Queer Muslim Environmental Futurism(s)

Bibliographic Data

ID24230800
AuthorsMaya Ghanem
Year2026
Volume25
Issue2
Pages295-321
Publication date2026-10-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueMeridians (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1536-6936 • E-ISSN: 1547-8424
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/15366936-12525754
OpenAlexW7220851807
LanguageEN
References cited29

This article demonstrates how queer Muslim intellectual and experiential frameworks subvert Euro-American hegemonic claims to nature and sexuality. Through Orientalism, Euro-American hegemony essentializes dichotomies over a linear conception of time, stereotyping Muslims and nature in the twenty-first century as temporally stagnant in comparison to Western LGBTQ+ rights or technological progress. Because many queer Muslims exist at the margins of the Orientalist binary, between stereotypes of Western LGBTQ+ modernization and Muslim homophobic regression, they are especially positioned to unlearn Orientalist constructions. Analyzing there are gardens at the margins, a mixed-media visual exhibition by queer Muslim artist Saba Taj, the author examines how queer Muslims reorient their relationships to space, time, and Allah’s creation. Drawing on these new space and time orientations as a form of futurism(s), the author uses Taj’s work to theorize Queer Muslim Environmental Futurism(s) (QMEF), which can dismantle Orientalist binaries that essentialize gender, Islam, and constructions of Nature. QMEF presents one of many ways for queer Muslims to redefine their relationships with Muslim traditions and with nonhuman creation.

gender essentialism · Islam and sexuality · LGBT rights · Orientalism · queer Muslims · Temporality · African Sexualities and LGBTQ+ Issues · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Gender and Feminist Studies

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