Inside a Groundbreaking Anthology That Sheds Light on 18 Queer Arab Voices

In a region where at least 15 nations criminalize homosexuality and in those that don’t, there’s a “don’t ask, don’t tell culture,” queer Arab communities may have been forced into the shadows but they undeniably exist. That’s why Tuesday’s U.S. debut of This Arab is Queer, a new anthology edited by Elias Jahshan, an Australian… Read more »

Meet America’s first openly gay imam

Washington – He’s been condemned by other Muslim leaders, and some local imams have even refused to greet him. But Imam Daayiee Abdullah – believed to be the only openly gay imam in the Americas – is proud of his story. He was born and raised in Detroit, where his parents were Southern Baptists. At… Read more »

Muslim attitudes about LGBT are complex, far from universally anti-gay

As one of a tiny number of openly gay imams in the world, Daayiee Abdullah has felt the sting of rebuke from fellow Muslims. No good Muslim can be gay, they say. And traditional schools of Islamic law consider homosexuality a grave sin. But Abdullah, a Washington, D.C. lawyer who studied Islam in the Middle… Read more »

What it’s like to be gay and Muslim

(CNN) Lia Darjes spent some time taking photos in the blissfully lilac bedroom of El-Farouk and his husband, Troy, in Toronto. The men, both Muslim, are naturally lit in a peaceful aura of domesticity, sunken into a comfortable bed with their black cat. But as with many gay Muslims she interviewed and photographed, unsettling inner… Read more »

Gay Muslim: Islam Is No Religion of Peace

Like the other two monotheisms that precede it, Islam has blood on its hands. “What’s his name?” I asked my husband as he woke me to tell me of the carnage in Orlando. “It’s going to be a Muslim name.” I just knew it. I had never been one to racially profile my own community.… Read more »