CURA Colloquium: Queered Aspirations: Religious Identity among LGBTQ+ People in Urban Pakistan

Identifying as a delineated queer identity, such as lesbian, gay, or bisexual, is an emerging phenomenon in Muslim-majority and “Islamically governed” Pakistan. This paper presents how young Pakistanis who have come to identify as under the LBGTQ+ umbrella understand their Muslim identities in the context of religious nationalism, and how their religious identities support, reject, and otherwise interact with their sexual orientation. In addressing this question, this paper uses ethnographic data on young, middle-class Pakistanis living in Karachi who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and nonbinary or trans. Ultimately, this paper argues that young Pakistanis are required to move between, and therefore disrupt, the binaries of “traditional and religious” and “modern and secular” in order to build flexible aspirations in precarious times. *Reading the working paper in advance is required for attendance.* Email cura@bu.edu for your copy. Co-sponsored with the School of Theology