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Tag: queermuslim

Episode 192 [in English]: Hamzeh Daoud on Presencing Ourselves

Hamzeh Daoud is a trans femme Palestinian researcher, organizer, and tech person originally from Amman, and currently based in Texas. She’s co-lead of the ongoing survey Presencing Ourselves: A Survey of LGBTQI+ Muslims in the U.S. (along with our recent guest Amara, and in partnership with Queer Crescent).

**If this applies to you, you can take the survey here!!**

This episode consists of complete emotional whiplash in which we alternate between serious conversations of queerphobia, family trauma, and settler colonialism, and utter ridiculousness. 

Hamzeh discusses the importance of the survey from their perspective, both identifying and critiquing the ways that quantification and measurability can give our communities more legitimacy in a capitalist-oriented system. 

They also talk about documenting their journey coming out to family and seeking asylum on Tiktok (follow them at @hammyenbywammy), while also questioning Western narratives around visibility. We also discuss the recent attacks on Gaza, why Zionist narratives are so effective on the US public, and the media obsession with illustrating the “perfect victim,” rather than treating life and liberation for Palestinians and other marginalized groups as unconditional.

Also in this episode, Ellie and Nadia make bad puns (which Hamzeh is puntagonistic towards) and Hamzeh tries to say “fuck” exactly five times to meet the podcast’s new community guidelines (listen to find out if she succeeds). 

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Episode 183 [in English]: Coming Around

Eman Abdelhadi is a second generation Palestinian-Egyptian academic, activist, and artist based in Chicago, IL. She’s also the subject of the upcoming documentary Coming Around, which follows her close and evolving relationship with her mother over the past six years, including Eman’s decision to come out as queer. Eman discussed what it was like to have intimate moments of her life documented, the importance of representing both herself and her mother outside a binary lens of good and bad, and the subversion of the singular coming out story most prominent in Western media. 

Eman also talked about coming into the public eye as part of a wave of queer Muslim activists following the 2016 Orlando shooting, how the public discourse surrounding that intersection shifted during and after the Trump era, and her current work as an organizer with the Muslim Alliance for Sexual and Gender Diversity.

Additionally, we discussed her research on gender differences in Muslim-Americans’ ties to religious communities as adults as well as her upcoming book (co-written with ME O’Brien) Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune 2052-2072, set in a post-disaster, post-capitalist, post-national world.

**Coming Around is currently crowdfunding for the final stage of their production process! You can donate to help this film come to life! **

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