Samra Habib is a queer Ahmadi Muslim writer, photographer, and activist. Raised in Pakistan, her family moved to Canada when she was a teenager. In 2014, she launched Just Me and Allah (@queermuslimproject), a Tumblr portrait project that visually documents the lives of queer Muslims. She works with LGBTQ organizations internationally, raising awareness of issues that impact queer Muslims around the world. Her memoir, We Have Always Been Here is her first book.
Samra Habib on joining Unity Mosque, a queer friendly mosque founded by El-Farouk Khaki, an openly gay human rights lawyer and his husband, in We Have Always Been Here.
I’ve always known I was “different” since my adolescence. In middle school, when everyone was having crushes on boys and passing notes to each other, I started to notice how I didn’t look at boys the same way my friends did. I started to question my sexuality and immediately felt dirty and disgusting as I was taught growing up in a Muslim household that homosexuality is sinful. I also associated queerness with being white so I felt as though I couldn’t possibly be gay which resulted in a decade of internalized homophobia.
In high school, I started to learn the vernacular of the LGBTQ+ community and what queerness meant. Once I realized that it’s okay to be both brown AND queer, I decided to come out to my close friends and eventually on social media. However, I am not out to my family as I feel like my safety would be at risk.
(Q: How do you bring awareness to youth and elders in your community?)
I bring awareness by utilizing social media as a tool to express myself and my identity as being both Bangladeshi and queer. I write about experiences as well as allow other lgbtq+ folks to share their stories in my magazine, Sorjo Magazine, for and by the unconventional.
I am also the co-founder of the South Asian Queer & Trans Collective, along with my good friend, Tamanna Yousef. It is a community support group that amplifies the voices of the South Asian LGBTQ+ diaspora. I hope that by being my authentic self, it makes other folks regardless of their age, to be themselves too.
"Regardless of my sexuality, I will continue identifying as Muslim and defending my community against bigoted assumptions and acts of terror that attempt to demonize Muslims for existing. I wish the LGBTQ+ community spoke out against Islamophobia more frequently and was more inclusive in their representation. I wonder if that would have empowered me to embrace my full identity at a younger age."
