Abstract
Thompson’s new book provides original qualitative evidence on the ways in which queer/LGBTQ2+ Muslims navigate their faith and spirituality in queer-friendly or queer-led mosque spaces and related online groups in North America from 2016 to 2020. Muslims on the Margins draws on the author’s own participation in these spaces and networks as a white Muslim convert, queer cis-woman. Her main aim is to provide an analysis of the discourses that queer Muslims deploy to engage in their faith and build a welcoming community, and in this, she succeeds by providing a richly detailed body of evidence and discussion.
Thompson’s broad analytical framework relies on the terms “non-conformist” Muslims and “marginalized” Muslims. The former is an explicit shift away from the term “progressive” Muslims, which denoted a movement in North America that she argues dissipated but also provided the impetus for explicitly queer-friendly groups and mosques. Moreover, she points to the more transnational reach of non-conformist Muslims. Non-conformist includes feminists, queers, and those wanting to bring forth anti-racist and anti-ableist perspectives, emphasizing “marginalization” from mainstream Muslim versions of faith and spaces. Her focus is mostly on queer Muslims, but what is most original about the study is that Thompson focuses on how queer Muslims create a community and interpret faith through interaction with other “marginalized” Muslims. As she rightly argues, there has been little research to date on how queer Muslims construct inclusive spaces together, with both other queers and supportive others who feel similar exclusions from mainstream Islam and Muslim communities.
Using ethnographic methods, Thompson organizes her findings around the production of meaning of the self, faith, and community. The depth of the interview material and the understanding of the “talk” produced in online forums is a direct result of the author’s deep engagement with the communities and a sound and consistent analytical approach to discourses. Thus, we learn about how individuals form narratives of self-identity that validate their existence as spiritual and queer; how a large part of being in non-conformist mosque spaces is a progressive negotiation of different embodiments (in contrast to gendered regulation in traditional mosques); and how the interactions of a range of non-conformists can produce a more inclusive community all around. She uses the latter point as an example of the possibilities of discursive futurism, which is central to her argument that non-conformists and queers can build a different future through their struggles.
The book takes us through the key themes of community building, embodiment, narratives of self, wider inclusion, and issues of racialization. Interestingly, there is no traditional conclusion chapter, but a coda written as a poem by the author, drawing together obvious themes and experiences from the study, but framed as the possibilities of the “Islam of the future” (p. 181). While this is creative and also perhaps acknowledges that we are not able to make decisive conclusions about queer Muslim experiences, this reader would have appreciated a conclusion to provide additional context for the study.
Throughout the book, there is little detail on how impactful the progressive and non-conformist movement has been in relation to the mainstream Muslim communities in both the United States of America and Canada or indeed whether there are any connections. There is also limited discussion of Islamophobia in either country or whether or how that connects to racialization of the participants. While Thompson is clear to state that this issue did not feature in the analysis of the discourses, there is also a half chapter devoted to anti-Black racism at the end of the book, without much clarity about how that issue connects to the profile of the participants or the broader understanding of issues that “non-conformists” should confront as part of their approach to social justice. In the United States of America, the overwhelmingly African American Nation of Islam is one of the largest group of Muslims, but there is no explanation of how they relate to other mainstream Muslim organizations and, hence, how both structure the non-conformist space. If a main contention of the study is that queer Muslim talk provides a window into how Islam might be expanded, reformed, or transformed through discursive futurism, then the dominant discourses that may stand in opposition to this futurism need some discussion.
Nonetheless, this is a valuable study of the detailed ways in which queer Muslims construct narratives of self, faith, and community, and it will provide very accessible examples for teaching at the undergraduate level on intersectionally focused courses about faith and queerness. It will also be relevant for researchers working at the intersections of faith and queerness, adding much more directly to this core area of studies of religion but with some useful insights for broader sociological and political literatures on the conflicts, politics, and navigations that queer Muslim identities illustrate about both mainstream queer and mainstream Muslim issues.