Queer Jews, Queer Muslims: Race, Religion, and Representation

Groundbreaking essays on the intersection of Jewish, Muslim, and LGBTQ identities.

Book Club Selection, Univ. of Michigan Judaic Studies Department

Through a curated selection of scholarship, Adi Saleem demonstrates that representations of Muslim and Jewish sexuality are often racialized and gendered in parallel ways as non-Western, deviant, and dangerous within Euro-American modernity. Contributors reckon with the intertwined past and present of Islamophobia, antisemitism, racism, coloniality, misogyny, and homophobia through distinct and complementary perspectives.

In the first of three sections, scholars investigate the construction and performance of multiple identities and the crossing of boundaries. Studies of scriptural texts and media discourse as they shape perceptions of Jewish and Muslim gender and sexual minorities follow, highlighting how these representations impact the lived experiences of queer Jews and Muslims. The final section examines the efforts of contemporary queer Jews and Muslims to organize and form communities to forge solidarity in the face of multiple forms of oppression and marginalization. In conversation with Islamic studies, Jewish studies, and queer theory, this collection explores the interrelated experiences and representations of Jewish and Muslim minorities in Europe while triangulating the Jewish-Muslim dyad with a third variable: queerness.