I can still feel the visceral “no” that rang through my body when my mother would ask me to pray as a child. I remember seeing her cry in the doorway as she sensed my resistance towards religion. I felt like a weed in a field of flowers on the nights when the local sheikh and ma3aref would come over to spread the word of God in our living room. I may not have known what it meant to be queer, but at the same time, I knew that religion did not belong to me— nor I to it.
Growing up, I felt like there was no space for me within the religious institution that I was born into. I never saw any representation of people who looked or loved like I did while maintaining a belief in God. I think I was 20-years-old when I first heard of the term “non-binary,” and even then, it was an abstract concept I didn’t fully understand. I had always felt androgynous, I just never managed to put a word on it. I didn’t know that I was allowed to be from where I was and feel the way I did. It took years for me to stand tall and proud with my identity as a trans-masculine person.
Each year, the weight of hiding a secret that my religion and culture deemed “sinful” slipped by like beads on a sib7a, silently counting the passage of time. Only I knew the truth of what was being carefully concealed behind the outward display of faith, and what was quietly affirmed within the hidden corners of my heart. A part of me wonders how different my life might have been if I hadn’t spent so many years wrestling with my own internalized homophobia and transphobia. Perhaps I would be in a thriving partnership. Maybe I could have avoided the trauma that came with engaging with people who were incapable of truly seeing me and respecting me for who I was. In imagining this alternate path, I can’t help but think of all the moments lost to fear and shame—moments that could have been filled with the love and acceptance I longed for but struggled to grant myself.
When I came out to my mother, she embraced me, her arms encircling every version of me that lived in the shadows, and offering comfort for each year that I hid. While her embrace was reassuring, I couldn’t shake the lingering question: Why should I devote myself to a God who would create beings whose very existence was deemed haram?
One day, I found myself sitting in my father’s car as we went on a long drive along the coast. The ocean stretched out beside us as he talked about a new imam he had recently discovered. The new imam apparently offered surprisingly progressive interpretations of the Quran. I asked question after question, voicing all the doubts I’ve long held about the different facets of religion that never sat right with me. With patience, my dad began to break down all of the imam’s interpretations. He explained that much of what people dislike about Islam doesn’t stem from the Quran itself, but rather from hadiths— words attributed to the Prophet Mohammed, often passed down through generations by those claiming to have heard them. He also reminded me that many rigid interpretations of our faith were shaped off the views of a few influential men.
When I asked my father about his stance on queerness, he confessed he hadn’t read enough on the topic but on what little he knew, queerness was considered haram. As I’ve come to understand it, even the most progressive interpretations of the Quran don’t condemn being gay outright, but rather, acting on it. Between my mother’s acceptance and my father’s uncertainty, I found myself struggling to reconcile my beliefs with my identity.
Amid all my searching, I think I found my own truth through another kind of love—My beloved grandmother, who was like a second mother to me. When she fell ill, cancer left her bedridden for over two years, bound to a life of pain and suffering. With her sight fading and her hearing slipping away, few things could penetrate the darkness that enveloped her. I remember how she always used to hold a sib7a in her hand, softly reciting her prayers and her daily affirmations. Deep down, I could sense how much safety her faith brought her, how she felt cradled by God’s presence, and sheltered by the quiet assurance of His existence.
In one moment, I wanted to give her the comfort she drew from faith, so I picked up one of the many siba7 that lived hanging on her bed frame, and gently placed it in her hands. I don’t remember what I said—I only remember the intention, the need to remind her of God in that moment, to offer her something tangible that made her feel she wasn’t alone, the way I often did. Though I couldn’t find faith myself, I wanted to offer her the solace I never truly had.
When she passed away, it felt like a part of me died with her, until I began living in her memory. Her death exposed me— as if her new vantage point in heaven gave her access to all my secrets. Her transition to the next phase of life allowed her access to all of the knowledge in the universe, including the knowledge that I am both queer and trans, and don’t believe in God—truths I had hidden from her when she was still with us. I was terrified this hypothetical newfound awareness would change how she saw me, that the boundless love she had always shown me would wither into the opposite: indifference.
I confided in my father and he reassured me that her love was unconditional. He believed that even If I had shared my truth with her while she was still alive, she would have eventually come to a place of peace, even if it took her some time. I realized with the omniscience of the afterlife came a boundless love and acceptance, a deeper understanding that transcended anything religion could have taught her about queerness or people like me.
Her voice still echoes in my head to this day whenever I need reassurance. I can still hear her saying “ya habibet alby, ya noor 3einy, ya ro7y,” words that expressed the depth of her affection and the special place I held in her heart.
In the year-and-a-half since her passing, my transness has blossomed. I cut my hair, underwent breast reduction surgery, and began adorning my body in ways that are gender affirming. For the first time, I feel unapologetically myself, unapologetically different, and unapologetically trans. Though sometimes I catch some disapproving stares, inquisitive glances, or even the occasional glimmer of secret admiration, in all of their eyes, I see my true self reflected back at me.
