Navigating Queer Identity and Daughterhood Among South Asian Muslims

Existing research on family and other kinship models — particularly in the South Asian context — points to how women's ability to perform heterosexuality is central to the formation of intimate communal relationships with other women. Within such a context, queerness is often seen as taboo and queer South Asian women are often marked as communal outsiders. Existing literature around kinship practices in the South Asian context rarely considers the lived experiences of queer women. Additionally, Muslim communal practices are rarely considered in discussions of both queerness and kinship ties in the South Asian context. A similar phenomenon is seen in the social construction of Muslim identity in the US, wherein larger socio-political debates — particularly post-9/11 — have constructed Islam in opposition to queerness. This construction of the Muslim as an active threat to queer existence is used to justify systemic Islamophobia. Muslim communities in turn, tend to retaliate against this systemic violence by casting out queerness as "Western ideology." Queer Muslims resultantly find themselves at the fringes of communal and political considerations. Looking at data collected through narrative analysis of interviews with queer Muslim South Asian women, this research aims to examine how occupying these seemingly conflicting social locations affects their relationships with the communities to which they belong.