Tag Archives: Islam

Playing with Visibility: The Queer Muslim Project

icon drawing of the faces of four very different queer Muslims in a rainbow-patterned circleDebbie says:

With all the terrifying news about transphobia and homophobia around the world, I found joy in reading about the Queer Muslim Project, in this Gay Times article by Deena al-Aqsa. This project started in India and has built a global presence, with a remarkably wide set of initiatives and efforts.

The group works with youth on challenging stigma and misconceptions, and also with artists on self-representation. Here’s group founder Rafiul Alom Rahman on a couple of their art programs.

We have Language is a Queer Thing, an India-UK poetry exchange programme. Last year’s cohort of poets performed at the BBC Contains Strong Language Festival in Birmingham. This year, our second cohort will be performing for the same festival, this time in Leeds for the Year of Culture programme.

Another programme we’ve recently launched in partnership with Netflix is called the QueerFrames Screenwriting Lab. We’re looking to select 10 queer screenwriters from across India, from diverse communities, who can create new frames of reference for us to see queer stories on the screen.

We also have the Queer Writers’ Room, for South Asian writers aged 18-25. We finished the first run of that programme in June and we are now preparing for next year. There’s a common thread of stories, really working with storytellers, shifting the narrative and telling our own stories in our own voice. 

You begin to see the breadth and depth of their work; many organizations would struggle to get even one of these ambitious efforts off the ground.

In response to a question about coming out, Maniza Khalid, the organization’s Programmes and Innovations Officer, gets really nuanced and thoughtful:

We can’t think of it in a binaristic way of being “out” versus being closeted. It implies you can only be one or the other. But especially for queer Muslims, there are spaces where you are selective about what part of your identity you put out there. 

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Visibility can be a double-edged sword. There are pros and cons to it. When you’re visible, I feel like it’s very freeing because you’ve already crossed a certain threshold, but you also hold so much social responsibility. Because how many queer Muslims are out there, who owns that? How many of them are publicly, visibly presenting their narratives to the world?

We play with visibility and we try to use it very frugally because there are consequences to think of, in different contexts. We’d never pressure anyone or any community to be out because we don’t think it’s inherently advantageous.

Coming out is often portrayed as a simple issue: the courageous come out, so the folks who don’t come out are by definition not brave. Khalid’s analysis is much richer and more honest.

Rafi Rahman is equally thoughtful about the Muslim aspect of the work:

I think we need to be open to more diverse interpretations of the Quran and Islamic scriptures. There’s so much time, effort and labour that queer feminist Islamic scholars are putting into this. There is a new discourse that is allowing us to see Islam from a more queer-affirming lens. 

We can do our bit in educating and informing people about the alternative perspectives that are available. There are groups like Muslims for Progressive Values who have collated a bunch of queer Muslim resources on their website.

It’s this kind of grass-roots, community-driven, ambitious work that keeps the haters at bay, and affirms self-acceptance and self-representation for a wide range of people. You don’t have to be queer or Muslim to appreciate these activists and the change they will continue to make. Here’s Rafiul Rahman to close:

Faith cuts through all of our work, and we have a lot of nuanced conversations on faith and identity. We are also looking at possibilities of empowering artists and creating pathways for them in the creative industry. We hope that in doing so, we can really enable them to find that kind of leadership and space and voice.

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Thanks to Mona Eltahawy at Feminist Giant, and her colleague Samiha Hossain, who writes many of their global round-ups.

Debbie is no longer active on Twitter. Follow her on Mastodon.

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Quick Take: Iranian Muslim Women Offer a Nuanced Way to Think about Hijab

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Debbie says:

In my experience, the argument about Muslim women wearing hijab can go to a very simplistic place: either the hijab (or other forms of modest dress) represent a woman’s right to express her own religious choices in her own way, or it is a form of oppression against women which should be combatted at all costs. Unless, of course, it’s an appropriate demand placed on women based on a thousand-year religious tradition which should not be questioned–but I don’t tend to be in spaces where that argument is presented.

Masih Alinejad and Roya Hakakian, writing in the Washington Post, have rethought this argument in a really useful way (this article is also available in Arabic at the link):

There are two vastly different kinds of hijabs: the democratic hijab, the head covering that a woman chooses to wear, and the tyrannical hijab, the one that a woman is forced to wear.

In the first kind, a woman has agency. She sets the terms of her hijab, appearing as ascetic or as appealing as she wishes. She can also wear makeup and fashionable clothing if she likes.

In the second kind of hijab, the woman has no agency. Where we lived, the terms were set by Iranian government authorities under a mandatory dress code that banned women from wearing makeup in public and forced them to wear a baggy, knee-length garment to fully disguise the shape of their bodies, over a pair of pants and closed-toed shoes. For a while, the authorities even decreed the colors that women could wear: gray, black, brown or navy.

Thinking this way moves the question from the hijab, which is just a scarf until it’s draped over a woman’s head, to the question of choice: are you wearing whatever you’re wearing because you want to, or because you are compelled to? What do you risk by not wearing something? (The article authors reference a Saudi activist, “Nasrin Sotoudeh, who has been sentenced to 38 years in prison and 148 lashes after defending the women who have defied the hijab laws”.) Who governs your choices?

Talking about Iran (and Afghanistan, which is facing a potential return of the hyper-misogynist Taliban), Alinejad and Hakakian say:

Women who live under these forms of hijab effectively live under a gender apartheid. The coverings mark women as lesser citizens, legally and socially unequal. In Iran, there are restrictions on women’s ability to travel, obtain a divorce or enter sports stadiums. A woman’s courtroom testimony is in most cases given half the weight of a man’s. The forced hijab honors neither tradition nor religion; it is a powerful tool of misogynist oppression.

They also imply (without discussing, since it isn’t their topic) that in the U.S. and other western countries, a hijab can be an act of not just choice but courage in the face of white nationalist violence.

Last week, I was in Sacramento lobbying at the California State Capitol. It was Muslim Day of Action, sponsored by the California chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations. Literally five hundred Muslim residents of California were there to engage with their elected representatives, and most of the women were wearing hijab.  I really appreciated seeing the people there.

I have certainly known for a long time about the importance of choice in all areas of life, including clothing and religious clothing; nonetheless, Alinejad and Hakakian have given me a clearer framework to recognize what I am seeing.

Just as Americans must distinguish between violent radicals and ordinary Muslims to successfully fight the former and honor the rights of the latter, so must they recognize that not all hijabs are created equal. [U.S. Congresswoman Ilhan] Omar and other Muslim women who benefit from the freedom that America has bestowed on them are especially well-positioned to speak up for women forced into hijab.

By itself, the hijab is a mere piece of cloth. Tyranny turns it into a symbol of oppression. It is democracy, with its embrace of diversity, that turns hijab into an emblem of power or beauty for those who choose to wear it.