Why This Queer Muslim Woman Pisses Everyone Off

I can attest that Urooj Arshad is a gentle, kind, introvert who emanates warmth, groundedness and confidence. Having said that, this trailblazer who was recently named by NBC Out as one of the #Pride50: Contemporary LGBTQ changemakers, pisses a lot of people off. This includes conservatives, islamophobes, homophobes, and folks in the mainstream white-led LGBTQ movement . . . Why? Because she is an unapologetic queer. Muslim. immigrant. woman. Apparently this makes a whole lotta folks uncomfortable. 

I recently spoke with Urooj to get a better understanding of the rifts within the LGBTQ movement and where queer Muslims fit in. She laid down so many gems, I hope you get as much from reading her words as I did . . .

In Bustle, you recently wrote this Valentine’s Day love letter to your young, queer, Muslim, immigrant self. Tell me about that. 

I’m not a big fan of romantic pieces, so I was thinking, ‘What would love look like for me to talk about’? When I was younger I really wished I had role models. I wish I knew that the life I live now was possible. I struggled so much growing up in Pakistan and even when I moved here. It’s important to know you can survive so much. You can live a life you dream of and didn’t even know was possible. It’s so important to just tell your story. It’s possible to have a different kind of future even if in your current reality you may not see it that way.

What is your day job? 

I work at Advocates for Youth. We focus on sexual, reproductive health and rights for young people in the US and globally. I am the Director of LGBTQ+ Youth Health and Rights Programs. I really love my job . . . I also know I wouldn’t be where I am without the amazing mentors in my life. I don’t mean official mentors, but just people who were older than me who were living lives that were incredible and gave me an opportunity to imagine a different future for myself. 

Why are you so passionate about youth? 

To me it’s really important to support young people. I work with LGBTQ youth in the Global South and LGBTQ Muslims in the US and it’s so important to support them because they may not have other caring adults in their lives and they may not have adults who believe their life has dignity and worth. They are doing brilliant things! So I elevate their work and bring it to a national and international level. The incredible work they are already doing reminds me of all the possibilities that can happen.

Congrats on being named amongst the #Pride50! I personally know so many queer Muslims (in the US and abroad). Why do you think these communities are not seen or heard in the mainstream? 

I just think that the dominant narratives don’t allow for that. Even at this point. Yes, you and I know tons and tons of LGBTQ Muslims. But the dominant narratives are defined by mainstream understandings of these issues. On the one hand you have these very mainstream LGBTQ communties. Then, if you think about Stonewall, you see that it started as a very radical protest against the police. After the initial Pride marches started happening and after the initial momentum around Pride in the US, which impacted the global world, there was also a major split that happened.

The Gay Liberation Front was radical and inclusive of folks of color and trans folks. They really saw their struggle connected to the Black Power movement for example. Then there was the Gay Activist Alliance (GAA). They were more focused on stand alone LGBQ issues. They didn’t see an intersectional struggle and didn’t connect to other communities and I think the GAA is what ended up defining the agenda of what we see today. 

There is an incredible lopsidedness around the major white-led LGBTQ groups which follow the path of the GAA. They are able to garner incredible resources. Compare that to the very under resourced or not resourced radical LGBTQ organizations. Overall, LGBTQ Muslims are in the margins of those communities and not really seen because if we try to live our full lives and say we are LGBTQ AND Muslim, a lot of times the mainstream LGBTQ people are not able to relate to that and say things like,”Why would you want to be part of a religion that hates you …?” There is a flattening of Muslim identities and people just don’t understand. So I think a lot of times we get lost in those larger spaces. 

And then as you know, in Muslim spaces, it’s incredibly hard as well to be our full authentic selves because people are not out for many reasons, including safety. For those of us who live in the West, where Islamophobia is so prominent, we want to be part of our communities. So people are not out because they feel like they want to hold onto their community and religious identity. People are just completely oblivious to who we are. But I think more and more folks are coming out, especially after what happened in Orlando. LGBTQ Muslims really felt a strong need to tell our stories after that. Because if we hadn’t, the mainstream would have promoted a very Islamophobic narrative. We didn’t want that. We didn’t want Orlando to do what Trump eventually did . . . He used that incident to justify the Muslim Ban. So after Orlando, yes, there has been a surge in the coverage of our stories. But it takes a lot of courage and risk to be able to do that. We are basically pissing a lot of people off and it takes a lot of emotional labor to do that. But in the ways people don’t want to see us, we continue to not be seen and understood.

Who are your role models? 

I have so many. I  wouldn’t be here without people who have passed away but whose writing/understanding of the world helped me. A book that changed my life was This Bridge Called My Back with writings by Audre Lorde, Cherrie Moraga, Gloria Anzaldua, incredible women of color feminists, queer women. It felt like while reading, they really GOT me. I was going to this really big white Midwestern rural school . . . Coming out, I felt so lonely and isolated. Just reading their words really pulled me to a safe space and I felt like I could go on. 

Then, along the way one of my first supervisors at my first job, Lance Toma, has to this day been a mentor and a dear friend who believed in me. Lance is a Japanese-American queer guy and he was not much older than me. When I said, “I had a racist interaction with a staff member, who was older . . .”,  he believed in me and that meant I could believe in myself. 

Then there is my friend Faisal Alam. He started an organization and movement that has impacted so many different parts of the world. He started it because he was so desperate to find community. He was part of a Muslim Student Association and he was struggling with coming out, struggling with his sexuality. So for him to give up 10 years of his life to create an organization  . . . To put LGBTQ Muslims on the map . . . I’m so grateful for his work. 

So overall, it’s people who have changed how we can see what’s possible… they are all my role models. 

Where do you find your strength when you receive pushback on your identities? 

I find strength in my community of LGBTQ Muslims, dear friends who are queer/trans POC, my partner who is Black gender nonconforming and now I would include my mom. It was not easy. It has not been easy for my mom to reconcile her idea of theology with my queerness but her love has been so important. For her to not agree with me on the theology, but still love me, has been incredible and transformative for us to both meet halfway. That gives me strength because I see how much she sacrificed to get me where I’m at. How her mom sacrificed, my Nani. They were both exceptional women who believed women should get educated. My mom made every effort to make sure I had a good education in Pakistan and that I learned English. This makes a big difference in Pakistan. My dad was not a good provider, so my mom worked really hard. She was a teacher and she made sure my school fees were paid. I find strength in that . . . both from my blood ancestors and those who are in the queer/trans community. 

I imagine that you get pushback from non-Muslims and Muslims. Can you discuss this dichotomy? 

It is an interesting dichotomy. As an LGBTQ Muslim person in this movement, you are just gonna piss everyone off because we are not letting go of our Muslim identity. After Orlando, narratives like women in Islam are oppressed and their community hates them came out. I am not going to support those problematic statements. Those statements are definitely a tool of White Christian conservative folks. We saw this pushed in Europe as a tool to push back against immigration as well. We certainly see it now in our government under Trump. Just read Trump’s language around the Muslim Ban after Orlando. He said he was protecting LGBTQ Americans from Muslims. He doesn’t even acknowledge that we exist. I see this as a larger right wing agenda that is anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant. 

Then there is another piece around conservative Muslims in that people are not willing to do any work. They are willing to just cavalierly use theology to erase our humanity. I have a hard time with that. 

But THEN we have these allies who say they support us in private but they will never say anything about us in public. That is really infuriating . . .  especially after Orlando. After Orlando, LGBTQ Muslims thought there was so much promise in the way Muslim civil rights organizations did come out and say they are against homophobia and transphobia. But those organizations are much more comfortable working with mainstream LGBTQ organizations that are not Muslim. Mainstream LGBTQ organizations are also comfortable working only with mainstream Muslim organizations. No one wants to push the intersectional framework forward. 

I also think that Muslims can be very uncomfortable with LGBTQ Muslims. Many are ok with non-Muslim LGBTQ people because they think, “Our civil rights are violated, their civil rights are violated, let’s work together”. But when it comes to LGBTQ Muslims, we don’t belong in any of those camps and that can be difficult. There is this larger framework of white supremacy, but within that, I get frustrated with the divide and conquer aspects. They are trying to separate LGBTQ folks from Muslims. We have to work at these intersections. This fake solidarity between the mainstream groups is not enough, it’s not gonna cut it. This Gendered Islamophobia rhetoric that is hateful, that Islam is inherently anti-LGBTQ seeps into our societal context. We have to push back on that. Muslims really need to be more vocal about their support for us. Muslim allies need to move the needle within their communities. LGBTQ Muslims can’t be the only ones doing the work 

When I was in AMCLI with you, I noticed that some Muslim leaders refuse(d) to acknowledge and accept queer Muslims. Why do you insist on remaining in those spaces? 

When I decided to apply for the American Muslim Civic Leadership Institute (AMCLI), I had realized that there was not much movement within LGBTQ activist spaces that was fighting against Gendered Islamophobia. The questions were not being answered in the public sphere. Such as, What is ‘Gendered Islamophobia’? How does the right wing use it to pit communities against each other? 

After the Proposition 8 debacle in California, mainstream LGBTQ communities were suddenly interested in looking at the intersection of faith and reclaiming it from the right wing. I think their model was very Christian. They were like ‘let’s just plug in a prayer from the Muslim tradition and call it a day’. But to me interfaith work is not the same thing as addressing the impact of being a marginalized community where Black, Indigenous, People of Color have been harmed by Christian traditions. They have used that tradition to justify colonization and enslavement. The harm by the mainstream Christian community towards POCs in this country and the Global South, is rampant, so I was not feeling it anymore (working with mainstream LGBTQ organizations). I applied to AMCLI because I was ready to have the important conversations with my own community. 

People come to us (queer Muslims) completely traumatized, kicked out of their homes and communities. The kind of isolation and stigma that leads to terrible health outcomes is terrifying. I thought that I wanted to be in that space . . . and, it was not easy to be in that space. There were people in AMCLI that were not happy that I was there. But I have the right to be there. I belong in it as well. It is a space that is secular. I loved how the AMCLI program underscored how they were interested in leadership, not religiosity. That helped me and others like Ismailis, secular folks . . .  I appreciated meeting brilliant Muslims in that space. A few people were uncomfortable with me being there, but most were allies. And I had to challenge my own assumptions around what Muslim allies actually look like. Which was a good thing.

What spaces have you had a part in creating? 

I am really proud of co-founding the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity. It is a national organization led by LGBTQ Muslims. It really creates that network of LGBTQ Muslims that is so desperately needed to end the isolation. It’s a radical collective. It’s amazing to be part of that space because it’s not stand alone. We don’t just focus on LGBTQ issues. We grapple with radical understandings of queerness and how that intersects with how our communities are over militarized, policed . . .

My primary piece of excitement is working on developing a Muslim Youth Leadership Council at Advocates for Youth. This involves young Muslims from 13 – 20 years old who are LGBTQ, feminist and/or allies. We will bust open the dichotomies around identities. It is a safe space and we are going to make sure that they are part of the larger mainstream discourse that says Muslims cannot be LGBTQ (read: they can). For example, tomorrow a young person is speaking at a panel about Structural Islamophobia. This person is queer and Black. In that space, you wouldn’t necessarily have a queer panelist. It’s also important that they are Black because Islamophobia dates back to before this country was a country. It is entrenched in the enslavement of Africans. It is such an exciting space to work with young Muslims right now, both cis and trans . . . 

Has your family accepted all of you?

My dad passed away in 1995, when I was 20. I didn’t have the opportunity to come out to him, for him to know me in my authenticity. But I believe he does know who I am. That brings me comfort even though I miss him so much. 

My mom and I have been on a long journey . . . My abusive, patriarchal brother outed me within a few days after my dad died. My mom didn’t understand what it meant. There are no words in Urdu he could have used. It took her awhile to understand. When I moved back home from college she knew something was very different about me. So when I was 22 she confronted me, pulled the Q’uran out, it was very dramatic. And I didn’t want to lie to her. My 20s were difficult. I was checked out of the family. 

As I became more established, moved to DC, started to feel better about my work, identities, and was not as afraid that I would be rushed off to get married (I used to literally have nightmares)  . . . I extended my heart towards my mom.

In 2005 she was diagnosed with breast cancer. So I went home and took care of her. It was a real turning point. Despite not living close to her and not being married, something really shifted for us. She understood that I love her and care for her and wouldn’t abandon her. 

A few years ago I told her about my current relationship. At first it was difficult for her, of course she gave me a lecture about Islam . . . But she has come to visit my partner and I twice . . . It was really incredible. Despite her own belief system, she loves me. She shows up for me. It is why she is a role model. 

Now, I’m 43. At this point, I’m lucky and happy that we have come this far. She has met my partner’s family, she prayed to bless our condo, she traveled to London to meet my chosen family of Gay Pakistanis. She comes from a world where queer people are not viewed as Muslim, so it’s important for her to meet queer Muslims. To feel and see how we don’t lose our cultural and religious identities. It’s important for her to see that. It’s been a long journey and it has been really beautiful. 

What is your self-care regimen and where do you find joy? 

It can be hard. Especially in these times. I try to find it in everyday things like the gym, Zumba, mani/pedis, reading a book, tea, healthy meals, our doggy, my partner, creating a beautiful space in our apartment, going for walks, vacations by the beach . . . The ocean has so much meaning for me since I grew up in Karachi. I also love bling. So any opportunity to go bling shopping, I’m in. I like to add to my collection. 

In 2012, I started going back to Pakistan with friends to connect with LGBTQ communities there. The first time back I was sitting on the floor, chatting with Khwajasaras in Karachi and I thought, ‘OMG, I’m talking in Urdu, wearing a kurta salwar and I’m talking about my sexuality. This is blowing my mind’. It was so great and I was able to connect all parts of me. It even helped me to push back on the Islamophobic narrative that Pakistan is awful for queer people. Pakistan passed a great law last year around Trans communities. I no longer feel a separation between my queerness and Pakistani-ness. I needed to see that in Pakistan. I need to remember where I come from. There is so much beauty in our culture and history.

How religious are you? 

I consider myself a cultural Muslim because I don’t practice in the traditional way. I can draw strength from my Muslim identity though. The first 17 years of my life were in Pakistan and I can draw from that. What I connect to are the shrines. Those beautiful spaces in Pakistan and South Asia in general (though I have only been to shrines in Pakistan). Those spaces feel spiritual to me . . . I connect. In Lahore I go to Data Darbar. I also go to Madhu Lal Hussain when I travel. It is a shrine of a Hindu and Muslim couple who were male lovers. That is more of a spiritual connection. It is very rooted in Pakistan. 

It’s so beautiful to meet LGBTQ Muslims within a continuum. Some make sure everything is halal. Then there are people like me. I never worry about whether Allah loves me. I know Allah loves me. I’m no longer wrestling with my identities. Instead, I’m relating to others who don’t believe I can exist. I find myself in this moment . . . it’s beautiful, where LGBTQ Muslims who want to be more religious have that option, which is rooted in an understanding of progressive theology. While others just want a cultural connection. We have the right to it all. We are not understood as religious and I want to push back on that. There doesn’t have to be an either/or about it.

Do you all feel as inspired by Urooj as I do? How so? Comment below!