2025/01/01 by Micah A. Hughes · 1 voice
Social Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Race, History, and American Society #Asian American and Pacific Histories #Mormonism, Religion, and History
paper · doi:10.1093/jcs/csaf007
openalex publication_date 2025/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
What does it mean to create a “queer religious community,” especially from a position of marginality and non-conformity? How do queer Muslims construct inclusive practices and develop welcoming spaces through their speech—for example, their discourse for others, queer or not—seeking alternative community? These are questions that Katrina Daly Thompson asks in their book Muslims on the Margins: Creating Queer Religious Community in North America. Across six chapters, a preface, and a coda, Thompson analyzes interviews with members, interested visitors, and attendees of organizations such as Muslims for Progressive Values (MPV), El-Tawhid Juma Circle Toronto Unity Mosque, the Atlanta Unity Mosque, Feminist Islamic Thinkers of North America (FITNA), and various affiliated and unaffiliated Facebook groups. Thompson’s interviews occurred at several MPV chapters, such as Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Columbus, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. A self-styled “linguistic anthropology of Islam” in the anthropological tradition of Talal Asad and Saba Mahmood, Thompson’s ethnographic study follows the discursive practices of queer Muslims in North America (p. 11). Thompson, a self-identified queer, white, cis-gendered Muslim woman, undertook participant observation and interview methodologies with several “progressive” and “queer” nonconformist Muslim “congregations” (formalized alternative mosque communities as well as more informal meetups).