Lamya H (shey/they) is a queer Muslim immigrant writer and community organizer based in New York City. Lamya is a published author of one of the most celebrated memoirs for queer and trans Muslims, Hijab Butch Blues. They have also received fellowships from Lambda Literary and Queer|Arts. 1
Lamya was born in the mid 1980s in South Asia, and when they were four years old they moved to the Middle East where their father was working. Their childhood was rooted in traditional Islamic education and practice. They went to an Islamic international school in the Middle East where they studied Islam, Qur'an memorization, and Islamic history. They grew up reading stories about the prophets and absorbed the lessons from their lives. Their upbringing instilled a love for Islam, but also an understanding rooted in binary thinking - ‘sin’ and ‘not sin’.”If you follow the rules you go to jannah, and hear fire and brim stone stories”. Lamya constantly questioned their experiences during their upbringing - why their brother was not asked to cook and clean, why he could play with his friends outside while they had to be home in the stuffy living room. All of these experiences informed their inclination towards feminist values, that undergirded the path they would take on race, class, and sexuality and gender.
The Second Intifada and the invasion of Iraq were extremely influential to Lamya’s political formation as a teenager. Living in the Middle East, these events had a heavy impact on them, setting the context for igniting a righteous anger at structural oppression rooted in Islamic ethics of justice.
Lamya’s politics developed before they realized they were queer, but they did not have the words for their queerness but were equipped with political language. Feminism deeply shaped their politics growing up, and Lamya has conflicted feelings about this considering how trans exclusionary radical feminism has co-opted and diminished feminist ideals. When Lamya started to familiarize themselves with queer theory and politics, it felt like that resonated with how Lamya was feeling their whole life. Lamya’s political formation informed an expansive understanding of Islam. Likewise, understanding Islam’s values of justice in their religious upbringing influenced how they came into their political identity. That Islam and queerness are intimately intertwined, and can expand on one another. Lamya found themself unable to separate values of Islamic justice, their politics, and queerness.
This expansion of ideals came through the experiences of not feeling commensurate with the values and practices in queer white spaces and traditional Muslim spaces. Expanding these identities necessitated breaking boundaries, and resisting. That is how Lamya came into their Islam. Growing up, Lamya was taught that there is no central Islamic authority, and any claims to authority should be questioned. That they were encouraged to read and understand the Qur’an for themselves and also respect different interpretations and opinions on the text because even scholars have differing and legitimate interpretations. So there was an openness to engage with the text on a personal and intellectual level.
When Lamya was 17 they moved to the United States to go to college. They then went to grad school and ended up staying in the U.S. after completing their studies. New York is the place they have lived the longest in their life. New York is a very special place to Lamya, they have lived there longer than any country they have ever lived in, and it's their favorite city in the world. What they most love about New York is that it hosts a unique richness of diverse cultures and languages.
Organizing and building community with queer and transgender Muslims was cultivated in a retreat space as the springboard for this work and what it could be for Lamya. They first met a lot of organizers through the LGBTQ+ Muslim Retreat, which was held from 2012-2017. The Queer Muslim Retreat, which was organized by the Muslim Alliance for Gender and Sexual Diversity (MASGD) had around 100 people come together to discuss their work, lives and collaboration and was a beautiful and intentional space for coalition building and community organizing. The retreat showed the diversity of how queerness and Islam could be expressed. Lamya has seen and been a part of the growth of queer Muslim organizing. Lamya witnessed how groups have grown from informal community hang outs to building larger organizing capacity over time. The retreat space served as a starting point for different gatherings and ways that communities could support each other and resist institutionalization. Retreat goers focused heavily on working together to build an intentional community space. Lamya continued to collaborate and organize beyond this space.
In the early 2010s, MASGD pioneered community organizing within the queer and trans Muslim community by establishing in person programming, providing grants for labor in the community such as writing, listening sessions for communities. During the covid shut-down, MASGD pivoted to virtual spaces to fulfill the needs of community building. This opened up spaces for people who could not access in person spaces to find community.
In an essay “A Very Queer Ramadan”, published in 2016, Lamya describes a Qur’an reading group during Ramadan that was transformative for their religious experience. Several people in their community decided to host intentional spaces every day during Ramadan to have iftar and read the Qu’ran together. Some of this reading was as simple as picking a random page and reading the text. Through discussions and reflections on the text, a memorable assertion came through. One of Lamya’s friends questioned,”What if we think of the Qur’an as addressed to us?” That was a mindblowing statement and clicked with Lamya, changing how they approached the text. That if the Qur’an should be considered a guide for one’s life, that you should be able to consider yourself a direct audience of the text. This Qur’an reading space reflected doing collaborative scholarship in real time, where participants would build on each other’s thoughts in discussion. Lamya deeply appreciated the candidness of her friends, their vulnerability to even sacrilege at times, creating a beautiful experience of reading the Qu’ran together. This space transformed how Lamya wanted to relate to the Qur’an.
Lamya’s work has been featured in Vox, Vice, The Offing, Black Girl Dangerous, Salon, and Autostraddle. Lamya published their prolific memoir Hijab Butch Blues in 2023 under Dial Press/Penguin Random House. Hijab Butch Blues won the Brooklyn Library Book Prize and a Stonewall Nonfiction Book Award. In this book, Lamya draws parallels between their life and Islamic journeys of prophets and jinn. Lamya shares their journey of coming into their queerness, highlighting the struggles of feeling misunderstood in solely queer or Muslim spaces, and finally finding a home in intersectional queer and Muslim spaces and community. Drawing on the lessons they learned from the Qu’ran study, to engage on a deeply personal level with the Qur’an and its story, shines through in this book.
When Lamya had their child, who is now three years old at the time of writing this profile, they took a sabbatical from all organizing work. As a queer immigrant parent, Lamya has seen how parenting is structurally supported in ‘straight-worlds’. Lamya has seen and experienced lack of accommodation and capacity to support parenthood and children in queer spaces.
In an interview with Lara Lillibridge for Hippocampus magazine, Lamya describes the writing process as being nestled in between free time of working her 9-5 job, early mornings at cafes, and writing on her phone on the subway. Because her job was mostly in person, during the covid shutdown, they were able to spend more time focusing on writing their book. 2
Lamya is in the process of writing a book about the 99 names of Allah, its complexities and contradictions and making sense of it. How these complexities and contradictions complement their experience of being a queer immigrant parent. Lamya wanted to write a book about what happens after a queer coming of age story, as one finds themselves moving through the world as an adult, centering queer Muslim joy and grief.
In Lamya’s free-time, they like to play board games, eat desserts made by their partner, and fulfill their goal of visiting every subway stop in NYC. Lamya has never run a marathon. 3 Lamya’s work and dedication to their community through writing and organizing has been celebrated inside and outside of the queer and transgender Muslim community.
(This biographical statement written by Soaad Elbahwati from an interview with Lamya H and the sources below. PHOTO CREDIT: Lia Clay for the Queer|Art Community Portrait Project.)
1 Lamya H, Home, https://www.lamyah.com/
2 Lara Lillibridge interview with Lamya H, INTERVIEW: Lamya H, Author of Hijab Butch Blues, Oct 2023,
https://hippocampusmagazine.com/2023/10/interview-lamya-h-author-of-hijab-butch-blues/.
3 Lang Craft Talks featuring queer Muslim writer Lamya H, Sep 2023, https://event.newschool.edu/lamyah.
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