Dr. Nas Mohamed Turned a Teenage Poem Into a World Cup Anthem
Written at 17 as a private promise to himself, "Let Your Love Shine" is now the soundtrack to his Love Is the Goal campaign at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
This is the third story in OutSmart’s coverage of Dr. Nas Mohamed’s Love Is the Goal campaign at the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Read the first and second stories in the series.
Long before Dr. Nasser ‘Nas’ Mohamed became a globally recognized LGBTQIA+ advocate, he was a child in Qatar trying to make sense of feelings he had never seen reflected in the world around him.
At 17, he says, he found himself confronting a truth he could neither explain nor ignore. “I witnessed my innocence and my soul, and I witnessed all the narrative around me that told me, ‘You cannot exist,’” Mohamed recalls.
Unable to openly express what he was experiencing, he turned to writing. “I just wrote that poem as a promise to myself to protect this innocence and not let it go away.” That poem would remain with him for years. Eventually, he had it tattooed on his body. Today, it serves as the foundation for “Let Your Love Shine,” a song he released as part of his Love Is the Goal World Cup campaign.
The poem’s central line remains as powerful now as it was when he first wrote it. “I pleased others with a life that led to my demise. Now it’s time for others to see me reborn victorious,” he recites, translating the lines into English.
For Mohamed, transforming those words into music felt like a way of reconnecting with the younger version of himself who first wrote them. “I wanted to go back to the moment where my own brain as a kid stopped me,” he admits.
The song’s spiritual dimensions are equally important. “I hummed it the way I used to hum holy text in Arabic when I memorized the Quran as a kid,” he remembers. “I hummed it in a way that is, to me, very spiritual.”
Mohamed is careful to emphasize that the song is not simply about sexuality. “What this is about, at the end of the day, is really not about sex and not about what you do with your body,” he says. “It’s about your soul.”
That distinction has shaped much of his advocacy work. “Your soul can be taken away when it’s witnessed,” he explains. “This is why I’m doing this in a way that’s very spiritual. People’s lives are being taken away. This is not a trivial topic. It’s very serious.”
The song also reflects Mohamed’s evolving identity as both a queer Arab and an American. “The second half, the gospel portion, is in there to bring it home here in America, because I’m American now, and I’m part of the fabric of this society,” he states.
For Mohamed, “Let Your Love Shine” is more than a song. It is the fulfillment of a promise made by a teenager who refused to let his truth disappear.
Listen to “Let Your Love Shine,” featuring Debby Holiday and Dr. Nas, written by Dr. Nas Mohamed and Simon Tam, with executive co-producer Leo Frappier, now available on Spotify, iTunes, and Apple Music.
