Salaam- Vancouver: Space Making
There exists a select few places in Vancouver allotted and reserved for Muslim, queer folks to engage in healing and community building. Even having the ability to publically celebrate Ramadan, while speaking communally about Islamophobia and its intersections with queerphobia and anti-Blackness over Iftar was a mere fantasy for queer Muslims residing in Vancouver up to a year ago. Previously, solace was solely found within groups and centres who organized either around queer of colour issues or just Muslim, and particularly cis-gender and heterosexual issues; therefore, one had to choose between their intersecting identities as a queer Muslim, as official organizing in public spaces within an intersectional framework of queer politics and Muslim existence was not configured yet. It was not until a queer man from Vancouver got in contact with El-Farouk Khaki, a gay, African- Indian, refugee and immigration lawyer who had initiated Salaam Canada in 1991, as a “social/ support group for lesbian and gay Muslims” which held regular meetings, celebrations and get-togethers in secret locations in Toronto (Salaam Canada). Salaam Canada went on hiatus shortly after announcing their commencement due to death threats and claims of failure of intersectionality (Salaam Canada). In 2000, Salaam came back and in addition to providing space for interaction, they started to provide refugee support, host annual Peace Iftar dinners during Ramadan and hold forums on human rights and social justice within the queer/trans and Muslim communities of colour (Salaam Canada). After viewing the success Salaam had in Toronto with space-making for queer Muslims, a chapter of Salaam in Vancouver was started near the Davie street area, which is infamously known for its White and gay gentrification and its “violent remapping of lives, bodies and desires” of folks identifying as trans, Two-Sprit, queer, Indigenous, Black, people of colour, poor and sex-workers, as they were legally evicted from, and pushed to the deadly streets during the late 70s, and still continue to be forcefully relocated to what is now known as the Downtown Eastside (Manalansan, 2005, p. 141). The political implications of Salaam Vancouver, a social centre open to queer and trans Muslims of colour living within the multitude of intersectional oppression, holding Islamic events and talks about state-enforced internalized queer and Islamophobia, all function as forms of disidentifying with a gentrified zone which was created to ensure the erasure of those very discussions and people for neoliberal corporate profit (Manalansan, 2005, p. 145). White and wealthy gay men latched onto what they viewed as an opportunity to achieve full-status Whiteness by being seduced by empire to turn on other queer folks, aiding in the oppression and propelled murder of poor, Muslim, racialized, trans sex-workers (Agathangelou et al, 2008, p. 121). This was done with the establishment of the CROWE in 1980, the Concerned Residents of the West End, lead by a White gay man named Gordon Price and middle class residents and business owners, majority White, who “emphasized how the street ‘prostitutes’ on the West End ‘commandeered its streets’, accelerated ‘the process of decay’, and made the area ‘vulnerable to criminal invasion’ (Ross, 2010, p. 201). During this process of exile, “the West End had begun to cater to a ‘pink market’ of gay consumers both locals and tourists alike”, which was being constructed in order for White middle-class gay men to begin to see themselves as apart of the nation state, so they would partake in oppressive measures to aid in the gentrification of the West End (Ross, 2010, p. 203). In this manner, White gay men “achieved a measure of respectability, political and social capital, and residential entitlement […] by the early 1980s, whereas sex workers “were subjected to evermore intrusive tactics of ‘spatiality governmentality’”, in the form of fines and restrictions to the distance a sex worker or homeless person can stand from schools and residential places (Ross, 2010, p. 203). Therefore, the White gay men signed up to join in on doing the empire’s dirty work in exchange for a facade of heteronormative acceptance and inclusion (Agathangelou et al, 2008, p. 122). In light of this grotesqueness, Salaam’s Vancouver location near the Davie street area now disturbs the White, cis male and gay “minority-mainstream”, reclaiming the right to an intersectional way of being within that Whitewashed space and remolding the geopolitics of the area into a configuration that encompasses the intersection of being queer/trans and Muslim, while viewing existence as tied to other non-Muslim, exiled queers of colour (El-Tayeb, 2012, p. 80). The establishment of Salaam Vancouver not only affirms queer Muslim existence by providing a space which lets racialized queers flirt while enjoying Iftar during Ramadan and praying together, but also reconfigures bars and clubs filled with middle to upper-class Whiteness in the area by opening its doors for free to invite back the queer and trans folks of colour who were kicked out of homes and cut off from making a living (Manalansan, 2005).
Queer Mosque as Place of Solace: El-Tawhid Juma Circle: Vancouver Unity Mosque
In 2009, El-Farouk Khaki, a gay, Refugee and Immigration lawyer and man of colour raised in Vancouver founded El-Tawhid Juma Circle, which manifested within Toronto’s Unity Mosque (Juma Circle). This mosque has become a glowing sanctuary for cultural and religious Muslims of all gender identities, sexual orientations, races, linguistic groups, dis/abilities and class, in addition to all Islamic identities, including Shia, Sunni, Ismaili, Ahmadi, Jafri, Sufi identities (Mastracci, 2017). In addition to disrupting the traditional uniform crowd allowed into mosques, El-Farouk, a gay man, was the first ever Imam to lead prayer in the mosque and made it a mandate for anyone to have the ability to lead a khutbah (sermon), despite prayer traditionally being led solely by cis-gender and heterosexual Muslim men in the mainstream mosques (Mastracci, 2017). By enacting these radical openings of Mosque doors, El-Tawhid is reconfiguring notions of being Muslim both within the imperial-Western imaginary of the homophobic and patriarchal, backwards Muslim and by disidentifying with a religious space, which was never open to non-hetero and cis- male, normativity (El-Tayeb, 2012). Having queer and trans folks of colour mingle and pray while uttering Arabic script which was not written for queer and trans formulation of faith and uttering the prayers in spaces those folks have been exiled from in both non-Western homelands and on Western, stolen lands, is an act of reclamation (Pérez, 2016). Similar to how Latinx queers moving their hips in clubs, alongside one another and to songs either not written about their love or interrupted as lyrics of heteronormativity by their communities, is revolutionary space-reclamation (Pérez, 2016). However, the Vancouver branch of El-Tawhid initiated several years ago does not have a space within a Mosque, yet shares QMunity’s space for prayers which still embodies a form of disidentification with an exclusionary Islam and also functions as powerful pushback towards the hostility visible Muslim queers face in Vancouver, as a continuation of the global project of Islamophobia (Munoz, 1999). Yet, it is essential to recognize Vancouver’s inability to hold queer and trans friendly prayer within a Mosque and why that is, due to this functioning as a barrier to many Muslims as they cannot be situated within the QMunity space due to the overt visibility of queerness the organization presents (El-Tayeb, 2012). Many Muslim queer and trans folks are not even afforded the opportunity to mould into the White, queer-liberation discourse of “coming-out” and “being-out” as a form of survival, as doing so poses physical and emotional threat to their connections, their mobility through borders and their loved ones’ lives trans-nationally (El-Tayeb, 2012, p. 80). Therefore, in its attempt to juxtapose the exclusionary notion of Mosques, Vancouver’s El-Tawhid is configured, probably without say due to mosques refusing to let them in and the devious rise in property prices, into an inaccessible and limited space; the space only affords entrance and association to those whose identities are not fearfully concealed (El-Tayeb, 2012).
Works Cited
Agathangelou, Anna, M. Bassicchis and Tamara L. Spira. (2008). Intimate investments: homonormativity, global lockdown and the seductions of empire. Radical History Review, 100: 120-143.
El-Tawhid Juma Circle: Embracing an Inclusive and Compassionate Islam. (n.d.). Retrieved November 06, 2017, from http://www.jumacircle.com/
El Tayeb, Fatima. (2012). ‘Gays who cannot properly be gay’: Queer Muslims in the neoliberal European city. European Journal of Women’s Studies, 19(1): 79-95.
Manalansan, Martin. (2005). Race, violence and neoliberal spatial politics in the global city. Social Text, 84-85(3-4): 141-155.
Mastracci, D. (n.d.). What It’s Like To Pray At A Queer-Inclusive Mosque. Retrieved November 06, 2017, from https://www.buzzfeed.com/davidemastracci/toronto-lgbt-unity-mosque?utm_term=.qi5972YKm#.ds5P41ma7
Munoz, Jose Esteban. (1999). Performing disidentifications. In his Disidentifications, pp. 1-34.
Ross, B. L. (2010). Sex and (Evacuation from) the City: The Moral and Legal Regulation of Sex Workers in Vancouver’s West End, 1975—1985. Sexualities, 13(2), 197-218.
Salaam Canada: Queer Muslim Community. (n.d.). Retrieved November 06, 2017, from https://www.salaamcanada.info/