Queer + Muslim = Possible
My love for Allah and the knowledge that Allah loves and cares for me deeply has always been at the center of my heart — for as long as I can remember. When others equated God with fear, judgement and punishment, it never made sense to me. It all felt so contrived by humans: parents, adults, others who wanted to manipulate others to bend to their will.
To me, the most high is the most merciful and benevolent and I thank Allah every day that I am a Muslim and that I am a queer Muslim woman. More than this, Allah placed within me all of my identities and who I am. Being queer is my God-given gift as is my gender identity and expression as if my love of cats, my humor — all of me is crafted by Allah.
Arriving at this moment of proud existence has been and continues to be a process amidst the external variables and pushback that challenges my living, breathing and being. The unpopularity of it all in the form of hate and the threats shapeshifting into fear and wondering, can I stop being me? The fear comes in multiple forms; the one I’ve struggled with the hardest has been the dismissal and erasure of my existence:
that as a queer person there is no space for me within Islam
that as a woman there is only one way I can be Muslim
that as a muslim there is no space for me within queer spaces
that as both, there is no safety or place for me within the United States
For a long time I internalized these messages as truth. I/we have few and far between (if any) role models to show us otherwise. I/we repeatedly experience micro-aggression after micro-aggression, left reeling in spaces we thought were space. I/we feel the sting and pain of explicit homophobia, racism, sexism and islamophobia within on an social, cultural and institutional level — our layers make the news. And I/we are here — existing after being told there is no such thing.
And for even longer, I tried to compartmentalize my identities — being Muslim Wazina in one space, being queer Wazina in other, being Afghan Wazina in another, thinking I could only have one because the others didn’t fit. It became exhausting and lonesome, even with people who said they loved me. And I was too afraid to let them see all of me.
Somewhere along the line, on those hardest of days, when I turned to Allah, I was reminded of my wholeness… and then life happened and I felt broken again. And on another heartbroken weekend, I went home to my family and I felt whole… and then life happened and I felt incomplete again. And on another hard day, the advice and kindness from my friend Terna had me feel warmth again… and then life happened and I felt lonely again. And somewhere I chose wanting to remain whole all the time, in every moment, joyful and not, and I committed myself to affirming the possibilities of being queer plus muslim.
This summer, I spent some time abroad in a Muslim-majority country where my heart felt so full in the presence of so many Muslims. I was also thoughtful about with whom I shared my work on queer Muslim issues. But when I did share, what so many people wanted to talk about more than the intersections of queerness and Islam was their personal journey with faith. Their heterosexual identity, their gender identity and the intersection of faith.
Thoughtlessly on my end, I had forgotten that this journey is not just mine — that this pain, the expectations, the pressures, the wounds and the healing, come in so many forms. Just like me, just like us, our allies don’t come automatically — they too need to get to the place where they learn from the process — and that is how we become I/we.
In the process of becoming, in our evolution of self, I hope I/we always remember that every part of you fits, independently and together, in the forms we were meant to take, not the forms projected onto us. We are not intended to replicate anyone else’s relationship with God, anyone else’s gender, nor anyone else’s model of partnership or relationships. Y/our successes are y/ours alone in the forms they are meant to take, the way Allah intended.
Wazina Zondon is the creator of Coming Out Muslim.
Reaching Out is a publication dedicated to gathering LGBTQ stories from people of all faiths under one roof and around one table.
