By Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle

Muhsin is among the organizers of Al-Fitra origin, a South African help crew for lesbian, transgender, and homosexual Muslims. Islam and homosexuality are visible by means of many as deeply incompatible. This, in keeping with Muhsin, is why he needed to act. "I discovered that i am no longer alone--these individuals are facing the exact same issues that i am going via. yet i have controlled, as a result of my in-depth courting with God, to reconcile the 2. i used to be thoroughly cozy asserting to the area that i am homosexual and i am Muslim. i wished to assist other folks to get there. So that is how I turned an activist." residing Out Islam files the rarely-heard voices of Muslims who reside in secular democratic nations and who're homosexual, lesbian, and transgender. It weaves unique interviews with Muslim activists right into a compelling composite photograph which showcases the significance of the cohesion of help teams within the attempt to alter social relationships and attain justice. This nascent circulation isn't really approximately being "out" rather than being "in the closet." relatively, because the voices of those activists display, it's approximately discovering how you can reside out Islam with dignity and integrity, reconciling their sexuality and gender with their religion and reclaiming Islam as their very own. Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle is affiliate Professor within the division of heart East and South Asian reports at Emory college. His prior books contain insurgent among Spirit and legislation: Ahmad Zarruq, Juridical Sainthood and Authority in Islam; Sufis and Saints' our bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality and Sacred energy in Islamic tradition; and Homosexuality in Islam: serious mirrored image on homosexual, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims.

Show description

Read or Download Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims PDF

Best gay & lesbian books

Male Sexuality under Surveillance: The Office in American Literature

Male Sexuality below Surveillance is a full of life, clever, and expertly argued research of the development of male sexuality within the enterprise workplace. Graham Thompson interweaves 3 major threads: a historicized cultural research of the advance of the trendy company place of work from its beginnings within the early 19th century to the current day, a Foucauldian dialogue of the workplace because the web site of assorted disciplinary practices, and a queer-theoretical dialogue of the textualization of the homosexual male physique as a tool for generating a taxonomy of male-male family.

The Fire Baby

Summer time, 1976. A aircraft crashes on a farm within the Cambridgeshire fens. Out of the flames walks younger Maggie Beck, clutching a child in her fingers. Twenty-seven years later, investigative journalist Philip Dryden - vacationing his spouse, Laura, in clinic - is witness to Maggie's deathbed confession. yet a few secrets and techniques are most sensible saved mystery, and what began for Dryden as a small and curious tale concerning the in simple terms survivor of an almost-forgotten airplane crash quickly escalates right into a full-blown homicide research.

The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government

In chilly conflict the United States, Senator Joseph McCarthy loved great aid within the struggle opposed to what he referred to as atheistic communism. yet that help stemmed much less from his wild fees approximately communists than his extra substantiated fees that "sex perverts" had infiltrated executive enterprises. even supposing now remembered as an assault on suspected disloyalty, McCarthyism brought "moral values" into the yank political arsenal.

Doubting Sex: Inscriptions, Bodies and Selves in Nineteenth-Century Hermaphrodite Case Histories

A young person woman is mocked while she takes a bathtub together with her friends, simply because her genitals appear like these of a boy. a pair visits a physician asking to ‘create extra space’ within the lady for sex. a physician reveals testicular tissue in a girl with appendicitis, and comes to a decision to maintain his findings quiet.

Additional info for Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims

Example text

I thought more about being gay—what does it mean to be gay and are there more people like me around? I was shocked to find that, yes, in my very own community there are so many. I realized that I’m not alone—these people are going through the very same things that I’m going through. But I’ve managed, because of my in-depth relationship with God, to reconcile the two. I was completely comfortable saying to the world that I’m gay and I’m Muslim. I wanted to help other people to get there. ”2 Muhsin decided early on to become a religious leader in his community.

I won’t say I’m an outcast, of course, but I’m very distant. I tend to keep to myself. I don’t go back home much to visit. ” Nafeesa refers to an incident when, at age nineteen, she was thrown out of her parental home. ’ It was more my mother sitting on my father’s head. She forever wants a son. And till this day, she’ll probably pray for me to be [a gay man].  She says she accepts me for being gay, but she doesn’t understand why I had to wear female clothes. ’ At this point, she can’t say that.

Nafeesa turned her personal disaster into an opportunity to assert that she was really a woman. She stayed with a friend and her family: “It was a school friend, a girl, and her family—Muslim people. I stayed with her and her family, and they accepted me. I had to share a room, but it was fine. They were accommodating. I shared a room and a bed with my friend, who was a girl [along with her young brother and her grandmother]. We all slept in one big bed. . That went on for a year and a half. I won’t say that was difficult, but that was a part of my life when I was really struggling.

Download PDF sample

Living Out Islam: Voices of Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender by Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle
Rated 4.95 of 5 – based on 11 votes