On Allyship

I learned about the Orlando massacre on Sunday night and figured I’d leave it up to LGBT members of IMI to lead our response but there was just silence.

It took me a while to realise this was probably shock. Whatever I was feeling as an ally paled in comparison.

By Monday, Tamsila, one of our trustees and an LGBT+ representative of IMI posted her thoughts on what had happened. I felt satisfied that we’d been able to put an LGBT+ voice at the forefront of our communications on the tragedy and to my cautious delight, allies seem to be coming out of the woodwork. Since being part of IMI, this kind of allied thinking is something I have always suspected exists among the silent majority of straight Muslims who don’t seem too bothered by IMI’s existence. They won’t actively support us, they’re not likely to donate but they’re cool with us.

They praise our aims around addressing disability and female leadership. They nod their heads when we talk about challenging racism and creating safe spaces. But more often than not, it’s only when there’s some kind of atrocity highlighted in the news that I see my fellow allies taking strategic action around the needs and the rights of marginalised groups like the LGBT+ community, like black people, like Ahmadiyas. And even then, the lived realities of people with disabilities are still bottom of the list.

Here’s the thing though, and this is a note to myself as much as any other ally, we cannot limit our active care of others only to the times when they’re under attack. We cannot wait for persecution before we start thinking about safety and equal rights. We (less marginalised people) are not the saviours of marginalised groups, we are the ones that marginalise.

When we stand up for people only in the midst of widely recognised tragedy, we take a myopic, blinkered view of their existence. We ignore the day to day aggressions they face. I feel like we need to look beyond what is immediately in front of us and turn our heads to the sides to see who we’ve pushed to the fringes.

During Ramadan, we’re encouraged to increase our charitable actions. To be more generous. To give more time, more energy, more effort, to the things that deserve extra attention. I think this extra generosity should shake up our view of the world, not uphold the status quo. Our eyes should open to injustice in such a way that we are motivated to challenge it strategically, so that less charity, less extra care is required by the time next Ramadan rolls around. Read Tamsila’s statement on the hate crimes that took place in Orlando. She encourages us to see the bigger picture and recognise our place within it.

~ IMI Volunteer

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