Lamya H: A story of a group of queer Muslims who refused to let their identities be mutually exclusive this Ramadan. A group of queer Muslims who were tired of feeling out of place in the mosques in their city, but who were also tired of being tired — of waiting for something to change.
It starts off as an ambitious idea: let’s create our own space, let’s read Quran and break fast together every day. The technicalities, though, prove difficult: Where do we do this so that it feels intimate but is also accessible in this city of large distances and small apartments? How do we fit this into our already busy schedules? What will we do for food?
But the hardest question, of course, is how. How should we approach the Quran? How do we hold space for the varied relationships we have with faith, with the trauma that some of us associate with more classical interpretations? How do we grapple with this text and the voluminous amounts of tafsir that none of us have training in, the centuries of exegesis that don’t always speak to us? How do we read this text that we’ve been taught to read through the readings of others? More here.