QMOSQUE Khutbahs

First and foremost, I would like to thank our organizers, our partners at Union Church and every single one of you who is in community with us tonight. Everything we do at Queer Muslims of Boston and now, at QMOSQUE, is for our siblings here in Boston and around the world. We build spaces such as these for our community, so that we can thrive together in this life and honor those who are not able to join us. The memory of our siblings lost to violence, war, and suffering is a guiding light to us in times of hardship and in times of joy.

Tonight, we experience many firsts. The first QMOSQUE event ever and the first time many of you are in this room, praying together. This is my first time delivering a Khutbah in such a setting, and it is the first Jummah I have helped organize in community. Our community is on the precipice of many firsts as well. The visibility of queer, trans, and gender non-conforming Muslims is at an all time high. So too are the systems and methods used to silence us. 

The joy of being in community with each other is contrasted by the gravity of our choice to congregate. Our continual commitment to remember Allah together is a thorn in the side of what hopes to eradicate us. When we pray, laugh, and stand together, we signal that we will always move forward, against all that wishes to stop us. 

While we experience many firsts tonight, we are also writing the next chapter in the long and dynamic history of queer, revolutionary Islam. Even now, we congregate in the historic South End, where organized Islam first found a foothold in Boston. Queer Muslims of Boston also has a long history, started eleven years ago by Kaamila Mohamed, Nabil Khan and Thouheen Alam. Union Square Halaqa, founded by Magda Mohamed, celebrates its ten year anniversary as well. A diverse and electric Muslim history stretches out behind us, today we add to this heritage, as we have always been an invaluable part of the Islamic tradition. 

Those who hold on to ignorance and prejudice have admonished many of you into believing that queerness and Islam are incongruent, that your identity as a Muslim must be defined against your expression of gender, sexuality, and community. This could not be farther from the truth. Queer Muslims have always existed, and we have always found one and other, just like we have in this room. Each and every one of us represent what is truly glorious in the Islamic tradition. We steward the broader Ummah to stretch their imaginations regarding concepts of self, divinity, and society. We are the diversity of Allah’s noble Creation. 

In the words of Islamic Scholar Dr. Scott Siraj Al-Haqq Kugle, “our human diversity is often cause for exclusion and violence, but it is actually God's way of challenging us to rise up to the demands of justice beyond the limitation of our individual egoism and communal chauvinism. Justice is not served until comfortable concepts like "tolerance" are stretched to the point where they almost break.” 

In this room, and in every room we congregate, we present an invitation to break obsolete, prejudicial, and conflicting notions of tolerance and justice that many of know so well. However, it can be difficult to locate an ethic of justice that can nourish us during visceral, unending times of violence. Everyday we must interrogate ideas of justice, and everyday we must be creative in our approach to a just world. The Quran and its scholars offer us a millennia of resources, but how do we interpret them for our purposes?

  Citing Islamic ethicist Dr. Yasien Mohamed, “justice is a result of aman, safeness, and to have amānah, trustworthiness. The prerequisite for justice is trustworthiness. That is why the Prophet Muḥammad, peace be upon him, was first and foremost recognized as trustworthy. Only then was he trusted to work towards justice for all.”

True justice is born when we work to trust one and other with our collective safety. When we inevitably grind up against the structures that wish to subjectate us, when our loved ones are victimized by these structures in front of our eyes, the question we often ask is “how do we stand for justice?” We can go a step further than this and ask “how do we keep us safe?” If we can trust our community members to keep us safe, if we can build an ethic of justice surrounding aman and amānah, we are one step closer to the justice many of us seek. 

We all have the ability to keep eac hother safe. We can all make choices that better the safety of our friends, families, lovers, neighbors, and community members. We all have the agency to place our trust in each other, and to follow through on our commitment to safety. The safety we build is multifaceted. It is the spiritual safety, physical safety, material safety, and emotional safety. We can succeed in bettering every dimension of safety through the smallest actions, as long as these actions are intentional, as long as these actions are urgent. 

And these actions must be intentional, they must be urgent. Now, more than ever, our ability to keep eachother safe is integral to our survival. We have the immense privilege of gathering here today while many of our siblings suffer immeasurable violence at the hands of imperialists, zionists, and capitalists. 

We have the privilege to gather here on the 365th day of Israel’s current genocide in Palestine. We have the privilege to gather here while war rages in Lebanon, while we mourn our brother Khaliifah Williams, murdered by the state just two weeks ago. The work we have achieved here today is eclipsed by the work we still need to do, to free our people from the chains that bind them, to build, brick by brick, a road to their safety, to their aman.

 Allah has tasked all of us with the responsibility of building this collective safety. We all are imbued with the responsibility to engineer aman for those who need us. Dr. Kugle writes “the story of the Prophet is the narrative of those who hear the speech of God because their ears are opened by suffering and oppression, and [they struggle] against it with endurance and patience. It is also [a narrative of sacrificing] one's own well-being to protect the poor, the vulnerable, the strangers, and those who suffer, without which worship is incomplete, or hypercritical.”

Without us, without our siblings in Sudan, Palestine, Congo, Kashmir, Tigray, Cox Bazar, and many, many other places, the prayers of the collective Ummah are incomplete. As we practice a revolutionary Islam, as we partake in building a true and just future of ourselves, we also steward’s Islam into a brighter future. A future where we trust one and other, a future where we keep each other safe. In this future, we are the active principle that cements justice by intentional, urgent action. We are what completes Islam. We are what gives it life. We are what keeps us safe. We are what allows for the most robust form of Allah’s creation. Without each and every one of you in this room, the practice of Islam, globally, is incomplete. 

As we pray together tonight, and as each of your return to lives outside of this holy ground, ask yourselves “how do I trust? How do I keep what is dear to me, safe? How do I contribute to an Islamic future, built on aman and amānah?” The answers to these questions are not easy. But with the help of those in this room and beyond, we can begin to find our footing as we traverse this path, together. 

I speak on behalf of our organizers when I say we are so grateful for your faith in us. Thank you for trusting us to keep you all safe tonight. We look forward to tending to this space with each of you in the future. Ameen. 

Assalamu alaikum everyone,

Thank you for being here on this frigid evening. At the last QMosque, I raised my hand to share that I was interested in giving a khutbah. I was encouraged to give this khutbah. I am not nervous to speak but I was nervous right up until I started writing this. As a new convert I thought “Am I Muslim enough? Pious enough?” Slowly I started to rid myself of these suffocating questions because the only answer was to believe in Islam, Allah, and learn the teachings of Muhammad (Peace Be Upon Him) so that I may be better equipped to live the rest of my life. I will get right to it and share that I will be discussing the blessings of Friendship(s) and the untapped potential of Friendship within our communities.

I believe I am here today, both in this spot and in existence, by the grace of Allah, and by the love of my friends. I am talking quite plainly about how important it is to have friends, to be a friend, to be friendly. I grew up in a single parent household, with one stable source of income. As a familial unit we had plenty of love for each other, but not a ton of money. Friends of my family and my own friends kept us fed, entertained, and warm.

In meeting new friends both in college and when I moved to Boston almost a decade ago, I discovered my queerness. Through my queer, religious friends I came back to religion. And through queer muslims, i rediscovered Islam, this time for myself.

One beyond the propagandized form I was fed for years. Because speaking as an American, I always knew something was off about how Muslims were discussed in popular culture, especially at an age when I didn’t even know what Catholicism was (especially around 2003); a religion I was very much forced to practice. I can see now it wasn’t just about maintaining an enemy for the sake of war profits, but also to obscure its root teachings; I am learning that it is centered so much around community and assembly.

When we move and assemble publicly we learn about one another. Whether it is on the bus, at work, or in the present moment, our existences are linked and we depend on each other to keep each other safe, for one stop or a lifetime.

We cannot all be besties; and those that like to be alone should not be expected to suddenly become an extrovert. Quite the opposite; friendship is about respecting these differences in how much socialization we are up for; but in any case love, respect, and provide what you can offer. I believe that people choosing to use their resources on you, monetary, time, physical, emotional, are all examples of Allah’s blessing. Yes, these are also nice gestures but the world we live in is not cheap and it is taxing. Anything you can share can feel like a bounty to someone else who needs it.

I agree with a popular observation that there is a loneliness epidemic. On a personal level it can be difficult to navigate life without close relationships, especially one not tied to our jobs and institutions that often drive us to want to be with these close friends. Across our social networks there are people waiting to be pulled back into the thick of it all; having been pushed to the sidelines by sickness, losses, and climate catastrophes. On our city streets there are those who sleep on the ground, hopeful that today you will look them in the eye with a smile, at the very least. And what is one to expect when the public is constantly privatized? And our privacy at the mercy of a few platforms or unaffordable housing.

If I can leave you with one thing this evening, a quest even, is to strengthen your current friendships and make room for a new friend that may need you more right now than you need them, for now.

To write a khutba about beginnings, the first khutba of the new year, it turns out you have to actually write the beginning of that khutba. And, as it turns out, I struggle with beginnings. So, naturally, I am going to belabor this point by sharing with you a few other beginnings that I considered for this khutba. Bear with me:

One: “Believing in God is difficult.” This one is straightforward. It meets the demand to immediately capture the audience’s attention. It’s provocative. It cuts to the heart of the question of faith. If believing in God is difficult, does Jordan even believe in God?

Two: “I must admit, I have never finished the Qur’an.” This one is a little risky. It admits to you all upfront that I may not be qualified to give this khutba. Starting things off with one of my biggest religious insecurities, especially as a student of religion, is pretty bold. But—relatability! What Muslim, let alone a Muslim that attends QMosque, has not struggled with the Qur’an?

Three: “New years—even strangely manufactured Julian calendar new years—are always a time of deep reflection for me.” Okay, this one is just way too safe and cliché. This one exposes the central conceit of the whole endeavor of a New Year khutba. Come on Jordan, you’re a poet! What about the road less traveled?

Four: “As long as I can remember, I have obsessed over beginnings.” Well, isn’t that the truth. We have gone so meta that here, within a khutba about beginnings, I have listed multiple beginnings including this beginning about…obsessing over beginnings. You know what, at least it’s honest. Especially with my plan to follow that line with relatable anecdotes about blank journals and new Pokémon save files—you all might have liked that one.

And, Five: “Bismillahir Rahmaanir Raheem. In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.” Yeah, I’m breathing a sigh of relief, too. This is the beginning. The first verse of the first surah of the Qur’an. Surah al-Fatiha. The surah that frames all of our prayers. The surah we call on in times of comfort, in times of longing, in times of stress, even in times of disbelief.

Many Quranic commentaries suggest that the Fatihah contains all of the Qur’an. Hazrat Ali is believed to have said, “The whole of the Qur’an is contained in the Fatihah, the whole of the Fatihah in the basmalah, the whole of the basmalah in the ba, the whole of the ba in the diacritical point under the ba.” In other words, this is a beginning worth obsessing over. In my broken Midwestern Arabic, I’ll recite:

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem

In the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful.

Alhamdu lillaahi Rabbil ‘aalameen

Praise be to God, Lord of the worlds,

Ar-Rahmaanir-Raheem

the Compassionate, the Merciful,

Maaliki Yawmid-Deen

Master of the Day of Judgment.

Iyyaka na’budu wa iyyaaka nasta’een

Thee we worship and from Thee we seek help.

Ihdinas-Siraatal-Mustaqeem

Guide us upon the straight path,

Siraatal-lazeena an’amata ‘alaihim ghayril-maghdoobi ‘alaihim wa lad-daaaleen

the path of those whom Thou has blessed, 

not of those who incur wrath, nor of those who are astray.

So, yes. I have never finished the Qur’an. I spent my life believing that the Qur’an is difficult to read, that it’s difficult to read because I’m a bad Muslim, and that, being a bad Muslim, I might as well not do anything about it. But now, I can’t help but find comfort in this surah. When was the first time you heard or recited these words? Who were you? How have you and the world changed since then—whether over years or over the last moments since I clumsily recited them. How many millions of people have read and recited these words across time, and in how many languages? How many of those people also questioned religion, questioned Islam, questioned God, questioned their role in this cosmodrama?

Believing in God is difficult. For a long time I struggled to even say or write the words God or Allah without wincing. I defaulted to “The Divine, “The Beloved,” “The Universe”—anything to avoid saying God. But here I am: God! God! God! Allah! Allah! Allah. Somewhere, somewhen, little Jordan is cheering for this small big success.

It would be easy to argue that the last few years have not made it any easier to believe in God. Where are we supposed to find God? Among the mounting ruins of Gaza? In the flooded fields of North Carolina? In the shadows of violent narcissists and abusers who run countries and plunder the earth’s resources for Monopoly money?

And, what are we to make of this straight path? How can we follow a God that is unimaginable, all-encompassing, and beyond belief? How do we make sense of a world on fire—a world that loudly echoes the apocalyptic fears of our grandmothers?

I can only answer these questions from where I stand.

Lately, I have surrendered any thought that I might see or encounter the ultimate unknowable nature of God. God probably won’t come down with the voice of James Earl Jones to talk to me about everything the light touches. But maybe, by letting go of the sometimes terrifying unimaginable totality of God, I might settle and celebrate God as God shows up in what is near, in what is close, in what is intimate, in what is cherished.

I do not always know if I believe in God, but I often sense God’s voice in the languages I speak: the languages of sweaty dancefloors and dance studios and Persian poetry; the languages of Virginia Woolf and Kaveh Akbar; the languages of my grandmothers faces lighting up with the presence of their grandchildren; the languages of a perfect Thai iced tea, a puppet show, a long hug from my partner; the languages of birdsong and burning incense; the languages of a well-worn sweatshirt, a well-loved pair of ill-fitting glasses, a frigid winter wind; the languages of good music, of roller skates, of hand-written letters; the languages of QMOB and QMosque, of a clumsy khutba given by a good bad Muslim who believes, at least right now, in the possibilities of a new year. Who believes that new beginnings are necessarily imperfect, that God is never found or seen, and instead only encountered in the act of seeking, by, moment to moment, cultivating the presence, humility, and curiosity that makes life worth living.

Inshallah, I look forward to spending this new year with you all. In this new year, may Allah accept our questions, our prayers, our dreams, and our doubts. May we not exchange our disbelief for belief. May we hold them both, tuck them into our pockets and backpacks and Notes apps as we continue our hike toward meaning, toward purpose, toward comfort, toward beauty, and maybe, toward God.

“Ramadan is a time for forgiveness”

Last year, my mother sends me an email with that as the subject line and I dread opening it. I know what kind of forgiveness she is talking about and I am tired of it. I am tired of the narrative of forgiveness being a simple thing, of my anger and grief being useless to hold onto, that I am too stubborn to be truly pious. I became estranged from my family at the beginning of Ramadan in 2023. And, in the same month of that year, I also found QMoB. Allah has provided in beautiful ways, alhamdulilah.

In this khutbah today, in the month before Ramadan, under a new presidency, with a fragile and volatile ceasefire in G(h)aza, I want to talk about Tawbah with you all. Forgiveness, repentance, remorse. None of these should truly be easy processes, on both sides of forgiving and asking for it. Tawbah, or repentance in Islam, also means to return. To turn back, to change course, and come back to Allah. To wander and return… may our lives be a migration back to Allah. 

Consider the beauty of our faith when, so often in life, forgiveness and remorse are not substantial, are not restorative, and are not commitments against doing harm but merely acknowledgements that harm happened without a guarantee for future behavior. Tawbah asks us to imagine what a world would be like without hollow performances of regret and instead with implemented ways to restore what was harmed (in material, emotional, relational ways).

Hazrat Ali was asked as to what is tawba, and he replied that tawba consists of six elements:

1. to regret one's past evil deeds;

2. to carry out Divine duties that were missed;

3. to return the rights/properties of others that were usurped unjustly;

4. to ask forgiveness of a person who has been wronged by oneself

5. to make a firm resolve of avoiding the sin in future; and

6. to employ oneself in Allah's obedience, as one previously employed oneself in Allah's disobedience.

So we see that forgiveness is more than just an exchange of “I’m sorry” and “I forgive you”.

[Step 1]: to regret

There is power in feeling remorse. There is discomfort in feeling regret, in wishing that you acted differently. And on the other side, there is grief in wishing that someone else acted differently. These are powerful emotions, these are messengers of our own innate understandings of right and wrong. It is a beautiful thing to still be able to regret. To be aware of your own misdoings, and for that feeling of discomfort to be strong enough to propel you to move, to change, to return. 

[Step 2]: divine duties

Hazrat Ali’s description asks us to carry out one’s Divine duties that we have missed– justice is our divine duty. There is a hadith that I love about encountering evil: “Whosoever of you sees an evil, let him change it with his hand; and if he is not able to do so, then [let him change it] with his tongue; and if he is not able to do so, then with his heart — and that is the weakest of faith.”

Here, there is a clear chain of priority in how we as Muslims ought to engage with evil. It is a measure of our faith, duty even, to intervene against harm bodily, verbally, and then internally. An alternative way to frame this hadith: love is action. 

[Steps 3 and 4]: return the rights and ask forgiveness

Of all of the steps of Tawbah, what I love about it is that so many of them are internal processes. Like the formula for how a season emerges gradually and completely, Tawbah desires a private process of reflection and action. Of the six steps Hazrat Ali enumerates, only two of them (3 and 4) require interaction with the person harmed. The other two thirds of the process of repentance are internal, quiet growing. 

[Steps 5 and 6]: resolve to be better and to be in Allah’s obedience

Because Tawbah is a process that one can undertake directly with Allah, there is a weight to the promise of avoiding the sin in the future. There is a difference between a mistake and a sin. In Islam, we distinguish a sin as something wrong that we’ve done with the knowledge that it was wrong. There is a self-awareness that we are committing to doing something harmful and that we are doing it anyways. A mistake is done without the knowledge of it being wrong. Once we learn, however, the same action is no longer a mistake but it is a sin. Intention matters significantly in Islam. But what about when we intend one thing and end up harming in an unexpected way? How should we proceed? We still have caused harm. Once we know that harm has been done, it is not possible to return to a state of unknowing. And what we do with the knowledge matters.

All that I’m talking about today is repairing harm. How do we repair systemic harm? What are the ways in which we can seek restorative– or even transformative– justice for our communities and others? How can we learn and apply the lessons of Tawbah to a good life? The concept offers us a pathway to expanding our lens of healing.

When we are looking for justice, remember that Islam asks us to think of the steps of Tawbah, remember the strength of what an apology is and what it could be. I invite all of you to look for the ways we can strengthen our relationships with each other, with ourselves, and with Allah through our understanding of what it means to forgive. Do not abandon yourself, for Allah has not abandoned you. By practicing Tawbah in all of the ways we can, we continue to claim ourselves, care for our needs, and protect our communities.

Inevitably, when my family reminds me about forgiveness, I will be reminding them about Tawbah. When I doubt my own story about the harm that has been done to me, when I think to myself, “maybe it would be easier to forgive them the way they are asking. Maybe it would be better for me to let go of the past and compromise”, I remember my emotions as my messengers, I remember my love as my action, I remember the complexity of pain and the fitting complexity of healing. When they ask about forgiveness, I will be asking for meaningful change.

For many of us, Ramadan is a time of deep spiritual reflection. It is a time when we not only cleanse our souls, but also our hearts and minds. It’s a month of renewal, where we set our niyyah (intention) for the year ahead, in order to become closer to Allah and more aligned with our true selves. This month, I’ve found myself asking the question of how I can come to Allah sincerely while struggling with the fullness of myself.  Suppressing authenticity out of fear- of others, of judgement, or even of self, makes me wonder if I am able to worship with a full heart. As a result, I have felt called to reflect on the meaning of ibadah (worship) beyond ritual. To me, worship is not just fasting, prayer, or charity- it’s also an act of honoring Allah’s creation by acknowledging that He has given each of us distinct and meaningful experiences:

“Indeed, We have created everything in perfect measure”

Quran 54:49

Through this lens, ibadah requires us to live truthfully, rejecting the fear that holds us back, and embracing the mercy that Allah has placed in us as Al-Raheem (the merciful). 

Each of us experiences life through a unique perspective – our own “cup”-- but the essence of life itself, the “water”, is shared by us all. Trying to force someone to see through a differently colored cup is not only impossible, it also prevents us from appreciating Allah’s diverse creation. Attempting to change others’ cups by scratching its surface or by attempting to mix our “color” with theirs does not achieve the intended outcome; rather, it leaves one feeling invalid and unheard. 

As humans, we are prone to judging each other for not having the same colored water. But only Allah is Al-Hakam (the ultimate judge). As such, our focus should be on the li(fe)quid we all share, in accordance with the unity that He desires for mankind: 

“Hold firmly together to the rope of Allah, and do not be divided” 

Quran 3:103

Here, we can see His command to us to support each other in our differences, and to nurture each other in our unique experiences of the life we hold. 

As Muslims, we believe that everything exists by Allah’s will and decree. He chose to place each of us here, in this moment, for a reason: 

“Know that if the entire creation were to gather together to do something to benefit you- you would never get any benefit except that Allah had written for you. And if they were to gather to do something to harm you- you would never be harmed except that Allah had written for you. The pens are lifted and the pages are dried.”

Hadith Al-Tirmidhi 2516

This Ramadan, let’s reflect:

• What does it mean that Allah has willed us to exist as we are? 

• How do we honor the life He has given us?

Jihad: Struggle from a place of love instead of fear. Imagine your cup is yellow, but you are told your water is wrong because it isn’t blue. You spend your life trying to change it by scrubbing your glass in hopes that the color will fade or change. Maybe you even try to add other cups’ colors to your own to no avail, only to miss the truth that your water- like everyone else’s- was always clear. This breeds self-judgement and inevitably makes us fear what is naturally within us. 

Ramadan is a time of jihad- the process of confronting our inner struggles in order to connect with our creator. The jihad of trusting that we know who Allah made us to be is a difficult, often lifelong journey. However, without engaging in this internal conflict, we are unable to face the fear of authenticity and cannot come to Him in our truest form. If we cannot do that, we risk missing out on the connection He has always held with us, even when we turn away: 

“Whoever comes to Me walking, I will come to him running.”

Sahih Muslim 2687

True worship requires us to set niyyah (pure intention), which includes presenting ourselves to Allah honestly and in vulnerability. Grounding in this truth quiets the mind, which allows us to access the humility needed to connect with Him. 

Socialization as shirk. How can we show up to Allah authentically when we live in fear of Him? Fear puts us in a dysregulared state of flight or fight, one where we cannot be fully present with the Divine. Allah states: 

“I have not created jinn and humankind except to worship Me” 

Quran 51:56

In other words, worship requires us to love ourselves and each other for His sake. When we place more weight on human judgement than on Allah’s plan, we unintentionally engage in associating others with Him, when he is Al-Wali (the sole governor):

“Those whom they call upon beside Allah have created nothing; rather, they themselves were created” 

Quran 16:20 

Queer people of faith often feel forced to hide our true selves in order to please others, not realizing that the tendency to place others’ opinions of us bleeds into our relationship with Allah. We begin to project the conditional love we receive from people onto the Divine. The difference is that Allah’s love is unconditional as he is Al-Wadud (the most loving). Trusting in His love means trusting that we are worthy of it because of who we are, not despite it. 

Honoring the life of Imam Hendricks. A beacon for those of us who hold both faith and identity close, Imam Hendricks was an inspiration in the ways in which he embodied Allah’s characteristics of Al-Haqq (the absolute truth), and is remembered for his work in teaching others about the power of living with honesty and integrity, no matter the consequence: 

“The need to be authentic is greater than the fear to die” 

Imam Muhsin Hendricks (1967-2025)

How do we continue his legacy? Rumi writes: 

“Opening up to Allah can only be done by looking to Him through out hearts authentically” 

Mathnawi VI, 3095-97

This is how we can embody truth through worship – to show how Islam informs our queerness, and how queerness, in turn, informs our Islam. To model a world in which worship is not defined by fear, but by sincerity and love. It means being good khulafa’ (stewards) of the bodies He has given us, and spreading His love into the world He created for us. To leave this world better than we found it:

“He is the One who has placed you as successors on earth”

Quran 35:39

This Ramadan, let us set our intentions: 

• To live authentically as Allah SWT created us 

• To trust that He has placed us here for a reason

• To love ourselves and others for His sake 

• To worship with hope over fear

Inshallah we live in the fillness of our truth, for the sake of the One who made us.

Bismallah alrahman alraheem 

When the prophet Musa was tasked with facing his oppressor pharaoh head-on, in front of a large audience, he was struck by uncertainty and fear. 

He never saw himself as the one who could stand up in front of crowds and compel them to change. 

Musa had lisp since childhood, when God compelled him to choose hot coal instead of milk which burnt his tongue leaving him to develop a lifelong speech impediment. 

Yet, as he stood in front of the pharaoh and his supporters facing their judgment and scorn

Facing unknown retribution harassment and imprisonment 

He looked to Allah subhanota3ala for support because he knew that what he was fighting for was right and that he had to be the voice of the oppressed. 

Neither pharaohs threats, nor his speech impediment stopped him. 

He prayed to Allah with the following Dua: 

رَبِّ اشْرَحْ لِي صَدْرِي* وَيَسِّرْ لِي أَمْرِي* وَاحْلُلْ عُقْدَةً مِّن لِّسَانِي * يَفْقَهُوا قَوْلِي

“Oh My Lord! Uplift my heart for me, 

and make my task easy,

and remove the impediment from my tongue

so people may understand my speech,1

Now more than ever I remember the prophet Musa. 

 Whenever I fear retribution for my words or I am faced with zionists who scorn my very existence I remember that Allah is with me and I pray to him to loosen the knot from my tongue and grant me self-confidence contentment and boldness to speak truth to power even if in the prophetic tradition of Musa I stumble through my words. 

This leads me to the topic of my Khutabeh 

Sabr: Sabar

Sabr a juicy fruit that’s sharp thorns that can prickle hands that are not cautious and lips that are too eager. 

We often translate Sabr into the English word patience.

Yet some might not know In Arabic Sabr is also the word for cactus. The hard-shelled plant which is made to withstand harsh desert climate, endowed with sharp spiked blades that can draw blood when prodded. 

And yet beneath the guarded exterior of sabr lies a sweet fruit that one must patiently pluck and carefully peel to reach the sweet fruit. 

One could easily say the connection between sabr (cactus) and our understanding of sabr (patience) is the time and patience it takes to receive our reward

The way I see it, the real connection between the two is the cactuses hardened exterior that puts up a fight aganist its harsh environment and potential predators. 

Our Sabr is not easygoing and complacent towards the harshness of the world 

Because to me, Sabr extends far beyond our ideas of patience. 

Sabr is our endurance and reward, in both internal and external sense 

Our external spikes of action and protectiveness 

And our internal softness and sweetness to each other

But perhaps what I want to emphasize the most is that Sabr is not compliance, 

not silence and not actionless endurance of injustice. 

Sabr is often used to depoliticize and delegitimize the actions of marginalized people. 

We are often encouraged to have Sabr when allah has decided to give us a burden. 

Perhaps some believe we must have sabr to deal with our perceived burden of Queerness, 

To thank god, have shukr for what we have and move on. 

They claim that being Queer is a test from god therefore we cannot challenge it. 

I think the true sabr in our Queerness is the sweet warmth of queer joy, the loud prickle of unapologetic protest and the resilience and survival in our Queer mosque today. 

having sabr and shukr means enduring and resisting the harshness of white supremacy, Zionism and Christian centricism and thanking allah for the strength he gives us to survive along the way. 

Which brings me to the second word of today: summod, or plural verb samidin  (those who are steadfast) those who struggle daily and yt remain standing strong.

 I think Palestinians have taught us the true meaning of this word, through their ability to find joy in hardship, to stand for their principles and land in the face of genocide, and to speak the word of god regardless of the cost. 

Being Palestinian has taught me to always care for my plants to stay rooted in the land, to be steadfast in my beliefs, and have an unending love for my people. 

To survive in whatever form that might look like on a day to day basis 

Sabr and summoud is Mahmoud Khalil and ​​Rumeysa Ozturk, is what i hear from you all on a daily basis about the ways in which you resist despite all odds 

There is this hadith that discusses wheen sabr really manifests itself: 

قَالَ سَمِعْتُ أَنَسًا ـ رضى الله عنه ـ عَنِ النَّبِيِّ صلى الله عليه وسلم قَالَ ‏ "‏ الصَّبْرُ عِنْدَ الصَّدْمَةِ الأُولَى ‏"‏‏.‏

Narrated Anas: The Prophet (peace be upon him) said, “The real patience is at the first stroke of a calamity.” Sahih Al-Bukhari – Book 23 Hadith 389

Our ability to have Sabr is not manifested until we have something to push up against and to resist. 

---

But Sabr is also about keeping ourselves aware of the ways in which we mess up

With others but also with ourselves

We often forget to have sabr within our hearts and minds 

The world is deserving of your patience but so are you

The most difficult form of sabr is being patient and kind with yourself

Whether it is realizing the physical limitations of your body or setting boundaries on your emotional capacity 

Our Sabr is having the patience, faith and self love to believe in our ability to create our own spaces where they don’t exist. 

This of course comes from a long Islamic tradition in which Sabr and the creation of space are inextricably intertwined. 

  Here, I am thinking of the Sabr of the prophet salllah allah 3alehi o salam, as he endured the abuse of his Meccan tribe. 

His hijra migration to medina was all about endurance: both the physical endurance of the desert trip 

but also his endurance in leaving his home, being shunned from his community and starting a new because of his belief in the word of god. 

The prophet created a space of community, worship and prayer upon reaching Medina. 

The mosque of medina was built bit by bit in hardship and struggle. 

Taken from the physical surroundings of medina

 from its palm trees and cactus fruit, to being patched together by many muddy hands 

 the mosque was built up by communal sabr and love. 

So Sabr as resistance and creation is also prophetic tradition. 

A prophetic tradition that Qmosque embodies, from our search for space, to our potluck iftars, our beach towel prayer rugs and our many hands and hearts coming together in prayer. 

Sabr as a form of resistance fills the pages of the Quran: 

Sabr is the ways in which Maryam endured the judgement of her qoum when she had the prophet Issa but did not budge from allahs commands to stay silent 

And sabr is the ways in which sabhiyat like Summiya were not willing to back down from the truth even if it mean they endured undescribably torture by their own community

The legacy of sabr IN islam is one that is painful, but centers resistance against great odds.

So may allah let us live in the legacy of Musa and speak truth even when afraid 

Embody the legacy of Mohammad and create spaces for those have been turned away 

May we honor the legacy of maryam and Sumaya Sabr by standing with what we believe 

and may they grant us the summoned of our Palestinian community while granting them ease from hardship. 

Ameen

Beloved Siblings,

I want to start with a refusal.

I refuse to worship the state, the dollar, or even my own fears and anxieties.

Because lā ilāha illā Allāh, there is no god but Allah.

Today I want to unpack that refusal, and the kind of community it demands.

It is my hope that these words can remind me just as much as they remind you. That Tawḥīd is not just a belief we carry in our heads, or a phrase we recite on our tongues, lā ilāha illā Allāh. There is no god but God. It is a way of living. A way of relating to each other. A claim that we make with our whole selves. 

To affirm Tawḥīd is to say: “I will not bow to anything other than Allah.”

Not to the boss, the tyrant, the settler, the institution, or the ego.

It’s stitched into the fabric of our proclaimed community values here in this masjid: I will not bow to cis-hetero-patriarchy,

Not to whiteness. And perhaps most importantly,

Not to fear.

(slow) For I fear nothing but Allah. And it is in Allah that I seek refuge. 

In the Surah al-Baqarah, God says

(slow) “So whoever rejects false gods and believes in God has grasped the firmest handhold, one that will never break.” 

That “firmest handhold,” al-‘urwat al-wuthqā, is our grip on Allah alone.

Not on presidents, prisons, or empires.

Not on police, borders, or billionaires.

Not on the logic of extraction, domination, or accumulation.

Only on the One who is Just, the One who is Merciful, the One who liberates.

As Mohamed Abdou writes in Islam and Anarchism, Tawḥīd is “a fundamental premise and pillar,” a rejection of any deification of the state, of tribalism, of material wealth, or human rulers. Allah reminds us that to accept Allah’s oneness is to refuse to give our allegiance to oppression, wherever it may manifest.

We cannot say “lā ilāha illā Allāh” and then obey or participate in an unjust system that cages children, extracts from the poor, silences the weak, or criminalizes our kin.

We cannot speak of the oneness of the Creator and then uphold the violent hierarchy of class, nation, or caste. This is why we are taught that to say lā ilāha illā Allāh is to make a shahāda, a bearing of witness, a testimony, a stand. It’s not a passive idea or fact. It’s telling the truth. It’s an active refusal to participate in the lie of domination. 

The Prophet ﷺ did not speak of Tawḥīd and then go along with the Meccan elite’s economic and social order. He disrupted it.

Tawḥīd, when truly embraced, means that we live in opposition to all the false gods of this world, the systems that demand our attention, our obedience and loyalty, when we know they contradict what we know to be just, merciful, and sacred.

But Tawḥīd is not only vertical.

It does not just teach us how to relate to Allah, it guides us in how to relate to each other.

To live the oneness of God is to recognize the sacred interconnectedness of creation.

To reject false gods is not only to say no to domination, it is to say yes to each other. To build trust, to share power, to walk with humility.

Mohamed Abdou reminds us that the earliest period of Islamic life after the Prophet ﷺ was rooted not in hierarchy but in three “revolutionary anti-authoritarian struggles” of 1) mutual consultation (shūrā), 2) consensus (ijmāʿ), and 3) collective welfare through mutual aid (maṣlaḥa). These three terms are not abstract ideals, they were practices that emerged from within a people struggling to live justly, together, in submission to Allah.

First: SHURA, or mutual consultation

It is easy to speak of our beloved Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), as someone who held perfect knowledge of every situation. This is not true. He engaged the minds of others. He worked in a world in which knowledge about what was good and right was being obscured by those who exerted political and economic domination. He sought consultation. From his wife, Khadijah, on the very first day of revelation. He listened to his companions — and not just men or the elders or the wealthy, but the youth, the poor, the enslaved.

He didn’t consult for show. He consulted because truth lives in community. Finding truth isn’t a lone activity, but an ongoing process of struggle with others.

Second: After shūrā, mutual consultation, comes ijmāʿ: arriving at community consensus.

Ijmāʿ is not simply majority rule. It’s not parliamentary procedure. It’s not a popularity contest.

It is the slow, sacred work of arriving at collective clarity for what is just, together.

It’s the practice of seeking shared truth through compassionate, open-hearted debate and experimentation. One can only do this when you’ve built a space, a container to hold it. This is what we have been attempting and experimenting here at QMOSQUE, making room for those of us who have had no formal claim to authority and knowledge to try out our ideas, to share with others, to try again. We draw on a rich tradition in doing so.

We currently sit in the neighborhood of the South End, historically Black, Puerto Rican, and Syrian. This neighborhood, and this street in particular, used to be home to a thriving scene of dozens of jazz bars and clubs, late night restaurants and lounges, the only places listed for Boston in The Green Book: a Negro Travelers Guide, marking the places safe from white violence, for Black travelers to stay if we were on a road trip.

Though Islam has a long history among the first enslaved Black people kidnapped from West Africa and brought here to work. The first organized Muslim life in Boston sprouted right here, when Black Ahmadiyya and Nation of Islam members used the infrastructure of the jazz clubs to engage their neighbors spiritually, inviting people to Islam. These organizers were ingenious in creating space for recognizing the oneness of Allah. Space for coming together was needed to affirm the truth: that they were indeed Muslims and part of a global ummah and that they needed to routinely gather to resist the white supremacist landscape they were living in. The first Boston mosque was down the street near the corner of Columbus and Mass Ave in the back of a Black woman-owned chicken restaurant.

We, in this masjid, inherit this legacy, the legacy of being at the margins of our ummah, or sometimes considered not part of the ummah at all. The legacy of having to use space creatively to bring us to each other. This legacy of claiming a deen that is ours.

If trans and queer folks can’t speak, it’s not ijmāʿ. If women aren’t in leadership and generating knowledge, it’s not ijmāʿ. If working-class folks are invisible, it’s not ijmāʿ. If those most harmed by the system aren’t in the room, then what we have is not consensus. It’s convenience.

We have this masjid so that we may struggle towards this. So that we can do ijmāʿ, so that we can consult one another, generate knowledge with one another, and arrive at truth together.

Which brings me to my third point: we affirm the oneness of Allah and our role as stewards of a shared Earth when we engage in mutual aid for collective welfare (maṣlaḥa)

THIRD: Maslaha

Maṣlaḥa, collective welfare, the public good, mutual aid. Maṣlaḥa doesn’t mean charity. It’s not about giving from above. It’s about sustaining each other. Building structures so we don’t get swallowed up by the systems of extraction. So we don’t leave our people behind.

In this moment, when our siblings are under the foot of settler colonial dominance, here in the so-called Americas and beyond, under the tyranny of drones, of AI, of genocide, in this moment when we might give in to our fear of raids, of being surveilled, detained, or disappeared again, we must remember that our safety does not lie in compliance, it does not lie in being isolated and quiet. Our safety lies in each other. In a world that threatens our lives and dignity, we fear nothing but Allah and we hold to this through the ways we commit to gather and treat each other justly.

What are we building that will hold us when the walls come down again? Who do we show up for now, before they’re gone? Where are the networks of love and defense that will make sure our queer, trans, undocumented, disabled, Black Muslim kin are not left behind?

Maṣlaḥa is a call to action. Not only to feel kinship, but to turn that into an infrastructure of commitment to each other.

The Prophet ﷺ said, “Whoever relieves a believer’s distress in this world, Allah will relieve their distress in the next.” That’s not just something to quote, that is something with which to build. We must be kind to each other in our building, kind through misunderstandings, open to correction, patient with our limits, open to the messiness and incompleteness, the burnouts, experimentation and failures in our pursuits.

This, this is where Tawḥīd, our acknowledgement of the oneness of God and God’s will for creation, lives. Not in abstraction. Not in theory. But in what we build for each other.

⸻

SECOND KHUTBAH

Beloved siblings, we return now to Tawḥīd.

After all that has been said, the refusal, the consultation and consensus, the collective care, these are all concepts indigenous to our vast, diverse tradition. And these grim times call us to remember this.

To say lā ilāha illā Allāh is to say:

There is no god but God.

I do not worship fear. Fear does not deserve my obedience.

I do not worship wealth. Wealth does not command my loyalty.

I do not worship whiteness, or gender, or borders, or the state. These constructs cannot guide me to what is just.

I worship Allah, the One, the Just, the Merciful.

In this worship, I struggle towards consultation, consensus, and the mutual aid of my peers. Each of you.

That is the rope that cannot break.

That is the root from which our ethics grow.

That is what frees us from domination, and commits us to one another.

Let us return to it. Let us live in it. Let us tell the truth. And through these times, let us protect each other in the name of Allah (SWT).

I wish to make duaa.

⸻

CLOSING DUAA

O Allah, al-Latīf (the Gentle), who knows the trembling of our hearts

Courage can feel foolish when we’ve seen the world in all its terror.

Protect us from life lived in perpetual vigilance.

Keep fear from monopolizing our relationships, our desires, our motivations, so that we can act without rehearsing the worst of our imaginations.

Help us dismantle and abolish our idols with haste, and treat ourselves and each other with kindness and mercy.

There are times when we feel small and exhausted.

Harness our courage.

Grant us contentment in our limits, and community in our battles.

Send others who tremble alongside us, who will speak truth with calmness.

Show us we need not be giants if we have good friends.

O Allah, al-Muntaqim (the Avenger), the One who reclaims what was stolen and restores what was denied…

We have known what it is to feel helpless.

To have our agency stripped and voices snuffed out.

We are grateful to those who have shown us that on the other side of our trauma, abuse, and grief, there can be power magnified.

Bind the will of our oppressors and abusers.

We remember our commitments to the vulnerable, poor, marginalized, and immigrant, to raise us up in honor and lead us from captivity.

Keep us from punishing ourselves for what has been withheld from us.

It is not our fault.

We reclaim what’s ours.

O Allah, al-Karīm (the Most Generous), the One who invites us to Your abundant table…

We are made of gratitude today.

That we can gather in chosen community is a rare gift that is not lost on us.

We thank you for every face before us and those who could not be with us.

We ask that you watch over the paths of all of those in this room and all those beyond this room who we bring here in our hearts. We ask that you watch over those who woke up not feeling good this morning.

Use this time to knit us together, weaving disparate parts back toward a shared origin.

Help us to see the beauty in this belonging.

Āmīn.

Aqimū ṣ‑ṣalāh

Assalamualaikum. Thank you all for attending another installation of QMOSQUE. 

To start off with a simple salutation: Eid Mubarak. 

Within the breath of the Islamic tradition, there are numerous events that can be called an Eid, or celebration. In the typical mainstream Sunni fashion, Eid al Fitr and Eid al Adha have the most theological prominence, with Eid al Fitr in particular maintaining a cultural hegemony on how Muslims order and live their lives. We often utilize Eid al Fitr as a cumulative event, a day after all the fasting, praying, and planning that helps members of the ummah re-engage their faith. We even, jokingly, call it a “Muslim Christmas.” 

Ironically, it is on Eid al Adha, the Eid we celebrate today, that we are able to go back in deep time and find syncretism with our Abrahamic cousins of Christian and Jewish traditions. While we often focus our religious energies on Ramadan and Eid al Fitr, Eid al Adha presents an exciting opportunity to turn many of the recognizable attributes of our faith into substantial calls to action. 

Many of you know there are key differences between the Biblical and Quranic accounts of what we are actually celebrating here today, a qurban, or sacrifice. In the Christian Sunday schools and Muslim Saturday schools of the world, the most shallow interpretation on this difference rests on the prophet Abraham and his progeny. This is, of course, where traditions begin to argue.

Between Genesis 22 and Surah As-Saffat, we get two very different renditions of a singular event. For those who have read the Biblical version, you will notice it is all about the drama. To quote academic John Kaltner, "The Genesis description of Abraham cutting the wood, loading the donkey, bringing his servants and wielding the knife over his son all contribute to the power of the biblical account but are not found” in the Quran. 

In the Bible, Issac does not know he is the sacrifice, instead he asks “where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” to which Abraham replies “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” Thus, Issac is bound and replaced with a lamb and everyone goes home happy. 

The Quranic rendition of what takes place on Mount Moriah is not only much shorter, with far less pomp and circumstance, it also includes a dream, and ironically, does not include a lamb! Here, Abraham tells his son, who is not named, that he had a dream that he would sacrifice him, and asks his son what he thinks about that. The son says “If Allah commands, you will find me patient.” And that’s it. The divine test has been passed, and the Quran moves on to other things. 

Your Saturday school teacher might have harped on the fact that Muslims are considered the descendants of Ismail, Abraham’s son through Hajjar and the eventual progenitor of the Zamzam Well. Thus, we should operate under the assumption that the Quran is talking about Ismail, and not Issac, who is named in the Bible. However, Muslim scholars have discoursed for centuries over this fact, and many of them actually believe that Issac is the son in question. 

The Quran then leaves us with an intentionally vague passage on purpose. This passage is not about the sacrifice or the son’s identity, it is instead about Abraham, and his ability to become the physical manifestation of submission and monotheism. 

The Arabic word used to describe someone who adopts pure monotheism is hanif, a term that is found twelve times in the Quran, eight of these occurrences are used for Abraham. He is the only individual who is ever explicitly designated as such in the entire Quran. Thus, Abraham was an individual of high moral and spiritual quality which enabled him to have a special relationship with Allah. He is a "friend of Allah," another title that is unique to Abraham in the Quran.

According to the Quran, Islam is not a religion that began in 7th century Arabia with the coming of the prophet Muhammad. Its roots can be found in deep time with Abraham. Abraham is the prototypical Muslim. Here, “muslim” is not a religious identity but a theological action. It is a term used commonly in describing Abraham and other pre-Islamic figures because they possessed the quality of submission, or “Islam,” to the will of Allah which is essential for true belief. 

Abraham is the ideal believer who should be emulated by anyone wishing to enjoy divine rewards. This includes the Prophet Muhammad, who is instructed in the Quran to imitate Abraham by following his religion and being an upright person, or hanif, just as he was.

For Abraham, Islam is not a thing you belong to, Muslim is not an identity. It is an action that climaxes at the most intense times of one's life. It is the action of having faith among an infinite amount of unknowns. It is the action of harboring belief so pure, so brazen in the face of external obstacles, that you trust in Allah beyond rational comprehension. 

The story of Abraham on Mount Moriah and of Eid al Adha is not that of the identity of the son or the grief of a would-be sacrificed. It is a story that pushes us to collapse our own reliance on identity and identity markers, it asks us to replace our dependency on modern constructs of selfhood with ventures that represent our shared morals and values. Eid al Adha is here to teach us how to act as Muslims, instead of allowing us to stop at simply being Muslim. 

We are lucky that this Eid falls at the beginning of Pride, because this lesson extends beyond the context of Islam and into our lives as queer, gay, and trans Muslims. 

These words I just used are not just nouns. They are not enamel pins we keep on our bags, hashtags we use in our social media bios, or monocurs for the parties we attend. These words are verbs that extend beyond who we have sex with and who we fall in love with. They are verbs that must dictate the very actions that define how we spend the rest of our lives. 

What does it mean to be a gay Muslim? If we look at Abraham on the mountain, it would mean we strive to transform our religious affiliations into modes of operation. If we look at our queer and trans siblings imprisoned, damned and murdered by the state, it would mean we transform our identities into the behaviors that build a more just future. We cannot allow the shallow veneer of pink washing or conditional neoliberal acceptance to cascade us into lives of moral apathy, or worse, moral compromise. 

On this Eid al Adha and Pride, may we all find the ability to turn words such as Queer, Islam, Trans, Muslim and Gay into the actions that feed our hungry, cure our sick, house our poor, empower our downtrodden, and obliterate our oppressors. Like Abraham on Mount Moriah, we are currently faced with a divine test. Together, we have the opportunity to choose collective action, instead of individualism. By the grace of Allah, may all choose to act out the values of our faith as we strive to be true hanifs in our practice.

Eid Mubarak, Ameen.

Bismillah ar-rahman ar-raheem.

“The hour is striking so close above me,

so clear and sharp,

that all my senses ring with it.

I feel it now: there’s a power in me

to grasp and give shape to my world.

I know that nothing has ever been real

without my beholding it.

All becoming has needed me.

My looking ripens things

and they come toward me, to meet and be met.”

— from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours, translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy

I begin with this century-old passage from Rainer Maria Rilke’s Book of Hours translated by Anita Barrows and the recently deceased Joanna Macy to draw out the question at the center of my khutbah today: What does it mean to be known?

What does it mean to be beheld, to be witnessed, or to be met? To be seen, to be understood? To be loved? How often do we lament being misunderstood or worse, invisible, unseen?

If only my partner could see the real me!

These fascists refuse to acknowledge my humanity!

My family will never truly understand me!

And how often are laments made by whole populations—the laments of the people of Gaza or Sudan, the laments of the unhoused, the laments of the neglected, the abused, the terminally ill—all crying out to the world to bear witness to their unimaginable suffering.

Our modern lives revolve around witnessing and being witnessed. We curate our online dating profiles. We try to share the right infographic to usher in a just world. Our social media feeds are filled with images of horrific violence and suffering followed by our close friends’ thirst traps—each begging to be seen. Witness me! See me so I might better see myself! See me so that I might know that I am not alone! Now when we fear rejection, cancellation, or cringe, we can turn to AI for a witness. We seek the company of a crisis-fueling technology trained on our own language and biases.

Where does this insatiable desire to be seen and known come from?

In one contested hadith attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him, he quotes God as saying, “I was a hidden treasure. I yearned to be known. That is why I made creation, in order to be known in them.” (repeat)

This hadith is foundational to many mystical understandings of Islam and it points to a “pathetic” God—not a pitiable God, but a God filled with pathos. A God whose loneliness, or even sadness, serves as a motivating force to create. To create in God’s image a witness in creation.

I first encountered this hadith in the context of apophatic or negative theology—which is a fancy way of saying an understanding of the divine in which God is unknowable. Where God is a hidden treasure. Where God can only be described by what God is not. 

So how can any of us—how can I—believe in an unknowable God? What point is there in belief when God will never descend upon me in a purple haze or a burning bush to demand that I recite? What point does faith have without proof?

When I gave my first khutbah back in January, I wanted to speak to doubt. Speaking to a congregation of fellow queer and trans Muslims, it felt important to openly acknowledge the difficulty of belief, especially when strangers and family members and fellow Muslims might question the validity of our existence or the integrity of our belief.

But this hadith about a hidden God wanting to be known has fundamentally shifted my faith and as counterintuitive as it may sound, it has made my belief unshakeable. I want to do my best to explain exactly why that is the case because if this hadith can assuage my doubts, maybe there is something in it to assuage yours.

First, a God that cannot be fully known by any one person is in fact an ultimately democratizing force. If any one person or being was able to witness God in God’s fullness, they would innately have more power than the rest of creation—and they could wield that knowledge as if they were God. In that sense, an unknowable God protects all of us from abusing that power. An unknowable God demands only that we move toward God, trying to understand more of God’s faces and names, knowing that God is always reaching toward us, yearning to be known. 

Second, a God that creates in order to be known is a God that values relationship. In fact, God’s act of shaping creation is a relational covenant. God seeks to be known by creation, and God’s creation bears the responsibility to witness God in all God’s forms that are expressed through creation. One reaches down while the other reaches up. This is a relationship built upon action. Eternal action. No matter how alone any of us feel, a God that yearns for a witness is a God that will never abandon creation. Loneliness—God’s or ours—is solved by this covenant. This is why I believe that our world is meant to be structured on relationships, not on the consolidation and wielding of power. What would change if we tended to all of our relationships—with each other, with the world around us, with the environment, with strangers, with ourselves, with God?

Third, this understanding of the divine refutes the nihilistic Western insistence on “creatio ex nihilo” or creation from nothing. We are not created from nothing. We are created from God. God is not bound by time—God simply is. God is Being. God is moving and changing and reaching toward us and we are moving and changing and reaching toward God. This is a theology of eternal transformation. A theology of the very queer possibility in each moment to become something or someone new.

What if, instead of having no proof of God’s existence, we actually have infinite proof of God’s existence? If everything is created from God rather than from nothingness, then everywhere we look, everything we feel, everyone we meet—bears a face of God, equally and infinitely accessible. What if the answer is that simple? God is. And so, we are.

What if, instead of begging for a witness or asking to be known, we make a better effort to know, to witness, to meet, to behold, to understand, to see? I am convinced that the truest act of love is to pay attention. To love is to pay attention. To love God is to pay attention to the echoes of God in all of creation. Our prayers are less an obligation and more a sacred invitation to attend, to express our curiosity. To slow down. To sit in front of God and shout in our hearts: I bear witness! I bear witness! I bear witness that there is no God but Allah!

I believe in God. I believe in God because I cannot see God. I believe in God because I question. I believe in God because God is dynamic, changing and growing just as I change and grow. I believe in God because I love my friends and my family and because in their love, I feel God’s love. 

If you take only one thing from this khutbah, I hope it is that you are not alone. No one is alone who believes in God.

This is only the beginning of a conversation about faith. I truly believe that the lessons found here can also be expanded upon to better understand suffering, to address the question of evil, and to connect us each to our imagination and our angels—to connect each of us to our highest, truest, queerest selves.

But for now, I will end as we began, with Rilke.

“I am praying again, Awesome One.

You hear me again, as words

from the depths of me

rush toward you in the wind.

I’ve been scattered in pieces,

torn by conflict,

mocked by laughter,

washed down in drink.

In alleyways I sweep myself up

out of garbage and broken glass.

With my half-mouth I stammer you,

who are eternal in your symmetry.

I lift to you my half-hands

in wordless beseeching, that I may find again

the eyes with which I once beheld you.

I am a house gutted by fire

where only the guilty sometimes sleep

before the punishment that devours them

hounds them out into the open.

I am a city by the sea

sinking into a toxic tide.

I am strange to myself, as though someone unknown

had poisoned my mother as she carried me.

It’s here in all the pieces of my shame

that now I find myself again.

I year to belong to something, to be contained

in an all-embracing mind that sees me

as a single thing.

I yearn to be held

in the great hands of your heart—

oh let them take me now.

Into them I place these fragments, my life,

and you, God—spend them however you want.”

And now, if you would like to, I invite you to join me in making du’a.

Ya Allah, the Infinite and the Unknowable. Ya Allah, the Awe-inspiring.

Ya Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful, and the Attentive.

Ya Allah, we thank you for the opportunity to gather in remembrance of you.

Ya Allah, may you ease our loneliness, our despair, and our heartbreak.

Ya Allah, may you understand us even when we stammer and may you forgive us when we doubt. 

Ya Allah, when we reach toward you, may we take comfort in your eternal presence. May we honor your eternal becoming by making the room to become our truest selves, and to become again and again and again.

Ya Allah, may we honor our covenant to slow down, to bear witness, and to pay attention. May our attention ripen the world around us to its blossoming. Ameen.

Salaam u alaykum, everyone. 
I’d like to begin with an invitation in. Whoever you are, whether this is your first QMosque or you’ve been coming for nearly a year, welcome. 

I wrote a poem I’d like to share with y’all: (It’s called Nameless Love)

NAMELESS LOVE
IT IS NOT MEANINGLESS / SAY TO YOURSELF // ALRIGHT / WE ARE GOING TO CUT THROUGH THIS / THE FEELING OF BEING VERY ALONE / DESERTED // THE FEET FALL OFF / THE WORK GOES ON

AN ACT OF DEVOTION /  BREATH IS PRAYER / AND I’VE BEEN A BELIEVER // WE THINK WE’RE TO BE FORGIVEN / JUST MOVE // PRACTICE IT / WANT / CHANGE / LOVE 

WE WANT TO MAKE IT A REALITY // A GENUINE LOVE / TAKES A LOT OF WORK / TAKES A WILLINGNESS TO ADMIT // GOD HAS LOVED YOU WITHOUT BOUNDS 

DEVOTION / AROUND US AND INSIDE US // THINK / LOOK BACK TO / OUR YEARNING / FROM OUR BODIES // LIVE / DON’T CLING TO / THE PERFECT MOMENT

RECOGNIZE / THE WORK GOES ON / THE HANDS FALL OFF / GOD’S CONSTANT / CALLING US BACK // THIS IS THE TRUTH / AND A MILLION OTHER ONES // TO GO ON

LOVE WITHOUT BOUNDS // SO GROW / AS WE ARE CALLED / SO START / AS WE ARE CALLED / STILL BE  // BECAUSE / WELL / YOU CAN FEEL THE LOVE OF GOD

NO MATTER HOW MEANINGLESS / GOOD // ALWAYS // THIS ONENESS / THE TRUTH

“...poetry is not a luxury,” as Audre Lorde wrote. “It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of the light within which we predicate our hopes and dreams toward survival and change, first made into language, then into idea, then into more tangible action.” 

Poetry is a transformative tool. I begin with poetry as a way to make sense of the noise, to ground us in this space, and to invite the listener in and let you experience the world in my colors. The Quran is a revelation-- it is poetry meant to be recited; its rhymes are a built in method for remembrance, its storytelling is a path of communication and connection. 

This is a reminder for me, climbing over the walls of disconnection I felt toward the Quran from when I was growing up: “TaHa. We have not revealed the Quran to you to cause you distress. But as a reminder to those in awe of Allah. It is a revelation from the One Who created the earth and the high heavens—the Most Compassionate, ˹Who is˺ established on the Throne.”

And in another surah, Surah Nur, verse 35, it is revealed:

“Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. Allah’s light is like a niche in which there is a lamp, the lamp is in a crystal, the crystal is like a shining star or a pearly planet, lit from the oil of a blessed olive tree, located neither to the east nor the west, whose oil would almost illuminate, even if no fire has touched it. Light upon light! Allah guides whoever Allah wills to Allah’s light. And Allah sets forth lessons for humanity. And Allah is with everything, Knowledgeable.” (24:35)

“And Allah is with everything, Knowledgeable.”

I begin with poetry, not out of a sense that I have something new to say, but to join in hands with everyone who has said the same thing before me. There is a light shining that will take effort to find and maintain, but there is a light. And it is vital for our existence to tend to it. 

May we be among those who are guided to Allah’s Nur. When fear constricts and pain narrows our focus, may we think of the light of Allah which we can ground our hopes and dreams for survival and change. May we bring our languages, ideas, and actions into the warmth of this Nur.

The violence that is being done to our communities can feel isolating, within the US and internationally. I think about Sudan and Palestine and the Congo, Uyghurs and Kashmiris and Rohingya, our incarcerated siblings, our trans siblings, our undocumented siblings. But we are never truly alone. Allah has not abandoned you. So do not abandon Allah. 

In Surah ad-Duha, the Daybreak, Allah reveals: 

 بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

1. وَالضُّحَىٰ

2. وَاللَّيْلِ إِذَا سَجَىٰ

3. مَا وَدَّعَكَ رَبُّكَ وَمَا قَلَىٰ

4. وَلَلْآخِرَةُ خَيْرٌ لَكَ مِنَ الْأُولَىٰ

5. وَلَسَوْفَ يُعْطِيكَ رَبُّكَ فَتَرْضَىٰ

6. أَلَمْ يَجِدْكَ يَتِيمًا فَآوَىٰ

7. وَوَجَدَكَ ضَالًّا فَهَدَىٰ

8. وَوَجَدَكَ عَائِلًا فَأَغْنَىٰ

9. فَأَمَّا الْيَتِيمَ فَلَا تَقْهَرْ

10. وَأَمَّا السَّائِلَ فَلَا تَنْهَرْ

11. وَأَمَّا بِنِعْمَةِ رَبِّكَ فَحَدِّثْ

1. Transliteration: Translation:

2. Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem  In the name of Allah, most Beneficent, most Merciful

3. Wad duhaa By the morning sunlight

4. Wal laili iza sajaa And the night when it falls still!

5. Ma wad da'aka rabbuka wa ma qalaa Your Lord has not abandoned you. Nor has your Lord become hateful of you.

6. Walal-aakhiratu khairul laka minal-oola And the next life is certainly far better for you than this one.

7. Wa la sawfa y'uteeka rabbuka fatarda And surely your Lord will give so much to you that you will be pleased.

8. Alam ya jidka yateeman fa aawaa Did Allah not find you as an orphan, then sheltered you?

9. Wa wa jadaka daal lan fahada Did Allah not find you lost, then guided you?

10. Wa wa jadaka 'aa-ilan fa aghnaa Did Allah not find you in need, then satisfied you?

11. Fa am mal yateema fala taqhar So do not oppress the orphan

12. Wa am mas saa-ila fala tanhar Nor repel the beggar

13. Wa amma bi ni'mati rabbika fahad dith And proclaim the blessings of your Lord.

The lives we have now are made by small incremental and consistent practices we do. Could the orphan imagine shelter? Could the lost imagine guidance? Could the needy imagine satisfaction? Could the version of you at 5, 10, 15 years old imagine any of this was possible? “Did Allah not find you lost, then guide you?” Could the Past You imagine that we could pray together or eat together or find each other at all? That we would gather in a church, in Boston, with other Queer and Trans Muslims, and make it our Masjid, praying in the legacy of all the interfaith organizers, all the Queer and Trans Muslim organizers, all the ordinary people who were instrumental and vibrant community members, to pray in their legacy of love and resistance? 

We are the inheritors of a long legacy of resistance. And that resistance is an ancestral gift of love. Not just for the ancestors of our blood but also of all of those who came before us, family of origin and family of choice, Queer Imams, organizers, allies, friends, those who we join in taking the mantle from, who we honor by showing up and living our lives authentically, in the ways we center our values of justice, of generosity, of love. There is destruction in this life-- always, yes. Systems of oppression are being pushed to their limit and it is bringing painful destruction. But there is creation too, in small and big ways. Humanity insists on survival and connection is survival. We must build our connections with this in mind: that the net of relations made up of our shared pain can be a safety net and not a snare entrapping us.

There’s a quote by Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò that I’d like to share, connecting to Surah ad-Duha’s message too: 

“That I have experienced my share of traumatic experiences, have survived abuse of various kinds, have faced near death from accidental circumstance and from violence...is not a card to play in gamified social interaction or a weapon to wield in battles over prestige. It is not what gives me a special right to speak, to evaluate, or to decide for a group. It is a concrete, experiential manifestation of the vulnerability that connects me to most of the people on this earth. It comes between me and other people not as a wall, but as a bridge.”

Our pain and our struggle comes between us as a bridge. Survival and struggle connects us to each other. At the heart of this khutbah is the idea that love is resistance, love is endurance, love is work. I think about the inheritance we have, these legacies of resistance. This inheritance that is beyond wealth or security, beyond blood or relations, is deeper and more nuanced than that. 

I think about Prophet Musa, how his story is marked by these pivotal moments of inheritance and legacy. The resistance of Prophet Musa’s mother, so desperate to not have her baby killed, praying to Allah to ask for guidance and receiving a message to place her baby on the Nile and let him go. A mother picking reeds and weaving a basket to fit her baby, so different from burying him if she was obeying Pharaoh’s decree, and yet a surrender to fate nonetheless. Weaving her love in with the reeds, making it as strong as she can manage with what little she has, she is trusting Allah to do the rest. She sets her baby in the basket and sends him down the River Nile, a river known for being inconsistent, sometimes smooth and other times flooding. She has her daughter watch over him, following the basket in secret to see where it ends up, and trusts the rest to Allah. His mother, his sister are moved by their love for Musa and faith in Allah, moved into action, moved into protection. And another woman’s love, Aasiyah’s, the Pharaoh’s wife, sustains Musa again. In the water, Musa is found by Aasiyah, and she takes him in, so moved with love from just seeing him, and something in her countenance, in Musa’s face, moves the Pharaoh’s hard heart. (This Pharaoh-- he who decreed that all boys from Musa’s family’s tribe, the Banu Israeli, were to die in alternating years.) This legacy of resistance, these actions of love allow him to be raised in the palace as if he was one of their own children. Miracle of miracles. The pain that began before Musa was born, that affected him intimately from the moment he was born, that pain is also his connection to his people. He is adopted into the Pharaoh’s Egyptian family, with the relative wealth and security that comes along with it, which are at the expense of his family of origin. He lives while boys from his tribe die, and this fundamental destruction of humanity sets in motion the purpose of Musa’s early life, and later his prophetic mission, against the shirk being done by Pharaoh. He lives in Midian as a shepherd for a while, finds a woman and lives in service of her small family for 8-10 years. He marries into her small family, and eventually heeds the call of Allah and returns to confront Pharaoh, afraid and asking Allah for aid. That comes in the form of his older brother, Harun. Musa was never alone. His struggles to live come with companionship when we reframe his story as his community’s story. Musa lives and continues to struggle and perhaps when his people turn against him, when he is imprisoned, when he is leading his people away from home and into the Red Sea, perhaps he is still thinking of that baby who was set into the River Nile in a basket of reeds. Perhaps he chooses life over and over again, chooses struggle again and again, thinking of what blessings he has that that baby on the river never could have known of. 

These two ideas, love and resistance, are the same legacy that we inherit. They rely on each other and can guide us as throughlines. How do we enact these legacies into our present? What are the ways we honor the gifts of struggle from our ancestry, as gifts from Allah? These gifts are a reminder that we are never truly alone. The work ahead of us has a purpose, should we commit to it and commit to it changing us as well. This life isn’t meant to be perfect or effortless or simple. To imagine perfection as the shrine that we build our lives on, that is shirk. Ihsan asks us to strive for goodness and let it challenge us.

We spend so much energy trying to understand our place and our purpose. And I want to also focus our attention on the fact that: we are here now, together from the many paths we each took. And in getting here, in finding ourselves together, we have to believe that we are not alone. We are never alone. We have never been alone. We carry in all of us the work of our ancestry (both of origin and of choice). Through them, we hold the long and immeasurable gift of struggling. What would happen if we accepted that our ancestors were just like us? That they were Queer and Trans Muslims too but more than that, what if they were resisters and organizers and lovers? What if it was true? What if we have never been alone? That for all of our struggles, there is an echo of it in others. That you go back far enough, you cast your web of relations wide enough, you realize that we have never been alone.

I’d like to end with an invitation in. If you’d like to join me in making dua:

DUA:

Ya Allah, put my heart at peace for me, and make my task easy for me, and remove the knot from my tongue, so that they might understand my speech. And make for me an assistant from my family (gesture to ummah), strengthen me through them, and let them share my task, so that we may glorify you much, and remember you much. Indeed you are watchful over us. (Musa’s dua)

Ya Allah, build for me, near You, a house in Paradise, and deliver me from the wicked and their deeds, and deliver me from the unjust people. (Aasiyah’s dua)

Ya Allah, thank you for allowing us to gather here once more in remembrance of You. 

Ya Allah, protect us and guide us. Thank You for what You have given us and what You have kept away from us. 

Ya Allah, may we continue to commit deeply to each other and to ourselves. May we continue to create in the face of destruction. May we endure our struggle together. May we love each other better.

Ameen.

Bismillah ar-Rahman ar-Rahim

The first lands that were friendly to Islam were African lands.

When the earliest Muslims fled persecution in Mecca, they made hijra to Christians. To Africa. To a place where nobody knew them.

In Mecca, the prophet peace and blesings upon him and his companions lived under constant surveillance. Their prayer was monitored, policed. They were beaten in public—Bilal, may Allah be please with him, tortured under the burning sun with a boulder on his chest. Sumayya, may Allah be pleased with her, murdered for her faith, the first martyr of Islam. Families disowned them. They were economically boycotted—cut off from trade, from resources, from community. The Quraysh watched their every move, waiting for an excuse to crush them. They were called deviant, dangerous, a threat to the social order. Their existence was criminalized. They were told they were destroying the fabric of society, corrupting the youth, abandoning the ways of their ancestors.

Does this sound familiar?

So they made the first hijra to Abyssinia—to Christian East Africa. To a Black Christian king who harbored them when their own people wanted them dead.

The Abyssinian king, the Najashi, listened to Ja'far ibn Abi Talib recite Surah Maryam—it’s mysterious opening (Kãf-Ha-Ya-’Aĩn- Ṣãd.) – verses about the mother of Isa (Jesus), alayhi salam. Verses that honored Maryam in ways the Christians recognized, in ways that resonated with their own reverence. And the Najashi wept. He drew a line in the dirt and said: "Between your religion and ours, there is only this." A line so thin it barely existed. And he gave them sanctuary.

The first hijra was not to power or wealth or familiarity. It was to a kingdom outside the reach of Meccan authority, to Christians offering shelter across religious difference. African Christians harboring Arab Muslims. Grace chosen over law. A refusal to hand over the vulnerable to those who would destroy them.

When the Quraysh sent emissaries demanding the Muslims be returned. bringing gifts, making promises, appealing to ethnic solidarity, the Najashi refused. He chose the persecuted strangers over his own potential allies. He chose mercy over political convenience.

This is our inheritance. This is where Islam began in the world beyond Mecca. In sanctuary. In a Black Christian leader saying no to the demands of the oppressors, yes to the refugees at his door.

We stand here today in Union Church on Columbus Ave, this historically Black church that opened its doors to us. A church whose dedication speech was given by Mary McLeod Bethune, who founded the National Council of Negro Women and insisted that Black folks arm ourselves with education and knowledge. A church that was home base for Mel King, may Allah have mercy on him, who organized Tent City, who fought displacement, who is the reason this neighborhood isn't completely swallowed by whiteness and gentrification.

QMOSQUE is one year old today. And we exist because of hijra.

Many of us made our own hijra to get here. From masajid that had no room for us: where we too were watched, policed, called deviant. Where our existence was treated as fitna, as corruption, as threat. Where we were told we were destroying the fabric of the ummah, corrupting the youth, abandoning the true path. Where we were economically excluded, socially shunned, spiritually exiled. Where the imam's gaze followed us like surveillance. Where we learned to make ourselves small, to hide, to split ourselves into pieces just to pray.

Some of us left mosques where they quoted selective hadith about punishment while ignoring the totality of our tradition. the vastness of tafsir, the complexity of fiqh, the multiplicity of voices across centuries. Where they reduced Islam to a hammer and us to nails, and called it Navigating Differences. 

And some of us fled not just Muslim communities but the broader machinery of the state. The surveillance of trans people, the criminalization of Blackness, queerness, the violence of borders and ICE and police. The empire that watches our every move, that pathologizes us, that calls us threats to children, to society. That passes laws against our bodies. Some of us fled countries where state violence is just as omnipresent, where to be queer or trans or Muslim in the wrong way means prison, death, means disappearance.

The atmosphere of today is not new to so many of us. We know what it means to be persecuted for who we are. We know what it means to need sanctuary. We know what it means to be strangers among your own people.

And here, in this place, we found sanctuary again. Harbored again by a radical, open, Black Christian community with queer leadership that said: you belong here.

We cold emailed them. They didn't know us. We were strangers asking for space, for shelter, for somewhere to pray. And they said yes. Like the Abyssinian King said yes. Like sanctuary requires—saying yes to people you don't always know, because they need somewhere to go.

Last Sunday, I went to church here at Union Church. Pastor Jay Williams—a Black queer man who shares my last name—preached a sermon that shook me. He said: "We always choose grace over the law." Not because the law doesn't matter, but because when the law becomes a tool of oppression, grace is the only thing that saves us. He invoked Dr. King: "One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."

That's not liberal civility. That's not respectability politics. That's the prophetic tradition. That's what the Muslims did when they fled to Abyssinia, they disobeyed the Meccan order. That's what the Najashi did when he refused to return them, he disobeyed the demands of power.

Pastor Jay reminded us that sanctuary is a gift from God - a manifestation of divine love. Rahman and Rahim, the merciful and compassionate, expressed through brick and wood and open doors and people saying you can stay. And that we must not surrender sanctuary to white supremacy, to Christian nationalism, to fascism in any of its forms. That s anctuary is something that must flow through us, not just happen to us.

He talked about the necessity of the church being outside the gaze of the state. "Church must be separate from the state," he said, "because there has to be somewhere to go."

Somewhere to go when the law becomes unjust. Somewhere to go when the state becomes predatory. Somewhere to go when the world demands conformity to cruelty. Somewhere to go when they come for your neighbors. Somewhere to go when existing becomes criminalized.

The mosque must be this too. The masjid must be outside the gaze of the state. We pray in public, we fast in public, our Islam is visible but we refuse to let the state define what Islam is. We refuse to let surveillance cameras and FBI informants and CVE programs shape our communities. We refuse to let the Department of Homeland Security tell us who belongs.

Our fates are woven together like a braid. QMOSQUE and Union Church, Muslims and Christians. Not performative interfaith work, but the kind of solidarity that risks something. The kind that says: if they come for you, they'll have to go through us.

This is what the Najashi and the early Muslims had. Not shallow tolerance. Deep solidarity. The kind that costs something.

Union Church is starting a rapid response fund. They're organizing for what's coming. They're not waiting. They asked their congregation last Sunday: are we prepared to be sanctuary? How might we practice it?

So now, at our one-year mark, I ask us the same question:

Are we prepared to be sanctuary? How might we practice it?

This is not an abstract question. This is not theoretical. We are entering (we are already in)a period of intensifying fascism. The state is sharpening its tools. Borders built up around us and built up within us are becoming more violent. Surveillance is expanding. Deportations are accelerating. Anti-trans legislation is multiplying. Book bans. Curriculum bans. Attacks on reproductive freedom. Attacks on protest. Attacks on organizing. The lists of who's targeted grow longer: trans people, immigrants, Palestinians, unhoused folks, sex workers, organizers, anyone who refuses the logic of empire.

We have hopefully been building an ecosystem beyond the state. We've had a year of gathering. not just for joy, though there has been joy, alhamdulillah. So much joy. The joy of praying together without fear. The joy of being fully ourselves. The joy of breaking fast together. The joy of seeing each other, of being seen. But also for building up to this moment. For learning each other's names. For creating networks of care. For practicing mutual aid. For becoming the kind of community that can protect each other when protection is needed.

So I ask us:

Is this space an insular community? Are we only here for ourselves? Are our doors open only to people who are already like us? Bilal Ware warns us about the need to avoid becoming "the suburban American mosques that are merely social clubs for upper middle class Arab and South Asian men." We can't replicate that exclusion just with a rainbow flag. Our doors must be open the way Abyssinia's doors were open, the way Union Church's doors are open—to strangers, to refugees, to anyone fleeing persecution.

Is this merely a place for us to perform our cultural heritage? Our nationalities and ethnicities? To eat familiar food and hear familiar languages and feel temporarily comfortable? To recreate the mosques we left behind, just with rainbow flags? Is this just nostalgia in queer packaging?

Is this merely a place to perform what Khaled Abou El Fadl calls "pietistic affectations"? To pray once a week and feel we've done our duty, while the world burns outside? To say "assalamu alaikum" like it's filler, like it's just "salams," like it's a casual greeting instead of what it actually is. A commitment? Peace be upon you. Not vaguely wishing peace exists somewhere out there, but actively wanting peace for you, being a vector of it, being responsible for it. When we say "assalamu alaikum," are we prepared to mean it? To embody it? To create the conditions for that peace to be real?

Or are we checking the box of Friday prayer and then going home, absolved, unchanged?

Or are we becoming a people prepared to practice sanctuary?

Because here's what sanctuary requires: It requires us to be knowledgeable. It requires us to be grounded. It requires us to know our deen not superficially, not just the Islam of rules and rituals, but the vastness of our tradition. Islam as a set of ethical and political commitments.

To do this work, we must know our deen. The Quran in all its complexity (not just the verses they weaponize against us, but the full surah, the full context, the ways that scholars across centuries have understood these texts. The hadith in all its nuance. The centuries of Islamic thought that includes fierce debate, mystical devotion, revolutionary politics, and an insistence on justice that cost scholars and saints their lives. The variety and vastness of our tradition not to pick and choose what's convenient, but to understand that Islam has never been monolithic, has never been singular, has always been a conversation.

Malcolm X studied Islam in MCI Norfolk prison and used that knowledge to free himself. not just physically, but intellectually and spiritually. He studied in a cell. He read by candlelight. He educated himself into liberation. And then he kept learning. He traveled to West Africa, to Egypt, to Mecca, and every encounter expanded his Islam. And he came back changed. He came back with a bigger Islam, a more expansive Islam, an Islam capacious enough to hold the fullness of human diversity.

That's the Islam we need now. An Islam that knows how to act during ambiguous times. An Islam that clarifies our ethical and political commitments. An Islam that doesn't just tell us what's halal and haram in the narrow sense (can I eat this, can I wear that) but what's halal and haram when the state demands we turn in our neighbors. What's halal and haram when the law becomes unjust. What's halal and haram when fascism wraps itself in the flag and the cross and even sometimes the crescent.

What's halal when ICE asks if you've seen your neighbor, and when there can be steep consequences for lying? What's halal when they want you to report the trans kid at your workplace? What's halal when they demand your membership lists, your donation records, your names?

The answer is: it's haram to comply. It's haram to collaborate with oppression. It's fard to protect the vulnerable. This isn't innovation. this is basic Islam. This is what the Najashi did. This is what the early Muslims understood.

The anarchist impulse. is to build networks of mutual aid that make the state irrelevant. To practice forms of organization that don't rely on hierarchy or coercion but on voluntary cooperation and solidarity.

We're a year into creating this space. We haven't yet built the full capacity for this ecosystem. it's a small team of people who mobilize a lot for this container to exist. But the container exists now. Use it. Build networks with each other. Create mutual aid projects, systems of care, dozens of them if we can. This space is here for that.

This isn't foreign to Islam. 

A refusal to wait for permission.

This is prophetic. The prophets didn't wait for Pharaoh's permission. They didn't wait for the king's approval. They acted in accordance with divine justice, and when the law stood in the way, they broke it. Musa, alayhi salam, was a wanted man. Isa, alayhi salam, overturned tables in the temple. Muhammad, sallallahu alayhi wa sallam, preached against Meccan power until they drove him out.

We are inheritors of this tradition.

Everyone deserves shelter, safety, and home. That's not a radical statement in Islam—it's basic. But to practice this in a world organized around borders, policing, and exclusion? That becomes radical.

Union Church asked their people: are you ready? They're building a rapid response fund. They're preparing for ICE raids. They're organizing for what's coming.

So I ask us: are we ready?

As ICE comes for our neighbors, are we ready? As the state criminalizes trans existence even further, are we ready? As they expand the lists of who's deportable, who's undesirable, who's disposable—are we ready?

Will we be like the Abyssinian king of our time? When those who want to harm the vulnerable come demanding we hand them over, will we refuse? Will we say: they are under our protection, and you cannot have them?

Will we organize bail funds? Will we share resources? Will we show up to court dates? Will we expand who we center as Muslims and Muslim community. what does Islam look like here, beyond the cultural modes we've come to make equivalent to our deen? Will we learn people's languages? Will we call and include our incarcerated siblings? Will we drive people to appointments? Will we do the boring, unglamorous work of solidarity?

Will we risk something?

This is our second year beginning. One year of QMOSQUE. One year of gathering in this place, of building something that didn't exist before. That's worth celebrating. That's worth pausing to acknowledge. We made it. Through everything, we made it.

We've learned how to gather, how to pray together, how to hold each other. We've learned what it feels like to make sujood without fear, to say "alhamdulillah" out loud, to exist as our full selves. queer and Muslim, trans and Muslim, all of our complexity and beauty and contradiction. People have gotten married here. People have navigated grief here, held each other through loss. People have navigated conflict here. A real community.

Now we learn how to be sanctuary.

Not just for ourselves—though we deserve it. We deserve spaces where we can breathe. We deserve to pray without fear. We deserve to be loved in our wholeness.

But we can't stop there.

We must learn to be sanctuary as we navigate this storm. For each other, for anyone who needs it.

The Najashi wept when he heard Surah Maryam because he recognized the truth when he heard it. He recognized kinship across difference. He recognized that his responsibility was to the vulnerable, not to the powerful. Not to the Quraysh with their gifts and their demands. Not to political expediency. To the refugees at his door.

May we be a community that recognizes truth. That recognizes kinship across our differences. That sees the divine in every person who shows up at our door.

May we be a community that chooses grace over law, justice over order, sanctuary over complicity.

May Allah make us worthy of this space, this history, this inheritance. Mary McLeod Bethune and Mel King. Pastor Jay Williams and Union Church. Brother Malcolm. The Najashi and the early Muslims who risked everything. Everyone who's ever chosen to harbor the vulnerable instead of handing them over.

May we be a people prepared to practice sanctuary.

We will take a brief pause and then I will close with a duaa. 

CLOSING DUAA

O Allah, al-Latīf (the Gentle), who knows the trembling of our hearts

Courage can feel foolish when we’ve seen the world in all its terror.

Protect us from life lived in perpetual vigilance.

Keep fear from monopolizing our relationships, our desires, our motivations, so that we can act without rehearsing the worst of our imaginations.

Help us dismantle and abolish our idols with haste, and treat ourselves and each other with kindness and mercy.

O Allah, al-Muntaqim (the Avenger),

Bind the will of our oppressors and abusers.

We remember our commitments to the vulnerable, the incarcerated, the poor, the oppressed, the immigrant, to raise us up in honor and lead us from captivity.

O Allah, al-Karīm (the Most Generous), the One who invites us to Your abundant table…

We are made of gratitude today.

That we can gather in chosen community is a rare gift that is not lost on us.

We ask that you bless the paths of all those in this room and all those beyond this room who we bring here in our hearts.

Aid us in dismantling the systems of violence built up around us and built up within us. 

We thank you for one year of gathering in remembrance of you.

Āmīn.

Aqimū ṣ‑ṣalāh

Alhamdulillahi rabbil 'alamin.

As SNAP benefits are jeopardized, as famine has been declared for Sudan and Palestine, as hunger is weaponized and our most vulnerable are affected, how do we continue to show up for each other? How do others show up for us?

We have a religious obligation to feed the hungry and the poor. What we do in this space matters; we are coming together, to gather, to have an evening of community and comfort, knowing that whatever the circumstances of our lives outside of QMosque, when we are here, we will be fed and we will be each others’ nourishment. Y’all being here is a commitment to our values, is a commitment to each other’s well being. 

And yet, it is hard to put down the weight of our lives outside of QMosque. The heaviness and exhaustion follows us in these doors. So I’d like this khutbah to be a spiritual shelter for us. 

I’ll begin with the shortest surah in the Quran. It’s one for us to remember when it feels like the challenges are insurmountable, when we’re burnt out and every week think, “maybe next week will slow down”. Surah Kawthar, meaning Abundant Goodness, is named after the River of Paradise:

بِسۡمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

إِنَّآ أَعۡطَيۡنَٰكَ ٱلۡكَوۡثَرَ

فَصَلِّ لِرَبِّكَ وَٱنۡحَرۡ

إِنَّ شَانِئَكَ هُوَ ٱلۡأَبۡتَرُ

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem

Innaaa a’tainaa kal kauthar

Fasalli li rabbika wanhar

Inna shaani’aka huwal abtar

In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.

Verily, We have granted you Al-Kawthar.

Therefore turn in prayer to your Lord and sacrifice.

Indeed, the one who hates you is cut off.

Surah Kawthar, Abundance distilled into three ayahs, is followed by Surah Ma’un, meaning “Small Kindness”:

بِسۡمِ ٱللَّهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

أَرَءَيۡتَ ٱلَّذِي يُكَذِّبُ بِٱلدِّينِ

فَذَٰلِكَ ٱلَّذِي يَدُعُّ ٱلۡيَتِيمَ

وَلَا يَحُضُّ عَلَىٰ طَعَامِ ٱلۡمِسۡكِينِ

فَوَيۡلٞ لِّلۡمُصَلِّينَ

ٱلَّذِينَ هُمۡ عَن صَلَاتِهِمۡ سَاهُونَ

ٱلَّذِينَ هُمۡ يُرَآءُونَ

وَيَمۡنَعُونَ ٱلۡمَاعُونَ

Bismillah Ar-Rahman Ar-Raheem

Ara ‘aytal lazee yukazzibu biddeen

Fazaalikal lazee yadu’ul-yateem

Wa la yahuddu ‘alaa ta’aamil miskeen

Fa wailul-lil musalleen

Allazeena hum ‘an salaatihim saahoon

Allazeena hum yuraaa’oon

Wa yamna’oonal maa’oon

In the Name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.

Have you seen him who denies the Final Judgement?

The one who repulses the orphan,

And urges not the feeding of the poor.

So, woe unto those who pray,

Those who are unmindful of their prayer.

Those who do good deeds only to be seen,

And withhold the small kindnesses.

As QMosque continues to grow, I find myself thinking of the parallels between our ummah and that of the Meccan Muslims. Like them, it was dangerous to be seen praying or gathering. Many of us keep our distance from mainstream Muslim spaces. We seek fulfillment in each other. We create our own worship outside of seeking legitimacy from mainstream institutions that would dismiss us. And as we gain some security by the sanctuary of Union Church, by the consistency of our efforts, I think about our commitment to spiritual fulfilment alongside the physical. 

Last month, the khutbah was about the first Hijrah of Muslims to Abyssinia, when persecuted Muslims were given shelter and aid by the Christian Ethiopian King. Hijrah-- meaning migration, to depart, to move away. 

“Hijrah” shares the same root with “Hajar”. Hajar who, when abandoned in the desert with her infant son and left bereft, is desperate for water. Hajar, who runs between Safa and Marwa while her baby is crying and kicking at the ground. In some versions, the Angel Jibrael’s wings dig a ditch that Hajar widens with her hands, until a spring flows out. In another version, the spring emerges from where the baby kicks at the ground. A miracle happens here. The water they so desperately need to live comes flowing out and forms the Zamzam spring. The spring opens up the land to greater life, with a caravan settling in the area and eventually becoming Mecca. 

Water is a pathway for life. Women and girls disproportionately bear the burden of water scarcity. What Hajar did is what many women do. She searches and survives.

When the Klamath River on the West Coast was dammed for 100 years, the river became sick. Dead salmon and trout filled the waterways, bloated and decaying in the water as their ancestral pathways were closed. The people living around the river from time immemorial, the Klamath, Karuk, Hoopi, and Yoruk tribes, among others, were no longer able to access the gifts of the river. There was no more fishing, no more harvesting Tule reeds from the banks, no more recreation or travel or connection to the waterway. While the river was dammed, poverty was created while resources were available. The dam’s owners, PacifiCorp, admitted that maintaining the dams was too expensive and they didn’t contribute to water supplies or flood control. Undammed in 2024, the Klamath River became the site of the largest US dam removal project, a struggle that was sustained by generations of resistance. Then, in June (2025), a group of Indigenous youth (from the Klamath, Yoruk, Karuk, and Hoopa tribes) completed the first source-to-sea run of the newly freed river. For 310 miles, for 30 days, youth kayaked through ancestral waterways and a new generation connected with the river that joins them to their heritage. The salmon have started to make their way back upstream. 

I talk about the Klamath River to connect us to the timeline of liberation. To know that the struggle is generations in the making, that consistency is the sustainer of our faith. And I talk about the Klamath River to connect us to the life that water provides us, while we are here on Turtle Island. 

Jannah is described in the Quran as “gardens under which rivers flow”. Allah has made a world that provides for us. In Surah Nahl, the Bee: “Allah is the One Who sends down rain from the sky, from which you drink and by which plants grow for your cattle to graze. With it Allah produces for you crops, olives, palm trees, grapevines, and every type of fruit. Surely, in this is a sign for those who reflect.” (16:10-11) 

Eating from the earth is such a blessing when we slow down and reflect. Allah provides. And yet, people go hungry. People are unable to access community. In the face of desertion, as Hajar was once left alone in the desert, in witnessing hunger and need and struggle, it is our duty to center small kindnesses as worship. To build community by feeding the poor, by providing for each other. 

I ask you: How will we worship? And how will we nourish each other? Our Queerness informs our deen. Like Surah Ma’un, as we gather, I don’t take it for granted that we get to pray side by side, irrespective of gender or sect. And while I don’t pray regularly, us gathering here, and all the effort that goes into making this space happen every month, that to me is worship. That, to me, is the accumulation of small kindnesses becoming abundance. 

The Quran says, “Indeed, Allah would not change a people’s state until they change their own state.” Hajar calls out for Allah and then she runs, searching. We have prayed for each other, now what do we do?

From Union Church’s sermon last week, “Belonging isn’t something you find, it’s something we make together.” Allah has guided us to each other, and now what will we build with each other?

Bismillah ar-rahman ar-raheem.

“And mention when the angels said: O Mary! Truly, God favored thee, and purified thee, and favored thee above women of the world.

O Mary! Be thou morally obligated to thy Lord and prostrate thyself and bow down with the ones who bow down.

That is tidings from the unseen We reveal to thee. And thou hadst not been present with them when they cast their lots as to which of them would take control of Mary, nor hadst thou been present with them when they strive against one another.

Mention when the angels said: O Mary! Truly, God gives thee good tidings of a Word from Him. His name is the Messiah—Jesus son of Mary—well-esteemed in the present world to come and among the ones who are brought near.”

Q 3:42-45

This passage from Surah āl-‘Imrān presents a snapshot into one of the most enigmatic and fragmented narratives in the Qur’an. The story of Mary’s birth, her childhood, and the divine birth of her son is narratively layered and complex. It highlights an important, but often overlooked, element of the Qur’an: silence.

Silence remains a deceptively complex subject in contemporary society. We can associate silence with topics as wide ranging as meditation, political inaction, consent or lack of consent, and the unheard voices of the oppressed. The two-word phrase, “God’s silence,” can be invoked to lament our inability to see or hear how God might intervene against injustice or ecological devastation. Where in silence we might be asked to cultivate a sense of inner peace and harmony, we might instead hear the incessant noise of our thoughts, worries, and insecurities.

The presence and absence of women throughout the Qur’an has long been a topic of important consideration. Islam is often glossed, even by Muslims, as upholding aspects of misogyny and patriarchy. And though this khutbah cannot answer all of those laments and important questions, I have recently found a lot of inspiration and comfort by attending to the silences of figures like Mary in the Qur’an with the help of one of my professors and friends, Dr. Zahra Moballegh.

Dr. Moballegh encourages her students to look at the Qur’an with fresh eyes by using a narratological approach. She invites us to populate the silences in the Qur’an using strategies from contemporary literary analysis and feminist critique. When for example Mary’s mother, unnamed in the Qur’an, stops speaking in Surah āl-‘Imrān, what details might we fill in? Mary’s mother, named Anne in other Abrahamic texts, vows to dedicate her unborn child to God (not unlike Mary will dedicate her son). Mary’s father is absent from Mary’s birth, possibly dead, and in the anxiety of childbirth Anne worries herself about his legacy and Mary’s well-being should Anne also die. After lamenting that she bore a child, the reader can hear in God’s interjection “And God is greater in knowledge of what she brought forth. And the male is not like the female,” that God welcomes Mary’s birth and knows better what is to come of her legacy. Though I am not an Arabic scholar, the lines about gender in this interjection are most directly translated to presume that it is in fact better that the child was a girl rather than a boy.

Gender essentialism aside, there is something profound about God’s interjection to affirm the sanctity of Mary, and following God’s interjection, Anne names the baby Mary and commends her and her offspring to God’s protection from Satan. And then, Anne is silent. Presumably, she dies in childbirth or shortly after because we then see Mary growing up in a temple under the care of Zechariah, a religious elder.

Just as Jesus would one day speak as an infant, the child Mary also carries wisdom beyond her years at a young age in the temple, schooling Zechariah when he wonders at the food she has in her sanctuary. She reminds him that “This is from God. Truly, God provides to whom He wills without reckoning.” This passage is easy to rush through, but what is important to remember here is that Mary, a young girl said to be favored by God, upends social norms to speak back to a religious authority that she might know more about faith than he does.

These verses go on and skip through time landing eventually at the verses I first mentioned about the angels. The angels themselves address Mary to emphasize her purity and her favor in the eyes of God. Then they say, “Be thou morally obligated to thy Lord and prostrate thyself and bow down with the ones who bow down.”

A quick contemporary gloss can highlight this command’s emphasis on Mary’s submission—however a closer look provides a more complicated read. The angels are not just asking Mary to bow before God. They are asking Mary to bow before God with them. By inviting Mary to pray with them, they emphasize her prophetic status.

The verse that follows is the most puzzling in the passage. Between two angelic speeches, God interrupts, introducing God’s self with the divine “We” pronoun what God describes as “tidings from the unseen We reveal to thee.” By working through the narrative with the support of Dr. Moballegh, I see this passage as a pained confession by God. The fragmented narrative structure is not unlike postmodern narratives today, sometimes fractured by trauma or pain. God reveals that Mary, a young and beautiful orphan, has men casting their lots over her and fighting over who will take control of her.

What might we glean from such a complex passage as a contemporary audience or as believers? Some reciters choose to recite this verse in the saddest Arabic register—drawing from these words an agonizing lament. What pains even God to admit? What unseen circumstances befall Mary before Jesus’s birth?

I do not personally believe that we need God or the Qur’an to spell out a literal or historical narrative of Mary or Jesus. However, I cannot shake the resonances these verses have stirred in me as I consider all of those who survive unseen violence. What happens in silence? What violence do the parentless, the young, and the vulnerable experience in this world? What violence did Mary’s mother anticipate with her dying wish that God protect her child from Satan?

I cannot say with any degree of certainty that Mary experienced violence, let alone that Mary could have experienced sexual violence. However, I do believe we can meditate upon narratives in the Qur’an like Mary’s in order to reflect upon issues that are as ancient as they are contemporary.

There is a way to read this surah and leave feeling upset by God’s presumable silence—if God could see these unseen silent tidings, why didn’t God interject? Or, might we remember God’s reminder earlier in the passage that “God is greater in knowledge”?

No prophets fulfill their destinies without suffering. No prophets are universally believed and lauded in the times during which they lived. How might those of us who have survived violence, especially sexual violence, see ourselves in the prophets? See ourselves in a prophet like Mary?

Many, including my professor Dr. Moballegh, believe that Mary is depicted in the Qur’an as a prophet. She is often included in lists or mentions of prophets—and even gets more airtime than some of her prophetic peers. I believe Mary is among the most favored of the prophets. And I believe God’s answer to survivors can be found in the angels’ invitation to Mary. They invite this young faithful woman—a woman who might by some be deemed impure—to pray among them. How radically different might our Muslim communities look if we focused less on literal, historic interpretations and instead listened to our scripture’s silences? God’s silence is not without answers. Who will we invite to pray amongst us? How might we shower the light of the angels upon all of those around us who have survived unimaginable violence? And for those of us who have suffered violence ourselves—how might we reclaim our dignity, our divinity, and our agency knowing that one of us has been invited to pray amongst the angels?

Now, if you feel so moved to do so, I invite you to join me in making du’a:

Ya Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful. Ya Allah, the Knowing.

Ya Allah, we thank you for the opportunity to gather again in remembrance of you.

Ya Allah, may we grow in our ability to bear witness to you in silence. May we open ourselves to the possibility that even your silence speaks volumes.

Ya Allah, may we remain humble as we interpret your signs. May our efforts and intentions be pure as we seek to know and understand you and our role in your world.

Ya Allah, may we uplift the voices of all whose voices are so often drowned out in our community and communities around the world. May we quiet our voices in order to better hear and raise our voices in order to better protect.

Ya Allah, may we follow your lead in blessing and embracing all of those among us who have survived violence in the quiet and unseen corners of this human life. May those who have suffered violence be reminded of their worth, their autonomy, their deep and intrinsic beauty. May we treat our neighbors as you treated Mary, inviting them to pray amongst us like Mary was invited to pray amongst the angels.

Ya Allah, may we each make ourselves a respite from violence—for ourselves, for each other, and to strangers whose suffering we cannot know. May we strive eternally to achieve your names in our own lives to become more Compassionate, more Merciful, and more Knowing.

Ameen.

I’m 12 years old and it’s the middle of the night. I lie awake in bed, petrified. If I close my eyes or fall asleep, I’m certain I will die.

A few months go by. I am laying in bed again, terrified. The idea of infinity shakes me. I’m so frightened by the idea of something so never ending. How could something like heaven, something so pleasant and soft, send roiling pains in my stomach. I was in a small form of hell already, but the unfamiliarity and relentless(?) going on of hell almost scared me more.

“Iqra”, the first ayah of the Quran that the Prophet peace be upon him received resonated with me. His miracle being the Quran while he was illiterate. Knowledge, inquiry and reading being the first tenants to us Muslims is so powerful. And even in times of strife and fear, we can still read. 

My mother didn’t finish middle school due to an awful circumstance and lack of knowledge of how to support her. She is many things but mostly she is so bright. She fully believes in the power of tawakkul and even when I was anxious and petrified, she would tell me to turn to Allah for comfort. She so trusted in doing what she could and leaving the rest to Allah. Tawakkul is a very deep form of knowledge. I used to resent this. Fighting against the lack of control and agency I felt. But now, it brings me great comfort. 

There have [been] many serendipitous things in my life. Where I thought I wanted something so desperately. I clung and begged for it. And it would go away. To my surprise, often it was for the best. Allah has held me and time and again shown me examples of tawakkul even when I didn’t feel ready. 

One of those ways was finding QMOB. As a kid, when I started to come to terms with my queerness, I never imagined a world where it could be reconciled with Islam. I rejected Islam in an effort to protect myself from being rejected. Coming to QMOB events felt terrifying. Would I be judged for my hesitation and trepidation? Would I judge myself? Would I find myself seeking community in the wrong place again? Instead, I found safety. Safety to explore where and how I wanted Islam to fit in my life. I found examples of what it could look like to practice or not. It was so challenging and triggering at first and I am so glad I pushed myself to keep revisiting until my triggers turned into a sense of comfort. And for that, I am so grateful. 

I think even now when things feel so terrifying and scary in the world. When I feel so uncertain, and am looking for control, I’m so thankful to carry this community with me in spirit, invoking it when I feel alone.
Happy Black History Month and remember to tawakkul even when you don’t know how.

Salaam. Thank you all for being here and for giving me this space today.

I wanted to start by sharing a couple of verses from Surah Al-A’raf, which I will read first in Arabic and then in English description.

وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ لَا نُكَلِّفُ نَفْسًا إِلَّا وُسْعَهَآ أُو۟لَـٰٓئِكَ أَصْحَـٰبُ ٱلْجَنَّةِ ۖ هُمْ فِيهَا خَـٰلِدُونَ ٤٢

As for those who believe and do good—We never require of any soul more than what it can afford—it is they who will be the residents of Paradise. They will be there forever.

وَنَزَعْنَا مَا فِى صُدُورِهِم مِّنْ غِلٍّۢ تَجْرِى مِن تَحْتِهِمُ ٱلْأَنْهَـٰرُ ۖ وَقَالُوا۟ ٱلْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ ٱلَّذِى هَدَىٰنَا لِهَـٰذَا وَمَا كُنَّا لِنَهْتَدِىَ لَوْلَآ أَنْ هَدَىٰنَا ٱللَّهُ ۖ لَقَدْ جَآءَتْ رُسُلُ رَبِّنَا بِٱلْحَقِّ ۖ وَنُودُوٓا۟ أَن تِلْكُمُ ٱلْجَنَّةُ أُورِثْتُمُوهَا بِمَا كُنتُمْ تَعْمَلُونَ ٤٣

We will remove whatever bitterness they had in their hearts. Rivers will flow under their feet. And they will say, “Praise be to Allah for guiding us to this. We would have never been guided if Allah had not guided us. The messengers of our Lord had certainly come with the truth.” It will be announced to them, “This is Paradise awarded to you for what you used to do.”

Over the years I’ve spent countless moments ruminating over verses such as these, which make reference to something akin to the purification of those who are granted access to heaven– a removal of the bitterness in our hearts, an afterlife with only good and virtuous speech to be found, with no idle or sinful talk, and a promise of everlasting bliss.

Words such as good and virtuous have always been somewhat subjective to me. And at times when my faith has been weakest, I have wondered how this so-called removal of all that is “wrong” would apply to me.

Who would I be if I was granted access to paradise? Would I be stripped of my queerness? My desires? My irrationalities and unwise decisions? Could I be wholly myself and still belong there, the way so many of us have never truly belonged on this earth?

Now, when I reflect on these verses once again, I struggle to even conceptualise a version of myself and my heart that exists without bitterness. As the imperialist powers of the world wage relentless wars in pursuit of their own fascist and oppressive agendas, as our communities are under constant attack here in their homes and back in their homelands, I feel that perhaps what unites us all in these moments is a sheer sense of anger.

As I stand here before you, I admit that much of my feelings this Ramadan have not been virtuous or good or kind.

Being here, I always feel united with you all in joy. But I also feel united with you all in sadness, and in grief, and in a desperate hopelessness. In never knowing if I’m doing enough. If I’m making the right decisions. If I’m prioritizing the right things. If I’ll ever be able to make a difference.

I do not know if there is space in the afterlife for these deeply human emotions that make us who we are. I’m not sure I know how to exist without them.

Growing up, I remember my Islamic teachers telling me stories about judgement day, about how our own hands would begin speaking out to reveal our sins. About how we would be compelled to beg our families, our friends, everyone we have ever known to defend us, but no one would come forward.

I still feel haunted by these deeply lonely images, particularly when living in a world where we repeatedly see our neighbours not showing up for each other, not being willing to sacrifice anything for the sake of their communities.

Once again, I suppose I want the irrationality. In the face of such devastation and destruction around us on this earth, where every day the worst thing we’ve witnessed becomes the second-worst thing, I want us to be falling of cliffs for each other. I want that to be my afterlife and my current reality – a version of living and being where we show up despite the consequences. Something that feels miraculous only because it seems so absent and unfathomable right now.

The truth is I do not have any answers. The truth is that I have always felt closest to you all through a shared sense of justice and resistance – and it’s hard for me to imagine what this community could even look like if we were not forced to resist.

What would our identities even be in a context of peace? What would be our relationship to Allah, to each other? Everlasting bliss feels so far away, so distant and removed from anything that has ever been afforded to us. Would we even know what to do with it, if offered to us?

All I really know is that I feel most like I’ve discovered heaven itself when we kneel side

by side to pray, or when I’m trying to fall asleep and hear the harmonized voices of you all performing dhikr in my mind, or when I get to take home a container of leftovers like a preservation of love to sustain me through the week, or when I hug someone by the end of the night that I only met for the first time in these halls that evening.

It’s hard for me to imagine a space more miraculous than this. A space that is making history and only exists because of all of us and our continued shared resistance. A space that centers and feeds our joy but creates space for our rage and bitterness, too. If this is the closest I ever get to Jannat, it’s enough for me.

Reflecting on all this, I’ve been thinking a lot this Ramadan about worship for worship’s sake. Not worship for the sake of attaining paradise, or achieving some form of reward in the afterlife, or out of fear.

But worship solely for the sake of feeling closer to Allah, and for the sake of finding Allah in everything – in the people we love, and the meals we share, and the streets we march on, and the tears we shed.

I want to keep fighting to create the closest we can get to heaven on this earth. And I want it to be a place where we can be wholly and completely ourselves, in all our flaws and messiness and imperfections. All that God’s infinite compassion and mercy allows us to be.

Thank you for being here with me in our joint anger and grief and hopelessness. Perhaps it is in the shared nature of these emotions where hope is to be found.

Assalamu Alaikum and Eid Mubarak. 

This khutbah had many different versions… I doubted the words I wrote and started over so many times. Do I have anything meaningful left to offer? Especially, when I have been struggling this month to feel connected to Allah? And yet, “Certainly, We have already created [humans] and know what [their] soul whispers to [them], and We are closer to [them] than [their] jugular vein.” (Q50:16). Allah already knows all of this. So, still, I try to write. To be closer to Allah. To be closer to all of you. 

To me, doubt is part of belief. It means that we are willing to risk disrupting the stability for the truth. How many of us do this just by daring to exist as we are? Doubt means that we are continuing to struggle, and that our jihad is worked and reworked, like the grit of sand that becomes a pearl, enclosed in the private pocket of space in a creature’s center. To doubt means to ask something of Allah, to look for clarity, to protect what you call the truth.

I grew up saying the takbir on the way to the masjid for Eid prayer. My family would recite it together, looping over and over. It was one of the more peaceful moments in the morning, when usually there would be an inevitable argument as we were always running late. Our dhikr would fill the car and wrap around me with a protective bubble. 

Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha Ila Allah, Wa Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Wa Lillahi Alhamd

(God is the greatest, God is the greatest, God is the greatest, There is no God but Allah, and God is the greatest, God is the greatest, To Allah belongs all praise) 

(I’ll repeat this throughout the khutbah and you are welcome to join me.)

These days, I am reaching for my faith to cover me, like the image of the Prophet (pbuh) after the Revelation in the Cave of Hira, returning home to Khadijah (RA), crying out for her to cover him. I want my faith to be my shield from what I cannot yet understand.

Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha Ila Allah, Wa Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Wa Lillahi Alhamd

Eid is a celebration for the completion of Ramadan. This year, it was a struggle to feel like Ramadan revitalized me the way it normally has. Usually, Ramadan strips away the distractions of this world and I feel more strongly myself for it, more humble and closer to Allah. 

The world has ended many times for many different people. I don’t mean to say there aren’t good things still or that there aren’t things worth celebrating. But it feels impossible to be celebratory right now when we are constantly faced with proof of our Ummah’s suffering: from Iran to Sudan to Palestine, and all the oppressed people of the world who are enduring violence and hardship. 

Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha Ila Allah, Wa Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Wa Lillahi Alhamd

I’d like to share part of a poem with you. It’s called: 

A Brief for the Defense by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies

are not starving someplace, they are starving

somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.

But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.

Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not

be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not

be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women

at the fountain are laughing together between

the suffering they have known and the awfulness

in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody

in the village is very sick. There is laughter

every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,

and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.

If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,

we lessen the importance of their deprivation.

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,

but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have

the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless

furnace of this world. To make injustice the only

measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,

we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.

We must admit there will be music despite everything.

“To make injustice the only / measure of our attention is to praise the Devil. / If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down, / we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.” These lines echo a quote attributed to Rabia al-Basri, an Iraqi Sufi mystic: “I love God. I have no time left to hate the Devil.” 

Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha Ila Allah, Wa Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Wa Lillahi Alhamd

To borrow a phrase from a friend, my duas after Maghrib have become Al-Jazeera headlines. In this holy month, the Muslim Ummah is joined together in fasting, physically and spiritually. This endurance is worship that makes solidarity a tangibly felt action.  

To focus only on injustice is to ignore that with grief and anger, the other side of the scale is love and care. We are inundated with news constantly and when we gather here, we make a spiritual shelter for each other, to be closer to Allah. The times that I feel closest to God these days are when we do dhikr out loud together.

Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha Ila Allah, Wa Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Wa Lillahi Alhamd

Al-Inshirāḥ, Surah 94 of the Quran, means "the Solace" or "the Comfort". I’ll read it first in Arabic, and then in English.

In the name of Allah, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful

1. Have We not expanded for you your breast

2. And removed from you your burden

3. Which weighed upon your back

4. And raised high for you your reputation?

5. So indeed with the hardship is ease

6. Indeed with the hardship is ease.

7. So, whenever you are free, strive in devotion

8. And turn your attention to your Lord.

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem 

1. Alam nashrah laka sadrak

2. Wa wa d'ana 'anka wizrak

3. Allazee anqada zahrak

4. Wa raf 'ana laka zikrak

5. Fa inna ma'al usri yusra

6. Inna ma'al 'usri yusra

7. Fa iza faragh ta fansab

8. Wa ilaa rabbika far ghab

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

1. أَلَمْ نَشْرَحْ لَكَ صَدْرَكَ

2. وَوَضَعْنَا عَنْكَ وِزْرَكَ

3. الَّذِي أَنْقَضَ ظَهْرَكَ

4. وَرَفَعْنَا لَكَ ذِكْرَكَ

5. فَإِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا

6. إِنَّ مَعَ الْعُسْرِ يُسْرًا

7. فَإِذَا فَرَغْتَ فَانْصَبْ

8. وَإِلَىٰ رَبِّكَ فَٱرْغَب
   

This surah is meant to be a comfort against despair. To think of previous burdens that have been lifted from our backs, when our chests have felt tight and then expanded, is then to know that with every hardship is a matched ease. In the end, the surah reminds us that we are to strive in devotion and attention to Allah. And in this effort for closeness, we will find ease. Remembrance of Allah becomes the touchstone that grounds us in this world’s chaos.

In our world that worships and abuses false idols of money and oil and power, Allah asks of us over and over again to give to the needy, to have compassion for the poor. The Quran warns against high interest rates, stealing an orphan’s inheritance, payment that cheats someone out of equitable compensation, and hoarding wealth. Our Zakat is part of our faith as a believer. We are responsible for each other. We are meant to look after our community’s needs and ensure that all are able to eat, to celebrate today. Zakat is “the bridge of Islam”, as one hadith says. It purifies the soul. 

Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha Ila Allah, Wa Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Wa Lillahi Alhamd

I want to borrow some wisdom from an ancestor: Assata Shakur. Her chosen name means “one who struggles” and “thankful one”. Here’s a section from her autobiography that I’d like to share with you.

“Kamau argued that Islam was a just religion, opposed to oppression. ‘Oppression is worse than slaughter,’ he quoted from the Holy Koran. ‘A true Muslim is a revolutionary. There is no contradiction between being a Muslim and being a revolutionary.’ I didn’t know much about it, but i agreed to seriously check it out. Muslim services were held regularly on Rikers Island, and Simba and i began to attend.” (Assata 92)

On the next page, she describes another interaction: 

“‘Do you think you’re a machine?’ a brother had asked me. ‘Do you think you were put on this earth to fight and nothing else?’

I thought about what Zayd had always told me. ‘While you’re alive, girl, you betta live.’

‘I am about life,’ I said to myself. ‘I’m gonna live as hard as i can and as full as I can until i die. And i’m not letting these parasites, these oppressors, these greedy racist swine make me kill my children in my mind, before they are even born. I’m going to live and i’m going to love… and i’m going to rejoice.’” (Assata 93)

Assata Shakur goes on to give birth to her daughter she had with Kamau, while still imprisoned at Rikers, on September 11th, 1974. She had been kept under inhumane conditions, faced medical cruelty, physical violence, and institutional neglect. She was separated abruptly from her newborn baby, beaten and chained, and taken once again to solitary confinement. After 6 years of incarceration by the USA, she escaped from prison and was given political asylum by Cuba, a country that has long endured US imperialism and terrorism, and continues to endure
Her last name, Shakur-- Shukr means gratitude, and from our remembrance of God, is an antidote to being unfeeling. Over a year ago, I gave my first khutbah here and I said that “our feelings are our messengers”. It is a gift to still be able to feel and react when so many around us are uncaring and closed off from others’ pain.

Surah al-Inshirah is followed in Revelation by Surah al-Asr (The Declining Day). It was said that Companions of the Prophet (pbuh) would say this to each other before parting.

In the name of Allah, Most Compassionate, Most Merciful

1. By the time,

2. Verily man is in loss,

3. Except those who believe and work righteous works, and enjoin upon each other the truth, and enjoin upon each other endurance.

Bismillaahir Rahmaanir Raheem 

1. Wal 'asr

2. Innal insaana lafee khusr

3. Illal lazeena aamanoo wa 'amilus saalihaati wa tawaasaw bilhaqqi wa tawaasaw bissabr

بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمَٰنِ الرَّحِيمِ

1. وَالْعَصْرِ

2. إِنَّ الْإِنْسَانَ لَفِي خُسْرٍ

3. إِلَّا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوا۟ وَعَمِلُوا۟ ٱلصَّـٰلِحَـٰتِ وَتَوَاصَوْا۟ بِٱلْحَقِّ وَتَوَاصَوْا۟ بِٱلصَّبْرِ

When we are struggling to be found, when we feel lost in the noise of this life, may we remember the solution-- it’s simple but not easy. Believe, do righteous work, and encourage each other to the truth, and endure together.

Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, La Ilaha Ila Allah, Wa Allahu Akbar Allahu Akbar, Wa Lillahi Alhamd

Thank you for listening to me speak today.

(DUA:)

Inshallah let us be of those who believe and do righteous deeds. Let us ask of each other the truth and let us endure together.

Ameen.