In reading these two works I found it difficult to resist comparing the experiences shared by these narrators. Both obviously highlight the difficulties they've faced being queer Muslim POCs, but it seemed to me that Ali's experiences of rejection and dejection stemmed from his experiences with other people, such as members of his family and friends, whereas the majority of Habib's dejecting experiences seemingly arise from feeling excluded from Muslim spaces as she is a Muslim woman who challenges classical notions of what it means to be a "Good Muslim". Ali does mention Islam, most notably in his discussion about his relationship with food and how that relates to Ramadan, but at least in the part of the text assigned, his personal relationship to Islam seems to be less of the focus. He frames Ramadan as "starv[ing] out of some deluded sense of obligation to a faith that casts us as underlings in a modern world," which certainly doesn't seem like much of a favorable relationship to me. I wonder if finding a Mosque like that which Habib describes could have helped him navigate the challenges of his younger life.