Just like American government officials have political pressure from Christian fundamentalists, other governments have similar pressure from Islamic fundamentalists," he says. "One way governments have long caved in to fundamentalists is to crack down on gays." He predicts the backlash will be worse in such Muslim countries as Indonesia and Malaysia, where in the past few years gay men and lesbians have won some degree of freedom to meet in clubs and establish their own organizations. "This will be an excuse to turn the clock back."

Furthermore, adds Ifti Nasim, an openly gay Muslim poet in Chicago, there will likely be increased tension in what some Muslim right-wingers have long perceived as a cultural battle between the West and Islam. Homosexuality is often presented by such religious groups as a Western corruption or sickness, he says. "Western culture is very popular in a lot of the Islamic world," says Nasim, cofounder of a South Asian lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender organization. "Islamic extremists see it as an aggression on their culture, and they have been losing the cultural battle for a long time. You can be sure they will cast the current situation as part of what they perceive as a continued showdown between the West and Islam. And that can only make things worse for Muslim gays and lesbians."

Dahir also writes for Self, Business Traveler, and Good Housekeeping.