Ibrahim Abraham is a graduate student and tutor in sociology at Monash University, Melbourne. He has published on the relationship between religion, politics, culture and sexuality in Australia and overseas. This month, as OUTinPerth’s guest columnist, he discusses what he has learned in his work with Queer Muslims in Australia.
For the past year, I’ve been interviewing Australian queer Muslims. By listening to their stories, hopes and beliefs, I have learned a great deal about the limits of acceptance in our society.
Islam has a rich tradition of public celebration of same-sex desire – often in such variety as to make non-Muslims dizzy with equal parts desire and disquiet. Partly due to European colonisation, but primarily through self-imposed political and cultural stagnation, much of the Muslim majority world has turned to reactionary gender norms, with homosexual identities usually unacceptable. This is not to say homosexual activity does not exist in Muslim communities. The few studies we have suggest same-sex activity is more common in Muslim communities than in most others. Nor is it to suggest Islam itself is the source of reprobation. Most of the queer Muslims I’ve interviewed insist that it is social and economic pressures from families that makes queer Muslim identities problematic. ‘It’s not the religion – it’s the culture,’ I was told repeatedly.
Most participants, in fact, felt that the answers to anti-queer attitudes amongst Muslims lay in a greater understanding of Islamic values. A gay Muslim from Sydney told me that, for him, ‘the conflict became the solution. You’re conflicting with your religion while the solution is in it.’
‘Islam talks about social justice,’ a gay Melbournian Muslim told me. ‘It’s always been attractive to the marginalised. Look at the early converts – most of them were women. The wider message of Islam gives queer people a voice.’ Quotes like this seem to argue against the assumption that queer rights go hand-in-hand with secularism.
The hegemonic secularism in Australia’s gay and lesbian communities presents another challenge for queer Muslims. For whilst many Muslims are uncomfortable with a Muslim who is queer, many queer people are uncomfortable with a lesbian or gay man who is a Muslim. ‘I only tell my religion to gay men if I know it’s safe to tell them,’ a Malaysian-born gay Muslim told me. He explained that ‘9/11 has impacted not only on the Islamic world, but on the gay world as well,’ leading to increased anti-Muslim sentiments. ‘People don’t know anything about Islam,’ another gay Muslim complained. ‘They just know Muslims are all terrorists!’
Unfortunately, the queer community often shares the anti-Muslim prejudices of wider Australian society, leading many Muslims to keep their religious and ethnic identity in the closet. A lesbian Muslim who was not out in her Muslim community commented that, ‘everywhere I turn I have to jump into a different closet. I can never just be me, I always have to be me as either gay, or me as a Muslim.’ Neither community accepted her for who she really was.
‘I don’t tell anyone I’m a Muslim now,’ a Bangladeshi-born gay Muslim told me, recounting the anti-Muslim rant he received on his first date with an Australian, who thought he was Indian, and thus a Hindu. ‘He was the first guy I met in Australia,’ he said, shaking his head.
However, for every story of rejection, I have heard a story of acceptance, of relationships formed by people who embrace diversity, not conformity. Stories like the HIV-positive, gay Muslim convert befriended by schoolboys from Sydney’s west – fellow Muslims who called him, ‘the strongest man they’d ever met.’
But my favourite story was narrated to me by a Melbourne Muslim man, ‘when I’m invited to dinner at a gay friend’s place during Ramadan [the Muslim month of fasting], I’ll take my prayer mat with me. After I break my fast with them, I’ll say my prayers. I don’t conceal that I’m a practicing Muslim, nor do I conceal that I’m gay.’
Stories like this teach us the true diversity of our society, but also that such acceptance is a rare thing. In a political and cultural environment that emphasises conformity, the central message of this research is that the celebration of sexual difference ought to accompany the celebration of cultural and religious difference.
