When writer Salma El Wardany went to the wedding of a former colleague in Australia in 2017, she didn’t think she’d be back to officiate a gay wedding two years later.
But in marrying a lesbian couple, the public speaker and self-proclaimed ‘shouty woman’ caused waves.
Salma, from an Egyptian Muslim background, ignored critics and went ahead with marrying brides Hannah and Megan, who she’d met at her friend’s wedding.
The couple felt it would be ironic if Salma became their celebrant – a person who can tailor a ceremony to the couple without legal obligations – considering how opposed their communities can be.
Salma tells Metro.co.uk: ‘We joked that Australians don’t like Muslims very much and that Muslims don’t always like gay people very much.’
Their private joke became a reality earlier in March this year when Salma officiated the beautiful vineyard wedding.
She wanted to step up for the LGBT+ community in the way she wishes other folks would be visible allies for the Muslim community.
‘We talked about being othered,’ Salma says. ‘We found a message worth sharing and that we were both allies for one another.
‘Why can’t our communities act like this with one another and get along? How beautiful life would be if it worked like that.
‘I thought it would be a beautiful thing to be part of, so I did it.’
Brides Hannah and Megan campaigned for gay rights in Australia for years. When Salma met them, she wondered why they hadn’t just wed abroad.
But they said they wanted to commit to each other where they live, in their home country.
Fast forward to a few years later, when Australia passed its Marriage Amendment in 2017, and Hannah and Megan were finally able to plan their wedding.
They enlisted Salma’s help, asking her to become their celebrant.
To become a celebrant in Australia, you have to do various courses, need to have lived in the country for six months and then have to do a qualification there.
Realising that this wouldn’t be an option, Salma and the couple found another solution – something called My Celebrant Buddy which allows a qualified celebrant to do all the legal bits while a chosen unofficial celebrant can take on special parts of the ceremony.
While Salma has experience speaking in public as a spoken word artist, acting as a celebrant was an entirely new experience.
‘I’m used to being on a stage and talking but this is different,’ Salma tells us. ‘This is someone’s wedding day and it was a lot more pressure because I felt like I was holding hearts in my hand.
‘It was a meeting of hearts and they trusted me to marry them in front of all their friends and family. It was nerve-wracking writing and performing it at the ceremony.
‘I wanted to write something that was super personal to them but also spoke to their struggle of fighting past this marriage act and the political significance of two women together.’
The choice to wed a lesbian couple provoked a strong reaction from Salma’s Muslim community.
‘When I initially posted the wedding, I got messages saying “you’re not Muslim” and “If you want to do these things, fine but don’t say you’re Muslim”,’ she explains.
‘I got a message from someone I’ve known my whole life saying “your values are so opposed to what we believe in”.
‘It makes me so cross because that attitude is exactly the islamophobic attitude we get every day so you should know better than to purport that kind of negativity and acidic attitude.
‘I got a lot of backlash but I just thought “good, feathers have been ruffled”.
‘This innate desire to silence is what immediately comes out but why be annoyed that this conversation is happening? I’m deadset in having those conversations in our communities because it’s so needed.’
Salma isn’t paying any mind to the haters, especially considering she has the support of her family.
She adds: ‘My dad was like “why are you doing it” but I said because it sends a beautiful message of religious tolerance and everyone living together and he was like “yeah okay, just be safe”.
‘The rest of my family thought it was beautiful.’
Salma believes that being a Muslim woman makes it easier for her to understand the plight of other oppressed people.
She says: ‘We (Muslims and LGBT folks) sit on the outskirts of society, it’s why I get along so well with them. There’s something about oppressed people understanding one another’s struggles even though they may be different.’
The activist wants to be vocally supportive of the LGBTQ community, and so she has since agreed to marry more of her gay friends.
‘I feel like I can’t marry straight people,’ she jokes, ‘I can only do queer weddings!
‘My friend Frank is getting married to his partner and when I was in Australia to marry Megan, he was proposed to.
‘He then asked me to be his celebrant and I said yes. That wedding is in Dallas, Texas, scheduled for 2020. I’m just traveling and marrying people all over the world!’
Last week, Salma’s friend Laura and her partner Emma got engaged. They also said they can’t imagine anyone else marrying them.
Their wedding will be held in Cornwall in 2021.
‘I think I can only do one a year because they’re so emotional and they take a lot,’ says Salma. ‘I have to be ordained, it’s a big task. I might just have to stop after that.’
The process for these weddings will be easier than the Australian one, and Salma will be able to do the whole ceremony by herself.
Being an outspoken Muslim woman online, Salma has her fair share of hate from trolls who pile on no matter what her views are.
When she’s vocal about her support for gay people, she is told that she is ‘encouraging’ this kind of ‘behaviour’.
To that, she laughs. She says: ‘I don’t have that much power. People are going to be gay regardless of what I do. I have zero sway over the gaydom of the world.’
And, she adds, ‘there are also gay Muslims. By humanising them you let them be gay and also worship God.
‘When we refuse to converse with them and cover everything in sin and damnation, what we’re doing is pushing people outside and they’re going to do the things they want anyway, in ways that are unsafe or don’t cater to their mental health.
‘People have been gay since the start of times.
‘Shouldn’t we try to bolster our faith, not send someone on their way? Isn’t God just love? Who are we to judge?
‘Ultimately Lakum deenukum waliya deen – for you is your religion, for me is my religion.’
In other words, just do you.
MORE: Hindu-Muslim lesbian couple praised for stunning pics that ‘brought India and Pakistan together’
MORE: British Muslims launch first ever pride festival
source https://metro.co.uk/2019/10/16/oppressed-people-understand-oppressed-people-muslim-woman-marries-off-gay-couples-10883892/
0 Comments