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in the case of the ancient Islamic tradition called ijtihad. This essentially refers to the circles of critical thinking and independent discussion that for centuries addressed questions in Islam. Until the tenth century, Muslims were encouraged to exercise autonomy of thinking and to contest the Quran, so that each and every Muslim had their own, independent relationship with the text. The entire point was to allow a multiplicity of experiences and perspectives to inform the practice of Islam. The Quran, in fact, is much more like a collection of poems than a literal series of commandments; its purposeful ambiguity is intended to encourage a diverse range of interpretations. But, as with everything else in the world, cisgender heterosexual men soon dominated the practice, and ijtihad was prohibited in the tenth century, meaning that Islam became more restrictive in the way that people understand it today. Passages like The Story of Lot, which textually seem far more likely to be warnings against rape and inhospitality, could be co-opted by conservative Islamic practitioners into an unequivocal condemnation of homo­­sexuality, leading to the kind of religious institutional homophobia that has scarred my life. It’s not Allah who forbade my queer identity, but the people who ignored the well of alternative potentials in the Quran.

      The more I rummaged, the more magic I discovered. Sufism, for instance, is a rich and spiritual sect of Islam that has many affinities with queer identity. As a queer person, I believe almost dogmatically in difference, in the idea that every single person is unique, with their own innate sense of self, and that it is this difference which brings all of us together as one. Sufism, in many ways, is based on a similar belief. It’s a branch of Islam in search of a metaphysical and profound personal dialogue with Allah. In Sufism, every single Muslim has their own individual relationship with Allah; Allah is not a singular hegemonic force that controls us all, but something we can each find individually and on our own terms. While I had grown up to perceive Islam as ascetic and austere, I completely missed an entire genealogy of the faith that directly resonated with me. I had deified the Western literary greats like Oscar Wilde for their queer magic, and completely skipped over the writings of Sufists, like thirteenth-century Persian poet Jalaluddin Rumi, whose dazzlingly spiritual poems are burning with homoerotic desire. It was all there the whole time. Just waiting for me.

      Prayer methods in Sufism can be wonderfully poetic, and also intrinsically queer. There is a glorious Sufi sect in which men dress in skirts and spin around and dance as a way to fuse their souls with Allah (the infamous whirling dervishes). YES, THAT’S CORRECT. MALE MUSLIMS WEARING SKIRTS. So while I’d gone about believing that Allah and every relative of mine was prepared to have me burned for my gender identity, there were actually male Muslims wearing dresses and dancing with Allah – and they actually got rewarded for being pious! I mean, I’m basically doing that every time I perform in drag – maybe it’s not so transgressive after all!

      When I learned about Sufist whirling dervishes, YouTube (of all places) provided the place where I could more directly see myself. I couldn’t believe the footage I was seeing – men, wearing billowing white skirts that would outdo Kim Kardashian on her wedding day, being celebrated by Muslim people in the audience as they limped their wrists and twirled to the sound of an imam singing the Quran. Here was a version of drag in the most Islamic context; for the first time ever, I actually identified with Muslims on the screen in front of me, each of whom was searching for meaning through costume, music and ritual. Each time I perform, I’m also searching for a transcendental connection with a higher power, channelled through the collective queer energy that comes from the audience. Whenever I get into drag – the quiet ritual of meticulously applying make-up and building a new self – I feel like I did as a young child praying. Islamic prayer is a very charged experience, in which you quietly allow your body to find Allah through movements and mantras. Every time I block out my brows and tell myself in the mirror, ‘you’re fierce’, I feel an affinity with these Islamic practices.

      When I am in my full Arabian get-up in front of an audience, I sometimes like to sing in Arabic, acting as a vessel for the beautiful queer feminine energies in Islam, feeling the spiritual power of what it means to be queer and to have a room of many different people celebrating this. It is a kind of religious experience, a room united in the celebration of difference; when a show goes really well, it gives me a kind of faith. A faith that Allah’s plan was for me to twirl onstage in a skirt so that I could eventually find not only myself, but Allah, like many Sufist Muslims had been doing centuries before me.

      The most radical thing I discovered in my re-readings of the Quran was about sin. For as long as I remember, I had believed that each sin committed was worth ten points, while each good deed was only worth one, meaning that there were about a trillion times more points on my left shoulder than on my right (somewhat spookily, all chiropractors comment that my left side is much harder to adjust than my right). This, however, was completely wrong. Sins are only worth one point – it is good deeds that are worth ten.

      The negative cycles of thought that had come to govern my brain seemed also to have polluted my memories. Islam, particularly, had been reduced to something I only ever thought of as bad. Every neurological pathway that started with Islam always led to feelings of shame and worthlessness and an image of eternal incineration. This clouded the nuance and truth of my religion – and it was these nuances that needed to be rescued, and which ultimately helped me to heal. Allah might not have been a punitive dictator taking relish in my misery. What if Allah was a force that wanted me to do good? What if Allah wanted us to find out that the good was always worth more?

      In a way, I kind of think I’m still a prophet. Not in the ‘everyone needs to convert to my way of thinking’ prophet – though hop aboard by all means! – but more that Allah has, in a sense, spoken directly to me. It’s as if Allah threw me into my psychotic breakdown so that I’d be forced to search for an answer to help me escape it. And it was having to return to Allah’s Quran, which is teeming with queerness, that remedied the anguish deep inside me, and which brought my fragmented selves into harmony.

      Queer people of faith are ripped apart in all directions. But it is in the delicate art of re-seaming these wounds that transcendence abounds.

      Somewhere along the way, I learned that the Bible was less a manual for keeping out of hell and more a library for the living.

       PÁDRAIG

       Let My People

      Nobody told me I was allowed to imagine.

      Growing up in 1980s Ireland, I was introduced to the idea of homosexuality by ads on the television warning the viewers about HIV and AIDS. If it was ever mentioned at Mass, it was in the context of sin. But – for some years – it was barely mentioned at Mass; not because there was any permissiveness, but because it was the unspeakable.

      I still hadn’t spoken it.

      In 1984, 87 per cent of the population of Ireland attended religious services weekly. In 1990 this had only dropped to 85 per cent. Religion was everywhere. Mind you, so was criticism. Sinéad O’Connor was ripping up pictures of the Pope, and there were always stories of the carryon in the Homes for Troubled Children. I learned that sin was like a blight on your soul and the rot would begin to creep up your throat if you sinned enough. When my mother sent me to confession, I sat up there, blessed myself and told the priest: ‘I’m only here because my mother made me.’ ‘What do you want to talk about?’ he asked me. ‘About why the Catholic Church is corrupt,’ I said. ‘OK,’ he said, and he listened. He was a young priest, trendy. He wore sunglasses and everybody thought he had notions. He died in his fifties.

      People wondered if he was gay, but I knew I was.

      I made some Protestant friends when I was fifteen. Theirs seemed a more immediate religion, with fewer authorities and a sense that God gave a damn. It was there that I heard that homosexuality was either a demonic possession or a deep-seated psychological disorder. It was said with ease, with calm: if it’s a devil, we’ll exorcise it; if it’s

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