We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir

by Samra Habib

It seemed that no matter how much her burka covered her up and hid her silhouette, nothing could protect her from the vulgar comments and predatory eyes of neighbourhood men.

She lived in a country where countless women are found dead in alleyways and on the sides of dirt roads, their bodies discarded because they were not able to conceive children, particularly boys.

Who belonged if none of us did?

despite our differences, we were all terrified of the same people.

after all, what was more permanent than death?

Azaad is a funny word in Urdu. In most instances, it means “freedom.” Freedom from your captors, war, and oppressive regimes. But when used to describe a woman, it is meant to imply that she is too wild to be tamed by those who have the right to tame her: her parents and all the men in her life whose honour it is her duty to prioritize before her desires.

Grown-ups, who are supposed to protect their children, are limited by what “best” has felt like to them, based on the circumstances they grew up in and the privilege they did or did not have.

My mother had failed to give me a better life than hers because she didn’t have the blueprint to show me what my best could look like.

Maybe home was simply any place where you felt seen and welcome.

why don’t we ever see someone above the age of fifty being pushed on the swings or eating an ice cream cone with sprinkles?

being queer, I learned, is so much more than who you sleep with. It’s who you are, whether that means rejecting traditional gender roles or embracing non-normative identities and politics.

After all, chosen families are a cornerstone of queer culture, especially for those whose biological families don’t accept them.

Being surrounded by great people isn’t a fluke. It’s almost like solving a math problem, finding variables, adding and subtracting to figure out a formula that works. Being surrounded by people who fuel you is intentional.

But for most of my twenties, Islam felt like a parent dishing out conditional love: I had no right to call myself Muslim because I’m queer and don’t wear the hijab.

After all, Islam is not a monolithic religion.

we had come together because we were unhappy with how queer Muslims are made to feel in mainstream mosques—as though we were all sinners who were going to hell. Many of us had been made to feel rejected by Allah at times when we needed him most. I loved that we were questioning and reimagining not just what it means to be Muslim in the twenty-first century but how to apply Islamic teachings to our present-day lives.

Relearning how to pray—focusing on the words and the prayer steps, such as kneeling in front of God in sajda—taught me that completely surrendering yourself to something you love is a gift. In fact, it’s in the getting lost that you find yourself.

Representation is a critical way for people to recognize that their experiences—even if invisible in the mainstream—are valid.

For the longest time queer Muslims have been made to feel that our fears, pains, needs, and desires are not valid because, before the existence of social media, we largely lived in isolation from others who shared them.

lack of representation of course doesn’t mean that they haven’t existed alongside other queer activists in the twentieth century.

“We have always been here, it’s just that the world wasn’t ready for us yet.

Together, through facing distinct realities, we should be united—united in the desire to be, in the desire to enjoy being free, safe, and happy.

“I get it,” she said. “You’re trying to make Muslims who are treated unfairly feel like they are part of Islam. That’s very Muslim of you.”

I was constantly reminded that, just as there are many sects of Islam practised throughout the world, different geographic and cultural factors dictate the injustices queer Muslims face and thus shape their activism.

loving someone can be a radical act when the world denies you love.

Not everyone is equipped for activism in the traditional sense—marching, writing letters to officials—but dedicating your life to understanding yourself can be its own form of protest, especially when the world tells you that you don’t exist.