Hijab Butch Blues as a reinterpretation of legends from the Quran was not something I expected to read. My love for the book in question is secure, however it was not a refreshing take. These were stories like “Marium may not have been straight,” that have existed in my brain as a form of myth-making comfort. To find in words something I’ve imprisoned within my mind, to find belonging as a queer muslim woman, felt like discovering content of legends, meant to maintain distance from reality. I saw worlds colliding as there was similarity in Lamya H’s—author of Hijab Butch Blues—perception of Marium as a sapphic woman to my theory about her being aro-ace and not interested in relationships that dominate the relationship hierarchy. Expressing faith or queerness is often tricky but literature can become a means for queer Muslims to assert themselves. Our stories participate in the written traditions of Islam while questioning our whole societies.

Also read: A Beginner’s Guide to Being a Bisexual Muslim

A prominent legend from the Quran remains that of Sodom and Gomorrah. According to it, in ancient times, the inhabitants of the city of Sodom raped foreigners whom they were supposed to host. Finding out about this, God destroyed the city to punish these assaults. The Islamic jurisprudence has long interpreted God’s wrath as a prohibition of homosexuality. My understanding of my place within the world turned upside down the moment I knew I was aro-ace, but religious fear was slow to creep in. I lived believing that I was not attracted to men in the conventional manner, mistaking it for my being a good muslim. I was supposed to be embraced within a community that focuses on halal forms of love, which is something I continue to appreciate for its Jane Austen-like courtship mannerisms. Books like Love from A to Z and God Smites And Other Muslim Girl Problems used to make me swoon and melt over the characters’ romantic encounters, which happened in a subtle instead of heated manner. A part of the reason lies in how romantic relationships mattered more to me when its representation was closer to the traditional idea of platonic love. But it was not long before I heard biases that are reserved for gay people within the Muslim community, used when talking about me.

Like the time I posted a half-baked poem about never needing a man in a romantic and sexual sense, because I’ve my writing and reading abilities to sustain me, and it didn’t sit right with my uncle. It’s one of the many times when the idea of heteronormativity was forced on me and I finally knew why queer Muslims either take pen to paper or turn to reading whichever representative literature they can get their hands on. You will be applauded for not turning to men during your adolescence, but the belief that sustains heteropatriarchy and propounds the idea that marriage is Sunnah catches up with you soon enough. It becomes a double-edged sword in a society riddled with Hindutva where I already had to prove my humanity since I was a kid incapable of fully comprehending why I’m a Muslim when others around me are not. I knew I was not safe when a schoolmate told a 7-year-old-me that I’m disgusting for being a Muslim. It was also a loss of a potential friendship for me. Being aro-ace requires similar negotiations. I’m expected to carry the defence that I deserve humanity simply because I can love in manners that are not romantic and sexual. I’ve spent my lifetime proving my nationalism, hoping my fellow humans would bless me with a certificate of humanity. I’m done with both sides now, but I would be nowhere without the works of queer Muslims.

Also read: Faith & Queerness: Finding the Intersection Between Religion and Homosexuality

Certain ideas are so deeply entrenched in black and white that it’s a scary taboo to break them. That’s why I gasped when I got my hands on On the Brink of Belief, an anthology, where many of the works are by queer Muslim writers. Contemplation about Allah’s love for Shaitan (Devil), imagining a world created to disprove him, in a short story that leans toward myth-making, showed me a space like Hijab Butch Blues. We are quick to label Shaitan evil and move on but as a queer Muslim who has experienced borderline personality disorder symptoms since I turned 16—though I didn’t have a name for either until recently—I was scared about turning into Shaitan. I wondered what it meant if I wanted to live with my friends in the future: was I destroying a system of mehram and na-mehram, further complicated by my lack of romantic or sexual attraction. My lack of patience, quick jealously, and the immense splitting I was experiencing as part of my BPD symptoms were of no help either. I was less scared of Shaitan and more worried that I could become a shaitan.

The reimagining in the book, which acknowledges Shaitan’s humble beginnings instead of a vanity that existed within him helped me ground myself at times. I also turned to therapy and Muhammad Iqbal’s poetry. A centuries old short story by Tawfiq al-Hakim about Shaitan trying to join a religion but facing rejection lets him acknowledge he is a sacrifice. These stories and poems wander, but the stability they provide to me as a queer Muslim—and apparently to other queer Muslims as well, based on books like God in Pink by Hasan Namir, which places two rival angels with different interpretations of gayness in the Quran at odds as they try to influence humans—is steady and real.

At odd times when I’ve posted my words as Instapoetry, affirming queer and other aspects of Islam that soothe me, I’ve received threats that can only be described as weird. The very threats that believe in Allah’s judgement! But the other day a non-binary Muslim person, who has complications with religion told me that they are happy about the work I’m trying to write down, in a world where representation has turned into a privilege. The memory about the time I got to tell Faraz Arif Ansari at Rainbow Lit Fest, 2024, that my Muslimness and queerness are enjoined to make me who I am despite missing the screening of their sapphic movie again and again. Their affirmation regarding how their belief is the same was a real life proof that we as queer Muslims are living out both our Islam and queer parts as the ground reality of what is shown in books and movies. In the words of Fatima Daas, “Society, our friends and even our family push us to choose. You have to take a stand, to cleave. I have decided to give none of my identities up, and assume them in their contradictions.” We do belong to our Muslim as well as our queer sides.

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The words of the Quran remain the same, but interpretation and reinterpretation paves the way for those who have been left on the margins of the stage in a show that refuses to believe in my existence. I remember coming out to a classmate as aro-ace, due to certain circumstances; my classmate in turn believed that it was a result of my Muslimness, and that I would eventually become hetero as I grew up. As if my education timeline would simply pave the way for the marriage stage, where I could settle into standards as they have always existed.

When one contends with hetero structures with the message of Quran I sometimes turn towards the rational writings of those such as Pervez Sharma in A Sinner in Mecca, which is a travelogue about his Hajj, a pilgrimage that Muslims who are capable are obliged to undertake. While the book is mostly about perspectives on a diverse range of topics, he captures a subtle mention in the Quran of men who do not feel attraction to women, described in a neutral context. A neutrality that accepts existence. An existence that could even turn into celebration. It may appear like the bare minimum, but the intersectionality of identities doesn’t always let us afford even the basics. In a way I appreciate how the verse indicates a possibility about being aro-ace alongside being gay.

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I came to my first Pride parade on my own. That was the lie I told my friends in a moment of hesitation because I found the loneliness I experience as a result of BPD and autism embarrassing—something I believe I needed to grow out of. I’m now ready to confess and credit my abba who accompanied me, which stands in stark contrast to the derogatory words he used the first time we acknowledged the existence of gay people in our conversation.

I can see the reflection of his change being analogous to the way Adiba Jagidar’s books describe the dilemma and eventual acceptance despite hesitancy in South Asian Muslim families. Cruel rejection is something Nishat is met with when she comes out as a lesbian in Henna Wars because Muslim girls can’t be gay. Yet the plotline gradually moves her parents toward understanding through small moments of bonding, which have the capacity to melt hearts.

Abba was quite willing to hear me out when I informed him that my aro ace identity exists in a particular way, and may from another person on the aro-acespectrum. In another of Adiba Jagidar’s work Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, we first encounter what seems like the fantasy of a brown Muslim mother who immediately accepts her daughter’s bisexuality. As the story unfolds through the book, we learn that she does face an internal struggle about having a queer daughter who may one day marry a woman instead of a man, alongside concerns about her safety in a world that is hostile to differences. I can see my abba reflected in these characters as he sat as a 60-year-old man trying to grasp the concept of deadnames. Pride and love look different for South Asian and Muslim LGBTQ+ people which may not match dominant white world narratives.

Also read: Being a Muslim Lesbian of Pakistani Descent

Maybe it was a sign that I cried when reading the poetry book, If They Come for Us by Fatima Asghar, for the first time. In the poems, the author included queer identities, besides being Kashmiri and talked about their ancestors’ partition trauma. In the memoir All the Parts We Exile, which I devoured recently, Roza Nozari describes her entry into queerness as gentle rather than agony-filled. I found resonance in that softness. Her book became as much her mother’s story as her own.

Acceptance in queer Muslim communities can be quiet, especially in the face of forces that conflate descriptions of rape with the meaning of sex, which is an argument often weaponized against queer Muslims in the interpretations of the Quran’s verses. After all, what’s gay about banging on the door to kidnap and sexually coerce angels who were visiting Prophet Lot?

Queer writers and readers of faith take it upon themselves to bridge different value systems that are often thought to be opposing each other. Reading became my oasis. I always look forward to the poetry selected by the Queer Muslim Project, because there’s an echo in those metaphors. The bare fact remains: there’s still a long way to go against the forces of Hindutva, heteropatriarchy, and transphobia.