“My relationship to Islam deepened through these two groups,” Rizvi said. “I learned a lot more, and got a framework for investigating this theological model more deeply. I started to feel magnetized to [Islam] for the first time.”

Now, nearly two years after moving back to Philadelphia, Rizvi found a similar space in Queer Mā'ida.

The group was created by Indigo Jordán, a queer and trans person who converted to Islam last year. Jordán was curious how many other queer Muslims were out there, and, most importantly, wanted to create a space for those queer Muslims, free of any “haram police.”

People of many genders, races and religious backgrounds attended a recent iftar. There were people wearing hijabs or crop tops, sporting tattoos or clothed in long robes. What everyone had in common was a love for, or curiosity toward, faith; a universal acceptance of peers in the come-as-you-are space; and, in the case of the Muslims in attendance, unapologetic ownership of their religion.

Going to traditional mosques can be stressful or ostracizing experiences for non-stereotypical, non-mainstream Muslims — especially queer Muslims, who are subject to homophobia within the larger Muslim community. But that’s not the case at Queer Mā'ida. There was no pressure or posturing, no self-consciousness or judgment around being “Muslim enough,” which allowed for space to grow into one’s spirituality.

Jordán, for example, parties, drinks alcohol, smokes weed, and does sex work — things that would be widely disapproved of in mainstream Muslim communities. But they don’t let those things shame them away from deepening their relationship with God and Islam.

“Those are things that are still inherently formed by the relationship I have with my spiritual practice, with God, with my practice of ancestral veneration,” said Jordán, who is Cuban. “I’m not naive to the taboos that exist within this community I have entered, however I do think that I have a different way of interacting with them.”

“I truly believe down to my core that Allah is not punitive.”

Then there’s Fatih Han, a trained imam who grew up in a traditional Muslim community in Germany, renounced Islam as a young teenager, but was later drawn back to his connection with God through powerful experiences with ecstasy.

Han dedicated his adulthood to reading an immense amount of Islamic literature excluded from mainstream schools of thought.

“That was really helpful in reformulating my identity and realizing that I didn’t have to formulate something new within the religion of Islam, but was able to just use what had been written in scholarship to understand myself,” he explained. “A lot of queer people think queerness is not part of Islam. But I personally disagree with that. I think it is part of the religion. It’s part of what I read.”

For Solomon Furious Worlds, who converted to Islam in 2019, Queer Mā'ida has been a critical space for their spiritual journey, particularly during Ramadan.

“Ramadan is a different feeling right now because I’m doing it with a group of people who are liberated,” they said. “That, to me, is such an important point.”

‘God in my community’

The role Ramadan played in Rizvi’s life over the years has evolved. As a child, it was fun. As a teen, oppressive. In her early 20s, she disassociated from it. Today, it’s a time of year she sincerely dedicates herself to spiritual engagement.

She anticipates Ramadan the way others anticipate Christmas, eager for the communal joys it brings — especially after she found her community.

“Saving grace” is how Rizvi describes the community of Queer Mā'ida.

And the other “Muslim-ish” people that make up this community, particularly queer Muslims, firmly stake their place within the Islamic faith.

“I see God in my community,” Jordán said. “There’s no way you can divorce me from that. And [attempts otherwise] only reaffirm my commitment to the truth that I walk in.”

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