According to indianexpress.com the newspaper was inspired by a series of workshops that the platform held last year called “Queer Muslim Futures”. They partnered with the Fearless Collective, a feminist art collective in Bengaluru, to create a three-part series where participants imagined alter egos and universes using poetry, drag, and portraits.

It is, therefore, an endeavor to map the community and “to imagine that different worlds are possible”, the founder Rafiul Alom Rahman. Art director Reya Ahmed and editor-in-chief Maniza Khalid told indianexpress chose to call it a newspaper as a nod to dailies where stories, histories, and opinions are documented. “Somehow, it’s very difficult to think that a newspaper can embody queer narratives. Though it doesn’t exist in print, I really hope that I can wake up one morning, have my coffee, and open a newspaper — The Queer Muslim,” says Khalid.

In its inaugural issue, there are reflections of the “Muslim burden” captured in Pakistani-American artist Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Jr’s video series Tomorrow We Inherit the Earth, in which the grandson of former Prime Minister and President of Pakistan Zulfikar Ali Bhutto places “the queer Muslim future in a post-apocalyptic Islamic world”. There are interviews with Los Angeles-based rapper Sadeeq Ali and Philadelphia writer-activist Vannesa Taylor, who share what it is to be queer, Black and Muslim in the US, and a comic strip titled