For context, I’m a USian who became interested in Islamic cultures as a young adult, and from there found something magnetic about the faith of Islam.
I have many LGBT friends, and whenever I’ve reached out to mosques, the answers I get are rather disappointing. The best one I’ve gotten still invalidates homosexual relationships. I’m cishet, but as I said I have many LGBT friends, and I’m also poly. I have a comrade who is trans and converted to Islam, and I see that many LGBT Muslims exist, but this confounds me, too. Even the most open-minded of them will say something is “what Muslims believe” and then clarifies that it is from a Hadith, not strictly from the Quran. The comrade I know is a “Quranic” Muslim - one who follows the Five Pillars and the teachings of the Quran itself, and I know the Hadith are controversial outside of the majority of Sunni Islam.
I want to be a more spiritual person, but the type of Islam I encounter promotes teachings I know in my heart to be wrong. I know, too, that many Christians, Muslims, and Jews have this odd personal combat with God, for lack of a better term - a struggle with the divine, wherein they work out various personal sins/failings or disagreements with the scripture. I know Jews that eat pork, Muslims who drink, Christians who don’t pray. I sense there’s a spirit to the faiths that is more important than adherence to prescriptions of the text.
I am white (part Native American, but this isn’t visible in my appearance or culture). No part of my lineage comes from any land associated with Islam. It feels like appropriation for me to want to convert to a faith, but then pick and choose which parts of it I want to believe and follow. I dabble in tarot and the occult. I’m poly. I believe all consensual love is valid and sacred. So, I guess my question is aimed more towards the Muslim comrades here who are LGBT or allies, who balance the secular with the spiritual, who might be able to show me the way:
How can I call myself a Muslim without compromising my beliefs? Is there a sect or denomination I can seek guidance from? Am I just wasting my - and your - time?
About the LGBT friends, if they’re not Muslims they don’t follow the teachings of Islam, shouldn’t matter if they’re queer or not, and it wouldn’t matter if they drank alcohol or not, there’s also this part of quran [60:7] [60:8] [60:9].
As for mosques and Muslim issue with LGBT rights, you have to remember that a majority of Muslims were or are still victims of colonialism, and there was a wave of saudi american backed wahhabis teachings and madrassas, and that Muslims historically were less harsh on queer people than europeans, for example the ottomans legalized it way before most western countries. There won’t be any well known sheikhs saying good things about queer people or doing an analysis more than “ew he put the wee wee in the poo poo” type of stuff, there’s also the whole pink imperialism thing which discourages even talking about it. My phone will crash if I try to search this right now but I sure a lot of global south countries that aren’t Muslim have issues with queer people (correct me if I’m wrong but also the DPRK isn’t too good about it because they value the family or somethin?I don’t remembe).
Finally, Islam doesn’t expect you to be perfect, you’re a human with flaws and are expected to make mistakes, even the prophet himself made mistakes, that’s why there’s forgiveness.
Not saying you should or shouldn’t convert, just answering with what I know
Thank you. You are right that the DPRK isn’t very LGBT friendly for those reasons. The passage and your reply helped a lot.