“We Don’t Need to be Saved”: An Investigation of My.Kali Magazine and its Related LGBTQIA+ Community in Amman, Jordan

Abstract

: This chapter investigates the positioning of Islam within the various debates and articles that appeared in the Jordanian LGBTQIA+ online magazine My.Kali. I will build on two statements taken from an interview with the magazine’s founder, Khalid Abdel Hadi, published by Süddeutsche Zeitung: “Religion is not the problem” and “We don’t need to be saved”. This text will then add other voices from the magazine to his perspective and embed them within broader discussions around being Muslim, queer, and Arab. This will touch on ways Muslims are embracing their religiosity at the same time as their queer-ness, as well as debunking the twin myths of the “Western queer paradise” and the “Muslim homophobe”. This also includes Muslim awareness of racism, Islamophobia, and heteronormativity in so-called Western countries. Juggling local and global activism, the concepts of queerness, histories, and languages makes visible the complex nature of Arab LGBTQIA+ communities.