We Have Always Been Here: A Queer Muslim Memoir

“Intersectionality” is a term coined in legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw’s 1989 article “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex.” The article is a criticism of antidiscrimination law practices, which assume that simply outlawing outward discrimination against a person is enough to achieve equality. Crenshaw argues that these laws are one-dimensional and do not look at the multi-dimensional aspects of an individual’s identity. Intersectionality accounts for the multiple facets of a person’s identity that might introduce unique experiences of discrimination that, at their metaphorical intersection, produce a unique experience that either identity would not experience alone.

Crenshaw imagines that the multiple aspects of a person’s identity (race, class, gender, sexuality, religion, disability, etc.) can act as multipliers for one another. Within this framework, a Black woman must deal with the misogyny of a patriarchal society, the anti-Black biases of non-Black people, as well as with the unique ways these two identities intersect (for example, the ways in which Black women are often depicted as “masculine” for not meeting white men’s standards of beauty for women). In this framework, a single aspect of a person’s identity cannot be isolated from other aspects of their identity—all aspects of a person’s identity “intersect” and must be addressed together.

Intersectionality is a crucial tool of analysis for many marginalized communities today because it has unveiled how interconnected various forms of oppression are. Samra Habib is Pakistani, Muslim, and queer. These facets of their identity are all interwoven throughout their memoir. Using the lens of intersectionality, these identities cannot be separated and examined individually but rather inform and complicate one another, producing an experience unique to the intersections of Pakistani, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ identity. Habib’s experiences are different than those of a cisgender, heterosexual Muslim from Pakistan, for example, or a Muslim born and raised in Canada.