We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir

by Samra Habib

My mother would give birth to two more girls, each of us a year and a half apart. By the time their third daughter was born, family members and neighbours were in mourning. They would drop by unannounced and express their condolences to my parents for having yet another girl. Being parents to daughters meant mounting burdens; it didn’t guarantee the prosperity that having sons did. Boys were free to go out and generate income for the family, whereas girls needed to be sheltered from the dangerous outside world until it was time to pass them on to their new guardians, their husbands. Daughters were additional mouths to feed, and dowries for them had to be accumulated before marriage. My father told the mourning guests to kindly go to hell, and in an act of stubbornness and, perhaps most important, love, named his third daughter Shazadi, meaning “princess.”

Tanhaiyan was a drama about two young sisters who, after their parents die, are forced to take up roles traditionally associated with men—a rare example of female empowerment on Pakistani television.

I had also reached out to El-Farouk because, despite identifying as queer for years, I still felt like an outsider within the LGBTQ community. I had naively assumed that no longer keeping my queer identity a secret would help me find my people. In reality, it pushed me further into the hole of isolation. It seemed that no one in the queer spaces I visited—dance parties, art shows, Pride events—was curious about why there were hardly any people of colour—and hardly any Muslims—in their midst. I felt even more invisible.

As we all started praying together, kneeling before God, I was surprised to find the prayers I had abandoned trickling off my tongue as though they’d never left. They’d been inside me all along, nudging me toward this moment. I was emboldened to think about what kind of relationship I wanted with Islam—

My subsequent visits to Unity Mosque felt like group therapy sessions punctuated by familiar religious rituals. Each time, my personal relationship with Islam was restored a little bit more, and my experience of always having felt like an outcast within Islam was validated. I’d never felt more Muslim than I did among my fellow outsiders, who came from all over the world and who each practised Islam in their own individual ways. There were people covered in tattoos and piercings, while others were wrapped in traditional burkas or chose to wear the hijab. Some prayed five times a day, while others, like me, prayed only occasionally. Yet 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.

Occasionally, if I was getting to know someone romantically, I would invite them to join me at the mosque. Understanding why that place means so much to me was the key to understanding who I am at my core. It was also a way for me to gauge how accepting a potential partner would be of the role spirituality plays in my life.

Growing up, I wish I’d had access to queer Muslim writers and artists who saw, felt, and feared like I did. Who didn’t want to denounce Islam and instead wanted to see whether there was still a place for them in it.