Giving hope to Queer Muslims
They hope to structure their accounts around the kind of content they wished they had seen when they first came out.

"[When you realize you're Queer], the first emotion you go through is, 'Oh my gosh, I'm alone. There isn't anyone else like me,' because you don't see people like that, Queer Muslims, that look like you. You don't see them, except for the gruesome violence. So, we want people to be like, 'Oh my gosh, there is someone who looks like me and is Queer. I must not be so much of an anomaly,'" Mohamad said.

"We wanted to find a space just for us Queer Muslims. Like Omar explained, all we've found on social media is just [people] sharing their side of the story, and we're never able to see people who look like us who are from the same religion as we represented," they continued. "So that's why we wanted to start this page, just to have different people with different backgrounds come on, so that way the younger generation or other people in general, once they go on social media, they can see people that look like them on there."

For Mohamad, being Queer and Muslim has meant feeling a little different in both communities. "My experience [with being Queer and Muslim] is not so great because... in [both] the Muslim and Queer [communities], we're considered abnormal. The Queer community is like, 'Oh my gosh, follow a religion that hates you for who you are?' and then the Muslim [one] is like, 'You're Gay?! That's a sin.' Of course, both... are wrong. That's their opinion."

While Hamed said their experiences were different, they also struggled with aspects of their identities coming together. "My experience was also not great. I can talk about it from more of a familial aspect. My parents ingrained in me the idea that queerness is against Islam, and you'd be burning in hell just for being Queer. I noticed whenever I approach spaces, even messages, that even our religious leaders would have these views and impose them on us. It was frustrating. It made me feel lost about where I fit in the religion."

Hamed, like many Queer Muslims, felt these teachings were not accurate to the religion they had grown up with but struggled to vocalize their beliefs or find a positive representation of Queer Muslims. "Being Queer is such a big part of my identity, and seeing that you would be ostracized for being Queer really kind of made me suppress myself," they said.

While they struggled with being accepted for who they were by some in the Muslim community, Hamed also realized that the often very white Queer spaces in Seattle were slow to welcome them because of their cultural and religious background. "Seeing the Queer community and how they view Muslims was also frustrating. There isn't a win in any situation. That's why we want to be able to foster a community in between those two... to help any Queer Muslim that feels lost and needs to feel heard and represented."

For Mohamad, coming out to Seattle Queers as Muslims can be just as difficult as coming out to straight Muslims as Queer. "I don't tell people I'm Muslim a lot of times. I'm still getting used to telling people, 'Hey, I'm Muslim, but I'm also Queer.' Unfortunately, the Seattle Queer community is a lot of white people. Everybody has religious trauma, and a lot of them come from Christianity and denounced their religion, which is why, often, I get this question: 'You follow such a religion? Why do you follow a religion?' Things like that...

"I want people to [know] that just because you denounce your religion does not mean that everybody who's Queer is immediately going to denounce their religion."

Educating their peers
The space Hamed and Mohamad are creating isn't just for Queer Muslims.

"It's also a page to educate straight Muslims as well," Mohamad said, "because a lot of them grow up with this idea that queerness is such a humongous sin, and a lot of that comes from their cultural background and not their religious background. It was just something ingrained in them growing up. It's to educate the straight Muslims, so they can find out, okay, Queer Muslims exist, and it's normal. It is not a sin in the religion. It's this cultural influence in them to think that it's a sin."

"We would like people to amplify our message," Hamed added. "Say they have Queer-friendly Muslims, not even just Queer Muslims, to send that message to them, so that even the greater Muslim community can contribute to this, because we're going to need the support of everybody to be able to do this. We need people to trust the process and trust that we are going to be creating something so needed for Queer Muslims and so needed for awareness about Queer Muslims."

They're also hoping to reach more people than just those in the Seattle area. "The page isn't just for Seattle. It's on social media, so it will be accessible for anyone around the world," Mohamad said. While they're just starting, they hope the page could eventually lead to in-person events or even a new organization.

"We'd love to see where this page could take us. Eventually, I want to be able to turn it into a nonprofit, especially to help young Queer Muslims. A lot of parents, unfortunately, don't react well to it, a lot of kids get thrown out, things like that, so yeah, of course, if we get to a platform big enough that we can create something where we could help people in person, we'd love to do that," Mohamed said.

Their whole goal is to help people by showing other Queer Muslims that they are not alone. "I want people, especially kids, [to see this], because this isn't something we had for ourselves," Mohamad added.

Focusing on mental health
"So obviously, when you realize, okay, I'm Queer, I'm not straight, you go online and want to find other people like that," Mohamad said. "Unfortunately, if you look up 'Queer Muslims' on the internet, you're going to find a lot of very graphic, violent things. We're trying to change that image of just like, 'Queer Muslims, you get killed,' all of that aggressiveness...

"We're just trying to get a page where anybody, any kid, grown-up, anybody who is having those questions, we want to be one of the first things that pop up. We're trying to use the hashtags and stuff like that, so as soon as you look up the words 'Queer Muslim' ...we want you to see other Queer Muslims."

Changing the way Queer Muslims are perceived on the internet can be life-changing. "It's an unfortunate reality that most Queer Muslims become very suicidal because of their identity," Hamed said.

"That's another reason why we're trying to get a Queer Muslim therapist, we're trying to get people who are interested in talking about their mental health... A lot of us have struggled with our mental health," Mohamad said.

"That's important to us. When I first knew I was Queer, I was terrified to talk about it out of fear of being disowned," Hamed said. "It's just a harsh reality for a lot of us. Either we live in countries that [have a] Muslim majority, that have problems with ...being Queer, or we live in countries like the US, for example, where if you talk about being Queer but you're Muslim, then literally anyone around you is going to be questioning you and think you're literally, as Mikhailo said, an anomaly or a juxtaposition, but not someone who can exist in reality. It's very dehumanizing."

"We want to normalize that Queer Muslims exist," Mohamad added, "and once you go on Instagram or TikTok, we want one of our videos to pop up and be like, oh, look at that, I just learned something new today! So, yeah, we want to normalize some things, educate some people, and share some stories on this page. We want to do a lot with it."