Reimagining togetherness and faith during Ramadan
Many queer and transgender Muslims said they’d felt isolated from traditions that emphasize togetherness, like praying at community mosques, fasting for Ramadan, or performing the Muslim pilgrimage called Hajj.
While over 30 majority-Muslim countries criminalize queerness in some capacity, many Islamic scholars disagree about whether Islam “accepts” queer and transgender people. Each scholar, institution, and government leads with their own interpretation of and perspective on Islam.
Sophia Uppal, a 28-year-old who’s nonbinary, described their relationship with Islam as complicated. Some of Uppal’s favorite childhood memories include waking up early to their mom preparing sehri, or the meal Muslims eat before sunrise to prepare for the day’s fast.
But they said they’d also felt disconnected from Islam for so long because of the expectation to adhere to a heterosexual and cisgender lifestyle. “My mom would dress me up in hijab and clothes that did not feel aligned with me at all,” Uppal said. “Now it’s sometimes a deep trigger when I see gendered Islam forced upon me.”
Both Uppal and Khan look back on their Islamic upbringings and recall feeling pressured to conform to generations of tradition and subjectively interpreted religious texts. At first, these teachings — like the interpretation that if a person was queer or transgender they couldn’t be a Muslim — made Uppal and Khan feel excluded from their communities. But infusing queer and transgender experiences into Islamic tradition has helped Uppal and Khan create new relationships with their Muslim identities.
Delusions of Adequacy 