Kinza Jamal
Queer Pasmanda Muslim and Intersectional Feminist
ALLAH IS QUEER
I have been raised with a teaching of Islam that Allah has no gender and back then when I was a child, I didn’t realize the importance this statement actually holds, Allah is indeed very much Queer in nature.
This statement is revisited by me while I experienced queer love for the first time in my life, and had my queer Inquilab (queer revolution) I felt it in my body. It was an outburst of liberating emotions and resistance with an overwhelming complex joy and grief of learning that there was so much to discover within myself. An act of courage and a bold soul-changing moment at first. I felt each part of my body shifting and transitioning into something so radically kind and humble to the possibilities Allah has created for me.
We as children were preached by Islamic scholars and family that Allah, our God, is an enormous, unimaginable energy who created all of us, and we as humans have no right to imagine what they look like or if they were of any particular gender. They kept on repeating that this supreme energy has no gender at all and it is forbidden to even think of imagining and we can’t even comprehend how they look today I understand this concept in its full capacity that Yes Allah has no gender of a Cis-het man or woman and they are not hetronormative in nature because no man or woman can create such a beautiful queer ecological system with complex yet incredible characteristics other than a Queer energy which is fluid in its environment, constantly evolving and surviving no matter how much men tries to hurt it (I say man because it a patriarchal world indeed, the head of this society and decision making bodies is full of men, yes other gender participate but they are still not in power) and destroy all the love it has to offer.
I see it today and get overwhelmed by the truth that my body unfolds each day by experiencing Allah’s queerness all around me, in the relationships, friends, animals, and the whole ecosystem I breathe in.
Fatema Seedat has brilliantly stated how sitting with diverse ideologies and differences of argument is an act of vulnerability, I second this, that openness to change and having the understanding that there can be different possibilities is an act of vulnerability.
Links to Part II and III:
Part II: Allah is Feminist – Women Chapter
Part III: Allah is mine – Women Chapter
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.