Coming Out Part 3: A Pride Story of Coming Out in a Muslim Family is Met with Silence!

Picture it, Toronto, 1981..the bathhouse raids! Where men were mocked, humiliated and arrested by the hundreds in an event the Toronto police called “Operation Soap”.

The raids outed men who considered the private clubs a sanctuary. An event that sparked the Pride movement in this City. Now imagine trying to come out to your parents at a time when being gay was a crime. That’s exactly what it was like for Salima, who just two years later, made the courageous choice to tell her Muslim family that she was gay.

Her father Akber was worried for “The immediate feeling was ‘Oh no, why us! Why my family, why her?!’ That was a jolt, but then we noticed that there was no change in her, she wasn’t becoming less of a daughter or more of a renegade or something. She was our daughter, and if we accepted it, she brought back love to us.”

Parents accepted Salima after the initial jolt, but 34 years she is still ostracized by her extended family. Salima talks about the hurt: “Sad to say it was mostly silence. It was never really out loud spoken in your face kind of shut down, but more of what we’re not asking, what we don’t want to know about your personal life. And that’s probably where the sting happens, it’s the silence, it’s the not saying, the not knowing its the everyones life is worth asking about but not this one.”

It’s a lesson Salima keeps alive herself, now that she a mom. “It inspires me to become a parent like that, it gives me hope that when you tell the truth, that you receive an equality in a relationship and that you draw from differences obviously we’re different people and at the same time a heathy respect for each others priorities and options for living life.”