something I think about all the time but especially during ramadan is how people so totally do not understand the mindset you have to have to be both LGBT and a devout (by any definition of that term) muslim. this is hard to explain to cishets but I want to try.

I know so many people who find it easy to believe in a loving and beneficent god because their lives are...maybe not always easy, but uncomplicated? everything is more or less the way they've been raised to believe it will be.

I'm gay and I'm trans. I didn't choose either of those things, I was just (ugh) born this way. it's like deliberately playing life on hell mode, except that of course it's not deliberate because I didn't choose it, it just happened.

and I *still* believe in a loving god.

do you know that that's like? I have this thing about me, and lots of my fellow muslims believe it makes me *evil* somehow, and they act like it's a choice I'm making to be sinful. like, why would a loving god do that? why would a loving god make just *being* yourself so hard?

I don't believe in a god who reaches down from heaven and makes things happen and I don't believe in a god who grants prayers like they're wishes made to a genie in a lamp, and I'm glad I don't because if I did, then I wouldn't be able to believe in god at all, because *gestures*

like, this is not a universe shaped by the deliberate care and attention of a god who makes things happen through direct intervention, you know? it's, I mean, it's bad sometimes. a lot of the time.

I believe in a god who grants prayers like "help me find the strength to live through this day" or "help me act with love and kindness in my interactions with others" like, idk, a little jumpstart for your soul? and I believe god shapes the universe by, you know, letting us live.

but anyway, the kind of god I believe in is only partly the point. the point is, even if you believe in a non-interventionist god who helps you find inner peace, the idea that god doesn't make mistakes is hard to square with literally being the wrong gender for your body.

but I do believe very much that god doesn't make mistakes, which means I'm like this on purpose, or at least, that being like this isn't *wrong* (contrary to multiple DMs sitting in my message requests folder). which, when other believers are so *cruel*, is...tough. very.

but I believe anyway. with every fibre of my very gay being. I have since before I knew that there was a word for god, that it was a thing other people felt in their lives. I was three years old when it was explained to me and it made so much sense, just part of the universe.

and idk, I've never been cishet so I don't know what belief is like for them, but I have been a very confused preschooler crushing on girls at recess and a very confused child dreaming of living in a different body and look, whatever, it gets better but it starts out so, so hard.

I mean, I'm a grown-up now and I'm pretty confident in who I am and that's great! but I wasn't for a very long time, decades, actually, and even when this all made no sense and everyone told me that these things were unnatural *at best*, I always believed in a loving god.

I've been told multiple times by multiple authority figures that my life would be better if my faith were stronger, but do you know how strong your faith has to be for you to keep believing when every other believer thinks you're inherently some kind of unholy?

like, the first time you read that being gay is a sin against the god you think is responsible for your existence, do you know how strong your faith has to be for you to decide you believe anyway? faith is incidental for so many people but it *can't* be incidental for us!

if you're gay or trans and you belong to a faith where the majority of adherents think your existence is wicked, belief in god *can't* just be window-dressing on the stage of your life. you have to be all in. your faith has to be stronger than so much hatred.

every day, my faith has to be stronger than everyone who ever told me this was just a phase, stronger than everyone who ever cut me out of their lives to prevent me from corrupting them, everyone who ever told me there was no way to avoid going to hell for being myself.

I can't just believe on the major holidays. I have to believe every second of every day that god loves me more than people hate me. I have to believe it like I believe in gravity and heliocentrism and relativity.

believing in a loving god in the face of hardship and suffering and hatred and cruelty is difficult for everyone, I think. the universe is as beautiful and as horrible as human beings make it, generally both extremes at once. why believe in a god who doesn't even *fix* things?

I wish I understood which part of the divine plan involved dysphoria and homophobia and family members who want me dead and family members who just wish I didn't exist and nasty comments from strangers who think I'm an abomination. I don't understand and I don't pretend to.

but I choose every day to believe that the love I see in the universe is more real, more enduring, than the hate and ugliness. it is a very difficult thing to believe, some days, but I have to keep at it.

I'm three decades and change into my life and I've seen every kind of cruel people can be when you're not straight and not cis and in the face of overwhelming evidence that people can be cruel, I choose every day to believe that the universe can be kind.

every day.

some days are worse than others. I'm writing this partly because the last few days have been particularly hard, and hard times make me think about why I still believe when it would be easier not to. but I don't think love is something you only believe in when it's easy.

if it seems like I'm saying "love" in place of "god" an awful lot, well, isn't that what god is? the ultimate reassurance that whoever you are, whatever you are, you are an irreplaceable part of creation? the ultimate reassurance that you, exactly the way you are, are loved?

belief in god, to me, means belief in humanity. it means believing that we are capable of changing the universe for the better, because otherwise, what's the point?

and wanting things to be better, believing that things can be better, that they will be better, that's love, yeah?

if you stuck with me this far, thank you. just...I hope that whoever you are and wherever you are, the universe is loving to you today.