When Tayseer, a Palestinian from Gaza, was 18, he was found in bed with a boyfriend by an older brother-and as a result was severely beaten by his family. His father threatened to strangle him if he ever had gay sex again.

A few months later, Tayseer was invited into an orange grove for sex by an undercover police agent of the Palestinian Authority, and subsequently arrested. Police told Tayseer that the only way for him to avoid prison was to become a Judas goat, to lure other gay men into sex so that they, too, could be arrested.

When he refused to be police bait in this entrapment scheme, Tayseer was hung by his arms from the ceiling. "A high-ranking officer he didn't know arranged for his release-and then demanded sex as payback."

When Tayseer fled Gaza for Tulkarem, he was eventually re-arrested, and forced to stand in neck-high sewage water with his head covered by a feces-filled sack. During one police interrogation, Tayseer was stripped and forced to sit on a Coke bottle...

...One of the most useful chapters in the book is Whitaker's dissection and refutation of the arguments of Joseph Massad, a controversial Columbia University professor and author of a widely-circulated essay complaining that gay rights in Arab and Muslim countries represent an imperialist "missionary" project orchestrated by what he calls the "Gay International."

In concluding his rebuttal of Massad, Whitaker writes that the Columbia academic and his acolytes present the debate "as a choice between cultural authenticity on the one hand and the adoption of all things Western on the other. In fact, neither is a realistic proposition...