Islamic Artist Trying to Change Thinking About Being Gay And Muslim

VOX MAGAZINE
By Brandon Ambrosino

Promotional poster for 'Just Me and Allah.'

When Samra Habib started attending art shows as a teenager, she quickly realized something: queer Muslims are seriously underrepresented in art. As a result, she says, many Muslims "don't have the cultural understanding about how to talk about these issues — they just don't have the tools." Habib decided to try to correct this problem with a photography exhibition that opened this week at Toronto's Parliament Street Library. The exhibition, titled Just Me and Allah: Photographs of Queer Muslims, features ten close-up photographs of out queer Muslims from all over the world. Habib's subjects represent a "range of religious beliefs." Some of them pray five times a day, while others merely observe certain holidays. All of them, however, have two things in common: they were raised in Islam, and they currently identify as queer.[link]