The LGBTQ+ Muslim Experience
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Inquiries into positive transgender development are particularly important given the high rates of gender-based victimization and limited mental health resources. Moreover, transgender Muslims may encounter multiple forms of minority stress as a religious minority, gender minority and often as immigrant and ethnic minorities as well. There are few psychological studies at present that address the religious and spiritual lives of transgender individuals. The current exploratory study therefore used a mixed-methods design to explore the religious and mental health experiences of 15 transgender Muslims. Participants completed a series of religious, mental health and identity development measures as well as open-ended questions regarding their religious and family dynamics. Fourteen of the 15 transgender Muslim participants narrated a challenging coming-out event, however the average depression scores for the sample were moderate and self-esteem scores were within the normal range. Although a larger, longitudinal sample is required to conduct a statistical analysis of the mediating factors, qualitative analysis suggested that 8 of the 15 participants used religion and spirituality as important coping tools (e.g., Allah, Quran, liberation theology). The present study’s exploratory and descriptive analyses help build a stronger theoretical foundation for understanding both the positive and negative aspects of religiosity and spirituality in transgender Muslim lives. Furthermore, this study highlights the need for more complex qualitative and quantitative analyses of gender minorities’ religious resilience and identity development experiences
This article serves as the first in a series of 4 articles providing a theoretically and empirically informed approach to understanding lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals and communities from the perspective of positive psychology. Termed LGBT strengths, this perspective aims to complement existing perspectives in LGBT psychology focused on distress and pathology to provide a more balanced and representative understanding of LGBT lives. In the present article we provide an introduction to the 3 pillar model of positive psychology and its relevance to the unique experiences of LGBT individuals. Drawing connections between positive psychology and related strengths-based concepts within the existing literature in LGBT psychology, we provide evidence for LGBT strengths across the 3 pillars and within diverse populations of sexual and gender minorities. Discussing the role and importance of fostering a psychological science of these strengths informed by an understanding of the diversity and complexity of LGBT lives, we conclude with an overview of the goals of this series and introduce the subsequent articles in the series which will address implications of LGBT strengths for theory, research, training, and practice.
Religion often creates cultural meaning for interpersonal relations as individuals and societies develop interactively (Etengoff & Daiute, 2013). Religious tools, such as God and texts, have reportedly been used in both relationally adaptive and maladaptive ways (Brelsford & Mahoney, 2009; Brelsford, 2011). Extant research regarding relational uses of religion largely focuses on Christian dyads’ general conflicts, as opposed to conflicts related to religious prohibitions. This study expands the current research regarding theistic triangulation (i.e., God/faith positioned as an ally against other party) and mediation (i.e., God/faith invoked constructively to mediate conflict), by focusing on gay men and their Jewish and Christian relatives’ accounts of relational religious tool use (Brelsford & Mahoney, 2009; Brelsford, 2011). 23 gay men (10 Jewish backgrounds, 13 Christian backgrounds) and 15 of their religious family allies (7 Jewish, 8 Christian) completed semistructured interviews focusing on the quality of their post–coming-out relationships and how they use religion to negotiate associated conflicts. Interviews were analyzed utilizing an applied cultural historical analysis (Etengoff & Daiute, 2013). 74% (17/23) of gay men reported that their religious relatives utilized theistic triangulation in post–coming-out conflicts. 65% (15/23) of gay participants reported that theistic triangulation negatively impacted their familial relationships. Alternatively, 69% (16/23) of gay participants also spoke highly of religious family allies that navigated post–coming-out issues and conflicts effectively. These findings illuminate the necessity of including socioreligious contexts in our study and treatment of gay men and their religious families. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved)
The purpose of this article is to traverse the fields of psychology, human sexuality and religion to find themes of commonality that can be used to shed light on how faith forms the unique life journeys of intersex and transgender people. The specific aims of this article are twofold: (1) to begin to explore the role that religion and spirituality may play in the lives of transgender and intersex individuals and (2) to provide a roadmap for psychologists and other social scientists to conduct future research in this area. We began by conducting a literature review of intersex and transgender religiosity and spirituality. After summarising the articles uncovered, we then offer suggestions on how current psychological methods and theories – including spiritual journeys, empowerment, positive psychology and stress-related growth – can be used to advance research on the role that religious and spiritual beliefs play in intersex and transgender lives. Our hope is that this article will expand the psychological study of religion and spirituality (both the positive and the negative aspects) to encompass sexual and gender minorities.
It is often assumed that the process of navigating an LGBQQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, and questioning) sexual identity in a religious context is difficult and conflicting. However, only a few studies have empirically examined LGBQQ experiences of religion and identity integration. One-hundred five LGBQQ participants (age 18–24) were surveyed to examine their experiences of religious and sexual identity integration. While LGBQQ young adults do not report a high degree of sexual and religious identity integration, factors such as self-acceptance and increased knowledge were instrumental for those who reported integration. Suggestions are provided for counselors working with conflicted LGBQQ young adults.
Drawing on observation, autoethnography, and audio-taped interviews, this article explores the religious backgrounds and experiences of Bible Belt gays. In the Bible Belt, Christianity is not confined to Sunday worship. Christian crosses, messages, paraphernalia, music, news, and attitudes permeate everyday settings. Consequently, Christian fundamentalist dogma about homosexuality-that homosexuals are bad, diseased, perverse, sinful, other, and inferior-is cumulatively bolstered within a variety of other social institutions and environments in the Bible Belt. Of the 46 lesbians and gay men interviewed for this study (age 18-74 years), most describe living through spirit-crushing experiences of isolation, abuse, and self-loathing. This article argues that the geographic region of the Bible Belt intersects with religious-based homophobia. Informants explained that negative social attitudes about homosexuality caused a range of harmful consequences in their lives including the fear of going to hell, depression, low self-esteem, and feelings of worthlessness.
This article looks at homosexual Black men who are heavily involved in fundamentalist African-American churches. These men describe themselves as "out as same-sex loving individuals" even though the messages preached by their church leaders and the doctrines of their churches are, at the very least, heterosexist, but more likely to be stridently anti-homosexuality. Not only do these men attend the churches they are parts of, but they are viewed as leaders in these churches in positions ranging from associate pastor to director of facilities management. The study uses structured interviews to understand how these men manage the conflict between a committed gay identity and a strong religious identity that says the two cannot coexist.
This qualitative study aims to document the identity experience of progressive gay Muslim men in a North American context. Six in-depth interviews, supplemented with participant observation, were conducted of gay Muslim men who attended an international conference for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, and questioning (LGBTQ) Muslims. For progressive gay Muslims such as these, a Muslim identity appears three-dimensional (religious, ethno-cultural, and color) when integrated with a gay identity. As a religious identity, gay Muslim's relationship to Allah (God) and a reinterpretation of the Qur'an and traditional condemnation of homosexuality appears necessary. As a cultural identity, East-West ethno-cultural differences that impact on homo-sociality and gay identity construction, marriage and the impact of coming out on the Eastern family and siblings emerged as critical issues. As a color identity, internalized racism, dating relationships and social dynamics within gay subculture as Muslims of color in a white dominant context appear key challenges.
The book suggests a transition from a relational worldview premised on the socio-political ethos of adaptation towards a transformative worldview premised on the ethos of solidarity and equality. Expansively developing Vygotsky's revolutionary project, the Transformative Activist Stance integrates insights from a vast array of critical and sociocultural theories and pedagogies and moves beyond their impasses to address the crisis of inequality. This captures the dynamics of social transformation and agency in moving beyond theoretical and political canons of the status quo. The focus is on the nexus of people co-creating history and society while being interactively created by their own transformative agency. Revealing development and mind as agentive contributions to the 'world-in-the-making' from an activist stance guided by a sought-after future, this approach culminates in implications for research with transformative agendas and a pedagogy of daring. Along the way, many key theories of mind, development and education are challenged and radically reworked.
The current study utilized data from the Social Justice Sexuality Project to investigate influences on psychological well-being of LGBT+ Muslims (N = 75) in the United States. Specifically, path analyses were used to examine the association between spiritual and religious engagement, LGBT community involvement, outness, and family support with psychological well-being. Control variables included lifespan Islam involvement, age, income, and the age at which the participant came out to themselves. Findings illustrate spiritual and religious engagement, outness, and income were all positively related to psychological well-being. Moreover, individuals who had converted to Islam but were not raised in the faith had significantly lower psychological well-being than those who had a consistent experience with Islam from their childhood until the time of the study. The present investigation provides critical contributions to the study of gender and sexual minorities in the United States and the experiences of currently practicing LGBT+ Muslims and those who were raised Muslim. Clinical implications and future research suggestions are discussed.
In Singapore, discrimination toward LGBT citizens has been reinforced through a monolithic notion of the traditional Asian family. This ethnography focuses on the lived experiences of 7 ethnic minority Malay Muslim "butch" individuals and their journey to parenthood. Drawing upon frameworks of intersectionality and piety, I explore how butches negotiate and reconcile their queer practices and desires as Muslim daughters around "coming out," foster children with same-sex partners, being a biological parent and their perceptions of Assisted Reproductive Technologies (ART). Reproductive futures, enacted by Malay Muslim butches, disrupt yet reinforce the durability of "natural" life trajectories scripted through conventions of marriage, family and fatherhood that have, insofar, excluded them. Further, their experiences also offer alternatives to existing literature on same-sex families that tend to render other nonwhite and/or non-Western queer family practices invisible.
The complexity of the lives of sexual and gender diverse Muslims within the United States calls for mental health providers to own our power and privilege. Embracing cultural humility in service of aligning ourselves with liberation psychology, we call for an intersectionally informed, strengths-based approach to empowering/affirming clients whose diverse religious experiences intersect with their experiences of marginalization as sexual and gender diverse (SGD) Muslims. Drawing on extant personal narratives around mental health and therapy of this population, the authors offer critical reflections, processes and opportunities for clinicians to take responsibility in honoring the diverse journeys and experiences of SGD Muslims in serving them in journeys of healing.
The current exploratory study utilized a mixed-methods design to study 18 lesbian Muslims' mental health in relation to familial and online social support (M Age = 24, Sd = 9). Due to the threat of familial rejection, the majority of participants (n = 11) selectively disclosed their sexual identity and four participants publicly disclosed. Half of participants scored as mildly to severely depressed on the Beck Depression Inventory (M = 15, Sd = 9). Participants reporting changes in their familial relationships due to their sexual orientation scored as the most highly depressed, F (2, 15) = 4.75, p = .025. Participants' depression scores varied significantly between those that belonged to online support groups addressing religion and sexuality (n = 8, M = 8.712, SD = 6.183) and those that did not (n = 10, M = 20.250, SD = 7.772), t(16) = 3.416, p = .004. Future research would benefit from exploring how therapeutic alliances and family of choice networks can help buffer lesbian Muslims' experiences of familial rejection.
This qualitative study critically examined, from an interpretive perspective, 14 life stories of LBTQ Muslim women across North America. This paper explored how LBTQ Muslim women navigated Muslim and LGBTQ hegemonic norms and exclusions as they negotiated and lived out identity intersections. Transnational and critical race feminisms, intersectionality, and critical Islamic liberationist approaches to gender and sexuality framed the project. The study findings suggested that LBTQ Muslim women resisted hegemonic norms by mapping out alternative paths grounded in Islam, and in living out lives in LGBTQ communities. Participants discussed their experiences of being “othered” within LGBTQ communities, how they challenged the notion of a monolithic Islam, how they expanded coming-out frameworks to include their own experiences, as well as how they asserted their own religious agency and resistance. Participants demonstrated that living out an intersectional identity was a complex task where constant negotiations of positionality were transpiring concurrently.
This paper examines how 21 transgender individuals used YouTube transvlogs to co-create their own transformative agency. Drawing on a social justice framework, I conduct narrative content analysis to explore how a historically marginalized population enacted their own transformative development without researcher intervention. I suggest that by questioning the status quo, explicating and envisioning new activity patterns, and committing to concrete online and offline actions, transvloggers develop themselves and their community in transformative ways. Vloggers’ resistance and pursuit of new developmental pathways illustrate the power of individuals to design their own technological transformative systems even amidst challenging circumstances.
Muhsin is one of the organizers of Al-Fitra Foundation, a South African support group for lesbian, transgender, and gay Muslims. Islam and homosexuality are seen by many as deeply incompatible. This, according to Muhsin, is why he had to act. “I realized that I'm not alone-these people are going through the very same things that I'm going through. But I've managed, because of my in-depth relationship with God, to reconcile the two. I was completely comfortable saying to the world that I'm gay and I'm Muslim. I wanted to help other people to get there. So that's how I became an activist.” Living Out Islam documents the rarely-heard voices of Muslims who live in secular democratic countries and who are gay, lesbian, and transgender. It weaves original interviews with Muslim activists into a compelling composite picture which showcases the importance of the solidarity of support groups in the effort to change social relationships and achieve justice. This nascent movement is not about being “out” as opposed to being “in the closet.” Rather, as the voices of these activists demonstrate, it is about finding ways to live out Islam with dignity and integrity, reconciling their sexuality and gender with their faith and reclaiming Islam as their own. Scott Siraj al-Haqq Kugle is Associate Professor in the Department of Middle East and South Asian Studies at Emory University. His previous books include Rebel between Spirit and Law: Ahmad Zarruq, Juridical Sainthood and Authority in Islam; Sufis and Saints' Bodies: Mysticism, Corporeality and Sacred Power in Islamic Culture; and Homosexuality in Islam: Critical Reflection on Gay, Lesbian, and Transgender Muslims.
This study explores the effects of a Christian identity on self-reported dissonance, and the relationship between source of dissonance and its resolution. One hundred sixty-three self-identified lesbians drawn from a convenience sample provided responses to open-ended questions regarding tension between religious beliefs and homosexuality. Source of dissonance was coded as internal, external, or nonexistent. An evangelical identity predicted both internal and external dissonance, although the likelihood of experiencing internal dissonance was higher. Resolution strategies included altering one's religious beliefs, leaving the church, or living with the dissonance. Respondents experiencing internal dissonance were more likely to alter their beliefs. However, the effects of the age of Christian identification and age of first suspecting one's lesbianism suggest that identity synthesis may forestall dissonance resolution when the source of tension is perceived as external.
This article examines the process by which persons reconstruct their Evangelical religious identity to include the formerly incongruent homosexual identity. Members of one conservative gay Christian organization, called Good News, are profiled in the way they come to desire, construct, and solidify a gay Evangelical identity. Through a process of socialization, they renegotiate the boundaries and definitions of their religious identity to include a positive valuation of homosexuality. This accommodated, but still distinctively Evangelical, identity enables persons to resolve the dissonance between their Christian beliefs and their homosexual feelings. The case study explores how a religious identity is accommodated to incorporate incompatible aspects of the self. It provides an interesting glimpse at religious socialization outside of radical conversion. This somewhat unique example offers a look at how individuals and groups are involved in negotiating religious identities in a modern world.
This paper presents data collected through a postal survey of 121 gay and lesbian Catholics in Britain. It aims to examine
the respondents' assessment of the official Catholic positions on sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular. The
Catholic Church labels the homosexual inclination an “objective disorder” and the engagement in homosexual genital acts “intrinsically
disordered.” A vast majority of respondents, however, found the Church's arguments against homosexuality and other sexuality
issues unconvincing. Most respondents considered genital acts within a same-sex relationship entirely compatible with their
Catholic faith. The respondents demonstrate the ability as social actors to rise above the “deviant” circumstances imposed
on them. This is the outcome of their having developed a positive self identity, constructed primarily in opposition to the
Church's teachings, that successfully incorporates their sexuality and religious beliefs.
In most western countries homosexuality is gaining growing support as an alternative lifestyle and, being a part of sex education in schools, is presented to children as a positive image. The first section of the paper summarises the current political and social aspirations of the gay and lesbian movement and examines the underlying values and assumptions in this position as well as its educational implications. The second section considers evidence of the extent to which the gay and lesbian aspirations are receiving a sympathetic hearing from liberals, sex education specialists, Christians, members of other world religions and the population at large. The third section develops a Muslim perspective on (male) homosexuality, based mainly on Islamic teaching but also referring where appropriate to practices in Muslim countries. Muslims oppose the teaching of homosexuality not only because Islam proclaims homosexual practices to be an ‘abomination’, but also because the notion of homosexuality as a lifestyle at all, let alone a natural and equally valid one, is itself incoherent from a Muslim perspective. The paper concludes with some suggestions about the educational implications of the Muslim perspective.
In this study we explore individual 's experiences of identity integration between their sexual orientation and religious beliefs. Using both qualitative and quantitative research methods, we examined identity integration in forty members and participants of the Metropolitan Community Church of New York (MCC/NY), a gay-positive church located in Mid-town Manhattan. The survey and interview data collected showed that: (1)a majority of the research participants reported that they had successfully integrated their homosexual and religious identities, (2) being integrated was related to higher role involvement at MCC/NY, being a member of the church, attending more MCC/NY worship services and activities/ministries, and attending MCC/NY for more years, (3) lesbians were less likely than gay men to report past conflict between their identities, and more likely to report being fully integrated, and (4) MCC/NY played an important role in helping these participants achieve integration between their homosexual and religious identities.
The discussion of design experiments has largely ignored the Vygotskian tradition of formative interventions based on the principle of double stimulation. This tradition offers a radical approach to learning reasearch which focuses on the agency of the learners. The principle of double stimulation is used and developed further in the intervention methodology called Change Laboratory, created in the Center for Activity Theory and Developmental Work Research at University of Helsinki. The paper analyzes the Change Laboratory methodology and its potential for generating expansive learning, using data from an intervention conducted in 2006 in the surgical unit of a university hospital in Finland. The analysis demonstrates how the agency of the learning collective developed hand-in-hand with the construction and implementation of a new organization of work by the collective. Such expansive learning goes beyond knowledge construction, resulting in materially anchored new practices.
While the psychological research literature on gay and lesbian Christians is rich and continually expanding, it is also quite fragmented-consisting mainly of studies with small sample sizes that focus narrowly on specific subgroups within the phenomena. Furthermore, the recent research and theories assessing and underlying the integration of these two identities have never been presented in one cohesive review. Therefore, working within a new theoretical paradigm that views gays and lesbians as spiritual and religious beings in and of themselves, the purpose of this article is threefold: 1) to integrate a fractured body of literature on gay and lesbian Christians; 2) to review and critique relevant psychological theories currently in use in this area; and 3) to introduce to the field the relevant theoretical concepts of integration as process and empowerment to better outline comprehensive pathways for future research on not just the lives of gay and lesbian Christians, but of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender people of faith.
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