Introduction

Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed is a 39-year-old French imam, religious thinker, queer scholar, and activist. He is the founder of three non-profit associations: Les Enfants du Sida (2006), Homosexuels musulmans de France (HM2F) (2010), and Musulmans Progressistes de France (2012). Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed is also the author of Révoltes extraordinaires: un enfant du sida autour du monde (2011) and Le Coran et la chair (2012), and co-author of Queer Muslim Marriage (2013). During the last few years, the French media have covered his same-sex marriage in Cape Town to husband Qiyaam Jantjies-Zahed in 2011, the publication of his book, Le Coran et la chair in 2012, as well as and his creation of La Mosquée inclusive de l'Unicité, the first “gay friendly” or inclusive mosque in Paris, in 2012. Like 2Fik in Chapter 1, who divided his life story into four “acts,” Ludovic-Mohamed divides his published account of his life into three chronological segments, whose temporalities and filiations merit close analysis. In contrast to 2Fik (a French citizen of Moroccan descent), however, who creates new queer temporalities and forms of (re)production and family in order to articulate his identity as a “dissident” Maghrebi French citizen who lives outside of France, Ludovic-Mohamed (a French citizen of Algerian descent) invents a new way for queer Maghrebi French speakers, and queer French Muslims in particular, to tie themselves to the teachings of Mohammed while they also ground themselves firmly into the present through feminist and queer readings of the Qur'an when living in a largely “normative” and secular France. As we will see, this includes a flexible accumulation of “I” statements such as “Je suis français, algérien, homosexuel et musulman” [I am French, Algerian, homosexual, and Muslim] that allow him to live a hybrid identity in a country that touts universalism.