Dear All YouTube-TikTok Imams, Muslim Bros, and Self-Identified Scholars of the Faith:
Please cease and desist all future public posts discussing the LGBTQ+ Community.
You have done more harm than you could ever imagine.
Trust me, a queer Muslim alive to tell our stories
there’s not many of us breathing freely
we’ve been caught between forced marriages and a closet of razors
slicing our arms open so the gay could spill out of our blood
and tensing up at each Khutbah in Pride Month
waiting to be told we are the deviant ones, straying from the path of Islam.
Have you been to a drag show though?
There’s nothing more beautiful than seeing a human being as art
an imagination manifested into a physical form
a spirit in movement enough for the whole room to feel it
to really feel freedom, transcendence in a moment
perhaps, what babies feel like
you know, the ones you use to scapegoat us with your rhetoric
Why make Oneness, what Islam is, so rigid-
a circle is not supposed to have any edges
only enough space inside to widen up its circumference.
You sold me a Universal path, a Love unconditioned;
but, between the lines I was pushed back to the furthest back,
sequestered into tiny spaces choking on a man’s judgement;
tried to imagine Divine Light
but only saw with weighted eyes
the faces behind the Pulpit.
Then, I finally found it for free: in a space of queered bodies searching for peace
in make-shift mosques in public parks and beaches;
we found God within the tender of our breaths and
in the lesbian couple who fed us Iftar the first Ramadan night
in non-segregated prayer lines
we bowed down heart to heart
met with a Love we couldn’t find
under your fear-filled eyes.
There is a field
lush
filled with life
far away it exists
beyond right and wrong,
I’ll meet you there with Maulana Rumi,
holding my lover’s musical side
while we hear the melodies of
the silent dreams streaming through our bloodlines.
We are more than what you claim us to be and less than your ego’s worst dreams.
We embrace each other in front of the Ka’ba five times a day,
offer prayers to the One for protection upon all those born this way:
who question the self-righteous that see normal Love as Deviant.
Our queer is the divine cadence in the contradiction between body and spirit:
blurry and still beautiful;
it’s the scars on our arms formed in a mosaic of stars
that remind us of the different realm we come from.
Our God entrusted us to close the window between Love and Fear fighting within your heart;
with joy in our mosques we release the pain of your harsh sermons that seek to separate us from Creation.
Perhaps, one day you’ll open yourselves up to witness
the Divine within a variety of our human relationships.
But, for now, please I beg of you:
Imams, Muslim Bros, Self-Identified Scholars of the Faith,
Shut up for a moment
And just listen.
God sings in the serene silence.
With peace,
Your Sister: Nathalie.
