#gay imam

[lgbtqiamuslimpedia]

Muhsin Hendricks

Birth : Unknown

Ethnicity : South Asian, African

Alumni : University of Islamic Studies, Karachi (1990-1994)

Gender : Cisgender man

Sexuality : Homosexual

Occupation : Imam, scholar, human rights activist, interfaith activist

Muhsin Hendricks is an Islamic scholar, researcher & human rights activist.He is called world's first Gay Imam. He has done independent research on Islam and sexual diversity, an area that does not often get explored in the Muslim/Islamic world. He has also delivered many papers and facilitated workshops on Islam and Sexual Diversity to many organizations in South Africa, USA and Europe. Muhsin is founder of The Inner Circle/Al-fitrah Foundation, the largest organization for LGBTQI+ Muslims in Africa & CCI Network, a network of inclusive muslims, faith leaders & activist. He founded the first gender-affirming, queer-friendly mosque in South Africa (the mosque is affiliated with organization Al-fitrah Foundation).

[yourdailyqueer]

Imam Siddique

Gender: Male

Sexuality: Gay

DOB: Born 1962

Ethnicity: Indian

Occupation: Reality star, fashion designer, stylist

[cowboyhorsegirl]

i think it's really so cool that riz ahmed played a canonically and visibly gay character i think that's so rad :)

[infiernolunar]

Homos, please, for the love of God almighty above in the High Heavens where the cherubs constantly sing, stop cheering for Muslims, STOP!

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Bari Weiss

Published: Apr 22, 2024

For a second, imagine that black students at Columbia were taunted: Go back to Africa. Or imagine that a gay student was surrounded by homophobic protesters and hit with a stick at Yale University. Or imagine if a campus imam told Muslim students that they ought to head home for Ramadan because campus public safety could not guarantee their security.

There would be relentless fury from our media and condemnation from our politicians.

Just remember the righteous—and rightful—outrage over the white supremacist “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, where neo-Nazis chanted “The Jews will not replace us.” 

This weekend at Columbia and Yale, student demonstrators did all of the above—only it was directed at Jews. They told Columbia students to “go back to Poland.” A Jewish woman at Yale was assaulted with a Palestinian flag. And an Orthodox rabbi at Columbia told students to go home for their safety.

Demonstrators on these campuses shouted more chic versions of “Jews will not replace us.” At Columbia they screamed: “Say it loud and say it clear, we don’t want no Zionists here.” At Yale they blasted bad rap with the following lyrics: 

Fuck Israel, Israel a bitch / Bitch we out here mobbin’ on some Palestine shit / Free Palestine bitch, Israel gon’ die bitch / Nigga it’s they land why you out here tryna rob it / Bullshit prophets, y’all just want the profit

These campus activists are not simply “pro-Palestine” protesters. They are people who are openly celebrating Hamas and physically intimidating identifiably Jewish students who came near. We are publishing the accounts of two of those students—Sahar Tartak and Jonathan Lederer—today.

Students—all of us—have a right to protest. We have a right to protest for dumb causes and horrible causes. At The Free Press, we will always defend that right. (See here and here, for example.)

It is not, however, a First Amendment right to physically attack another person. It is not a First Amendment right to detain another person as part of your protest. And while Americans are constitutionally protected when they say vile things, like wishing upon Jews a thousand October 7s, we are certainly free to criticize those who say them. We are also free to condemn institutions dedicated to the pursuit of truth who have abandoned that mission, and who stand by and do nothing meaningful to stop scenes like the ones of the past 48 hours.

The students who support terror have given in to madness. Refusing to condemn them is madness.

There are courageous students who see that madness clearly. Please read these essays by Jonathan Lederer and Sahar Tartak.

--

[commonsensecommentary]

“For a second, imagine that black students at Columbia were taunted: Go back to Africa,” [Bari Weiss] wrote Sunday. “Or imagine that a gay student was [sic] surrounded by homophobic protesters and hit with a stick at Yale University. Or imagine if a campus imam told Muslim students that they ought to head home for Ramadan because campus public safety could not guarantee their security.”

Weiss accurately added: “There would be relentless fury from our media and condemnation from our politicians.”

But since the targets of this growing mayhem are mere Jews, the responses are crickets, handwringing, and “context.”

[beardedmrbean]

STORY: Members of Ghana's LGBT community say they are living in more fear than ever.

They're waiting to see whether the West African country's president will sign into law a bill that would further restrict their rights.

Gay sex is already punishable by up to three years in prison.

The new law would also impose a prison sentence of up to five years for the promotion or support of LGBT rights, making it one of the harshest of its kind in Africa.

Kwame already bears the scars of Ghana's widespread intolerance of homosexuality.

In 2021, the 30-year-old was attacked by neighbors over his sexuality which left him partially blind.

"You can understand how this bill is just going to be - this is just the beginning."

Kwame and his partner, who live apart for safety reasons, believe their best option would be to leave Ghana before the law comes into effect.

"To be honest, for me, I don't think there is any future in this Ghana, when it comes to this thing. There is no future for you. Because I think they just want to end everything."

Homophobia is rife in culturally conservative Ghana.

Hostility and attacks are commonplace, although few such incidents make it to the courts.

In February, parliament unanimously passed the bill but President Nana Akufo-Addo has delayed signing it - with his office citing two impending Supreme Court challenges.

Ghana is also in the grip of an economic crisis and its finance ministry has warned that the bill could jeopardize $3.8 billion of World Bank funding and derail a $3 billion International Monetary Fund loan package.

But Sheikh Armiyawo Shaibu, spokesperson for Ghana's Chief Imam, said it would be wrong for the West to restrict aid on behalf of LGBT people.

"So Islam sees it as, I mean, treats it as abominable, it's reprehensible, it's detestable, it's prohibited, in our word it's haram, it's prohibited, and something that is sinful, among all other sexual immoralities that one can practise to attract the wrath of God."

On Thursday, the High Court in Accra is due to rule on a lawmaker's petition to compel Akufo-Addo to act on the law within seven days.

Human Rights Watch has urged Akufo-Addo to veto the law and warned it could lead to "further gratuitous violence against LGBT people and their allies"

The uncertainty over what happens next is weighing on those who worry about the law's broader social impact.

Emmanuel Owusu-Bonsu is an LGBT rights activist.

"It's almost like everybody in Ghana is about to be given a gun, that's how I see it, that everybody in Ghana is about to be given a gun, and can point it at anyone and just say, 'Gay, gay, gay, gay, gay,' and they'll be taking you away. So it's very scary."

Article Link

[lgbtqiamuslimpedia]

Gender Me: Homofili og Islam (2008)

Director - Nefise Özkal Lorentzen

Writer - Nefise Özkal Lorentzen

Producer - Jorgen Lorentzen

Cinematography - Nefise Özkal,Nils Petter Lotherington,Cengiz Tanc

Animation - Morten Haslerud, Simon M. Valentine

Editor - Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas

Sound Design - Håkon Lammetun

Cast - Mansour Saberi,Emre,Kerem, Daayiee Abdullah,Tigran,Huseyin,Kaltham, etc

Duration - 51 minutes

Languages - Turkish,Norwegian,Arabic

Year of release - 16 January, 2008

Gender Me: Homosexuality & Islam (also known as,Gender Me: Homofili og Islam ) is a documentary film directed by Turkish Norwegian filmmaker Nefise Özkal.The film was shot in Turkey and Norway.Gender Me is a part of ''A Trilogy On Gender And Islam (BLU-RAY)''

Gender Me featured an openly Gay Imam Daayiee Abdullah for turkish audiences.

Synopsis

Gender Me: Homosexuality and Islam is a road movie about a gay muslim's personal voyage into the world of full of taboos. Mansour is the central character of this film.Mansour is a Iranian gay refugee; He has been living in Oslo for 18 years.Now he wants to travel back to Istanbul, where he lived 2 years before he was granted asylum in Norway.He searches the question of faith and gender in Islam & he wants to collect the unusual stories of gay muslims.As the film unrolls, Mansour meets a range of complex individuals (who identifies them as gay & muslim).Therefore, the film language uses an experimental style,which dramatizes the dreams of the informants or the verses of Koran.It shows the ambiguity of Mansour & his inner conflict.

The film interviewed Imam Daayiee Abdullah, an openly LGBTQ+ Imam, who interprets the Koran through a different point of view;Throughout his youth,Mansour suffered from being and feeling different.He even thought that he was born with bad luck because he is a gay. Even though he is a well-established young man living in Oslo,Norway.But he cannot get rid of his former angst and shame.In the Koran there is a story that defines Islam as a religion of change, tolerance and love. It is exactly because of this text that Mansour's road movie first starts.Where should he travel to find the real Islam that he has been away from for many years? He finds many names, many web-addresses & many intellectuals who dare to interpret the Koran from a gender perspective.He has heard a lot about bitterness! In other terms, Mansour is a dream-catcher.He is like Graham in Sex, Lies and Videotapes.He wants to collect histories of other queers with an Islamic background.

[nakibistan]

LGBTQIA+ Imams, Clerics & Faith leaders:

Classical Imam An-Nawabi

South Africa & World's first Openly Gay Imam Muhsin Hendricks

Algerian-French Imam Ludovic Mohamed Zahed opened an Unity Mosque in Paris

Canada's First Openly Gay Imam El-Farouk Khaki

America's First Non-binary Imama Amina Wadud

US's First Openly Gay Imam Daaiyee Abdullah

US's First Trans Male Imam Tynan Power

US's first Trans Woman Imama Mahdia Lynn

Unity Mosque's founder & Imam Frank Parmir

Queer Imam/Imama Trina P. Jackson

Black Non-binary, Queer Imam Taylor Amari Little

Tamsila Tauqir from Inclusive Mosque Initiative (IMI) lead the first Inclusive Congregation in UK. She was also a leader of Safra Project, a LBTQ Muslim support group.

Pakistani Transgender Maulvi Jameela Begum/Maulvi Jameela

Bangladeshi Gay Imam Suleman

Pakistani Gay Imam Sameer

Pakistan's Khawaja Sara/Transgender Imam Muhammad Khan

Pakistan's Islamic Transgender madrasa founder Miss Rani Khan

Indonesian Transgender Madrassa's Founder Shinta Ratri lead prayers for Transgender

Italian Genderfluid, Queer Imama Sveva Basirah

Jordanian Former Gay Imam & Sheikh Khalaf Yousef

Somali-Australian Imam Nur Warsame

Iranian Queer Mullah Taha performed Same-Sex Weddings for gays - BBC News

Tanzanian-Indian Intersex,Transgender Imam & Scholar Sheikh Hussein Mustafa Parmar

German Sufi professor & Imam Rahal Eks

German's Bisexual Liberal Imama Seyran Ates

German's Openly Gay Imam Christian Awhan Hermann

➡️ See Also :

https://www.thelocal.no/20170620/norwegian-muslim-plans-liberal-mosque-in-oslo

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5263255/Imam-caught-trying-meeting-boy-15-Grindr.html

https://76crimes.com/2023/05/25/gay-muslim-leader-murdered-in-bangladesh/

https://minivannewsarchive.com/society/six-men-and-an-imam-arrested-for-homosexual-activity-956/comment-page-1

https://5pillarsuk.com/2019/05/02/controversial-mufti-abu-layth-mocks-classical-scholar-imam-an-nawawi-on-homosexuality/

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/muslim-worship-leader-raped-boy-at-mosque-2182791.html

https://www.channelionline.com/amp/madrasa-teacher-arrested-for-molesting-a-child-student/

https://www.khaama.com/mullah-imam-arrested-for-raping-child-in-ghazni-province-02516/

[menalez]

I'm assuming you're a Muslim, and I truly apologize if you're not. But how do you deal with being a lesbian and not feeling any guilt or shame or even fear! I struggle alot. Same thing with viewing Islam as a religion when there's so many sexist and patriarchal things about it, but I can't let go because this is my religion.

im not the best to ask about reconciling religious beliefs with one's sexuality because i was never religious and was always skeptical of religion overall & in my case islam specifically. but ill share my process in hopes it will help & for those of u who come from more religious backgrounds, i encourage you to share your wisdoms with anon as i know my experience is not aligned with what anon needs.

so, i came out when i was 18 and i was very much afraid. i was mostly afraid not because i thought id be going to hell, because that idea didn't make much sense to me anyways, but because i was afraid of the reality of being gay (& especially a lesbian specifically) in my country. i literally felt like a wave of heat take over me and felt this weakness i can't even explain, its like i had a really high fever or sth. i knew i would lose the love & respect of many relatives and that id never be able to actually live a decent life in my country. we are so far behind in terms of gay rights, its not something people talk about yknow and theres no kind of community or orgs for us because its illegal to "promote" it in any way which means its illegal for such an org to even exist. theres no support for us.

at that time, i did look into more liberal & progressive interpretations of islam. it did help me a bit and it made me feel like i was doing something and promoting change that will maybe ultimately help gay muslims like myself. i thought maybe it would be possible to change how muslims view homosexuality bit by bit. so i looked into those things and surrounded myself with other gay muslims and would read about the interpretations from this one gay imam and id argue all the time about how qaum lut (people of lot) were actually not punished for homosexuality, that theres no actual mention of homosexuality, and that what is actually being criticised is them committing adultery (they were married men) & rape for power. i argued they werent even gay anyways and its been misconstrued for homophobic reasons.

i did this for a few years until i realised it was fruitless & theres no changing bigots, but looking at those interpretations at least did give me some kind of peace of mind that this idea of women being inferior and gay being a sin and all the other nonsense most muslims believe is at least not believed unanimously. so... idk how helpful it is but id recommend perhaps looking into that? it was part of my process & journey and maybe it'll at least bring you comfort and a peace of mind. the way ive seen religious muslims also think of it is like, it makes no sense to make gay people and then single us out for something we did not choose nor can change and just reaffirming the fact that if god does exist, then god would love gay people too. idk. good luck tho anon & i hope someone else has better input to provide

[patrice-bergerons]

One of my favourite twitter accounts to follow is of this one Canadian gay reverend (@/revdaniel highly recommend) whether it's him posting about his day to day life with his husband and dog or eviscerating evangelicals who come at him with their queerphobia.

But I also think why don't *I* get to have the same thing, you know? Why are there no openly gay imams leading congregations that not only tolerate but embrace and celebrate queer identities? Offering readings and interpretations of the Quran that go beyond 'well you are sinning for being queer but God even loves sinners?' I haven't prayed in years but I would literally sprint to mosque if I had that. Why can't I - literally anywhere in any Muslim community??

[voidingintotheshout]

The view from my window.

If anybody needs to hear it, one of the more powerful things that I’ve allowed myself is “I know it’s a problem, but I’m not dealing with it right now.”

Hassan Minaj has a bit in one of his specials about being approached in the mosque by a white Muslim that, even as a child, he was sure was a federal agent in clumsy disguise. He later confirmed this when the “Brother” was declassified years later. I can tend to be very anxious so I got it into my head that this random dude who occasionally goes to Muslim meet ups might be a fed. The Geopolitical issues around Muslims being both victims and villains has brought out the dark side of my anxiety.

I know that it’s not good for me to try to “solve” these mysteries, and so I’m allowing myself the freedom to just acknowledge that I might have someone in my life that might be manipulating me towards their own ends, and I’m choosing to not care. I can’t prove anything and this is how people go crazy and I don’t want to go crazy. I just need to focus on my faith and I need to stop worrying about trying to “be on the right side of history.” I need to stop worrying about the fact that an Imam I respect might be both homophobic and a closet bisexual.  I need to stop worrying about  whether being a gay Muslim makes me stupid, naïve, or supporting some kind of “evil empire”.

I don’t like to mask off on here because it’s very depressing when I expose myself completely vulnerably and all of my deepest, darkest fears, and it gets like three notes. I’m not doing it for attention. It’s just annoying when I don’t get any at all if that makes any sense.

My point is that one of the more powerful things that I can do with mental health issues is what I called Blindspot Technique. It’s basically that you give yourself a percentage of objectivity that you have in a situation and your blind spot is the percentage that you need to adjust to compensate for what issue or trauma you have, and its power to distort your objectivity. Like if you’re very very sensitive to anyone saying anything negative about your body/weight, maybe you need to adjust down how sure you are that something was intended as insulting/offensive by maybe 30% or 40%. Maybe you’re having dinner with a friend who has never been a jerk to you in the past and you were at their place and they ask if you want some vegetables for dinner. If when you are in the heat of your issue, you are 60 to 70% sure that was a passive aggressive comment but you adjust it down by 30% and now you’re less than 50% sure. Probably best to let it go. Maybe in hindsight you put together the pieces that they just came back from a farmer’s market and so vegetables were on their mind and it was nothing about you. That’s the Blindspot Technique.

Anyway, related to my issue is that I need to accept that my blind spot in terms of objectivity on this is so high I can’t reasonably be able to tell what is my issue taking control and what is the objective truth. Like, a few days ago the synagogue near my house had a gay pride celebration get together. This happened a few days after my Imam told me that identifying as gay is “cursed” and tried to talk me out of identifying as gay at all because I’m asexual. I then saw that gay pride mixer at a synagogue, and I just felt this overwhelming ache. That I wish I believed in Judaism, so that I could be part of a religion that may be more persecuted, but at least is supportive of LGBT people. It just made me so frustrated and tired. 

Mostly, it made me frustrated and tired because the honest truth is that I believe in Islam with all of my heart and soul. And I have a personal relationship with Allah that means so much to me and my religious practices makes me happier and healthier and more confident to do so many things that I would’ve never been able to do and it’s frustrating that the people at the mosque will never truly know who I am. And also that many of my non-religious gay friends will never truly understand the Muslim side of me. I might never find a lot of my people and that sucks. I may be drawn towards institutions that make it impossible for me to be fully out because I have internalized homophobia. I don’t know. I just know that I don’t have the clarity to figure that out so I am going to take my Imam’s advice and not worry about it because in his words: I’m driving myself crazy trying to figure out something that I can’t figure out. I need to just put my head down and focus on the five pillars and not really worry about the rest of it. 

Thanks for reading.

Oh, and as for the brother, who might be a fed, I’m not concerned because he’s probably just a kindly pharmacist, who happens to be impossibly good-looking, blonde haired and blue-eyed, and dressed like he just came off the runway of the fashion show. He’s also incredibly successful and charming, and seems to be the exact type of person that would appeal to Muslims. I may have gender dysphoria and daddy issues but I’m not gonna let anyone make me say things that I don’t believe. If he actually started a conversation about any of that jihadist bullshit, I would tell him to go fuck himself. Hurting innocent people for your beliefs is for brutal monsters who have lost their humanity. 

[iamdeltas]

me before last Friday: Honestly The Owl House is a good show but I think it's a little overpraised. People act like it's the greatest show ever created and it just isn't and it's got plenty of its own flaws.

me after having to listen to the local imam's extremely homophobic khutbah last Friday about the Dangers of Pride Month and The Presence of *GASP* Gay Characters In Our Precious Kids' Shows: The Owl House is the greatest show ever actually. The best show EVER created. Specifically because it would give this imam a fucking aneurysm.