Becoming Muslims with a “Queer Voice”: Indexical Disjuncture in the Talk of LGBT Members of the Progressive Muslim Community

Abstract

This article examines LGBT Muslim erasure by hegemonic Islamic and homonormative ideologies and how those involved in nonconformist Muslim groups queer those ideologies in order to forge narratives of belonging. I analyze the work of 'queering' Muslim voices among LGBT Muslims and allies involved in a multisited community of nonconformist Muslim face-to-face and online groups, and what such queering explains about the relationship among erasure, voice, ideological disjuncture, and resistance. Through analysis of individual and group conversations alongside ethnographic observations, I argue thatLGBT Muslims and allies strategically index queerness and Muslimness as a challenge to marginalizing discourses and to create 'safe' spaces that also benefit other Muslims on the margins. Narratives of both LGBT Muslim marginalization and its strategic disruption as well as nonconformist group interactions are used to illustrate how the queering of Muslim discourse creates "indexical disjuncture" to make space for both LGBT Muslims and other nonconformist Muslims. I conclude by considering how providing evidence of language's role in the process of 'queering' contributes to ongoing conversations in queer theory. [progressive Muslims, LGBT Muslims, queering, indexical disjuncture, erasure, voice] T his article examines the erasure of LGBT Muslims by hegemonic Islamic and homonormative ideologies and how those involved in nonconformist Muslim groups queer those ideologies in order to forge narratives of belonging. I analyze the work of 'queering' Muslim voices among LGBT Muslims and allies involved in a network of nonconformist Muslim face-to-face and online groups, and what such queering explains about the relationship among erasure, voice, ideological disjuncture, and resistance. Through analysis of individual and group conversations alongside ethnographic observations in a multisited community, I argue that LGBT Muslims and allies strategically index queerness and Muslimness as a challenge to marginalizing discourses and to create 'safe' spaces that also benefit other Muslims on the margins.Building on scholarship on sexually diverse and gender-variant Muslims in other disciplines and a growing body of queer linguistic anthropology, I examine narratives of both LGBT Muslim marginalization and its strategic disruption as well as nonconformist group interactions that illustrate how the queering of Muslim

Beyond the axes of inequality: Religion, race, and everything in between.

“…Few studies, however, explore the impact of the intersection of race/ethnicity and sexual orientation on the mental health of heterosexual and sexual minority adults other than African American (Balsam et al, 2011; Calabrese et al, 2015; Else-Quest & Hyde, 2016; Everett et al, 2019), and Latinxs (Ibañez et al, 2009). Although the intersectionality approach has been used to study different ethnic minority groups, little to no studies have been conducted that examine the intersectionality of multiple marginalized identities among Asian (Ching et al, 2018), Arab (Smith, 2012; Thompson, 2020), and South Asians, or among faith groups, for example, Muslims, Jews, or Hindus. In this paper, we examine the relationship between MSI (gender, religion, and nativity or immigration status and sexual orientation) in a sample of diverse Lesbian, Gay, bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) and heterosexual males and females.…”

Queer linguistics and identity

“…Levon's (2016) sociophonetic analysis of creaky voice use by an Orthodox Jewish man who experiences same-sex desire demonstrates the role of linguistics in exploring intersectionality, as the speaker positions himself as both queer and as committed to his religion (which does not allow homosexuality). Similarly, Thompson's (2019) To appear: Journal of Language and Sexuality 10(1) discourse analysis of narratives produced by LGBT Muslims in the US shows participants simultaneously indexing queerness and Muslimness by effectively creating a space for themselves which legitimises the intersection of these two seemingly clashing identities. Afzal's (2014) ethnographic analysis with Muslim American gay men of Pakistani descent further shows how the construction of complex identities with competing intersecting parts is linguistically possible.…”

Linguistic taboo, ideology, and erasure: Reproducing homophobia as norm and lesbianism as stigma in women's football in Turkey

“…When Irvine and Gal (2000, 38) wrote about language ideology and the three processes by which it works, they used "erasure" to mean that components of language that did not match the ideological apprehension of that language would be "unnoticed or explained away"-erased. But when they wrote that "erasure is the process in which ideology, in simplifying the sociolinguistic field, renders some persons or activities (or sociolinguistic phenomena) invisible" (38; emphasis added), they also inspired researchers to discuss the concept in relation to erasing or denying identity through language (e.g., Thompson 2019). I concentrate on two main linguistic maneuvers-first, the substitution of the word "shorthaired" (kısa saçlı) for "lesbian," and second, the erasure of lesbianism by referring to the women in question as "wannabes" (özenti)-to show how the word "lesbian" is taboo because lesbianism is taboo and how this works to ideologically erase lesbians.…”