Suras and Tolerance: Meet Europe's Gay Imam

[unhappycamper]

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/gay-muslim-imam-brings-message-of-tolerance-to-europe-a-985863.html



Lesbian couple Sahar Mosleh (right) and Maryam Iranfar receive a blessing at their wedding ceremony performed by gay imam Ludovic Mohamed Zahed in Stockholm.

Suras and Tolerance: Meet Europe's Gay Imam
By Takis Würger
August 13, 2014 – 02:34 PM

~snip~

Coming Out

He called his parents to his room and told them that he was gay. His mother cried, his father looked at him again for the first time in a long while and said, "We knew." His mother wouldn't stop crying, prompting his father to say, "He's tried to change for the past 15 years, so we have to accept him." He then smiled at his son.

To this day, Zahed doesn't fully understand what happened to make his father came around.

Zahed studied psychology and anthropology and began working for an aid organization. At 30, he went on a business trip to Pakistan and reflected for the first time on his life and whether he was good person or not. A short time later, while in a hotel room, he sank to his knees and began praying.

He also began reading the Koran again. He didn't come across a single sura in it condeming homosexuality. What he did find, though, were plenty of homoerotic poems in classic Arab literature. He then founded HM2F, an association for gay and lesbian Muslims in France.