Being Both Queer and Muslim Proves Fodder for Discussion (in Boston)

 From the New England Blade

Being Both Queer and Muslim Proves Fodder for Discussion
Conversation Comes as MFA Gay and Lesbian Film Festival Ends

by Blake Evans
May 14, 2008

Using the film "A Jihad for Love" — screening Sunday as part of the MFA Gay and Lesbian Film and Video Festival — as a starting point, Massachusetts Area South Asian Lambda Association (MASALA) will sponsor a panel discussion on what it might mean to be Muslim and Queer, especially in 2008 in the context of an increasingly globalized world, on Sunday, May 18.

The panelists, coming from South Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, represent to some extent the range of diversity within Islam as well as what it means to be Muslim (and Queer), from practitioners and agnostics to atheists and those who simply identify culturally as Muslim.

Panelists will include Imtiyaz Hussein, Saadia Toor, and Mohammed El-Khatib. Dr. Rakshanda Saleem, a local activist involved in a range of social justice issues including LGBT rights and those focused on South Asia and the Middle East, will moderate the discussion. Hussein founded MASALA in 1994 in an effort to connect his "Indian-ness" with his "gayness." Formerly chair of the Board of AIDS Housing Corporation, he worked in a number of community organizations before going to business school and moving into the corporate world. He doesn't see any conflict in being gay and Muslim.

"Allah created all of us and loves all of his creatures," said Hussein.
Toor is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies at The College of Staten Island, City University of New York. She believes there is a divide: "When I was Muslim I was not queer," she says, "now I'm queer but not Muslim."

El-Khatib y works with the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston. Raised in a secular setting, he came out to himself at 17 and found faith as a way to reconcile with his homosexuality.

"Islam gave me the strength to face a homophobic home and social life," he says, though he also agrees with Toor that bringing together the two sides of himself has been difficult. "The irony is that since coming out, I've found it harder to practice Islam without feeling like I'm in personal conflict with my identity as a gay man."

"A Jihad for Love" screens at 3:45 p.m. in the Remis Auditorium. The panel discussion follows immediately after in the Riley Seminar Room at the Museum of Fine Arts.