Queer and trans Muslim community has meant a lot to me over the years. It is through this community that I first met other trans people, and began to imagine I might be trans myself. It is through listening to other queer and trans Muslims’ experiences and ideas that I at one point chose to turn away from Islam, and it is through them that I found a path back, which also feels like a path to my own heart. In MASGD, I hope to practice my love for our communities through service, and help us create connections that allow us all to be safer, stronger, and more supported and supportive. We are perfectly imperfect, and I love us with all our messiness and vulnerability and pain and creativity and joy. I love you even if I don’t know you, because I know that you are a beautiful creation, and so very worthy of love. You are not alone.

— Gabriel

To my Darling, dearest, beloved ummah. As a young person realizing I was both queer and non-binary I felt desperately lonely. For so long, I disavowed myself my identities thinking I was the only QT Muslim that existed and it simply just wasn’t possible for me to be real. All young Malek needed was a whisper, a rumor, a dream that I was, in fact, not alone. The hope of that possibility kept me going and the moment I found Queer Muslim community my world burst open with joy, with sorrow, and infinite possibilities. If you ever find yourself alone in a room, or with a chorus of voices that tells you your presence is anything other than a divine blessing, look up at the moon. Look up at the moon and remember that somewhere beneath it, in this gorgeous universe, there’s a whole family waiting to love you, to hold you, and to honor you- as you are.

— Malek

Beloved, 

 As your fellow Muslim, I affirm the preciousness of your existence. I affirm your inherent, ongoing & incorruptible wholeness. I am here to love and uplift you, and to remind you of that wholeness. The world certainly has its illusions, and anything that suggests fragmentation as the direction of truth is a grand illusion. 

 As part of MASGD, I am committed to creating and supporting spaces of connection, joy, pleasure & delight; spaces that can be present to your pains & sorrows; spaces where you can trust your heart & your gut; spaces where remembering is possible & where you can be true to the essence of Allah that is within you. 

 I love you. Now & always. 

— Terna

I don’t know how to describe it …

But I sure do feel it in every inch of my being …

Your love… keeps me alive …

Not just merely alive …

You see, breathing in some O2 and exhaling some CO2 doesn’t feel the same without you …

Oh how to describe your love?

I feel it … I breath it … and I cherish it . . .

This love filled with joy, accountability, and growth …

Nothing ever felt like all of you before …

— Mirna

“my people I follow you like constellations

we hear the glass smashing the street

& the nights opening their dark

our names this country’s wood

for the fire my people my people

the long years we’ve survived the long

years yet to come I see you map

my sky the light your lantern long

ahead & I follow I follow”

From “If They Should Come For Us” by Fatimah Asghar 

— selected by Raad

"You at the edges and shores, in the rooms of quiet, in the rooms of shouting, in the airport terminal, at the bus depot saying “No!” and each of us looking out from the gorgeous unlikelihood of our lives at all, finding ourselves here, witnesses to each other’s tenderness, which, this moment, is fury, is rage, which, this moment, is another way of saying: You are who I love"  

From “You Are Who I Love” by Aracelis Girmay

— selected by Aaliya

Dearest Community - it was only in your loving arms that I found I could be all the parts of myself. Thank you for holding space for me; it’s an honor to try and do the same for you through this work. 

— Eman

“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. 

Ours is not a caravan of despair. come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.”

Jelaluddin Rumi

— selected by Ana