Asifa Lahore: Disarming Through Drag

Asifa Lahore, the UK’s most prominent Muslim drag queen, uses her act to challenge stereotypes of faith and sexuality across the Asian and LGBT communities.  Last Friday, at the inaugural Attitude Pride awards, she was awarded for her work empowering LGBT Muslims and helping to unite two distinct communities. Chris Godfrey caught up with her. 

 


Hi Asifa, congratulations on your award! What was your reaction when you found out you’d won?

I was so, so surprised. When I got the call I literally screamed for a good ten minutes. I just couldn’t believe it. It’s the first time in my life that I’ve actually received an award. It was an acknowledgement of love and acceptance from the mainstream gay community, which I’m really honoured by.

I always go back to those times when I first got on the Drag Idol stage and the gay community didn’t quite know how to take me. Since Drag Idol to now I’ve done a lot of work in terms of media awareness, the cabaret show, club hosting, in empowering the gay and Muslim community. This was the first time actually that I got acknowledged by the mainstream gay community for the work I’ve done as a gay person. It’s about time a gay and out Muslim drag queen is celebrated in the LGBT community!

So the big news last week was the SCOTUS ruling in America; how has your faith impacted your feelings towards same-sex marriage?

I’m a big supporter of gay marriage and people assume that because I’m a gay man that’s why I support it. But actually I support gay marriage because I’m a Muslim. I feel the notion of marriage is very, very new to the gay community. And I think it will probably take about a generation, another twenty years for gay marriage to be normalised in British society and for it to be culturally gay as well. I think marriage for a lot of gay people is still very alien.

But for me I always wanted to be married as long as I can remember. Growing up and watching my mum and dad in a marriage setup, in a long-term and seeing Muslim people in my community getting married, I wanted that as well. I just happened to want it with a person of the same sex.

The notion of marriage actually comes very much with my cultural and religious identity, probably more than my gay identity. I’ve now been in a civil partnership for six years, the two identities are so intertwined. I’m sure a newer generation will be entering into gay marriages more and more as time goes on. So I think the notion of marriage for me is probably more culturally Islamic than it is gay right now.

You’ve spoken a lot about reconciling your sexuality and your faith, is there still conflict there between these two identities?

I think for a lot of gay Muslims, they find it so hard to straddle the two. I think most people would give up one for the other. In some cases people are like ‘no I don’t want to be gay, I’m going to get an arranged marriage, I’ll pretend to be straight’. And marriages of convenience in the gay Muslim community are still very high.

On the other hand some people feel ‘no, I’m going to be gay and totally get rid of my Muslim side, I’m not even going to bother with my Asian heritage’. And you know that has an impact on their life as well. This idea of authenticity and actually being honest to yourself, not only with your sexuality but also with your religious and ethnic background, a lot of people feel they have to give up one or the other.

Where I stand with it is actually I want it all – I want to be in love with the person of the same sex, I want to be married to that person. I want to be able to walk in to my mosque on a Friday afternoon and pray. And on Friday night I want to go out and perform and boogie as well. I’d rather do everything out in the open, not hidden from the eyes of God, not hidden from the eyes of the world.

Has your drag attracted much attention from the non-LGBT Islamic community?

I have a massive following of British, Muslim heterosexual women who adore the fact that I am glamorous, they adore the fact I wear Islamic clothes as well as British clothes.

But the reaction that I do get from the more conservative elements of the Muslim community is very harsh. I am publicly denounced by some of the biggest Mosques in the UK. I receive regular death threats, for me to stop not necessarily doing my drag but to stop calling myself a Muslim drag queen. I get threats not only to myself but to my husband and to my parents as well. That can be very hard when you’re caught up in that.

It’s a mixture of responses. I think if we take onboard the younger generation – the Zayn Malik generation, shall we say – of British Muslims, they absolutely adore me. I get much more positivity than I do negativity from them. However it’s interesting that British Muslim communities which are accepting of me would never come out and say that she is doing some amazing work, or we follow and accept her.

Do you think there’s a lack of understanding, even a fear, in the gay community of Islam?

I think regardless, Islam has been politicised within mainstream media and, to a certain extent, the British Muslim community themselves in the last sort of decade. In Britain the picture of Islam is pretty bad right now. So I don’t think it’s confined strictly to the gay community. But I do feel that education on both parts needs to be there and that open dialogue from both Muslim communities and gay communities needs to be there.

The key is gay Muslims themselves. Now if gay Muslims were empowered to be themselves and were out and proud, not only about being gay but also about being Muslim, then it’s people like us that hold the key to bridging the two communities together. Actually I think our communities have more in common than we think and education is the way forward on both parts. The people that can actually bring about that change is the gay Muslim community in the UK itself.

For every one person that comes to Pride there are 50 at home, probably watching that parade on television, probably still feeling isolated in Britain today. What I want the LGBT community that is out and proud to do is reach out to people and ask those challenging conversations to people that you wouldn’t normally. Chances are LGBT people are in places you wouldn’t even have imagined and are crying out for their hand to be held. My message is to just be out and proud and hold the hands of people you wouldn’t normally hold hands with.

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