DAIYEE ABDULLAH: I've received a number of emails from people. And I would probably say 80% of them are younger LGBTQ people who are fearful. They're like, I'm afraid. What can I do? And I've been working very diligently to calm them.
UROOJ ARSHAD: My name is Urooj Arshad. And I identify as a queer Muslim. I was born and raised in Pakistan. And my family immigrated to the US when I was 17. And I came out at 19. And that was about 20 years ago.
I feel like I live in a new world. I think when—after 9/11 it felt like a new world. This is—I feel like I'm on the third day of a new reality for so many people that I know and love, because we sit at these intersections. These are not separate identities for us. And for a long time we felt invisible in both spaces. We were educating LGBT mainstream folks. And we were educating Muslims around the existence of these complex identities. And a lot of times our voices get lost.
I'm scared, in terms of—I was already feeling very vulnerable. My communities feel really vulnerable. We feel unsafe for so many reasons. The trauma in our community is so palpable. So we are already sitting with that. I just don't know what this is going to do to us.
I think right now, we're in crisis mode. But when things start to calm down, I really feel that whatever policies become prominent—it's an election year. It's already scary, what kind of rhetoric is being said. I just don't know what the world is going to look like.
SHEHZAD UKANI: My name is Shehzad Ukani. I am a queer Pakistani American Ismaili Muslim, originally from Chicago. My mom, specifically, didn't have prior exposure to what it meant to come out, and to be able to differentiate sexual and gender diversity from mental illness.
I was incredibly scared. It was after Ramadan, in August of 2010, where I decided that this was absolutely necessary for me. And I felt completely and utterly unprepared for it. There are so little safe spaces for queer and trans people of color to begin with. And now, others are making it less safe and less available.
Given that a lot of us are in mourning, continue to be in mourning, I think a lot of our concerns revolve around trying to build as many allies as possible. I think we have a lot of allies in name. But unfortunately, those allies exist in name only. That's both within and outside of the Muslim community.
DAIYEE ABDULLAH: It's important that we have more voices to articulate their particular life issues, their life experiences, and also that there is a way to find a common ground so that we can all work and live together.