Values & Principles

Values

All of our work is built upon these values. Values are the glue that bind principles to create a solid foundation. We can all say the exact same words, but what grounds us / holds us accountable? These things must be present for us to genuinely be behind our foundation — for example you can’t understand collectivism without understanding settlerhood.

Source: Letters from a Living Utopia by Mx. Yaffa AS

These values are built from Islamic and Trans wisdom and are core to utilizing Islamic and Trans Methodologies for world building.

We are human.

We are accountable.

We are growing.

We are collectivist.

We claim purpose and responsibility.

We claim non-attachment.

We claim liberation, vision, utopia.

We honor strategy.

We honor sovereignty.

We honor death.

Human - Insan

We honor what it means to be human and we honor the realities that are meant for us.

Liberation is inherent to being human.

Belonging is inherent to being human. Assimilation is the antithesis to belonging, if we did not belong we would have gone extinct long ago. To belong is necessary for liberation — and it is not new, it has always been ours to claim.

We make mistakes, we are accountable, we grow towards one another and our purpose.

Accountability - Tawbah

It is our responsibility to honor that to be human is to make mistakes, to be accountable, and to grow.

One of the most harmful visions of systemic oppression is to come into anything from a place of perfection or desiring perfection. Perfection, in the white supremacist capitalist sense, is anti-human. We move towards humanity, always.

Growth - Namu

We are meant to always grow towards our purpose: stewarding land and caring for one another.

It is our responsibility to develop skills needed so we can hold our current realities and the possibilities of collective liberation.

Systems of oppression intentionally suffocate our capacities so that we are unable to show up when it is most needed.

We honor that capacity is held in the physical body, expanded through land, ancestors, spirit, start, and all creation. Training our body-minds to expand our capacity is necessary.

Collectivism - Jama’eiah

This work is rooted in an ecosystem made of land, spirit, and every living being, centering the most marginalized of the most marginalized, particularly people and places we will never know and will never directly interact with.

This work is for everyone and it is not about any one of us or our immediate community, it is so much bigger. The work is about dismantling all systems of oppression, not necessarily listening to the wants of anyone, especially when these desires are in direct opposition to this broader goal.

Purpose and Responsibility - Masouliah

Every human is a part of building a collectively liberated consciousness and worlds. It takes all of us

This work is ours, not someone else's somewhere else.

It is our responsibility to learn to do this work, to be trained, to come together, to be a part of collective liberation creation. We are responsible for our purpose to steward land and care for one another, a purpose that can not truly be honored if we are not working to dismantle systems of oppression and build systems of care and liberation.

Non-attachment - InshaAllah

We control how we show up, we do not control anything beyond that

In the greatest scheme of things we do not control what happens beyond ourselves and even within ourselves there is plenty that is not in our control

We honor the work we need to, not trying to force an outcome in our timelines and visions; we simply do not have that kind of power, nor is it for us to ascribe to

Hakeem — We do whatever we can, and the rest lies with the best judge of all judges, Allah (SWT).

Our physical bodies are only here temporarily. While we hold no physical attachment to this world beyond the prescripted length of our lives, we are tethered to liberation and will/should do everything in our power to uphold the responsibility Allah (SWT) endowed us with to this dunya.

Dream, Utopia, Liberation, Vision - Huriah

We know that limitless possibilities are possible — not just the possibilities placed upon us by systems of oppression. We dream not because we can design a perfect world but because the act of dreaming supports us in expanding our capacity and grow towards liberation, just like some plants grow towards the sun — we grow towards liberation through dreaming. We dream not for a distant future, but to enact our dream of liberation now.

We were created with purpose, our work is to remember and return to liberation.

Strategy - Tadbeer

We are strategic in how we move towards collective liberation. This work is not about us, thus our comforts and discomforts are not relevant.

It is our responsibility to care for ourselves when it is most strategic for us to see this vision through. If we’re one of the only people to see a vision through, it is therefore important for us to take care of ourselves in order to actually see the vision through.

We reflect, we consider, we act.

Sovereignty - Seyadah

We were created different and sovereign.

We claim our autonomy, for our land, our bodies, and everything else we have been gifted.

Within our lifetimes, not representing a single human life, referring to the humanity beyond oppression, the one that is still here when collective liberation is achieved. It could be today, tomorrow, a thousand years from now — it is all within our lifetime as a collectivist ecosystem.

Death - Maut

Death is a part of the spiral of life

Everything dies — humans, plants, the planet, the universe, and definitely systems of oppression.

We mourn as we build collectively liberated worlds.

This work does not begin or end with any of us — we live and we die along the way.

Principles

These principles, values, and priorities were created by various Trans and Queer Muslim (TQM) groups, organizers, and culture workers. We’ve utilized and referenced foundational texts by Queer and Trans Muslims, such as Mx. Yaffa, Randa Jarrar, Mohamed Abdou, Sheyam Ghieth, Lamya H., Eman Abdelhadi, and many others, to support our community in building a liberatory foundation that moves us towards collective liberation.

This is a living, breathing document.

We highly encourage the community to check this periodically.

If you have any feedback, please fill out the contact form at themasgd.org.

We are committed to Islam as an organizing methodology through which we labor towards liberation—a vision of liberation that encompasses all.

Within societies that are structurally anti-Muslim, we have been forced to distort our Muslimhood for our safety. Islam is a way of life to move towards and maintain liberation. Our Divinely-decreed purpose is to build a liberated world, recognizing it as not merely possible but probable. An Islam that can fit within the confines of and assimilate into systems of oppression is not the Islam that we are tasked to live out.
Trans Muslims in particular occupy a space where different marginalized identities intersect. By refusing to cut out pieces of ourselves to survive in this world, we move outside of systems of oppression. Through this, trans-queer Muslims are some of the best world-builders the world has ever seen, across space and time.
We wholeheartedly reject the conservative notion that transness and queerness are challenges sent by Allah (SWT). Central to Islam as an organizing methodology is the understanding that The Divine has created endless, accessible pathways for us humans to bring about a liberated world. Humans and our superiority complexes block these pathways with systems of oppression. Us trans and queer Muslims do not subscribe to the belief that The Divine that creates us simultaneously hates us. Doing so denies the power and grace of The Divine.
For further political grounding, we highly recommend MASGD’s Towards Trans Muslim Liberation Podcast, MASGD’s Beyond Single Ide ntities guide, and Queer Muslim Futures by Maniza Khalid.

We honor an Islam that honors humanity, and assert transness and queerness are and will always be human.

21st-century westernized conceptions of transness and queerness cannot be blanketed(ly) applied to Islam. In seventh-century Arabia, understandings around gender identity and sexual orientation did not need to be differentiated because it was normal. A prominent example were the mukhanatheen — effeminate men in early Islamic society.
For centuries, Islam existed long before the systems of oppression we currently experience. It is these very systems that created and continue to marginalize transness and queerness. We conceive of an Islam liberated from right-wing white supremacist influence, one that renders said influence irrelevant.
Islam’s understanding of the body is completely antithetical to the white, ableist, capitalist, colonial understanding of the body — an understanding that does not see trans people as people. In Islam, the afterlife is premised on your liberatory organizing for the most marginalized of the most marginalized in the dunya — not on your gender and sexuality.
In a trans-queer interpretation of Islam, everyone by sheer value of their humanity, belongs. We name belonging through an understanding that everyone plays a critical role in organizing towards a liberated world. Because Orientalism portrays us in a “backwards” light, heteronormative Muslims have banded together and tried to force trans-queer Muslims off the Muslim bandwagon. That’s not going to get them anywhere and in fact, will only make our movements weaker
For further political grounding, we highly recommend “Opposite of Haram” by Sheyam Ghieth and Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H.

We are committed to Indigenous Sovereignty everywhere, including land back and bodily autonomy for all individuals.

First Nations people are often relegated as relics of the past; centering them is the least that non-First Nations people can do. Doing so without a methodology premised around Indigenous sovereignty is tokenizing them — superficially deploying them to make our movements appear more intersectional (Dr. Mohamed Abdou).
The struggle for a free Falasteen must extend to and is inseparable from the struggle for repatriation of land on occupied Turtle Island. There is no organizing for Falasteen without questioning and actualizing how our settlerism (through, for many of us, being forcibly displaced) on Turtle Island is benefitting First Nations people. Indigenous sovereignty is at the bedrock of all other movements.
Without utilizing an Indigenous sovereignty methodology, our movements will, if they haven’t already, over time replicate a white supremacist capitalist methodology.
For further political grounding, we highly recommend MASGD’s Substack article on Indigenous Day of Mourning.

We are committed to undoing settler ideologies (i.e., the desire to approximate to whiteness) among immigrant and forcibly-displaced people. We refuse to assimilate into settlerhood on stolen land and recognize the privileges gained due to genocide that many of our community members benefit from, even as we experience genocide ourselves.

“We are committed to undoing settler ideologies” = Settler ideologies are the death of us. All of us who are not Indigenous to Turtle Island engage in settlerism, no matter how much we steward or repatriate the land, by mere virtue of profiting off of said stolen land. Ultimately, what determines what kind of settler you are is how you move in service to First Nations people.
“among immigrant and forcibly-displaced people” = As trans Muslim immigrants, we recognize that we are not the original peoples of Turtle Island. The first to be forcibly-displaced, for 500 years and counting, continues to be First Nations communities and enslaved Black folks. Claiming being first only robs us of the ability to learn from the most marginalized of the most marginalized of communities.
“We refuse to assimilate into settlerhood on stolen land” = Assimilation — abandoning and demonizing one’s culture for whiteness — is the antithesis to collective liberation. Without collective liberation, the state will go on determining who lives and who dies, how long we live for, and how we die.
“even as we experience genocide ourselves” = We cannot apathetically distance ourselves from the Global South — the same tactics we bear witness to in Gaza are those deployed in our backyard. To fight against oppression to any degree requires resisting it on all fronts. No level of oppression anywhere justifies complicity in oppression elsewhere — the very bedrock of zionism.
For further political grounding, we highly recommend MASGD’s Substack article entitled To This Genocide Holiday.

We are committed to the end of all empires that oppress through domestic and international state violence, including, but not limited to policing, incarceration, surveillance, colonialism, imperialism, and zionism.

“end of all empires that oppress” =Life under empire is, in various ways, unlivable. We build a liberated world not only because we are forced to, and also because the Qur’an calls upon us to.
“associated;” “including, but not limited to” = Because systems of oppression uphold empire, reform of empire does not exist. Any ideal and manifestation of reform has, time and time again, been proven to serve as an assimilatory strategy that only distracts from building a liberated world. Reform is counterinsurgent — it attempts to bring minoritized people into the fold of empire by positioning them to betray their people and uphold the very systems that oppress their own communities.
For further political grounding, we highly recommend MASGD’s Library on our new website!

We are committed to building alternative systems and institutions through mutual aid to meet our community’s needs.

Alternative systems and institutions are needed because the current systems were never built for us. Alternative systems are strong models of how we can divest from the state in intimate and communal ways. However, they can be if we assimilate, and a lot of our people who don’t need to, do.
Representational politics is proven to not be the solution. Internalized racism says representational politics is enough, when what we need is community control. We must deconstruct the whiteness that occupies us and our communities.
We honor that this principle and how we practice this principle emerges out of under- and undocumented communities and their underground work in creating mutual aid networks to survive. Because violence of the state is greater for these communities, under- and undocumented folks have learned to divest from state systems especially inaccessible and abusive to them.
Building alternative systems allows us to feel cared for, to be responsible for other people’s care, to be responsible for accepting other people’s care, and for other people to feel responsible for caring for us. We are committed to alternative systems that refuse to replicate systems of oppression and take care of all of us.

We are committed to utilizing Islamic, disability, and trans methodologies for building a collectively-liberated world that recognizes the intersections of all struggles.

Muslim, disabled, and trans are often used as mere identities that can be scapegoated and sidelined for the sake of western liberal ‘freedom.’ We articulate that single-identity liberation is conditional and individualistic. Dismantling systems of oppression in one region or to one people facilitates its eventual return. No one marginalized group is more “worthy” of liberation than the next.
We re-center Muslim, disabled, and trans as methodologies that move us towards building a liberated world in a non-attached way. We do whatever we can, and the outcomes are ultimately up to Allah (SWT).
We need multiple methodologies at work simultaneously for us to build a collectively-liberated world that resists the colonizer’s perpetual divide and conquer tactic and that recognizes our survival is intrinsically connected. Our strategy lives in the gaps between interweaving multiple methodologies as we holistically build infrastructure (i.e., alternative systems) in the short-, medium-, and long-term. There’s power in understanding how to mobilize resources from within the system to return it to who it was stolen from.
These methodologies tell us none of this work is about us. Collectivism is front and center, and our entire purpose on Earth has nothing to do with us as individuals.
For further political grounding, we highly recommend Letters from a Living Utopia by Mx. Yaffa, the Combahee River Collective Statement (1977), and MASGD’s No Pride in Genocide Guide.

We are committed to investing in a liberated world, understanding that liberation is a daily practice and not only an end destination.

Practice is not something that comes after liberation, it’s built into how we liberate our lands and peoples.
Liberation as a practice means investing in a liberated world. To do so, we must grow our capacity out — not martyring ourselves for the work when it is not strategic. Increasing capacity can look like exerting less energy for the same amount of work, so that you have the space to breathe and rest.
What does increasing capacity actually look like? When our bodies enter fight or flight mode immediately post-crisis, our capacity temporarily increases. But, due to capitalism and colonialism, we’re stressed all the time, so our bodies are unable to operate from that standpoint long-term. We must recognize capacity as a living entity that encapsulates everything around us, alleviating the stress of carrying atrocities alone. Our bodies are not meant to hold genocides, but one’s capacity as a practice of shielding oneself from the things that are not yours to carry, can.
For further political grounding, we highly recommend Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072 by M.E. O’Brien and Eman Abdelhadi.

We are committed to fulfilling our purpose that Allah (SWT) bestowed upon us: stewarding land and caring for one another, recognizing that we each individually carry a different role to achieve this purpose.

“stewarding land and caring for one another” There is so much power when we name and claim methodologies as a way to enact our responsibility on this dunya — to steward land and care for one another. As a marginalized person, if you do not claim responsibility for fulfilling your purpose, collective liberation, we will not waste time on you (this is not about you!).
“individually carry a different role to achieve this purpose” Some people may use liberatory methodologies to survive. Others are able to assimilate outside of these methodologies. Certain folks will be killed (slow genocide, state violence, etc) if they try to assimilate or utilize these methodologies. We must understand our role, in part, as a risk assessment.
Roles should serve the world that not only exists, but are prepared for the future — allowing us to show up stronger when the next atrocity strikes. In a liberated world, roles will still exist, but they’re not placed upon us out of necessity/fear that no one else is going to do them.
Once we understand our role, we will move away from survivor’s guilt. Your role is different from mine as someone who can be killed in the next hour.
For further political grounding, we highly recommend The Social Change Ecosystem Map, Living to 99 by Yaffa AS, and Be Better Broken by Yaffa AS.