Hi Everyone,

We have now completed the member checking session for the study! We were able to meet with 4 participants from across the country to present the initial themes and findings for the study along with one quote to support each theme. The queer Muslim folks who attended the session shared that these themes and quotes resonated with them and aligned with their own experiences. We are so grateful to these participants for joining us in this conversation and sharing their thoughts and feedback about the initial findings from the study. We can’t wait to share the results with you as we begin the next phase of the study!

Thank you so much for your support and interest in this study. For more updates, you can subscribe to this page below!

-Research Team

Hello All!

We are so excited to share that we have almost finished the analysis process! We have compiled the initial findings for the project and we are in the process of completing a member checking session with queer Muslim folks who participated in an interview to ensure the findings adequately reflect their experiences and stories. Over the summer and fall months we will be developing materials to share the results and we are so excited for you to see them!

Thank you so much for keeping up to date about this project! For more updates, you can subscribe to our page below.

– Research Team

Hello all!

We are very excited to share that we have completed all the interviews for the study! We were able to hear from 29 queer Muslim participants across five provinces. We are currently in the analysis process and we hope to share the results with you very soon! Thank you so much for keeping up to date about this project! For more updates, you can subscribe to our page below.

– Research Team

We are so excited to be able to share Maryam’s interview with Cheri DiNovo on the Radical Reverend radio show! Maryam, the head of our research team, shares her experience living as a queer Muslim, what Islam means to her, and more information about this project and why it is important to her as a queer Muslim. You can check out the interview on CIUT Radio’s website at the following link:

The Radical Reverend

Thank you so much for your continued support for this study! For more updates, you can subscribe to our page below.

– Research Team

Hello all!

As we begin to wrap up recruitment for this study, we would like to share a final recruitment call for anyone who is interested in sharing their experiences with social services across Canada. We would love to hear from as many queer Muslim folks as possible so if you or someone you know is interested in participating, please sign up at the bottom of our contact page or email us at muslims.socialservices@gmail.com. For details, check out our recruitment poster below!

Thank you so much for your continued support for this study! For more updates, you can subscribe to our page below.

– Research Team

Hello all!

We are very excited to share that we have 26 queer Muslim participants that have completed an interview for the study! We are hoping to start the analysis process in the next couple of months and we are so excited to share the results with you when they are ready! However, if you or someone you know is interested in participating, you can still sign up at the bottom of our contact page or email us at muslims.socialservices@gmail.com. Thank you so much for keeping up to date about our project! For more updates, you can subscribe to our page below.

– Research Team

LGBTQ+ Muslim Expressions of Madness, Love, Resistance, & Care

Edited by Rahim Thawer, MSW, Maryam Khan, PhD, and Lali Mohamed

Call for abstracts
Submissions can include a range of topics that engage with Muslim religious and cultural practices, communities, rituals, values, and languages that inform, influence, or impact your mental health. We are using ‘mental health’ as an expansive concept that can include and is not limited to: mad, madness, sanism, psychiatric and psychological diagnoses among other expressions. We also recognize that ideas and constructions of ‘mental health’ are anchored in unique sociopolitical, historic and cultural shifts and perspectives. This means that depending on your positionality and geographic location, conversations on ‘mental health’ and what it is maybe different based on varying histories of colonialism, regional events, world events, expressions and practices of Islam and spiritualties. The experiences of ‘mental health’ are diverse, and we invite you to tell a story that engages with your own mental health as someone who identifies with the LGBTQ+ Muslim community.

Overview
LGBTQ+ Muslim communities across the world experience varying degrees of marginalization and persecution at the hands of loved ones and family, community members, religious institutions and the state. As a fraction of the population, we as LGBTQ+ Muslims are simply not adequately represented in the dominant culture regardless of where we live or how progressive the laws are. As resilient beings with multiple minority experiences, our stories of mental wellness and struggle often go untold. Taklif-Dhibaato, meaning problems in Urdu and Somali, is a transnational collection of personal essays, stories, poems, and interviews by LGBTQ+ Muslims who are ready to be heard.

The following questions and statements could be explored in your submission:
● `What was the role of religion and spirituality in helping you express your queerness?
● How did your family or congregation cause you emotional strife? How did LGBTQ+ communities cause you emotional strife?
● How has anti-Black racism in Muslim communities impacted your mental health, emotional well-being and sense of safety and belonging?
● In what ways did your fear of rejection give rise to other mental health challenges?
● Many people assume that identifying a mental health challenge/problem means you’re looking to shift how you operate in the world. Share a story about how your “problem” is actually an adaptive or creative adjustment and what it means for you to embrace your madness.
● Share how you came to resist oppression and abandon what didn’t work for you. Take us on a journey of how you created a space for yourself in a complex world.
● Perhaps you simply want to talk about your struggle with isolation, fear, and mental health at the forefront of a story. Weave in aspects of race, class, gender, disability, immigration status or your country of birth to paint a systemic picture.

Submission Guidelines
We’re looking to solicit a range of short pieces, written in English, that reflect a diversity of voices, perspectives, orientations and writing styles – journalistic, academic, personal, polemical, or none of the above. The use of first-person is fine, and writers should strive for clear, informative prose that is accessible to a general reader. We ask that all interested contributors submit a short abstract of 200-300 words long by: January 17th, 2021 using this Google Form.

If your abstract is selected, we will offer full editorial support for your pieces and work with you to produce a great contribution.

Please bear in mind a few key points:
● The contributions themselves should be about 1,000 to 1,500 words.
● Our deadline for first drafts is April 30, 2022.
● We will provide detailed editorial feedback for a second draft, and further editing and copy-editing on subsequent versions.
● We reserve the right to not include a submission in the final version.
● Please keep track of all your sources and interviews for fact-checking purposes. We haven’t decided yet whether there will be endnotes or an index, but each essay should include attributions with sufficient detail to allow readers to understand where the author has sourced their information/insights.
● Feel free to draw on your previous writing where applicable, but the material in this collection should be original.

The co-editors identify as sexually and gender diverse Muslims who are located on the
Indigenous traditional territories of the Neutral, Anishnawbe, Haudenosaunee, Huron Wendat, Petun, and Mississaugas of the Credit River Peoples.

For further information or questions get in touch with us: muzzierainbow@gmail.com
To enter a submission, please use this Google Form.

Your co-editing team,
Rahim, Maryam, Lali

Hello all!

Today, we are happy to share that we have 21 participants that have completed an interview for the study. We are almost halfway to meeting our goal of 45 Queer Muslim participants. If you or someone you know is interested in participating, you can sign up at the bottom of our contact page or email us at muslims.socialservices@gmail.com. Thank you so much for keeping up to date about our project! For more updates, you can subscribe to our page below.

Hello all,

We hope your September is off to a good start! We are so excited to share that we currently have 15 participants from across several provinces and representing a diversity of ethnicities, ages, sexual orientations, and gender identities. We are still working hard to recruit more Queer Muslim folks throughout Canada to reach our goal of 45 participants. If you or someone you know is interested in participating, you can sign up through our contact page or email us at muslims.socialservices@gmail.com! You can also share our research poster by saving the image below.

Thank you so much for your continued interest in our work! For more updates about the project, please subscribe to this page below.

-Research Team

We are so excited to be able to celebrate Maryam, the head of our research team, as the recipient of the Emerging Community-Based Researcher Award! Last week, Maryam was able to meet with CTV Kitchener news to share more about this project and why it is important to her as a queer Muslim. You can check out the interview on the CTV Kitchener website or on Twitter at the following links:

https://t.co/JepuSm63l2

Thank you so much for following along on this study journey with us! Keep a look out for more updates about the project by subscribing to posts on this page below.

-Research Team