RU Ally Week closes with ‘Coming Out Muslim’ event

Terna Tilley-Gyado said she wants to tell other lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Muslims that the arms of Islam are wide enough to hold them in all their different states: their love, their anger, their desire, their failing and their dying.

To end RU Ally Week, “Coming Out Muslim: Radical Acts of Love” featured a performance produced by Tilley-Gyado and Wazina Zondon showing the experiences of Muslims in the LGBT community. The Office of the Campus Deans of Douglass, Cook, College Avenue, Busch and Livingston as well as the Center for Social Justice Education and LGBT Communities sponsored the event.

Rebecca Reynolds, assistant dean in the Douglass Residential College, said she was interested in the way people balance multiple identities.

“I know that for so many students, it’s so hard to balance their cultural background [and] their religious background with their sense of identity as they move through the campus and [their] college experience,” she said.

Performers Tilley-Gyado and Zondon, both Muslim women, began the event by kneeling on their own prayer rugs to a religious chant.

Afterwards, they sat on stools and faced the audience, using family stories and personal experiences to describe the emotions of being at the crossroads of “queerness” and Islam. The act was meant for the audience to understand that sexual identity and Islam are not as separate as they are made out to be.

Tilley-Gyado said for her, being Muslim or a lesbian has never been a source of internal conflict, and she has never felt that her culture asked her to be something other than what she is.

“When you first get it, there’s a moment, or a month, or a year or five years, where you’re not quite sure you want it,” Tilley-Gyado said. “And slowly, you begin to recognize the features and the special features, the singularity of the gift.”

Both Tilley-Gyado and Zondon agree that being a queer Muslim is the best gift they never asked for — and for that, they thank Allah everyday.

Tilley-Gyado said if she were not a queer Muslim, she would never be part of the “amazing community” to which she belongs and fiercely clings to.

“If Allah is closer than my own jugular vein, is the creator of my heart, the source of its blood and beat, how could I despise myself?” Tilley-Gyado said.

Zondon complemented Tilley-Gyado’s assertion by saying that her past love interests, her pop culture idols or her parents did not make her lesbian — Allah did.

Zondon said Islam has not turned its back on her, but there are people who have.

It is necessary to change the notion that an inherent contradiction exists between being Muslim and gay, Tilley-Gyado said.

LGBT issues in the Muslim community are not isolated, but wrapped up in many other issues, she said.

She said she questioned how to continue this conversation in the community — multiple groups have stakes in the issue because of their personal identities, sexual orientation or religious beliefs.

“We chose story-telling as a way of narration specifically to draw a common thread from us to the audience. I think of an invisible string that connects you and gets passed along,” Zondon said.

Mia Powell, a School of Engineering first-year student, said she attended the event because she never realized that people could be conflicted between their Muslim faith and their sexuality. She said she is curious about this particular point of view.

Editor's note; A previous version of this article neglected to credit The Office of the Campus Deans of Douglass, Cook, College Avenue, Busch and Livingston as an event sponsor.