Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé

Dr. Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé (December 19, 1952 - February 9, 2016), formerly known as Elias Frajajé-Jones, was a queer theologian, AIDS activist, scholar, spiritual leader, academic and professor. In 2023 a festschrift entitled Dr. Ibrahim Abdurrahman Farajajé: A Legacy of Afrocentric, Decolonial, In-the-Life Theology and Bisexual Intersexional Philosophical Thought and Practice was published, edited by Herakhuti Sharif Williams.
Farajajé was raised in Berkeley, California in an ethnically and religiously diverse environment. His parents were both education activists. He was one of the first black male students at Vassar College where he received a bachelor’s degree in religion in 1972. He went on to teach at Howard University School of Divinity in 1986. In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Farajajé was an ordained priest in the Santería religion. In 1995 he started as a faculty member at Starr King School for the Ministry. At Starr King, Farajajé was a provost and professor of cultural studies and Islamic studies until his death in 2016.
Early life
Farajajé grew up in a progressive, racially, and economically mixed neighborhood. His extended and immediate family was said to be religiously and ethnically mixed. He credits his parents for his knowledge on the importance of advocacy and social justice. Growing up, Farajajé had tutors for school to stay ahead and a second language tutor and learnt many languages like Spanish and French during this time. He is the first of his biological and adopted siblings. He credits his upbringing for his educational excellency, leadership skills, public speaking skills and his sense of social responsibility.
Farajajé credits his high school education for exposing him to queerness in a positive light. He states in an interview with LGBTQ Religious Archives Network that he did not have a background of hearing anti-LGBTQ preachings when he started his path of becoming a religious scholar. He states that his mindset on queerness, sexuality, and gender was neutral which he credits to the fact that he was surrounded by queerness and learning about these issues in a neutral way. In Washington, D.C., in the 1980s, Farajajé was one of the few religious scholars to be an HIV/AIDS advocate. As an advocate for the queer community, Farajajé was one of the first black theologians that self-identified as queer. Farajajé was against the essentialist way of looking at gender and race. He preferred a more fluid approach to conceptualizing identity. From the beginning of his career, Farajajé was a scholar of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, queerness, and queer theology. He developed a program at Howard University that taught African American religious leaders on how to respond to the HIV/AIDS crisis. In the class, his students would be trained on how to be HIV test counselors, and he had people affected by HIV/AIDS speak to his students. Farajajé organized the healing service in Washington D.C. with different churches and HIV agency groups coming together for this service. This performance was based on the story of Antigone. The performance was about a woman who had to negotiate with a pastor so she could bury her son who was a victim of HIV. At the end of the performance/service there was a fake funeral in which the audience was asked to view the “body” which turned out to be a mirror, so when the audience members approached the casket they saw themselves, communicating that the victims of HIV/AIDS could be anyone.<ref name=":3"/> The book studies the religious and theological roots of Afrocentrism. It touches on the African American reinterpretations of Christianity. The context behind the book was the separation of African American communities in the 19th and 20th century.
Politically, Farajajé described himself as an anarchist.<ref name=":2" /> In D.C he was very active in the “ACT UP” group and was arrested for civil disobedience around HIV activism. He was also on a chair of political action committee for the D.C Black Queer Coalition, where he made TV appearances.
Early works
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* "Other Voices" (1987)
* "Conviction: A Healing Stream.” (1988)
* African Creative Expressions (1991)
* In Search of Zion: Spiritual Significance of Africa in Black Religious Movements (1990)
* "Breaking Silence: an in-the-life theology"<ref name=":1" /> (Published in Black Theology: A Documentary History Vol 2 1980-1992) (1992)
* Piercing analysis/ or In-to-body Travel/ or What is All that Piercing Stuff?” (1995)

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