There are Muslim men who say things like “only Muslims should be able to comment on sexual assault in the Muslim community” WHILE NOT BEING WOMEN. You’re seriously not registering that you’re asking people of an outside demographic to stop, while being part of an outside demographic? You don’t get to choose our allies for us. Sure, I’d probably tell Ashton and McKenzie to shut it but that’s because I get to choose my allies to save your ass out of a courtesy to you that I don’t owe, and you don’t get to choose them for me.

When Muslims are anti-LBGT, the non-Muslim LGBT community gets to say things unless LGBT Muslims silence them. Straight, cisgender Muslims don’t get to make that decision.

When Muslims are anti-black, black non-Muslims can object and it’s only for BLACK MUSLIMS to tell them to stop. Non-black Muslims don’t get a say in who is or isn’t able to check our anti-blackness.

When Muslims are sexist or gender essentialist ONLY MUSLIM WOMEN AND NB MUSLIMS decide that non-Muslims can’t comment. Muslim men do not. You are looking for a way to dodge accountability so that you don’t have to hear about it. It’s the new respectability politics.

Severing a population from its allies and support network is abuse. It is also (again) a gross misunderstanding of intersectionality, by privileging one identity (in this case the Muslimness of victims) over another (the femaleness of victims), which is the only mindset that can birth such an obnoxious maxim as “only Muslims can comment on sexual assault” while not being a woman. Here’s a newsflash brown men: your little world of oppression is neither all-encompassing nor the only one that exists.