The Importance of Religion and Representation
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“We have always been here, it's just that the world wasn't ready for us yet.” This is the melancholic queer diasporic experience. Reading Samra Habib’s was inspiring. The queer “Eastern” life was not just created, it has always existed. It is hard to recognize this as colonialism forced homophobia into our world, but queerness is inherently non-Western. I liked this reading because I believe the emphasis on representation is the most important thing, and the intersection of creativity and society is essential to preserving the identities that the world tries so hard to erase. The part on religion was especially significant, and it was beautiful reading about a utopia where one can be all while also not being alone in that being.
I never thought that religion, queerness, AND “ethnicness” could intersect. It feels like we can either get one or the other but not both; you either bring your religion and queerness in a white way, or you get your religion and ethnicity in a straight way. After looking up the photography project, I found joy in how the photography was not professional. It spoke to how Habib explained how some Queer Muslims “might not have the tools to understand the language wirttten by academics in Ivy League Schools,” but that doesn’t mean they shouldn't have access to queer conversations, just how it doesn't mean they shouldn't have access to queer representation. Mohamed Abdulkarim speaks to this religion, chosen family, and life path. Something that stood out to me was when he said, “I didn’t understand the value of literacy until that day,” which made me think of how Habib was trying to break this barrier of literacy through images of queer joy. Abdulkarim and Habib show how the melancholic migrant experience takes shape differently, specifically melancholia. We must combat its hopelessness, which Habib strives to do with the archival series of experiences.