Muslims worldwide celebrated Eid al-Fitr this week, the festival of breaking the fast, which marks the end of Ramadan. Oftentimes, associations with Islam and Muslim societies don’t include the black Muslim diaspora. Black Muslims make up a significant number of Muslims worldwide and a large portion of the Muslim population here in America.

Black Muslim Twitter, a subset of black Twitter, used the hashtag #BlackOutEid to illustrate that black Muslims are here and slaying.

Personally, seeing #BlackOutEid flood my timeline was heartwarming to say the least.

The murder of Alton Sterling spread the morning of Eid, along with the news of a bombing in Yemen, following weeks of headlines about tragedies in Baghdad, Gaza, Syria and more. Waking up Eid morning with a heavy heart, and feeling weighed down by an intolerable amount of powerlessness made the hashtag all the more meaningful and refreshing.

As I’ve written about before, watching way too many people who look like you and pray like you be murdered at the hands of law enforcement, armies, vigilantes, and tyrannies, on a daily basis, creates what begins to feel like a perpetual state of mourning and grief. Reading about men who could’ve been your father, or children who could have been your cousins, or women who could have been your sisters, it all begins to take its toll.

In times where being black, being Muslim, and being a woman, it can feel like you’re constantly fighting to prove your humanity. The hashtag served as a celebration of our identities. Black Muslims face Islamophobia within and outside of the black community, erasure from the Muslim community, face racism in America and globally, and live in a world that is beginning to feel increasingly hostile to inhabit.

Yet #BlackMuslimTwitter reminds us that despite it all, our existence is worth celebrating.

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