Navigating Eid as a queer Muslim
Just Like Us ambassador Rayyan Aboobaker reflects on growing up between faith, family and identity, and what it means to carve out space where queerness and Islam can exist side by side.
Just Like Us ambassador Rayyan Aboobaker reflects on growing up between faith, family and identity, and what it means to carve out space where queerness and Islam can exist side by side.
Words by Just Like Us ambassador Rayyan Aboobaker
Eid has always meant celebration.
Growing up, it meant going to my grandmother’s house. The door would already be open when we arrived, voices spilling out onto the street. Inside, the house felt full before you even stepped in - conversations, the clatter of plates, the smell of food. Shoes piled by the door, cousins squeezed onto sofas or sitting on the floor, aunties and uncles moving around. It was loud, warm, familiar, and I was always in the middle of it, but never fully at ease.