Art by @artqueerhabibi (note that spelling of Arabic names varies)
As-salamu alaykum!
Four years ago, one of the US’s worst mass shootings occurred in Orlando, Florida. A Muslim man shot up a gay nightclub killing 49 people, mostly Latinx and other POC. The Pulse shootings shook a lot of LGBTQIA+ people to their core around the world, me included. Although I’m very white, very Anglo-Australian, as most people would know I’ve spent the past 15 years learning Spanish and being involved with the Latinx music world. I wrote for Club Fonograma for several years. I found a queer community with them before I found one in Australia, so even from afar an attack on queer Latinxs felt even more horrific. But I digress. This week, another awful, and just as symbolic, queer death happened in Canada.
Egyptian refugee, Sarah Hegazy, died by suicide on Sunday. The 30-year-old feminist and lesbian fled her country after being jailed, tortured and harassed for the crime of flying a rainbow pride flag at a concert.
The infamous photo, taken in 2017, is so heartbreaking seeing how happy she is. The concert in question was something I knew about at the time because it was for one of my favourite bands, Mashrou’ Leila (مشروع ليلى), and her imprisonment was one of the final straws that broke the band and sent them to go live in the US (from their homeland of Lebanon). That it has come to this end is deeply upsetting, not just for the band, but for queer people all over the Arabic-speaking world (and its diaspora) who saw the openly gay lead singer as a beacon of light in their conservative countries.
Here is Hamed Sinno, the lead singer, speaking at a vigil for Sarah in Brooklyn on Tuesday. He has been full of grief, depression, anger and anxiety ever since the move to the States. He and his band are banned from several Middle Eastern countries just because of his sexuality. A concert of theirs was even cancelled in their home country last year. It’s shameful and a shame because, on top of everything, it has put a hold on their music-making.
Last year, after the Christchurch massacre, I was compelled to write on the intersectionality of Islam, the LGBTQIA+ community, and whiteness. What we’re seeing in the recent protests in the US and around the world is an awakening to white privilege and specifically the privilege of either cultural superiority or cultural relativity. In reality, all we have to do is shut up and listen. People are reaching the same conclusions as us — let’s say the banal philosophy of ‘love is love’ — you just have to look harder for those voices because the mainstream white media ain’t amplifying them.
Hope that makes sense.
Rest in power, Sarah. الله يحبك
I know I said I’d write more on media on Tuesday, but I forgot that I was going to write about Sarah. Instead, here’s a Twitter thread that perfectly summarises how information online gets distorted. It’s actually really funny/interesting because it details how a viral photo became a part of modern day folklore.
And now for some other things:
Snopes.com is a website dedicated to thorough FACT CHECKING. Use it!
The AFROBUBBLEGUM movement is an art movement for African artists to showcase art that does not portray Africa and Africans as poor or suffering. It was cofounded by a Kenyan artist who made the 2018 film, Rafiki, which was completely banned in her country for depicting a lesbian relationship.
Another Mashrou’ Leila song: