At the same time, homosexual relationships were, in practice, generally tolerated in pre-modern Islamic societies, and historical records suggest that laws against homosexuality were invoked infrequently - mainly in cases of rape or other "exceptionally blatant infringement on public morals" as defined by Islamic law. The types of punishment prescribed for non-heterosexual activities include flogging, stoning, and the death penalty, depending on the particular situation and the school of thought. Homosexual acts were forbidden ( haram) in traditional Islamic jurisprudence and therefore were subject to punishment. There is little evidence of homosexual practices being prevalent in Muslim societies for the first century and a half of Islamic history, although male homosexual relationships were known of and discriminated against in Arabia, but not met with sanctions. Sexual activity between women is generally viewed as a significantly lesser offense than sexual activity between men, and this is reflected in the laws of some Muslim-majority countries there are typically harsher punishments for male offenders than for female offenders or, in some cases, bias in the form of legalizing lesbian activity while criminalizing gay activity. To this end, anything other than heterosexual activity - chiefly vaginal intercourse between a biological man and a biological woman (i.e., not transgender) - is eligible for punishment under Islamic law. At the same time, "both the Quran and the hadith strongly condemn homosexual activity" and some hadith advocate the death penalty for people who engage in any homosexual acts. However, modern historians from the Western world have argued that Muhammad, the main Islamic prophet, never forbade homosexual relationships outright, although he disapproved of them in line with his contemporaries. The Quran mentions the "people of Lot" and, echoing the narrative of the Hebrew Bible, describes how God destroyed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah because of their residents' engagement in homosexual acts. Within the Muslim world, sentiment towards LGBT people may vary between societies and individual Muslims, but is largely negative.
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