For context, I’m a USian who became interested in Islamic cultures as a young adult, and from there found something magnetic about the faith of Islam.
I have many LGBT friends, and whenever I’ve reached out to mosques, the answers I get are rather disappointing. The best one I’ve gotten still invalidates homosexual relationships. I’m cishet, but as I said I have many LGBT friends, and I’m also poly. I have a comrade who is trans and converted to Islam, and I see that many LGBT Muslims exist, but this confounds me, too. Even the most open-minded of them will say something is “what Muslims believe” and then clarifies that it is from a Hadith, not strictly from the Quran. The comrade I know is a “Quranic” Muslim - one who follows the Five Pillars and the teachings of the Quran itself, and I know the Hadith are controversial outside of the majority of Sunni Islam.
I want to be a more spiritual person, but the type of Islam I encounter promotes teachings I know in my heart to be wrong. I know, too, that many Christians, Muslims, and Jews have this odd personal combat with God, for lack of a better term - a struggle with the divine, wherein they work out various personal sins/failings or disagreements with the scripture. I know Jews that eat pork, Muslims who drink, Christians who don’t pray. I sense there’s a spirit to the faiths that is more important than adherence to prescriptions of the text.
I am white (part Native American, but this isn’t visible in my appearance or culture). No part of my lineage comes from any land associated with Islam. It feels like appropriation for me to want to convert to a faith, but then pick and choose which parts of it I want to believe and follow. I dabble in tarot and the occult. I’m poly. I believe all consensual love is valid and sacred. So, I guess my question is aimed more towards the Muslim comrades here who are LGBT or allies, who balance the secular with the spiritual, who might be able to show me the way:
How can I call myself a Muslim without compromising my beliefs? Is there a sect or denomination I can seek guidance from? Am I just wasting my - and your - time?
I’m not sure how to answer that question. I used to be pretty atheistic myself. I’m also very skeptical by nature, and I don’t believe any divine being would be so callous as to condemn nonbelievers to an eternity of suffering. It’s not a fear of death. I just crave… something I can’t explain. Something that I’m not getting from anywhere else. To me, spirituality is just… natural. I believe plenty of atheists are spiritual, too, just in a really materialist fashion. Reverence for nature, love of life, appreciation for the universe… My ideas on the nature of the divine probably don’t fit into Islam as neatly as they should, but I’ve often gotten along better with Muslims than any other religious demographic here in the US. Maybe all I really want is the experience and knowledge that comes from partaking in the community. Maybe it’s just part of my journey. All I know for sure is I keep drifting back to Islam specifically, and it feels weightier and more meaningful than any other spiritual path I’ve explored.
I’m not reading you in bad faith, and I’ll look into the Ms. Marvel thing, but I’m a little surprised by the responses I’m getting. I feel like I’m having to justify being interested in Islam on a community page called Islamic Leftism. I sort of thought there’d be more Muslim comrades interested in answering my questions about the faith and less atheists asking me why I’m spiritual at all, lol.