For both Islam and Queerness, it is seldom you ever find uniformity. Our attitudes and way of relating our sexualities, genders, form in their own unique ways, with common attributes that are yet not universally shared. Our struggles and what we face also overlap but never perfectly so. In this article, I hope I may be able to reflect this.

“I go between periods of feeling like Allah would still love me, maybe even more for being honest about myself. And other times the comments online get to me, and I feel like maybe I am going to hell… I don’t know how to feel sometimes” said Tay, one of my early interviewees.

Tay’s relationship with Islam hasn’t been unique in some respects. Converting in her late teenage years and then having a falling out with Islam before returning after some time. Her words are relatable to undoubtedly more than a few of her fellow converts and those born into the faith.

Often there is a pressure, both open and intentionally applied and unspoken and not necessarily intentional that to be a ‘Good Muslim’ you must outwardly appear Muslim enough. You open up a Twitter feed even somewhat connected to those in Muslim Twitter, you can find a range of personal stories, quotations from Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the words of scholars or faith channels. While well-intentioned, these words can often also pressure people towards standards that they may not be able to reach.

This only becomes more exacerbated when more malicious groups of what’s been dubbed ‘The Haraam Police’ go out and bully people who don’t meet their often arbitrary lines of what constitutes correctness. This issue is one that many Muslims face in the physical world, but the online variation can often seem the most unrelenting and hurtful of them all.

Photo by Eylül Yorgancı on Unsplash

“I don’t struggle with the question of whether Allah has condemned me, it’s my fellow Muslims,” says Noor. “Because of the way Muslims in general and mainstream Islamic thought is so anti-gay, it makes me feel far away from Islam.”

This is another very common string throughout the experiences of many Queer Muslims, for all the preaching of love and unity as one Ummah (community) that many religious authorities as much as random every day Muslims you’ll meet in the streets, your membership seems predicated on a fixed set of identities.

A celebration of diversity and of the equality of people between people is one of the many beautiful things about Islam, with both the Quran and the Sunnah (tradition) of the Prophet clearly outlining the idea that one human is not superior to another except by their own actions. Of course, history has seen this ignored too many times, but as a trait our faith demands of us to respect, it is advertised by many, only for the doors of such open embracing to be slammed shut by many of our own institutions and communities should we fall into a category of guilt by mere existence.

To live as a queer person within our religious community is hard both on us in the present as well as for those who were born Muslim or became Muslim at a young age, within our own childhoods, either if we knew of our own queerness from a young age, or we had to go through the arduous process of self-discovery. Within the heteronormative nexus of culture, colonization, scripture, and the reinforcement and expansion of homophobia as a result of or reaction to colonialism, we find ourselves being almost definitionally counter-orthodoxy by existing, whether we want to be in this contradicting position or not.

“I had to go through a mountain of useless articles and YouTube videos to finally learn that homosexuality in itself isn’t a sin but acting on it is.” Mariam said to me in my interview with her.

As much as in Queer Muslim circles there are well-known attempts to refute the basic assertion that the Quran condemns homosexuality through the story of the Prophet Lot, there is also a stream of Queer Muslims who do follow the traditional line of the sinfulness of homosexual acts. But for those who I have interviewed this is a minority view.

It should be noted however that while this is a minority view, it is so for a small group of English-speaking individuals who feel comfortable giving their voices to this article, and can’t represent its actual buy-in in the wider population.

Even though the view that homosexuality is at least permissible in Islam is more common among the interviewees than the view that it isn’t, the means to which the various interviewees came to such a conclusion is indicative of the experience of living as a queer person within our religious communities, an experience often recalled in terms of isolation and fear.

For some, it can be a matter of exploring heterodox sources and scholarship.

“Originally my gender & sexuality was an issue, but I explored more obscure shaykhs for their perspective, as well as coming to realize that in the end gender & sexuality do not impede my faith nor my salvation.” Hisham explained to me early on in our interview “Keep in mind I’m rather heterorthodox” this can for many be an important aspect for self-acceptance and a way to combat the hegemonic nature of many arguments that claim Homosexuality to be a sin, not even restrained to the act as more considered but still prohibitive readings provide but to the very presence of queerness irrespective of acts.

Vianna takes another common route for many Queer Muslims, one that sidesteps specifics of scripture for broader wider-ranging themes and attributions “We were raised to understand that first and foremost, God loves us. As a result, I don’t look for scripture to support retribution. I naturally notice the merciful aspect and how I navigate Islam reflects that. Bismillah — In the Name of God, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful, opens all but one chapter of the Quran”.

This line of thought approaches not from the scholarly, with all the potential for endless investigations into the very wording and historical context on single vowels or ancient traditions of law, but from that of one of the most accessible and clear to see aspects of Islamic theology, the very names attributed to God. When God is described in English as The Loving, what is described is not that God is loving, but that God is loving beyond all constraints of this limited universe and our own capacities as we live our lives shackled to this finite world in a finite slice of time that will end someday.

While this may not necessarily represent a way to confront narratives from scholarship, it is easier to understand, and is more primordial to the relationship between creation and the divine. It can be endlessly debated as to the precise nature of what the Prophet Lot condemns in scripture, but it is near on considered heresy to challenge the breadth of these attributes, and thus the very station and nature of God core to Islamic theology.

“We were raised to understand that first and foremost, God loves us.”

Another route simply comes through self-reflection and the healing of wounds left from trying to reconcile what is insisted to be irreconcilable. “I had a bit of a crisis of faith and thought I had to leave Islam.” one of the interviewees said to me as she explained the process of navigating her faith and sexuality. “I felt like a hypocrite for the longest time, because I couldn’t fathom being queer and being Muslim at the same time. It’s only recently that it’s become easier. Now I’m happy identifying as both!”

Azrael’s route is of particular interest. “When I was growing up I learned not to be homophobic in public, which lead to me having gay friends at school and learning their stories. It also helps that my dad encouraged me to question everything, so I was open-minded when I learned about LGBT struggles.” This was part of a very long process for Azrael which lead them to reconcile their beliefs with Islam. “I truly felt confident in my views after talking with my dad, all the arguments he has against the LGBT movement are pretty weak. I haven’t come out to him yet, but when he tried to diminish my queerness, he ended up affirming it.”

For some, there is a combination of more than one of these approaches, and others not mentioned here. “I contacted many prominent Shia scholars and got varying opinions. The varying opinions made it clear that these issues were not of consequence in the Quran or in any other scriptures or writings. I also prayed a lot and continue to pray a lot when I can.” Zoya says. “Some scholars were totally affirming. Some said someone cast black magic on me”

These are many roads to which many Queer Muslims may take in order to find reconciliation between faith and queerness. Yet it is not from just our siblings in faith we find frustration and rejection.

For the power over life and death that many states and groups who proclaim their mission of enforcing God’s law, and the hostility they push towards us, they are not the only quarter from which our identities are scrutinized, our experiences and identities abused and these important components of ourselves treated with suspicion and bigotry.

It is from western non-religious queer communities we also face at best frustration from well-worn tropes and at worst rejection and an alliance of crusader wannabes with the queers they would otherwise see slaughtered. While not holding the same power over our lives as religious authorities or society in certain states, the experience of queerness in the West often overlaps with an admitted weariness towards religion.

It is undeniable that many queer people, religious or not, face trauma coming from the Church, the Mosque, the practices that have been shoehorned to try fit a Christian-centric definition of religion. The trauma of homophobia as exemplified by the Church for many is serious and must be acknowledged.

Yet even with this acceptance, the infusion of early 2010’s internet style contempt for religion and those who practice it is rampant within queer circles. Islam it feels, in particular, is the target of such attitudes as toxic as they are, especially when mixed with already-prevalent problems of racism, cultural appropriation, and colonialist language used regularly by many in the mainstream of white queerness.

For many of us, we also find our words and our writings twisted horrifically to try to prove our faith’s ‘Barbarity’.

As much as many queer spaces can pride themselves for their deviation from the heterosexual norm, whatever pretence of righteous opposition to the injustices and cruelties of our societal status-quo breaks apart into the same Islamophobic tirades and national ego-thumping of the superior white western liberal over the ‘Barbaric backwards Muslim’.

Where once European clergy and royalty ingrained the fear of the sexually free Orient, that mystical land beyond the ‘civilized torch’ of Christendom, within the cultures of their kingdoms and empires. Today the enlightened white liberal scaremongers from the cosmetically modified scripts of evangelical doom-seekers, the scripture of the white man’s rainbow tick’d burden, and the gospel of colonial propaganda of the inherent barbarity of the coloured sexually repressive Muslim world.

“I felt like a hypocrite for the longest time, because I couldn’t fathom being queer and being Muslim at the same time. It’s only recently that it’s become easier. Now I’m happy identifying as both!”

While some will call these analogies as being over the top, it doesn’t detract from a very basic experience Queer Muslims face in many LGBT accepting places–in fact, it can be very much a heightened issue.

In a post-9/11 world where groups such as Daesh have executed many ‘effeminate’ men on the suspicion that as a result, they are gay, the response in the West from both members of the queer community and from our liberal allies has included condescension towards our faith and a relegation of it as somehow uniquely ‘barbaric’ and worthy of all the racist tropes and stereotypes that would cause outrage for some if it was applied to non-white Christian groups and states.

As much as it must always be sincerely acknowledged that religion has been used to play horrible crimes out, many anti-theistic and Islamaphobic attitudes towards those Queer Muslims who do not renounce their faith is pervasive. Often accompanied by references to bacon, bestiality, and violent misogyny as somehow a requirement to be able to practice our faith, and falls in line with the violent rhetoric of right-wing and evangelical thought but with lip-service towards equality and the principles of humanitarianism.

“I’ve always remained a Muslim at heart, and never gave up on that identity even when it was heavily challenged by the secular makeup of French society.” Says Assem, describing the pressures many Muslims are faced with to give up their faith by society. “There was a lot of peer pressure early on me to abandon my religion, but I’ve never yielded to it since I always felt that my religion was an integral part of my identity. It’s never something I could easily give up.”

While this feeling is certainly true for many Muslims, not just those who lie at the intersection of queerness and faith, it is charged in a way from our very intersection of what many presumptively judge to be an impasse — the grand contradiction.

“I’m not your enemy,” Tay says when asked on what non-muslim LGBT people can do to help their Muslim counterparts “We could accomplish so much together if we’d just get along. A lot of you already do but some have a lot of work to do”

This sentiment is echoed a lot, both by interviewees and in my own experience–and in a way, it can be heartbreaking. In queer spaces and circles, we find refuge when our more traditional familial, social and cultural spaces do not have the capacity or do not want to acknowledge our right to exist. Yet when in the spaces we hoped to find refuge, we instead have hostility and contempt for what is one of the most intimate aspects of our identities.

“Too often do I hear non-Muslim or non-religious LGBT people try to denounce our religion, as if us dropping the religion will stop all our problems. It will not, religion is something important to me,” Zoya says.

Just removing our religion from the picture doesn’t mean that all troubles will vanish. It assumes that we even want to give up these important parts of who we are. Such attitudes of ‘just become an atheist’ can often come off as cold-hearted or in some cases actively malicious. Actions by non-Muslim queer people to demand we renounce Islam only shows again the aptness of Vanessa Taylor in saying:

“[How a non-Muslim] can help, I’d say, is be accepting of the fact that I’m Muslim, that it’s a hard thing to come to terms with along with my gender and sexuality.” another interviewee said.

When I asked Electra about what could non-Muslim LGBT people could do to help their Muslim siblings in queerness, she responded: “Stand up for Islam when the queers say shit about it, and let people know that being queer/trans doesn’t lock you out of faith.”

Vianna agrees with Electra, when I asked her the same question she urged solidarity. “Be a good ally. It’s not hard. Listen to what we need, and stand up to bigots and bullies the way you would want someone to stand up for you. We know what it’s like to be marginalized.”

Assem, when asked this question, expands this somewhat. “Don’t dwell on the intercommunal issues that Muslims are still wrestling with regarding queer identity” he says, before adding another layer to this general principle. “This could be the entire difference between embracing someone into a community and helping them bloom, or have it become a tragedy like the Orlando shooting, where that isolation becomes fuel for actions that hurt the whole of society.”

Image courtesy of Hidayah LGBT

Another aspect that Noor brought up as I asked her was simple but also brings many many other ways that our non-Muslim companions in queer spaces can help Queer Muslims: “I think the best thing for people to do is not assume that a Muslim in a queer space is there as an ally. A lot of times we get thanked for showing up to support the community when I’M PART OF THE COMMUNITY.”

Another aspect here, which requires a whole article unto itself is also brought up by Noor in this instance. “Another thing is that LGBT people in the West shouldn’t treat Islam as if it’s Christianity, meaning Muslims in the West aren’t the oppressors or the ones fighting hardest against our rights.” This touches on an interesting subject, just how problematic many ‘critiques’ of Islam both from LGBT and Non-LGBT people can be boiled down to christian-coded critiques of religions that share little with christianity.

Following many wonderful people from J-Twitter (Jewish Twitter) has given me the language, including for Muslims, to articulate the experience of being a religious minority within the Christian-centric West. Although atheism in the West is growing particularly strongly in recent years, those who end up leaving the Church often, however, bring with them assumptions and basic conceptions of religion that try to squeeze ‘religion’ into an entirely Christian-centric framework. Terms like ‘Christian Atheism’, ‘Culturally Christian’ and ‘Christian Hegemony’ for instance, are important tools for which not just Jewish people, but Muslims and those of other faiths can use to describe living in a space where the Christian framework is the overwhelming norm.

But in the end for Islam, and for Muslims, our religion is more than just laws–it’s also one of a personal relationship with God. Where we need no Bishops to speak for us because we are unworthy, where we do not subordinate ourselves to a single human institution of our faith, but instead have a diversity of views, scholarship and modes of understanding our relationship to faith, to law, and to the divine.

The very relationship between God and the servant (a common term referring in Islamic scripture to Muslims) is about as varied as there are Muslims who live, strands of commonality exist but even so each person’s relationship is unique, personal, and has only two members, the Muslim and their God.

“I argue with God often,” Azrael told me when I asked their relationship with God. “Sometimes I’ll be reading the Quran and a verse confuses the hell out of me, and I sometimes wonder “Why did X happen” or “Why does Y exist”, sometimes I stay up all night distracted by existential questions. But every time I come out with a lot more faith in God or a better connection with a Muslim community that’s willing to help with the hard questions”

Hisham voices a similar view. “It’s complicated at times. I find myself questioning why I exist and if there is a God, but I always return to Him. In the end, I need to remind myself God is not His worst worshippers.”

Another interviewee voiced how that process was for her when she was younger: “I would say the relationship has been tumultuous at times. But now I think I’ve reached a place in my life where it’s a nourishing and fruitful relationship. It’s taken a long time, but I know that Allah made me the way I am, and that’s a Queer Muslim person.”

For others, the relation can be summed up in more familial terms. “I mostly treat my relationship as both friendly and paternal if that makes sense. It’s like how my relationship with my dad is. Except I can’t hide from God, but I like to believe God is more forgiving and understanding,” another interviewee told me.

Others describe their relationships differently still.

“My relationship with God is one of turmoil, one of uncertainty and definitely one where I don’t feel like I’m always catered to the way I should be. I find it healthy and natural to ponder the relationship between God and their servant not as something where someone is always a beneficiary of other side’s actions,” Assem said about his relationship with God. “[It has to be one] where you do not bind your faith to something as fragile as wellness, or in my own case, complete alignment with my own political ideals. It’s a relationship with it’s ups and downs.”

Vianna too makes her own point, one that particularly strikes a lot of what I myself aspire to do and be. “I turn to Allah, the Quran, and the Sunnah when I need Guidance. I try to live up to the love I’ve experienced and support people with kindness and presence whenever I can. I embrace the person Allah created me to be. I want to be a light in the darkness whenever I can. Others may not like how I live my life, but I’m not doing it for them, I’m doing it for Allah.”

Our relationships with God, to our cultures and our social circles, our relationships with queerness and queer culture, each is infinitely variable and shifts and evolves through time and the experience of humanity. Yet it is ours and the stories that we have, our struggles, and our triumphs. We have voices that deserve to be heard, not exploited for the gains of those who hate us.