Muslim, LGBTQ communities must unite against acts of hatred

Message of love and tolerance must ring clearly, writes

My friend Rob Wells and I have often had conversations about a hypothetical attack on a local gay bar and the associated backlash against the Muslim community. So with great concern I read the news on the Orlando gay bar shooting by an American Muslim citizen that has left 49 people dead.

Any Muslim with the slightest bit of interest in Islamic studies knows of the strong Qur’anic proscription against wanton murder and fisad fil ardh (anarchy on Earth). Yet, there are people from Muslim backgrounds who violate the sanctity of the holy month of Ramadan by engaging in senseless violence.

Muslim leaders have been swift to denounce the latest in the never-ending series of terrorist acts undertaken by people who claim an affiliation with Islam.

The Council on American Islamic Relations, which supported the hate crime bill in 2009 that included sexual orientation and gender identity, went so far as to urge Muslims to donate blood for the injured victims.

In their respective tweets, Imam Khalid Latif expressed solidarity with brothers and sisters in the LGBTQ community and seminary instructor Abdul Nasir Jangda offered prayers for the families who lost their loved ones.

Many Muslims continue to dissociate the horrific acts of violence from Islam. Indeed, former CSIS analyst Phil Gurski writes in his book The Threat From Within, that Muslim “community leaders have frequently and continuously raised their objections to and otherwise outright rejected terrorism.”

However, several Muslim leaders continue to be indifferent to the abuse and murder of gays when they refuse to renounce draconian punishments of homosexuals and depict them in the worst possible ways.

Violent actions do not emerge out of a vacuum, but emerge from a warped narrative that is stoked by homophobic leaders who hide behind the thin veneer of religious freedom. It is for this reason that I had opposed the choice of a Muslim speaker in January at the University of Alberta, who had referred to gays as “filthy, disgusting thing.”

Imam Suhaib Webb has tweeted about the work needed for capacity building against hatred of vulnerable minorities. To this end, Wells and I, as members of the Edmonton Police sexual and gender minorities liaison committee, reached out last year to our counterparts in the EPS Muslim community liaison committee. Our objective remains to draw both communities together to work on areas of common concern and to have a joint response against ugly incidents of hate.

However, our objectives can only be realized when we make the effort to know one another. From one logistic reason to another, our efforts have not materialized in the manner we wanted. Yet, we cannot tarry, as lives are at stake, especially those of vulnerable LGBT Muslim youth who must contend with both homophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry.

We also need to ensure that we do not allow hateful speakers to dole out hatred like poisoned candy bars to impressionable youth in Edmonton.

Canada’s strength lies in its diversity. When we nurture diversity, the more extreme voices get drowned out. The need of the hour is to get a grand coalition of Muslims — Sunni, Shia, Ismaili, Ahmadi, Bohra, Sufi among others — to work with each another against hatred of any community, specifically the LGBT.

While many of the emails I have sent to some local Muslim leaders have been ignored, it is my fervent hope that we will be able to band together through liaison committee meetings, at the upcoming rallies against hatred and my own community presentations on deconstructing homophobic arguments in the name of Islam among other events.

I hope that the Muslim and LGBT communities can unite to express solidarity in times of both grief and joy. I also hope that through our tears and prayers, we honour the precious and beautiful lives lost with the promise that instead of giving into hatred and fear, we live our lives with love — relentless, radical, everlasting love.