Month: July 2017

A couple of weeks ago, Siddika Jessa, a senior official of a large North American Muslim group was forced to resign because….she’d attended the wedding of her son to another man.

I’m both upset at how immediate and severe the backlash was, that it forced this, but I’m also happy that a Muslim mom who wasn’t even completely accepting herself at first now would rather stand with her gay son than keep the power that came with a homophobic group.

Some excerpts from her resignation letter:

My stance today is not just as a devoted mother but as a human being who has painfully observed
how the community has usurped the rights of God’s creation in the name of Islam and passed
judgement.

[My son] had talked to various Scholars and sought help in the Shia Faith and he tells me that the best piece of
advice that he got was to ensure that he does not get married to a woman and ruin her life.

For us this is about standing up for Ali’s God given right to live a life that would not be filled with the
burden of religious guilt and compounded by communal scorn and societal shame. […] Let me point out that our community
is not immune to this and I personally know of many people within our community that are
suffering, stiffened and ostracised. 

We chose not to have that for our son. We wanted him to be the best human being possible.

And most valuable, to bring an Islamic perspective on why to NOT be homophobic.

In moments of darkness, I realized that the only way for Ali to live an authentic life and not have to
hide and fear rejection was to give him space to reach his human potential as God’s creation. After
that God knows best. The only person to judge my son would be God on the Day of Judgment. If a
compassionate God provides sustenance to every human being, who am I to deprive my son of that
sustenance?

And then the rather bluntly honest conclusion:

When I reflect back through mine and my Son’s journey I
am convinced that his orientation is Nature and not Nurture. Like Ali Reza expressed many times,
“that if he could flick a switch and not be Gay, he would do it in a heartbeat”.

A couple of weeks ago, Siddika Jessa, a senior official of a large North American Muslim group was forced to resign because….she’d attended the wedding of her son to another man.

I’m both upset at how immediate and severe the backlash was, that it forced this, but I’m also happy that a Muslim mom who wasn’t even completely accepting herself at first now would rather stand with her gay son than keep the power that came with a homophobic group.

Some excerpts from her resignation letter:

My stance today is not just as a devoted mother but as a human being who has painfully observed
how the community has usurped the rights of God’s creation in the name of Islam and passed
judgement.

[My son] had talked to various Scholars and sought help in the Shia Faith and he tells me that the best piece of
advice that he got was to ensure that he does not get married to a woman and ruin her life.

For us this is about standing up for Ali’s God given right to live a life that would not be filled with the
burden of religious guilt and compounded by communal scorn and societal shame. […] Let me point out that our community
is not immune to this and I personally know of many people within our community that are
suffering, stiffened and ostracised. 

We chose not to have that for our son. We wanted him to be the best human being possible.

And most valuable, to bring an Islamic perspective on why to NOT be homophobic.

In moments of darkness, I realized that the only way for Ali to live an authentic life and not have to
hide and fear rejection was to give him space to reach his human potential as God’s creation. After
that God knows best. The only person to judge my son would be God on the Day of Judgment. If a
compassionate God provides sustenance to every human being, who am I to deprive my son of that
sustenance?

And then the rather bluntly honest conclusion:

When I reflect back through mine and my Son’s journey I
am convinced that his orientation is Nature and not Nurture. Like Ali Reza expressed many times,
“that if he could flick a switch and not be Gay, he would do it in a heartbeat”.