Totally Radical Muslims

Roxana Dhada: I'm very much in a place where I'm sort of rediscovering my identity as a Muslim, and only because of the rad folks that I've met in the East Bay, and so I think that so many of us have internalized Islamophobia, and internalized wariness and anxiety about identifying with, either publicly or privately with things that have had so much history and meaning, and that we have literally generations of weight attached to them.

[musical interlude]

Welcome to We Want the Airwaves. My name is Nia King. I know I said I'd only be doing one episode a month, but I got a little something extra for you this month. This week I interviewed Shenaaz Janmohamed, Aliya Karmali, and Roxana Dhada of Totally Radical Muslims zine. The call for submissions for the next episode of the zine, which is going to be on the theme of queer Muslim love stories, closes on May 1st. So, if you're interested, head over to totallyradicalmuslims.com, and check out their call for submissions. Without further ado, here's Totally Radical Muslims.

[musical interlude]

Nia King: How do you all edit this together? Do you have different position titles, or is it just kind of like …?

Shenaaz Janmohamed: Free-for-all. [laughter]

Nia: Free-for-all, is that your preferred choice of terms? [laughter]

Shenaaz: We recently came up with the term “ulema”, which is like our organizing core, but “ulema” is an Islamic term, it's an Arabic term, it means—what would it be, the religious leaders' deciding board. So it's kind of a funny use of the word to call ourselves the ulema.

Nia: Cool.

Aliya Karmali: I didn't grow up speaking Arabic or even learning it. When I first heard the term, this is sort of ironic, I assumed it meant “ummah”, not “ulema”. And ummah, to me—given my little Arabic and my South Asian ancestry—meant kind of broad community, and the people. So it's a term that's really broadly used to describe Muslims around the world of different ethnicities, different regions, different languages. And I feel like that very much rings true for me because, in TRM, we have South Asian folks from around the continent, we also have a lot of different Arab folks from different parts of the Middle East, a lot of different stuff in between also. So, it's a learning experience for me in that regard, for sure.

Nia: You want to add anything?

Shenaaz: I think for me, ulema is like the scholars, the traditional kind of men—you know, cis men, who are seen as scholars. And so, the zine is also about naming and resisting heteropatriarchy. And so—what was that?

Roxana: The beardy ones. [laughter] That's how I always think of them.

Shenaaz: Yeah, so, to say that we're the ulema is like—I think we have some pretty legit ideas, and some pretty passionate visions. Not just us, I mean the collective whole. So, the ulema is giving our voice authority within the Islamic rhetoric. Which is really—it feels kind of fun, but it also feels powerful as a potential. Nia: That makes sense. So, my understanding from reading the story of TRM on the website is that one of your very intentional, and I feel like you touched on this a little bit already, but—political goals behind the project—was to build solidarity and community between South Asian Muslims and Arab Muslims. Can you talk a little bit about why that was important to you?

Shenaaz: I think in the Bay Area, one of the things that I often say, that has allowed me to organize and really lead with my queer Muslim identity is, I feel like we have some relative privilege in the Bay Area because we have such a huge queer Muslim community. There's a huge queer South Asian community—communities. There are many Arab queers. So, big enough to where communities are kind of factioned off. So, we wanted to bring more people together. I don't know how politically intentional it was back then. I mean, frankly, Amir was like, “I wanna hook up you and Fadwa. How can I bring you guys together?” [laughter] But it was also just about, like, these are really cool people who ought to know each other. And we were in community side by side for years, and yet didn't necessarily have connection. So I think it was also just growing how inclusive, and how many identities we could hold within our community—queer, trans, straight—all the misfit Muslims who didn't have another place to be, we wanted to bring everyone together, and not just through cultural background, or just have a Desi community or an Arab community, we wanted as many folks as we could hold together.

Nia: I'm interested in how you define “misfit Muslim.” Because I noticed on the website that it's not just queer and trans. I don't know if everyone that contributes or everyone that's part of the ulema is queer or trans, but it seems like there is an intention to be inclusive beyond just that, is that correct?

Aliyah: Beyond just queer and trans?

Nia: Yes.

Aliya: Yeah. I guess beyond, but inclusive and centering of that. And I'm sure you all probably have something more to say about that, but we've been having internal conversations around what that looks like, the centering of queerness, because we don't just have queer folks who are part of even the core organizing team. You know, for myself for example, I don't really identify as queer.

I feel like we're really struggling with some of those issues right now internally. And so even though we're trying to bridge those things, and also make it more, as denoted in the name, about radicalness and about radical politics and the struggle for collective liberation of our people and other people in Oakland. We're also thinking of more, how can we connect to the African-American community, since—

Nia: African-American Muslim, or African-American in general?

Aliya: African-American Muslim, but I think also, in general. And one of our potential upcoming issues is hopefully going to focus on issues of surveillance of Muslims in the Bay, and that obviously cuts across racial lines. And I think it could also potentially cut across lines of sexual orientation, to look at the ways that queer black and brown youth, Muslim included, are specifically targeted at that intersection—in schools, on the streets, we know it happens. I think we need to lift up those voices significantly more.

Nia: My impression was that the title, Totally Radical Muslims, was like, slightly tongue-in-cheek, but you also do identify as radicals, is that correct?

Roxana: Not, like, in a white way! [everyone laughs] Sorry, is that appropriate for this podcast?

Nia: It's totally appropriate, but I'm going to ask you to explain what that means.

Roxana: Sure. Yeah. I think that, in my experience at least, in the Bay Area, identifying as a radical immediately places you within the context of white Bay Area activism. And I think, this is something we mention as Muslims a lot, when we say, “queer/trans radical Muslims,” we reference this ideal of, like, “the pork-eating whores.” Which is like, the Muslims who are radical for other Muslims. So, radical within our own Muslim community, as well as radical in other communities that do have different contexts in the larger political discourse that is in the East Bay, I think that we would all sort of identify ourselves as politically radical. But I think one of the unique things for me about this project was the opportunity to come out and do work as a radical person and a radical Muslim. That's how it feels for me.

Nia: Okay, and so, can we talk about the difference or similarities—like, when you differentiate between radical person and radical Muslim, you're talking about someone who's radical in their politics versus someone who's radical in their religious beliefs or in their religious community, or could you sort of explain…?

Roxana: Sure. I mean, I guess I can explain by example. For many Muslims, and then for me definitely, the way that I grew up, not wearing hijab, or choosing not to eat zabihah, or choosing to remain uncovered in various ways, or even crossing gendered socialization norms is something that is radical, in Muslim communities, depending on the context. And so I think a lot of us transgress those boundaries, and would be considered radical, or whatever word you want to use—outcast, misfit, we've sort of used those words before. Whereas, in the non-Muslim community, being radical takes on a lot of different connotations. It's about your political identity, it's about your—I mean, I guess the diet choices overlap a little bit—you know, like, radical intentional lifestyles, but it is a different context.

Nia: Anyone else want to—?

Shenaaz: Yeah. I mean, I think for me, the radical Muslim is meant to turn the whole notion of “who's radical Muslim, these terrorists,” and turn it on its head, and actually, in the US context, radical means left-wing, politically. It means progressive. It means revolutionary. It means all these different things, there's a rich history. The ways in which “radical Muslim” has been kind of warped into this meaning of someone to fear, someone to basically, you know, bomb. Someone to exploit. Someone to, etcetera. It's deeply not really understanding people in their context. So, for me the reason I wanted to really use the word “radical Muslim” is to reclaim some of that. It feels like whenever you hear “radical Muslim”

there's some awful lie attached to it, or even just a very small sliver of an understanding of a person. The humanity is lost. So, not understanding a person in Gaza, Palestine who's been occupied, who's resisting in any way they can, but rather, “Oh, those savage Palestinians. Those radical Muslims.” So, it's to kind of interrupt some of that. But I think to your point Roxana, I slightly disagree. In that, for me, radical culturally—I think there's a lot of different ways to be culturally radical, or oppositional, or non-establishment. So I think in a family where wearing hijab was the norm, and choosing not to wear hijab, that's an example. I think there's some who wear hijab within a family where nobody's wearing hijab, and that's radical. So, there's lots of different ways in which someone's gutsiness shows up, that are just really family-specific, culture-specific, community-specific. For some it is, not eating swine is a radical act. And for some, eating swine is a radical act. So it's really—those are where the lines are not hard lines.

Nia: So, basically, what radical means is relative and different for everyone.

Shenaaz: I mean, I think that there are some political gains in terms of like, a liberatory frame, that feel universal. But I think where we get into policing cultural practices, that's where it's sticky. And I think that's where family of origin and context and community is really meaningful. The social worker in me is like, meet everyone where they're at. And there are little ways to be radical as well as big ways.

Aliya: Yeah, you said it very well! [laughter] I just feel like, for me, as someone who does a lot of work with a lot of radical, political left organizations in the Bay, those can be extremely oppressive, alienating spaces. So, in contrast, I mean, while we definitely are extremely complicated as a group, and are working through our own issues, nobody is immune to internalized oppression and externalizing oppression on various forms. I think it's a very interesting conversation that we're having because there's clearly so many different ways to define what radical means—culturally, politically, and religiously. So I don't think we necessarily need to have a rigid definition. That's the beauty of it, is it's so individualized.

Roxana: And all of our different intersectionalities make it really sticky, like you were saying, in a lot of ways it can be really hard to be visibly or to speak up or to come out as a Muslim if you're queer. In a lot of ways, the queer community has been really Islamophobic, and the same goes for finding a mosque that you feel comfortable in as a queer person. Or as someone who, this is something that we talk about—having a Desi identity, but, Islamophobia in Desi spaces, and it gets complicated. It gets messy. And I think I'm always fighting against the feeling that I have to choose, that I have to leave something at whatever door I'm entering, and that has been one thing about TRM that has been very valuable for me, and has sort of extended into the other queer, trans, and radical Muslim folks that I've met through TRM, is that I have come to this realization that there are doors where I never have to leave things to enter, and that Islam is queer, that Islam is radical, and that my Islam is my Islam, and that no one can ever take that or make me leave that.

Nia: Your second issue, Karbala-Fired Resistance Stories, your website said that the goal of it was to lift up Shi'a Islam and its strong anti-oppression roots, could we talk a little bit about what that means?

Shenaaz: Yeah. This feels like me saying “This is what I've been talking about, people!!!” [laughter] You know, Shi'as are the minority—are a minority sect, and within Shi'as there's several sects or divisions within, so, being in majority-Sunni spaces, I've always been trying to raise the visibility of Shi'as. As a Muslim project, and really lifting up the Shi'a experience, or at least a word like Karbala—

and Karbala is an actual city in Iraq, so it's a historic place. Intentionally saying, we are going to acknowledge Shi'as as legitimate Muslims is to me, a very radical act, because the norm, I think, is tolerating Shi'as, certainly not respecting the history that we believe, and certainly not respecting or acknowledging the values that Shi'as really center around, which are deeply rooted in social justice. When I was a kid, I feel like I first learned about feminism—not in that word, but through stories around the Prophet's family that my mom told us, and so much of my social justice fabric was woven through my Shi'a upbringing. For me it was really important to celebrate that, and make that connection explicit publically. This is actually why I do the work I do.

Aliya: For me, I identify as a Shi'a Ismaili, which, like Shenaaz was talking about, is a sect within Shi'aism, and historically, we as a group have been, and continue to be, along with other various forms of Shi'as, persecuted and literally violently attacked and killed in different parts of the world, sometimes at very specific times, when we have celebrations or moments like—there's something called Ashura, which takes place throughout the world, and it's a moment of very public manifestation to commemorate the loss of Imam Hussein, who was a descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, and those are times where, because people get together very visibly, they're targets, they're sitting targets. Literally. For people who feel like Shi'as are infidels, because they don't believe in very strict notions and interpretations of the Qur'an.

But, then there's these other groups that are minorities within minorities, and you carry around a lot of hurt from that historically, and it does get passed on from generation to generation. And there's a lot of work that we have to do within our own communities—the other day, someone was like, “Ismaili? What does that mean? You mean smiley? You're smiley?” And I just died inside. I don't know, it's important work. I’m glad we’re centering it.

Nia: Did you want to add anything?

Roxana: So, I was raised sort of defaultedly Sunni, so not explicitly. And I learned, in a similar way that a lot of Muslim children are taught, a simplified narrative of the Shi'a/Sunni split, and the history of that. But, my take on it is that I am for Muslims. I'm for all Muslims. I'm for the ummah, and I'm for Muslim identities being recognized, and valid, and legitimate, and—you can't pick out one group and say no. I feel like that makes no sense. If there isn't liberation for all Muslims, then Muslims are not liberated.

Nia: So, ummah is a term that intentionally includes both Sunni and Shi'a?

Shenaaz: I guess that's arguable. It depends on different times. Technically it is a word that just means “community,” “the people.” So how you slice that depends on how you see Sunnis and Shi'as. If you are on the spectrum of seeing Shi'as as infidels, then it does not include us. When I was at University of Michigan, there was a very conservative Muslim Students Association. Not the whole group was conservative, but there was a conservative element, and—a typical greeting for Muslims is “salaam aleikum,” “wa-aleikum as-salaam,” but if you do not believe that the person greeting you is a righteous Muslim, rather than saying “wa-aleikum as-salaam,” you say, “wa-aleik,” which means, “and to you.” So you don't say—

Nia: That's kind of a burn.

Shenaaz: Yeah. So instead of saying, “and peace onto you,” you just say, “onto you.” And I received that a few times. And I was like, what the hell is going on? Wahhabis are in the mix here!

Nia: What does Wahhabi mean?

TRM: Wahhabi is like this fascist, [laughter] US-backed, very essentialist Sunni group. Based in Saudi, historically been very much in the pocket of the US, and has been one of the most divisive elements within the Muslim community in terms of Sunni/Shi'a divide. Very literalist interpretation of the Qur'an. [other TRM speakers mmm-hmm in agreement] Which is—when you start getting that literal, you start losing any meaning or essence, and you have a lot of power then because you're just using words, and saying “This is what it means.” Anyway, so Wahhabis are a hot mess.

[laughter]

Aliya: In sum.

Nia: So, we talked a little bit about being a minority within a minority as Ismaili Shi'a Muslims, and as Shi'a in a majority-Sunni context, but I know from reading the story of TRM on the website that TRM is also formed, to some extent, out of experiencing—this is my understanding, please correct me if I'm wrong—Hindu hegemony within South Asian spaces. Is that an accurate paraphrasing?

Shenaaz?: Yeah, so—Aliya and I wrote together the story of TRM, because we've been a part of it really from the very beginning, and—I don't know.

Aliya: Well, I kinda think it goes back to this question that we had before about why do we want to make bridges between South Asians and Arab folks, and I think, like Shenaaz was saying, we were part of this group, which historically has been financially supportive of the project, of the Totally Radical Muslims, as a fiscal sponsor, but historically, and I'm not sure about now, there are very very few self-identified Muslims [in the group]. This is several years ago. Not that long ago, maybe three or less years ago, when we came about, and it just didn't always feel like a safe space, because not only was it very Hindu-dominated, but it was also very North Indian-dominated, and though we're both of North Indian descent, we also come from a diaspora of South Asians that is housed, and has roots migratorily in East Africa. There's just so many different kind of layers to our identity, and certain things happened or certain things were said where it was very clear that Muslims were not necessarily welcomed or understood. So at that point, there was a decision to try to do something different, and something called the Muslim Circle was created, and—Shenaaz, jump in at any point if you feel comfortable—

Shenaaz: Trauma.

[laughter]

Aliya: —but the idea was to have that circle and come together as Muslims that also identify as Desi, which is South Asian, and identify potentially as radical or left, and also have a concurrent circle for people who identify as Hindu, and have that kind of privilege historically in our subcontinent, and to then come together and do work around our differences and that tension, but it really never came to fruition, I don’t think, within the Hindu circle, but we certainly got stronger, and from the Muslim circle was spawned some years later, Totally Radical Muslims. And we were doing work with other

Arab groups in the Bay Area around surveillance issues, and I think that's also how we started to make those bridges, and those connections.

Shenaaz: This kind of Hindu-dominated—is a common problem with South Asian spaces. They are by default the majority. They're going to fall into identity of the majority, which is often Hindu, North Indian. It's been my experience in all South Asian spaces that as a South Asian Muslim, it doesn't feel like there's really a space for me, or an understanding of how I come into the room, as a Muslim, as someone from the diaspora, who's not Pakistani. People assume that we're Pakistani when we say we're Muslim. It's like, get a life, dude.

Nia: [laughter] I read also on the website, I don't remember the exact context for this, but—there's something about people who were from Pakistan being asked to speak about Palestine, because... people just confused the two Ps? [laughter]

Shenaaz: Mmm-hmm. Those are probably, like, the human rights campaign people, the HRC people.

I think that speaks to Roxana's earlier point around Islamophobia in the LGBT—and I use LGBT, not like, QPOC spaces—because it is in LGBT space where you're, like, the darling Muslim who's like—“It's so exciting that you're gay and Muslim! Can you speak [on this panel]? And hey, would you mind talking about Palestine?”

Roxana: (sarcastic) “That must be really hard! How do you deal with that? How's your family?”

Shenaaz: So it's like this confusing piece of being lifted up, and acknowledged for, likely, your legitimate work—

Nia: —but sort of fetishized, in a way?

Shenaaz: Exactly. And your real identities don't actually matter that much. It's like, oh, Pakistan, Palestine, what? You know. It's interchangeable. It's just like, “exotified other.” Or, “Muslim who pushed through.” That story comes from Arooj, who has been an organizer in queer communities for a long time, and she and I did this workshop at an LGBT Muslim retreat in Philly, and we asked people in the room—all queer Muslims—how they were treated in social justice and LGBT communities, and there was a resounding “we feel exotified,” “we feel misunderstood,” “people just don't know what to do with us,” and those conversations were what lead to wanting to put together the zine, as well.

Nia: It feels like through the zine you are creating space for queer Muslims. You said “I don't really feel like there's a space for me,” and I think zines—it's weird to think of something made out of paper as creating space, or creating place, but I feel like it does in a way. Does that make sense?

Shenaaz: Yeah. It's been incredible—I should send them to you guys more often, but we get some incredible, particularly when we first started, we would get some incredible emails from people. All across the country, but even outside of the US, mostly in Europe to be honest—people thanking us for existing. Being so happy to find our project. Feeling so seen, and so excited to have a chorus with whom to feel into. And that's the most exciting part, is that again it comes back to me really believing that we have—I feel like I have relative privilege here in the Bay. For someone like in way-up upstate New York, who hasn't even met another queer Muslim, this is their opportunity to meet folks. To have

community. Like you said, through paper.

Nia: Yeah. So, I want to talk about this paper. This is a really, really beautifully laid out zine, and it's got some color in it. It's mostly black-and-white on the inside, but then you've got this beautiful full-color glossy cover. And you talked a little bit about where the money came from, but I'm curious to hear more about how do you have distribution overseas, how are you continuing to put out such an incredibly beautiful product?

Shenaaz: Well, we charge for our zine, so it's not for free. We give away, I would say, 50 percent. But we do sell them through our website, totallyradicalmuslims.com.

Nia: I'll make sure to include it.

Shenaaz: But that really covers the cost, because they're like—I think this volume 2 was something like $3.50 or $4 to print per [zine], and we're starting sliding scale at $5, so it costs shipping. The price that we're asking covers shipping. And with some shipments in the US, it's a little bit less than the $1.50 we ask for, and so that 10, 20 cents goes towards shipping to Switzerland. So, it's been working itself out. I don't know how glossy and colorful we'll make them look, moving forward. I think there's been an ask to return to more of the DIY culture of zines, and to also make it more accessible in the end. So, do we also want to make it a PDF that people can just print, or pull up on their home device? But we also have these community events, like zine releases, and those tend to be pretty decent fundraising efforts, because we'll charge a little bit of a door, we've done them during Ramadan, so there would be iftars, we'd have food. We tend to make a little bit. We definitely get community support during some of those times, which feels good, it's like—oh, the community appreciates and is supporting this project.

Nia: Yeah. I think I read on the website that the first zine release party was in Fruitvale. Is that a place that has significance for you, or for—I keep wanting to call it a collective, I know it's not a collective, but—

Shenaaz: We're trying, one day, insh'allah! That's my hope, being real. [laughter] We did it in Fruitvale because it was at SOL [Sustaining Ourselves Locally], because we have some homies that live there, and they gave us the space for a really good deal, and it's a people of color-centered, queer people of color space. We had some random white folks that attended. [laughter] Actually, there was a couple people that, it felt like they were there for other motives, and so it was just like OK, this is part of the reality.

Nia: So, not white Muslims, just like, tourists, essentially?

Shenaaz: Tourists by way of like, you know. . . the FBI.

Nia: Oh, OK. That's a very specific kind of tourist! [laughter]

Shenaaz: That kind of tourism!

Nia: Got it.

Shenaaz: The very brief and specific visits. [laughter]

Nia: Okay! Wow, that's so intense.

Shenaaz: That's part of what this climate and time produces, is kind of being suspect, who can you trust? You know. And also just being real, okay, there's this random guy who's just having this weird conversation. I mean, he could just be awkward, but…

Aliya: Or on the flip side, very self-righteous activists who feel like because they were involved with Occupy, they should get free admission or something.

Nia: Wow.

Shenaaz: Or they should eat first. [laughter] Before the people that are fasting, incidentally. It's like, get to the back of the line, son.

Nia: It seems like you're very Oakland-based in a way, but then you have this international audience, so how much of your contributors are from here, and how do you reach folks outside? How much is it a priority to have folks contributing from not just Oakland?

Shenaaz: I would actually say that a lot of our contributors are outside of Oakland, and outside of California. Well, a good deal in the first volume were from Southern California, I think. We had some international contributors. It's really just word of mouth, so it's how things spread, but in volume 2, we had a good deal of submissions, to the point where we couldn't include all, and we have very particular ideas, and a frame that we're trying to put out, and so some things didn't fit as well as others.

Nia: Could you talk a little bit about what that is?

Shenaaz: Yeah. Like, we have this value of not editing voice. In this time where the Muslim voice is so constructed, is meant to be so—what was the word you used in the car?

Aliya: Moderate.

Shenaaz: Moderate. Safe. You know, that's the Muslim voice you hear. And we're like—No. Tell your story as you want to tell it. Be thoughtful and don't play oppression olympics. Honor histories. But tell your story. And we have values that we say that we want to lift up. Anti-oppression, I mean, I don't know exactly off the top of my head, I'd have to look at the website.

Nia: But when you say something doesn't fit, what would be an example of why?

Shenaaz: I mean, it kind of goes back to the conversation on how you define radical. And we had—there was a submission that was someone saying like, “I believe that gay Muslims are OK. I don't believe there's anything wrong with being gay, and I tell my friends that, and I tell aunties in my community that, and I get pushback.” And right on. Thank you sister, that's good work. It didn't feel like it necessarily was at the same place—

Nia: Like they were coming from a different place politically.

Shenaaz: Politically, and just—it didn't feel cohesive with the other pieces, because there was still something being worked out. Again, I'm really not interested in being tolerated. I'm interested in being seen and respected. And I think that contributor was definitely on a path towards something, but still working it out, and really trying to convince herself that there's nothing wrong with being gay.

Aliyah: Straight savior.

Shenaaz: A little bit.

Nia: So this person was not queer-identified?

Shenaaz: No.

Nia: So it was kinda like—

Shenaaz: Not yet.

Nia: I like to call it cookie-seeking ally behavior. [laughter]

Roxana : I'm so glad you said that! I'm so glad you said that, yeah.

Nia: [laughter] That's my interpretation.

Shenaaz What is that, I missed it?

Nia: Cookie-seeking ally behavior.

Aliyah: [laughter] Ally treats.

Roxana: Which I think that, you know, like Shenaaz said, there's an aspect of that that we do want—we're happy that that person is taking those actions because ultimately, perhaps it helps in the grand, zoomed-out scheme of things, but when I think about it, and when I think about a baby queer Muslim who is in a lot of pain, just working out their own shit, I would want every single piece in our zine to only be healing and helpful. And as complex and painful and messy as all of our histories have been. But, this theoretical pained baby queer Muslim will at one point hear that sort of straight savior narrative, and I think, in terms of the position of power and privilege that we have in having money to make a zine, but I think our time, our space, the paper space we all think is super valuable. And so, like Shenaaz was saying, some things get cut.

Nia: So, in this issue that I'm looking at, issue #2, from what I read, you got a lot of contributions from folks in prison, is that correct?

Shenaaz: Yeah, not a lot, but four. Which feels like a good amount. Nia: How do you get submissions from people?

Shenaaz: Aliya, would you like to speak to this one?

Aliya: Well, the person who I think helped source them worked with Asian Prisoner Support Committee, if I'm not mistaken, and also used to be active with ASATA, the Alliance of South Asians Taking Action.

Shenaaz: As well as Dunya, who was doing the printmaking workshops.

Aliya: Yeah. But I feel like Shenaaz and I have been talking about this a little bit, and it's just incredible that that amount even happened, to be honest, because as we all know, prisons are some of the most, if not the most oppressive, restrictive, violent, inhumane places in our society, so just to be inside those walls, much less be a Muslim-identified person, post-9/11, and potentially a black Muslim-identified person, because there are a lot of converts. And there is a lot of conversion that happens inside California prison walls, is doubly and triply powerful. But we have to be very careful of how we do that work, and Kasi Chakavartula, who helped source these pieces, and Dunya, had existing relationships with people, I think primarily in San Quentin, potentially. But I mean there's 33, 35, an ever-growing number of prisons in California, and new and different kind of prisons, and I feel like there's also a lot of focus on men's prisons and ones that are close by, but oftentimes they're just in the middle of nowhere in California or all the way at the border in Oregon. We have a lot of work to do on that front, too.

Shenaaz: So I think there's a real commitment to continuing to reach folks inside and, if not get submissions, certainly continue to make sure that the zines get in. One of our comrades, Dunya, said that when she did a workshop at San Quentin, she did a printmaking workshop, and she passed out some zines, and she said this one gentleman was sitting down, and he literally read it from cover to cover in like, 45 minutes. And just, was like, in it. And she texted me when she left, and she was like, you should be really proud. It's something that we're trying to figure out, in terms of how to reach the breadth of our community. Nia: Yeah. That's part of what I wanted to ask. Both how you get writing out of prison, but also how you get writing into prison. Because I've heard different things about sending zines to prisoners. One of the things I've heard is that you can't send anything with staples in it. I think it varies from prison to prison. How do you actually get the call for submissions into prisons? I apologize if this seems redundant, but—digitally, on paper? Logistically, how does that work?

Aliya: I imagine they took it in personally.

Shenaaz: They did, yeah. Kasi was working with a few folks and said “hey, there's this zine project,” and told them about it, and Adnan submitted a piece. I think it was just through oral communication, and she probably showed him the call-out, too. And then our other friend was doing workshops, and showed them the zines and said, “would anyone like to contribute to the next volume?” and several of them volunteered their work. Those are some of the artistic pieces that are in there.

Nia: You had mentioned earlier, black male prisoners converting to Islam inside prison. I feel like there was something that you said that sort of had the assumption embedded in it—and I might be incorrect here—that there—

Aliya: —weren't already Muslim. Nia: Yeah, that it's more common for people to convert on the inside than to go into prison already being Muslim.

Aliya: Yeah. Nia: Do you know that to be--?

Aliya: I don't know that to be statistically or empirically true, and I think that was, right, an assumption on my part. But just in doing that work, through paid work and through voluntary work, I should have also said that there is a number of Latino Muslims who have converted and who have not necessarily converted, and who have come to the faith through their own community outside, and who have come to the faith politically on the inside. Connecting, like we were talking about earlier, the history of struggles for liberation and being anti-oppressive as being a core tenet of the faith of Islam, and a way to draw strength to survive and persist and be resilient while inside.

Roxana: Nia, I'm really glad that you said that. And I do want to take a moment here because you are right, in that I don't think that the majority of black Muslims are converts, or that they are exposed to Islam through conversion or even necessarily through the prison system, and I want to take a moment and acknowledge that as Muslim Americans, the first Muslim Americans were black Africans who were brought to the United States via the slave trade. The history of black Muslim resistance goes back to since there have been black people in the United States, and I think that as non-black POC Muslims, we have such a terrible history of erasing that narrative. And it's a narrative that I think isn't really told in a lot of Muslim spaces. I'm really glad that you bring that up. Because I think that is maybe the biggest work that we have to do. Nia: The sort of, this is a great transition into what you were talking about before, but the desire for solidarity with black Muslims. But I also want to add, I don't know how much that narrative is constructed, but it certainly is reinforced, by the media. I think a lot of people—when they think “Muslim”, they think someone from another country, and someone who is not black, when in reality, most US Muslims are black Americans who are not immigrants. What you were talking about earlier was potential for building alliances around surveillance. I'd be interested to hear more about what that could look like, if you have thoughts or ideas, or things that are already in progress.

Aliya: I mean, I think there's a lot of things that are already in progress, through different organizations in the Bay Area that do that work through grants, and for paid work, but I don't think we necessarily have thought of ways to implement all of the things we've just been discussing, in terms of outreach, in terms of bridging those connections across racial lines in a way that doesn't seem forged and tokenizing, and potentially intrusive. I think it might just come about when we do put a call-out, seeing what the responses are like, and where they're coming from, and trying to meet people where they're at that way, because I don't think we can say necessarily “here we are, we want to be an ally, now come to us.” Nia: Right.

Aliya: I think we just have to—I mean, the call-out might kind of serve that purpose. But one idea that some people who have overlap between TRM and what was called the Coalition for a Safe San Francisco, itself a very interesting, powerful, sometimes problematic space that no longer exists, is having a town hall on surveillance in Oakland. And that's an idea that could potentially resurface and come to fruition through TRM. Nia: That's great.

Aliya: —because the coalition doesn't exist, and a lot of those people are no longer in those organizations, but we did some base ground outreach to different mosques all over Oakland, East Oakland, West Oakland, downtown Oakland, North Oakland, and just tried to start building relationships between imams and us.

Shenaaz: Isn't some of that happening with the DAC?

Aliya: The Domain Awareness Center, yeah. There's actually a huge city council meeting on that tomorrow evening, and Imam Zaid Shakir, who represents Lighthouse Mosque, came and made a very powerful speech before the city council on that issue. There's a lot of Department of Homeland Security and other federal funding that could potentially flood Oakland and is likely to flood Oakland in the millions, because if they don't spend it, the money is just going to evaporate. So, Imam Zaid Shakir, who's a very well-known black Muslim leader of the Lighthouse Mosque in Oakland, had a pretty eloquent speech about how that effects his community, and more broadly in Oakland. Nia: Yeah. It's really fucked up that the only thing Oakland can get money for is surveillance.

Aliya: Right? Nia: How do you distribute the call? How do you get the submissions you get? Because I feel like that often shows you how communities are shaped, and who's part of them and who's not part of them. Is most of your outreach or publicity through the website? Or, I don't know, is there this like, international queer Muslim network that is a pipeline that you can just input things to? [laughter]

Shenaaz: There are listserves, and they have gone out, some international, some US-based. Again, it's all through networks. So it's hard to get outliers, because we're so reliant on social media and the internet. At some point we had talked about guerilla-style going into masjids and putting zines in between the Qur'ans, putting call-outs in the musallahs, and just like— Nia: I'm sorry, can you please define those terms for me?

Shenaaz: Oh, sorry! So, putting zines next to the Qur'ans, our book, and— Nia: I know what the Qur'an is! [laughter]

Roxana: “Our book!” I like how you called it “it's our book!”

Shenaaz: I know, now I feel like I'm going door-to-door. [laughter] Roxana: It's the bigger, older book.

Nia: Masjids?

Shenaaz: Oh, masjids. Masjid is mosque. Yeah. And then musallah is a praying mat. So, like sneaking zines into the prayer mats and—so that's one way to get it out. Especially with youth. You know, I work at a high school, and I think about, how would I get one of my students to think that it's interesting and not just like “Miss Shenaaz, what are you doing?” Do you have suggestions for outreach?

Nia: To the queer Muslim community? [laughter]

Shenaaz: Just people in general. You'd be surprised who's a queer Muslim undercover. [laughter]

Nia: Yeah. I guess I'm thinking about—so I edited a zine, the first issue was called MXD: True Stories by Mixed Race Writers, and the next two were called Borderlands 1 and 2. And it started out, like I think a lot of zines start out this way, where you tap people you know and you're like “Hey, I want you to write something.” And then when they don't get it to you, you harrass them and extend the deadline and tell them that it's for real this time.

Shenaaz: Pretty much.

Nia: And then if that gets read, and distros carry it, or zine libraries carry it, or it gets reviewed by somebody, then you can start to take cold submissions because then if you put the call out, people will be like “Oh, I've heard of this thing,” or “Oh, I've heard of this editor,” and so you start to get a broader range of folks that way. But what I found is that also, the quality of the submissions when you're taking stuff from people you don't know is very different from when you're working with a core of folks that you do know, and you know the quality of their writing. I think there was a third issue of Borderlands that I never put out because I was a very nervous editor, and I felt just, politically and personally not okay about changing people's words, but there was something that someone wrote—it was by a woman of color, but I felt like it was speaking about this other woman of color in a way that was really objectifying, and I didn't feel comfortable with it, and that ended up—it wasn't just that, it was also that I didn't get a lot of submissions, but that was a hump that I couldn't get over. I think I asked them—I can't remember if I asked them to take it out and change it, or if I was just too shy to do anything. [laughter] I think it's really hard as an editor—for me it was hard to get to a place of being comfortable with saying, “You can't say this in my zine.” So yeah. Other aspirations or ambitions in terms of the future of TRM?

Shenaaz: It's linked, but paying the contributors. Even something like a gesture would feel good. Nia: Yeah.

Shenaaz: And then making it more accessible. So, how do we do both those things, still getting community support to be able to make it more accessible.

Nia: You mean accessible financially or accessible, like, translating it into Braille, or—there could be so many things—Shenaaz: That too would be awesome. I meant also just like, making it available.

Nia: Yeah.

Shenaaz: People keep asking us to do it as a download. Nia: And how do you feel about that?

Shenaaz: I just don't know how to do it.

Nia: Oh, okay. [laughter] That's like a relatively easy fix, I guess. [laughter]

Shenaaz: The point is for people to have it. So I don't have any hangups about that, I just don't know how to do it.

Nia: Yeah, I feel you. For me, giving away stuff for free that you worked so hard on is also—I feel like there's always that balance between wanting something to be accessible, and wanting to be compensated for the work you've done, and it sounds like y'all are not making a profit on this at all. It's like you're charging basically exactly what it costs to make, and ship, and sometimes even less, which is also the situation I'm in [laughter] where I'm like, am I just really bad at this, or does no one make money on zines? I'd like to think it's the second, but it might be the first. [laughter]

Shenaaz: I did throw a nice Thanks-taking dinner, and got like a fancy, organic turkey. That was our one moment of compensation. [laughter]

Nia: With money that was raised from TRM sales?

Shenaaz: Yeah. We had a celebration party.

Nia: Cool. So you talked about moving to a more—I don't want to say “more DIY,” because I feel like what you're doing is already DIY—but more lo-fi sort of a model for the next issue? You talked about having a more sustainable model going forward. You talked about paying contributors. You talked about building bridges with black Muslim communities, particularly in the East Bay. Are there other hopes and dreams that you have, and making it more accessible, for the zine? Like, big pie-in-the-sky type dreams?

Shenaaz: It's not a big pie in the sky necessarily, but it's wanting to actually connect the project more explicitly to Islamophobia and the current political moment, and the experience of Muslims, the climate of war, the drone use, surveillance state. All these different things that actually inform what it's like to walk in the world as a Muslim, and certainly what it's like to walk in the US as a Muslim, for me. To make those links explicit. To not just be like this gay Muslim group, but as we get more media attention, I really want to connect to the amount of drones that we're using in Northern Pakistan and Yemen, and I want to actually talk about what's not in the typical media more. That feels like an important next step. Because it's on our minds, it's in our hearts. But I think we don't necessarily—I haven't been leading, and making those connections explicit. I think because I assume that people know those connections in our left community, but I don't think I should assume that anymore.