Honoring Mahdia Lynn
Honoring Mahdia Lynn
Radical Soul's Queer Ancestor Series
I want to help foster a Muslim community that combats anti-blackness, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia — a community that is accessible for all. An Ummah that uplifts the most marginalized and prioritizes compassion and equity over power and profit.
This is part of a series honoring queer elders and ancestors. Mahdia Lynn was nominated by Ember Jehan and Hanan Malas.
Mahdia Lynn, who passed away last month, was the co-founder and director of Masjid Al-Rabia, a women centered, LBGTQIA+ affirming pluralist mosque in Chicago. Lynn, a disabled transgender Shi’a Muslim, was heavily involved in justice work around incarceration and prison abolition, disabilities, LGBTQ and women’s rights. Through her organizing and public speaking, she impacted the lives of people around the country.
Masjid Al-Rabia, which officially shut down in 2024, was the only openly affirming mosque in Chicagoland area, and a source of comfort to marginalized Muslims both locally and across the country. Among its services, the Masjid Al-Rabia community sent care packages and letters to incarcerated LGBTQ Muslims and created Ramadan programming for LGBTQ Muslim youth.
She personally was a source of refuge for me as a closeted teenager. The spaces she created and her activism empowered me to come out as a proud Queer Muslim.
— Ember Jean
Lynn was very open about her struggles, including a history of drug abuse and leaving an abusive marriage, suicidal ideations, and how it all led her to Islam and the comfort her faith brought her.
I chose to pick up the Qur’an when my life was at its bleakest. I chose to read. I chose to practice. I chose to live this weird contradictory complicated beautiful life. I chose this life, because if I didn’t I would have drowned in myself a long time ago.
Islam gave me my life back, and so I gave my life over in service to Islam.
People ask me what I do for a living, and I tell them: I pray five times a day, and I do what I can to keep kids from killing themselves.
Mahdia Lynn
She also wrote about her double life. In one, she pretended to be the “average Middle-American housewife” who chose to leave her husband and start over on her own. In her other life, she was a “bisexual transgender activist working to make the world safer for women.”
She stayed closeted in order to survive, “remembering the long list of queer and trans women I know who had been kicked out of their community or worse after being outed.”
But she couldn’t stay silent after the shooting in Orlando.
“In one week I was interviewed five times and I turned down even more. In Chicago there was a summit between mainstream Muslim leadership and LGBTQ Muslim community organizers. Many of us — myself included — came out of the closet that night and spoke frankly with local leaders about the realities of our experience,” Lynn explained in a post.
She helped bring us together during the tragedy of Pulse.
— Hanan Malas
“The mosque wasn’t safe anymore so we built our own. A women-led, LGBTQIA+ affirming pluralist community where no one is turned away. A space built on accessibility, inclusion and a passionate love for Islam.”
Lynn helped launch Masjid Al-Rabia a year later. She was also active as a board or planning member for other inclusive organizations that help marginalized Muslims build community.
Rest in power, Mahdia Lynn.
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