What does it mean to be queer and Muslim in a world that insists you cannot be both? Queer and Muslim is a powerful collection by and for LGBTQ+ Muslims navigating layered identities across lines of faith, family, culture, and community. With contributions spanning essays, poems, letters to past and future selves, and more, the book explores the emotional and spiritual dimensions of queer Muslim life and challenges the perception that faith and queerness are inherently incompatible. These raw accounts confront the psychological toll of grappling with tensions between religious expectations and queer identity and offer rare insight into the ways mental health is lived, expressed, and supported across diverse cultural and theological landscapes. They tell of building chosen families and reconnecting with birth families, radical healing, cultivating spaces of belonging, and reclaiming faith on your own terms. In an era of rising Islamophobia and escalating threats to queer and trans lives, the stories contained within Queer and Muslim--stories of resilience, grief, pleasure, rage, and joy--are vital, each of them an affirmation of the multiplicity of queer Muslim identities. Queer and Muslim invites readers to listen deeply, think expansively, and care more courageously.
Rahim Thawer (he/him) is a registered social worker, psychotherapist, and author based in Toronto, Canada. Rahim explores intersections of mental health and systemic oppression in his practice and writing. Maryam Khan (she/her) is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Social Work at Wilfrid Laurier University. Maryam conducts community-based research with 2SLGBTTIQ+ individuals and communities.
""A luminous, soul-stirring testament to queer Muslim resilience, radical faith, and unapolagetic healing.""--Pepe Hendricks, editor of Hijab: Unveiling Queer Muslim Lives ""A rich, powerful, and compelling anthology, full of timely, unflinching, tender, intimate narratives of LGBTQ Muslim lives and experiences.""--Wim Peumans ""Queer and Muslim is a raw, vital collection illuminating LGBTQ Muslim lives with complexity and transformative care and a courageous tribute to Muhsin Hendricks' enduring legacy of healing.""--K. D. Thompson ""This collection of personal narratives is both important and full of hope. By adding more understanding to how queer Muslims inhabit their lives, loves, and faith, and by leading us to think about healing and belonging through these stories, this collection provides original and uplifting interventions that aid queer Muslims being seen and heard for who they are, in their own words.""--Momin Rahman
