A Mediterranean cruise ship carrying about 2,000 passengers, mainly homosexual men, on an LGBTQ-themed voyage has become an international story after being denied entry by two Muslim-majority states, Türkiye and Egypt, in the span of just a few days.
The Scarlet Lady had been scheduled to visit Kuşadası and Istanbul on 7 July, before Turkish authorities said the trip conflicted with local 'moral values', 'family values', and social norms. After an unsuccessful appeal, the ship was rerouted towards Alexandria.
However, on 9 July, Egypt also denied the vessel entry into its ports. Passengers were told by Atlantis chief executive Rich Campbell that the ship would not call in Alexandria and was seeking alternatives. Campbell said Atlantis had sailed a similar itinerary last year 'without issue'; Egypt has not publicly explained its decision.
The incident exploded on social media and made headlines, turning the story of the Scarlet Lady into a textbook example of how Western liberal assumptions collide with actual reality once they escape the Western information bubble.
Despite most mainstream media outlets and forums trying to downplay or even ignore it, Islam as a religion is traditionally and deeply hostile towards both LGBT issues and people. Its position is rooted in the Qur’anic story of Lot, which Muslim scholars have traditionally read as condemning male same-sex conduct.
Over time, hadith reports and Islamic legal scholarship turned that moral condemnation into legal doctrine, treating same-sex acts as forbidden sexual behaviour outside lawful marriage.
The Qur’an itself, however, does not provide a detailed punishment for homosexuality; the penalties later imposed in some Islamic legal systems were developed by jurists and then incorporated into modern state laws.
Iran’s Islamic Penal Code, for example, criminalizes male and female same-sex acts, with punishments including flogging and death. In 2022, Amnesty reported that LGBT rights defender Zahra Sedighi-Hamadani and Elham Choubdar were sentenced to death for ‘corruption on earth’, saying they were targeted over real or perceived sexual orientation, gender identity, and LGBT activism. Iran Human Rights also reported the January 2022 execution of Farid Mohammadi and Mehrdad Karimpour on charges of ‘sodomy by force’, a sexual offence carrying capital punishment.