Khaled El-Rouayheb

You should read at least the introduction and the first chapter of Khaled El-Rouayheb's Before Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic World, 1500-1800 by the University of Chicago.  His work (and that of dear comrade Joseph Massad) settles once and for all the notion that Liwat should be treated as an Arabic version of the word Homosexuality.  El-Rouayheb criticizes those Orientalists and others (like me in an old article from 1993 in Arab Studies Journal titled "A Note on the Study of Homosexuality in the Arab-Islamic Civilization") merely translated Liwat as Arabic for homosexuality.  His case is very convincing.  I still, however, argue that there were notions for homosexuality beyond the technical meanings of it as was used in Arabic.  But I don't have time alas to get into this now.