99 Names: excavation of the heart

I am working on a collection of poems and illustrations with my father, Shabbir Diwan, who is a trained fine artist. 99 Names is a series of 99 poems, each corresponding to one of the 99 divine aspects of Allah. The collection seeks to blur lines between sacred and profane, between pious and blasphemous, and between spiritual and corporeal. As a queer, Muslim, woman, a feminist and a runaway academic, I take the religion I was raised in and reclaim it. I infuse themes of heartbreak, illness and disability, sexual pleasure and transcendent love into these poems. At its core, this collection seeks to uncover the empowering truth that humans were made to imperfectly embody these divine aspects and to queer Islam and dogmatism in the process.  ​