Out of Many, One
Why Muslims Should Stand in Solidarity with the LGBTQ+ Community
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“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Four years ago this month, Americans were witness to the second largest mass shooting in the nation’s history. Forty-nine people were shot and killed and another fifty were wounded at a gay night club in Orlando, Flordia by twenty-nine-year-old Omar Mateen. An outpouring of love and support came from around the Muslim world, including local Muslim community-based organizations in Orlando. The Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) asked for members to donate blood to the wounded. Hassan Shibly, CAIR’s executive director, rushed to Orlando from his home in Tampa to meet with family members of the victims and offer condolences and prayers. Then there were the many Muslims from across the country — students, medical doctors, journalists, business owners — that took to social media to express the importance of Muslim solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community during this tragic hour.
One possible explanation for these responses was the Muslim community’s fear of an Islamophobic backlash after one of “their own” had committed an act of domestic terrorism. The fact that there were thirteen other mass shootings that year, none of which generated the same type of reaction, lends credence to this argument. According to a 2016 FBI statistical analysis, queer folks were already the most likely targets of hate crimes in America — four times as likely than Muslims in fact. Why hadn’t Muslims spoken up prior? Why not condemn these other more mundane acts of violence against queer folks?
While there is validity to these critiques, it should be noted that other mass shootings that year did not come close to the scale of the Pulse Night Club massacre — including a mass shooting by a Muslim at a shopping mall in Washington. Despite what conservative punditry would have the public believe, mass shootings and anti-LGBTQ violent crimes involving Muslims are uncommon. The relative silence in mainstream media about ongoing violence against queer folks means that many Muslims, and Americans in general, may simply not be aware that this is a problem. Lastly, to limit Muslims’ show of support to naked self-interest is not only reductive and cynical but fails to appreciate the centrality of the Qur’anic call to be maintainers of justice within our faith.
In Islam, faith is demonstrated in part by our response to oppression and injustice. In an authenticated saying of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), he teaches that when believers see an evil they must try to change it first with their hands. We must take action to right a wrong, to bring about restoration and healing when others rights have been violated. If we are unable to take action with our hands then we must speak out against it. That means making public statements to call out these violations of the sanctity of human life. Today that could be everything from a televised press conference to an op-ed to participating in a social media campaign. If we are unable to do either, the Prophet said, the least we can do is to detest that evil in our hearts.
Muslims showed up in all these different ways for their queer neighbors, friends, and colleagues four years ago. It was a beautiful moment of solidarity that appeared and left just as quickly as it came. Tragedies have a way of doing that though. Bringing people together across lines of difference just for the moment. Because at that moment the differences between us seem trivial all of a sudden. They don’t disappear, of course, rather they take a back seat to what feels more urgent — our shared humanity.
In recognition of Pride Month, I want to discuss the reasons for and challenges to Muslim solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community. This is an invitation into what I hope to be a nuanced exploration of some of the intersections between religion, gender, sexuality, and justice. This is a call for us to pierce the veils of queerphobia and Islamophobia in order to see one another, not just in a moment of tragedy, but in every moment, every day.
Before beginning, I want to give an affirmation of my unequivocal support for the right to a life of dignity for my queer brothers, sisters, and gender-nonconforming fam. That includes but is not limited to equal protection under the law, equal access to healthcare, and the freedom to identify however one chooses and to love whoever one chooses without fear of persecution.
As mentioned, there is a strong imperative in Islam to “stand firmly for justice as witnesses to Allah be it against ourselves, our parents, our near of kin, be they rich or poor.” There is also a normative tradition in Islam regarding gender and sexuality that folks in the LGBTQ+ community would consider essentialist and heteronormative. It’s important that we hold these two things in tension as we explore what it means to be in solidarity in spite of differences in beliefs between our communities.
As Muslims, we hold the belief that human life is endowed with ‘isma (inviolability) and hurriyya (freedom) in order to fulfill our covenant with God. In other words, we are all born with a divinely bestowed right to freedom and protection from harm. Although these God-given rights are part of a sacred covenant, they are not revoked if human beings don’t attest to faith. These are rights everyone has whether they are believers or not; no one has the right to deprive us of them. It stands to reason, then, that Muslims’ defense of all people’s ‘isma and hurriyya would be uncontroversial.
The reality, however, is that when it comes to defending LGBTQ+ rights, there is no consensus within the Muslim American community. While acts of violence during tragedies like the Pulse Night Club shooting are condemned, we tend not to be engaged in other ongoing campaigns for freedoms and protections for queer folks. There is no single reason for this. Rather, I believe it can be best understood as the result of a confluence of factors.
To begin, we live in a queerphobic culture that fosters prejudiced attitudes through the promotion of myths and malicious conspiracies about queer folks. On the whole, mosques have not created spaces to educate, foster relationships, and dialogue with (not about) folks in the LGBTQ+ community to combat miseducation and fearmongering. This includes making mosques places where queer Muslims, who straddle two worlds, feel welcome, seen, cared for, and supported. As a consequence, LGBTQ inclusive mosques and other physical and digital spaces are being created that buck traditional spatial arrangements and orthodoxy concerning gender and sexuality.
Prejudice and ignorance about the experiences and issues facing queer folks can’t fully explain Muslim reluctance to be in ongoing solidarity. At the heart of the dilemma, I believe, is a broader crisis of knowledge within the Muslim community. Though knowing the prescribed and proscribed acts are essential, being literate in the tradition goes beyond do’s and don’ts. At the most fundamental level, we must know how to show up in relationship with communities and for other communities whose customs and beliefs are different from ours. We must also understand the complexities of applying sacred law in different social, cultural, and political contexts and the indispensability of scholars in this process.
In 2014, I attended a Friday sermon in West Oakland in which the imam discussed the recent escalation of violence at the Mexican border involving drug cartels. He used this current event to make a point about what he described as the primary objective of Islamic law — the preservation of human life. His argument was that support for decriminalizing marijuana not only would help remedy prison overpopulation — driven by racial disparities — but could also save lives at the border by reducing the cartel’s revenue stream. A congregant interjected in an agitated tone, “So what is you saying? That it’s okay for us to smoke weed?”
The questioner struggled to hold two things in tension: our religious opposition to illicit drug use and political support for laws decriminalizing them. What the imam was inviting us to reflect upon was the importance of critically (re)evaluating our positions on issues in light of changing socio-political circumstances and in line with the highest principles of our faith. If the letter of the law ever results in human suffering we must oppose it — even if the law is consistent with our religion’s teachings. There are times when such matters require juridical interpretation of course. In these cases, it’s imperative that we are not given to an anti-clericalism that would prevent us from heeding the counsel of the scholars. But there are other times when each of us has to make a judgment using our fitrah i.e. our God-given intuitive reasoning. So while Islam is a law-based religion, our fitrah can help us to discern instances when the law oppresses rather than guides us to moral action and encourages pious restraint.
In a rebuttal to the accusation that he had violated the Torah, Jesus says that “the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath.” Later, he reprimands the legalists by accusing them of having “neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice, mercy, and faith.” In that Friday sermon, the imam was trying to teach us an over 2,000-year-old lesson. We are not made for the law, it is made for us. He was trying to show us some of those weightier matters in a 21st-century context, to help us see that these can literally be matters of life and death.
On June 12th, 2020, the four year anniversary of the Pulse Night Club massacre, the Trump administration rolled back healthcare protections for LGBTQ+ folks. The Department of Health & Human Services issued a press release declaring it would be “returning to the government’s interpretation of sex discrimination according to the plain meaning of the word ‘sex’ as male or female and as determined by biology.” The Obama administration had expanded the law’s definition of sex in order to make it “illegal for doctors, hospitals, and other health care workers to deny care to someone whose sexual orientation or gender identity they disapproved of.”
The majority opinion among classical and contemporary Islamic scholars is consistent with this definition of sex, notwithstanding the extra-Quranic mentions of the mukhannathun who do not neatly fit into either category. In the Holy Qur’an, Allah says “Glory be to the One that created everything in azwaja (pairs) so that you may reflect.” Throughout the Book, the sexes are gendered in relation to each other; they are described as physically and biologically complimentary, part of a duality that can be found in creation throughout the cosmos.
So although as Muslims we may, on the whole, agree with this understanding of sex, it does not make it moral to give active or passive assent to Trump’s policy change. We have to examine both its intent and the impact to determine whether it violates our queer brothers, sisters, and gender-nonconforming fam’s ‘isma and hurriyyah. Will it increase the human right to healthcare protections and freedoms or will it further restrict them?
According to the National Center for Transgender Equality U.S. Transgender Survey, 33% of trans folks who sought treatment from a healthcare provider in the year prior “had at least one negative experience related to being transgender, such as being verbally harassed or refused treatment because of their gender identity.” Denial of coverage by insurance providers was not only for care related to gender transition but routine sexual and reproductive health screenings as well. In a 2017 literature review of health care disparities among LGBTQ youth, it was concluded that queer youth have an increased risk of mental health issues and disease prevalence. They also have the additional challenge of finding physicians and healthcare providers with the appropriate training needed to provide adequate care. Changing the legal definition of sex would only exacerbate discrimination and preexisting gaps in healthcare service for queer folks.
Beyond an ethical basis for Muslim solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community, there is a practical one. We need alliances in the fight against religious persecution. Solidarity with those whose beliefs conflict with ours also has an analogical precedent in the prophetic biography (seerah). Before his exile from Mecca and migration to Medina, Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) accepted support and protection from tribes and individuals that did not accept his religion. To pressure Muhammad’s tribe to withdraw their protection from him, his enemies implemented a boycott. Mut’im ibn Adi, the pagan chief of the Banu Nawfal tribe, stood in solidarity with the Muslims by secretly sending food, water, and supplies. When Muhammad eventually lost his tribal protection Mut’im sent an armed escort to bring him to the center of the town. Upon arrival, he publicly announced that Muhammad was under his protection. When asked if he was one of his followers he simply replied no.
American Islamic theologian and scholar Dr. Yasir Qadhi comments on this story saying that “we need to form relations with the Mut’ims of our times. When we find them, we form allegiances. We praise them, they praise us.” Organizations like the National Queer Asian Pacific Islander Alliance (NQAPIA) and the National LGBTQ Task Force are some of these Mut’im’s of our time. Young people like Allyson Beetham are speaking up about combatting Islamophobia in the LGBTQ+ community and among the non-muslim general public. As Dr. Qadhi advises, we should form alliances with such organizations. Why? Because acceptance of one another’s religious, philosophical, or political beliefs is not a condition for solidarity.
After the hijra to Medina, Muhammad developed a compact, which functioned as both social contract and constitution. In addition to enumerating all parties’ responsibilities, it enshrined freedom of religion and universal protection for all regardless of belief. This included the Jewish and pagan tribes that were living in Medina prior to the hijra.
In a chapter of the Holy Qur’an revealed while Muhammad was in Medina, Allah said that had it been His will we would have “been made into a single ummah (community).” We were not, however, as a trial from our Lord. The verse continues, “so race to do good works.” In another Medinan chapter titled “The Dwellings” it reads:
“O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise (each other). Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. And Allah has full knowledge and is well acquainted (with all things).”
- Holy Qur’an, 49:13
As the head of state in Medina, Prophet Muhammad treated all the tribes as separate communities, part of the one larger ummah of Medina. This political and social reorganization of Medinan society represented a radical departure from the pre-Islamic tribal system wherein freedoms and protections were contingent upon ideological conformity and loyalty to the traditions of the forefathers. The ummah of Medina did not require ideological purity as a condition for one’s rights being safeguarded. Whether you were inside the city or traveling outside of it, the larger ummah protected you and stood by you. Why? Because despite your differences, you were part of the larger tribe.
May we recognize one another as part of one tribe, regardless of difference. Amin. Amen. Ase.
