Queer Crescent

Dear Queer Crescent Chosen Family and Allies, 

We write this bittersweet letter to thank you and to share with a heavy heart that after eight powerful years, we will be closing our doors effective June 2025. This decision has not come easily, and it carries the weight of many reflections, conversations, and acts of love. 

Closure
The choice to conclude operations arises from a confluence of challenges—including a shifting political landscape, evolving philanthropic priorities, burnout from unrelenting crises upon our communities, and leadership transitions. Yet even in this moment of closure, we are guided by the resilience of our community and trust that the seeds we’ve planted together will continue to grow in new and unexpected ways.

History and Work of QC
Queer Crescent (QC) was one of the first queer Muslim healing justice organizations in the United States. QC was founded by Shenaaz Janmohamed in the wake of the Muslim & African Travel Ban of 2017 as a drop-in support group in Oakland, CA. It started with humble beginnings, with a vision and niyat to grow an organization rooted in healing justice and a transformative organizing praxis. For us, healing justice has always meant holding both collective healing and resistance—tending to our bodies, minds, and spirits even as we organize against the conditions that perpetuate violence, trauma, and crisis in Muslim bodies-minds-spirits. It is a living, evolving framework—both political and spiritual—that has guided and grounded our work. 

Over the years, we blazed bold and necessary trails—lifting up the voices of marginal Muslims and making our presence undeniable. We brought our truths to the larger queer community by confronting Islamophobia with courage, and carved out space within mainstream Muslim communities, challenging queerphobia and transphobia with love and persistence.

We have carried the weight of multiple forms of exclusion, all while daring to dream and to build sanctuary. Creating safety for our communities meant confronting power alongside healing ourselves. We often say at QC, “We heal to organize, and organize to heal.” 

During our eight-year run, we: 

• Held over 35 community healing spaces to connect, restore, imagine and organize; 

• Organized over 25 political education series and workshops, ranging in intersectional topics such as Surveillance and Bodily Autonomy; Resisting Pinkwashing Now and Until Liberation; and co-led the Partnership to End Gendered Islamophobia and the Muslim Abolitionist Futures coalition space. 

• Conducted critical advocacy on behalf of queer Muslims around LGBTQ censorship and criminalization, including:

• A campaign in Dearborn MI resisting 2022 LGBTQ book bans;  

• Co-authored an amicus brief for a case heard at the Supreme Court of the United States challenging “parent-opt out” of LGBTQ curriculums in Maryland Public Schools i

• Redistributed mutual aid through the 2020 COVID-19 Radical Muslim Mutual Aid initiative in partnership with Masjid al-Rabia; and the 2022 Muslim Fund for Bodily Autonomy, providing funds for gender affirming care, abortion access and mental health supports for multiply-marginalized Muslims. 

• Experimented with new models of somatic training through our recent pilot programs, Muslims Embodying Dignity & Leadership (MEDL) and Queer Constellation Membership. Through these programs QC began to develop new opportunities to organize and heal with our community.  
  

Acknowledgement and Gratitude
As we close this chapter, we do so with full hearts—carrying gratitude, humility, and profound appreciation for our community. Your courage, your vulnerability, and your unwavering truth-telling have been the ruh / soul of Queer Crescent. 

As an organization born at the juncture of LGBTQ+ push-out and islamophobia, we have a vested interest in the intersectional experiences of our community. As LGBTQ+ Muslims, we contain multitudes. In the public and political sphere, our existence is erased or problematized (as with pinkwashing)—by weaponizing homophobia in Muslim communities and islamophobia in LGBTQ+ spaces. This serves to fragment our movements by turning marginalized communities against one another instead of building the allyship and solidarity necessary for true collective liberation.

Throughout our journey, Queer Crescent was often called upon to hold space for healing across many lines of oppression. Black Muslims are erased and excluded within Muslim communities at large. Despite our efforts and intent, our work and organization often did not effectively connect with Black LGBTQ+ Muslims, as evidenced by the demographics of our programs, leadership, and audiences.  The conversations and struggles we engaged in revealed the urgent need to keep pushing these edges—for the wholeness and liberation of all queer Muslims.  

With full and reflective hearts, we bring our institution to a close.  And in the spirit of our collective liberation we offer forward the seeds. We invite each of you to turn inward and consider how you might continue this work by engaging with the following questions:

• How can we take actionable steps to undermine anti-Blackness in Muslim communities and the erasure of Black Muslims within our movements?  

• How do we disrupt Sunni supremacy and intra-community violence against Shia, Ahmadiyya, and other minority sect Muslims? 

• How are we advocating for gender expansiveness and self-determination in Muslim communities as we keep pushing for inclusiveness? 

• How do we intervene on wedge issues like pinkwashing, LGBTQ censorship, and the dangerous slippage of right-wing capture of Muslim communities due to the ongoing absence of queer solidarity? 

Duas Forward 
To the staff and contractors of Queer Crescent, thank you for your dedication and hard work. Thank you to previous fellows and staff,  mentors, coaches, advisory council and steering committee members. 

To our organizational partners, coalitional comrades and funder community, it has been an honor to be in solidarity and shared leadership with you all. 

To our community, your support has been inspiring and invaluable.  While this chapter is closing, the relationships and impact we’ve built together will not be forgotten.

We welcome you to join Queer Crescent, one final time, during one of our upcoming closing circles: 

• Community: Monday June 16 from 3-4:30pm PST | 6-7:30pm EST
  RSVP Registration required 

• Organizational Partners and Funders: Tuesday June 17 from 10-11:30am PST | 1-2:30pm EST 
  RSVP Registration required 

If you have any questions or need further assistance, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us at hello@queercrescent.org 

Thank you for being a part of our journey.