I created this timeline because I wanted people to be able to learn about the efforts to remove Dr. Driskill from the Oregon State University faculty--a movement that is taking place on multiple fronts--in one place. Although I and many other former/current WGSS graduate students only became aware of this issue recently, there are Native people in and outside of the academy that have been aware of Dr. Driskill's persistent fraudulent identity claims and have been working to address the harm caused by their pernicious actions for at least a decade. Non-native scholars such as myself have a responsibility to  take this issue seriously, to center the work of queer Indigenous scholars in lieu of a "representative one voice" (to use Dr. Jodi Bird's phrase), and to disrupt the academy as a "pretendian factory" (to quote Dr. Liza Black). My hope is that this particular case may offer insights that can be used in other situations.

The first section "In the Heart of the Prophet," traces a history of women's active participation in the early Muslim community and highlights the example set by three women of the Prophet's (PBUH) family: Khadijah, Fatima, and 'A'isha. Helminski explains, "Because the original impulse of Sufism is classically understood to have opened with the example of Muhammad and the revelation of the Qur'an, even though these women lived before anyone used the term 'Sufi,' we might consider them to be foremost among the first Sufi women" (Helminski 2003, 3). 

Having explored accounts of the first Sufi women, the book turns to early Sufi women. Helminski describes this transition as follows: "After the death of the Prophet Muhammad and the first four caliphs who followed him, the spiritual authority he initiated became fragmented. These early Sufis sought to clarify and deepen that interior spiritual connection that they saw as the essence of Islam" (20). Many of these accounts have been compiled from historical biographies, some of which have been made accessible through the efforts of contemporary Sufi women scholars.

Helminsky describes Sufism as "popular Islam" that, in contrast to "official Islam," was instrumental to the spread of the religion across the world. (I am a little skeptical of this division since many leading Muslim othodox theologians were Sufis, and tasawwuf is a central Islamic practice, but I digress.) Attributing Sufism's greater role to its higher tolerance of local customs and promotion of more egalitarian relationships, she writes: "The resulting social integration of essential Islamic principles occurred as Sufism not only spread to farther lands but also repenetrated the heartland of Islam, enabling the 'heart's blood' to flow more freely throughout the whole body of Islam" (75). From the 12th century onwards, there was a shift from mystics practicing autonomously to mystics clustering around and following particular saints around whom tariqas formed.

Opa gifted me Women of Sufism 11 years ago when I first decided to major in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. It feels appropriate that this is the book that welcomes me back into doing scholarship.

​During a graduate course called QTPOC Arts and Activisms that I took in 2018, I was given the following assignment: to create something for the Día de los Muertos altar at the Eena Haws Native American Longhouse. I made a card/letter-poem for my ancestor, Shauki Masi, who had passed away in 2017. I continued this practice of writing to Shauki Masi long after the course concluded. 

As I re-read what I'd written over a year or so, I was struck by some of the themes that emerged about queer South Asian kinship, belonging, and world-making. I decided to try to weave together the letters into a larger piece. The idea to dedicate individual letters to the pillars of Islam was inspired by Halal If You Hear Me, a poetry anthology centering women, queer, and trans Muslim voices, edited by Fatimah Asghar and Safia Elhillo. (The collection is divided into sections for each of the pillars.) I presented the finished piece as part of a panel, Queer/Trans Muslim Storytelling: Diasporic World-Making, at the National Women's Studies Association conference in San Francisco in 2019. I was touched and honored to see how the letter-poems resonated with folks at the conference. This gave me the courage to submit the piece to Meridians, where it was eventually published in 2021. 

When I left the PhD program at the end of 2020, one of my regrets was that my dissertation wouldn't be finished. My dissertation chapters were inextricably interwoven into conversations with Shauki Masi's ghost, including and expanded beyond the letter-poems. It felt profoundly disrespectful to abandon the project partway, even though I knew that the dissertation was neither the sum nor the purpose of this ongoing haunted queer diasporic kinship practice with Shauki Masi. It, therefore, means a lot to me to see "Letter-Poems to Shauki Masi: Diasporic Queer South Asian Muslim Reflections on the Five Pillars of Islam" in print. It represents one part of how I try to honor responsibilities to Shauki Masi as well as to my larger communities.

Note: Updated on 09/13/21 to add image description.

My textile-essay, "Autoimmune: A 'Medicinal History,'" was published in Disability Studies Quarterly. ​

Since I was not allowed to include acknowledgements in the published version, I'm going to do that here instead. Thank you to my mum, Ayesha Khan, for the idea of making a doll, and to my Oma, Henny Khan, for teaching me how to sew. A big thank you to Lzz Johnk, my mad kin, who gave me the courage to call myself mad in the first place. I am also grateful to the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful engagement and generative feedback. ​

- Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Care Work (pg. 124)