Hana A Khalyleh

The Republic | azcentral.com

In the days and weeks after a Muslim American man killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando — shootings that were carried out in the name of ISIS — Muslim leaders across Arizona made efforts to publicly condemn the attack.

At the same time, LGBT Muslims found themselves in the position of defending a faith that has not always accepted them and, in some cases, confronting the fears and questions of people in the communities where the parts of their lives and identities converge.

Johnny Martin, a 23-year-old Phoenix Muslim and activist for interfaith relations, was among members of the Muslim community standing in solidarity with those in mourning, attending candlelight vigils across the Valley and decrying the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando as deviant from Islam.

“I don't believe (the killer’s) actions reflect Islam in any way,” Martin said. “It is disheartening to know that our Muslim community will face a backlash.”

Martin is the president of Sun Devils Are Better Together, or SunDABT, a student-run interfaith coalition at Arizona State University designed to bring members of different faiths and non-faiths together for open communication. In the wake of the killings in Orlando, he spoke out not only as an interfaith activist or as a Muslim, but as a member of the LGBT community.

“Horror. Shock. Sadness,” Martin said regarding his reaction to the shooting. “But I'm inspired by the efforts of groups like SunDABT to seek hope and peace during this difficult time.”

Martin, who identifies as bisexual, converted to Islam in 2014, and though the voices of LGBT Muslims in America might seem few, he is not the only Muslim in the metro Phoenix LGBT community to speak out against Islamophobia while also dealing with the grief of the 49 lives lost in Orlando.

The Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity (MASGD) issued a statement after the shooting, which coincided not only with LGBT Pride month but also with the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, during which many Muslims fast from sun up to sun down and engage with their communities to promote charity and self-reflection. On its website, the alliance said: “It pains us that these periods of joy, celebration, and peace have been violently marred with horror.”

LGBT and queer Muslims across the country say they are using the spotlight on their faith to promote a message of peace, while also drawing attention to the layers of marginalization they experience, and the backlash they see through their own communities.

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'How does it feel to be part of a religion that kills people?'

When Nicolas Anthony Magallanez, 22, a gay Latino Shiite Muslim from Litchfield Park, heard about the Orlando shooting, his initial reaction was one of disbelief. He followed closely with a personal prayer.

“I just kept saying to myself, ‘I hope the guy wasn’t a Muslim, please God,’ because the reaction is always the same,” Magallanez said.

Magallanez is familiar with the backlash Muslim communities face after crimes carried out by terrorist groups make the news. In November, he made national headlines when he took to social media to write about Islamophobic messages he received over Grindr, a gay-dating app, shortly after the ISIS attacks in Paris.

“People know I’m Muslim,” Magallanez said. “It’s not a secret. And when something like this happens, I get met with anger and confusion and questions. ‘How are you going to make up for this? How are you going to fix this? How does it feel to be part of a religion that kills people?’ ”

Magallanez is a college student, working as a barista while studying to obtain his journalism degree from ASU. Online, he spends his time promoting activism on social media for feminist and social-justice causes, including LGBT rights and the fight against Islamophobia — two experiences he considers not at odds with each other, but intertwined.

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“People who know me see me as the guy who cooks, the guy who works at Starbucks, as a nice person, as a friend,” Magallanez said. “But then something like this happens and they remember that I’m a Muslim and the sentiment always becomes that I need to apologize, or I personally need to do something that makes up for what what one man did in Orlando. I get put in the same box as him.”

Tensions are often on the rise in the wake of acts of terror, and the stress between communities can manifest itself in hateful ways. In June, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, reported that in 2015 alone, there were more than 75 attacks against American mosques. In each of the last two months of the year, after the ISIS attacks in Paris, there were 17 incidents, figures that would have previously reflected the number of attacks in a single year during each of the previous two years.

Shortly after the attacks in Orlando, the director of CAIR’s department dedicated to fighting Islamophobia, Corey Saylor, said there had been a spike in Islamophobic attacks against people perceived to be Muslim and on Islamic mosques, a trend that is getting more and more apparent for Muslims across the country.

Sumayyah Dawud, a transgender Muslim woman, agreed with the sentiment that Islamophobic rhetoric is more openly delivered after incidents like the shooting in Orlando.

“Hours after the attack, there was definitely a pushing of the narrative that this was caused by Islam, that it was because of the religion itself, by people trying to stir up Islamophobia,” said Dawud, a Phoenix human-rights activist. “I’m appalled and disgusted by this narrative, but I’m also not surprised, because this happens every time there is a shooter or bomber who happens to be Muslim.”

Dawud made waves at the Tempe Islamic Community Center last September after rules were put in place barring her from attending group prayers and religious events unless she could provide medical documentation she is “anatomically female.” She attends rallies and protests for the remembrance of transgender individuals and for the Black Lives Matter campaign, usually wearing a hijab, abaya and niqab — Islamic dress and garb that covers everything but the hands and eyes.

Her experience at the community center made national headlines, and that, she said, coupled with her choice of dress, makes her easily identifiable as a Muslim, and subject to unfair assumptions.

“This country has seen white Christians walk into malls and movie theaters to kill people, and I don’t hear anyone talking about Christianity itself killing people,” Dawud said, speaking of the backlash she has seen the Muslim community experience. “No one ever talks about how race or religion are responsible for an attack unless the attack was carried out by Muslims.”

'In the Muslim community, I have to deal with transphobia. In the LGBT community, I have to deal with Islamophobia'

Being a gay or transgender Muslim can come with its own brand of challenges within the LGBT community, Magallanez said.

“A lot of people don’t really know what Islam is outside of their television screens, and when the only representations you get are from 'Homeland,' the news, and that one girl from 'Orange is the New Black,' people don’t really know much and they have questions,” Magallanez said. “For lots of people, they have never met a gay Muslim, and they assume that these two experiences are exclusive or independent of one another, when they really aren’t.”

It is hard to find any statistics on the LGBT population of countries in the Muslim world, but it is much easier to find surveys and opinions on LGBT equality in Middle Eastern countries, many of which have passed laws making it difficult to openly identify as LGBT. In polls by the Pew Research Center in 2013 in several Muslim countries, acceptance of homosexuality was well below 15 percent among all groups polled.

Even so, Magallanez said attitudes toward the LGBT communities in the United States also contributed toward what occurred in Orlando.

“There have been generations of Americans who wanted the LGBT community dead, and now they’re willing to call it an exclusively Islamic trait when 49 of us lost our lives in Orlando,” Magallanez said. “People like to make things about them and withhold all responsibility. I got a lot of comments from people saying, ‘This is one of the worst tragedies in American history’ and one of my first reactions is always, ‘This isn’t American history, this is queer history happening right here.’

“This man did not attack something that Americans have consistently stood for,” Magallanez said. “There are Americans saying that we can’t use the same bathrooms as them, or who said for the longest time that we can’t get married, or that we can’t fight in the same armed forces. These things have changed, but laws don’t change people or attitudes.”

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Dawud agreed. “I don’t think anyone is disputing that the victims were American,” she said, "but the victims were members of the Latino community, as well as the LGBT community, and these types of statements were distracting from the issues of a historically and currently marginalized community in American society. In the Muslim community, I have to deal with transphobia. In the LGBT community, I have to deal with Islamophobia.”

Martin said his background often makes people curious, but he is glad that it opens up conversations about Islam within the LGBT community.

“The only people who were surprised (by my identity) were those who hadn't been forced to acknowledge the awareness of queer Muslims before then,” Martin said. “It is not a part of my life that I try to hide or keep secret because I do not believe that it is sinful or wrong. Most of my LGBTQ+ friends seem fascinated by my story of converting to Islam, and they often want to know more about my faith and practices. Alhamdulillah (thank God), the LGBT community has always been very open-minded and inclusive in nature.”

Responsibility of Islam

Even while defending their faith from what they see as unfair attacks, some LGBT Muslims feel that criticism of Islamic communities concerning internal homophobia and transphobia is warranted and needs to be addressed.

“I wouldn’t say that Islamic communities are completely blameless,” Magallanez said. “There is a huge faction of the community saying that homosexuality is wrong, even though the Quran never mentions homosexuality. There are some verses that could be interpreted to be talking about homosexuality, but they could also be interpreted in other ways.”

Dawud said in her interactions with Islamic community gatherings, it was commonplace to experience homophobia or transphobia. She also said she spotted hypocrisy among Muslim leaders who would ignore her plight when she reached out for support during her dispute with the Tempe Islamic Community Center, but who would still appear publicly to stand in solidarity with the LGBT community.

“There are several LGBT Muslims in Arizona who reached out to me when my story got out there, who are questioning their assigned gender identity, or are questioning their sexuality, who are not getting the support they need from many leaders in this community,” Dawud said. “The leaders act one way, but then say something completely different once the cameras get rolling.”

While many LGBT Muslims might say Islamic communities play a role in their marginalization, this is not a universal experience across all with the shared identities.

“My community has been very supportive, alhamdulillah,” Martin said. “However, I'm blessed as an American convert to have most of my Muslim friends deeply involved in the interfaith movement. They tend to have the empathy and compassion to accept me in all the different ways God made me.”

Even so, he agreed with Dawud that Islamic communities would benefit from more inclusive safe spaces for the LGBT community, and that conversations on how to move forward need to take place.

"We can't wait for tragedy to strike to come together across lines of difference," he said. "People with different worldviews and belief systems need to build bridges of tolerance, cooperation, and understanding if we are to have a brighter future after this senseless massacre.”