Short Abstract

This workshop highlights the growing global im/mobility of queer Muslims as a site of global contestation, backlash, and politicization. It deals with queer Muslims from various perspectives who are setting themselves in motion voluntarily or who are being moved by structural constraints, on an empirical or theoretical level.

Long Abstract

This workshop highlights the growing global im/mobility of LGBTQIA+ Muslims. People on the move, such as pilgrims, migrants, refugees or tourists, are “sexual beings expressing, wanting to express or denied the means to express, their sexual identities”, as Mai and King (2009) state. Islam plays a significant role in this process, as it encourages self-chosen mobility through spiritual incentives, and it can also lead to a forced departure from one’s own environment or home country when it intersects with queerness. Indeed, there has been a consistent increase in the mobility of queer Muslims on a global scale, that enables new networks and the empowerment of individuals as part of a transnational queer rising. Conversely, queer Muslim life-worlds are saturated with discrimination and repression as they are a site of global contestation, backlash, and politicization, leading to flight and escape. At the same time, LGBTQIA+ rights are instrumentalized for racist migration policies: Stringent border control and anti-immigration policies are frequently associated with the necessity of safeguarding the rights of queer individuals from the purported “homophobic, migrant, Muslim other.” Thus, whether a queer Muslim on the move feels joy, support, discrimination, or violence on and through the journey is dependent on the form of mobility and their intersectional subject position. This panel invites presentations dealing with queer Muslims from various perspectives who are setting themselves in motion voluntarily or who are being moved by structural constraints, on an empirical or theoretical level.