‘Out to get us’: queer Muslims and the clash of sexual civilisations in Australia

Abstract

Drawing on qualitative data from interviews with twelve queer Muslims in Australia, this article analyses the ongoing struggle for queer Muslim recognition within the context of the so-called 'Clash of Civilisations'. Analysing the rhetoric of national security and 'Western' civilisational identity, this article interrogates the incorporation of sexuality into the cultural and political discourse of the 'war on terror', from the xenophobic demonisation of Muslims as sexual predators, to liberal Islamophobia that posits Islam as an aggressive and alien Other against which liberal capitalism must be defended. Within this hostile environment, queer Muslims in Australia are articulating various strategies for finding meaning in their lives. From a Marxist perspective, this article analyses these strategies for recognition which range from complex acts of 'closeting' sexual, ethnic and religious identities, to subversive acts of critical hybridity that seek to negate the exclusionary nature of homophobia and Islamophobia within Australia's multicultural society.

Islamofobia queerizada y resistencias musulmanas queer en tiempos de homonacionalismo

“…Al igual que sucedía con sus homólogas en los países de mayoría musulmana, los discursos culturalistas oposicionales han afectado de manera significativa al modo en que las identidades musulmanas queer occidentales han sido conceptualizadas, hasta el punto de que autores como Abraham (2009) se refieran a ellas como "imposibles" o "inviables". Paradójicamente, esta presunta "imposibilidad" se convertirá en el génesis de lo que he denominado "movimiento transnacional de activismo musulmán queer".…”

Impossible Subjects: LGBTIQ Experiences in Australian Pentecostal-Charismatic Churches

“…The first section consisted of 12 general questions for all participants (Figure 1). The second section of 10 questions was for the 2 This term was coined by Ibrahim Abraham, who recognises queer Australian Muslims as similar impossible subjects-a configuration of sexuality and spirituality 'impossible' in heteronormative understandings of Islam (Abraham 2009). See also (Ngai 2004).…”

Homosexualities, Muslim Cultures and Modernity

“…Despite this, many queer Muslim women living in the diaspora did feel pressure from their families to adhere to normative gender roles and, most notably, to marry a suitable man, as most of them are not 'out' in the mainstream American sense. (2010: 380) Despite the heteronormativity in Muslim communities, many queer Muslims do not reject their ethnic or kinship networks outright, partly it seems because of the need to remain close to an ethnic community in the face of wider racism (Abraham, 2009(Abraham, , 2010 and perhaps increasingly because of Western cultural exclusions of Muslims (Khan, 2010). In this sense, gay identity is not the totalizing identity that many have experienced and chosen in the West, since it has to be negotiated in intersection with other significant identities.…”

“…This is a significant analytical and political distinction from post-structuralist theories because while it similarly challenges the politics of dominant knowledge construction evident in post-modernist approaches, it does this through its emphasis on the authenticity of the experience and knowledge of those caught between major locations of identity, rather than pursuing the ultimate deconstruction of identity that is theoretically implied in much of poststructuralist analysis. Whilst there is a constellation of concepts that attempt to think through the kind of 'intersections' that queer Muslims represent -such as 'hybridity' (Abraham, 2009(Abraham, , 2010 and 'assemblage' (Puar, 2007), to name but two 13 -my attachment to intersectionality is partly because it makes sense of the lived experience of those located at the crossover between dominant categories, rather than implying that they are somehow one step on the path to dissolving identity categories altogether. Queer Muslims as intersectionality do have various social experiences of identity and communities, and a properly intersectional perspective asks us to attend to this standpoint rather than simply to engage in a theoretical exercise of complicating or deconstructing dominant categories.…”