Sexual im/mobilities: On queer Muslim pilgrimage

Abstract

The current conflations and opportunities created by globalization lead to an invisible phenomenon of mobility: pilgrimage performed by queer Muslims. Broadly understood as either impossible to be queer and Muslim or as a sin, queer Muslim pilgrimage is a global phenomenon of our times. However, it only gains sketchy attention in mainstream debates on Muslim identities. What is missing is a conceptual understanding of queer Muslim pilgrimage as a basic mode of sexualized mobilities. This article discusses regimes of power that enable, impede, or channel pilgrimage undertaken by queer Muslims in Malaysia. It is argued that “regimes of sexualized mobilities” function ambiguously in Malaysia in order to control and discriminate LGBTQIA+ and to simultaneously cherish them. This ambiguity is based on the entanglement between processes of politicizing Islam as well as on Islamic principles and the historical condition that transgender people have always belonged to Malay society.