Kinza Jamal:
Queer Pasmanda Muslim and Intersectional Feminist
Links to Part I and II:
Part I: Allah is Queer – Women Chapter
Part II: Allah is Feminist – Women Chapter
This is why I am choosing to share my experience and understanding of how I experience the love of Allah in every inch of my body, and it is deeply tied with the spiritual experiences I’ve had in this life.
I will keep repeating that “Every resistance against systematic oppression is a Queer Resistance”. This means that any injustice caused by patriarchal expectations, in a natural world that is inherently queer, impacts each and every living being, and resisting such atrocities is a type of queer resistance.
I believe Allah is love, and I choose to imagine Allah as only love.
People try to scare me by telling me about Allah’s wrath, anger, and how I should be afraid of Allah. They try to attach greed, fear and hate to Allah to make me obey the patriarchal norms within organised religion, but when I think about Allah, it has always been the purest form of unconditional love I feel in my body.
People come and ask me, “how can you be a Queer Muslim?” How can Queer and Muslim be put together and how are you justifying this statement?”
The only answer I have for them is Love.
My Allah isn’t terrifying but full of love, radically accepting of my identity and existence, and doesn’t promote any kind of discrimination, because how can Allah hurt someone when Allah is love? Allah is the only love I have ever known, in every aspect of my life and in the very essence of my being. Allah is not discriminatory in nature as Allah brings death to everyone without any discrimination. Allah is inclusive and affirming of everyone’s diverse realities.
This is evidence of Allah’s acceptance of queerness. Allah’s creations in the natural world are extremely diverse and queer, but it is society that imposes false gender norms & roles, causing discrimination, gender inequity, atrocities, genocides, war, violence, cultural shame and hurt.
We as humans create tools like religion, capitalism, casteism and racism to control the masses. Society promotes false practices to enable suppression and regressive power on marginalized identities.
“Allah has no gender and is Queer in every form, I repeat — Allah is made of love is only love.”
Gender is a social construct that gets used to promote gender inequality, and true acceptance and intersectionality comes from recognizing and embracing gender diversity. Discrimination and violence are a man made thing, not divine mandates. I believe in Allah’s love and that Islam, at its core, is about humility, intention, and love, not about what patriarchal leaders preach, encouraging biological essentialism and stating false facts on the basis of science, when science in itself evolves and sex isn’t permanent, as Judith Butler rightfully argues. Sex is also a social construct determined on the basis of genitals by doctors, medical practitioners and society itself.
The true beauty of Islam lies in challenging the patriarchy. Mohammad was a feminist at heart, embodying peace and humility in all his actions; he was compassionate for all kinds of people, keeping hope for even the tyrant’s change of heart with acts of kindness. He only spoke of peace and love.
Society often distorts religious scriptures and teachings to justify control and discrimination. Just like the Quran, other religious scriptures are equally misinterpreted by men for men to keep enabling patriarchy on people, who will keep following these religious scholars blindly and will not educate themselves on sustainable spirituality.
Allah always asked its followers to question any dilemmas, questions and doubts and this process is known as Ijtihad, an independent reasoning within Islamic jurisprudence, which allows for evolving interpretations of scripture in light of contemporary issues.
You can read more about it here- Smock, David. (Ijtihad: Reinterpreting Islamic Principles for the Twenty-First Century. US Institute of Peace, 2004. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/resrep12312. Accessed 5 Nov. 2024.)
Allah’s Queer love is everywhere, and we all are made from love, for love and are love. We as a collective need to reflect on our own questions, prejudices and stereotypes against Muslims or any queer person from any religious community.
I really hope I was able to simplify and explain to all of you how Queer and Muslim identities co-exist in all of our Queer Muslim bodies and lives. Yes, we all have different understandings of spirituality, but this is an attempt to bring some stories of love together from my end.
Here is a little effort of love, kindness and transparency from a South Asian Queer Pasmanda Muslim for all the curious birds out there, as I sit with my vulnerabilities and share my truth with the hope that we’ll have a more loving society in the future.
About the writer:
I am a Queer Pasmanda Muslim Minority and an intersectional feminist, who works as a SRHR-J practitioner, liberation writer, painter; encouraging & ensuring a young, feminist, and rights-based approach. I am a certified social worker and have done my Master’s in Gender studies from Jamia Millia Islamia Central University New Delhi.
I am a social justice activist who is actively advocating against decolonising for issues like the prevention of Gender Based Violence and Discrimination (with a focus on Emotional Violence, Violence Against Women, Children and Gender Diverse People), foregrounding Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity (DEI), Sexual Reproductive Health Rights and Justice, Adolescent Youth leadership and Mental Health and Well-Being. The approach I have been following in my work is collective liberation and trauma informed care-centric for a safer & accessible space for all, which has aided in my understanding of feminist leadership to include and often center leisure and the space for vulnerability.
I am an active part of the Anti-Capitalist, Casteist, Colonialist and fascist decolonial movements, and believe in the ideology of collective liberation for all.