Muhsin Hendricks
(1970 - living) South Africa
Muslim imam
Muhsin Hendricks is Muslim and a learned Islamic scholar, but he is also homosexual - which orthodox Islam will tell you condemns him to eternal damnation. Between 1990 and 1994 he took up Arabic and Islamic studies at an institution in Karachi, Pakistan.
But the doubts about his sexual status continued to haunt him and he had to "come out". This obviously came as a shock to his wife and three children and he says his mother fainted when she heard the news. "It was very hard, but the conflict within me was so great that I had to tell them the truth."
Hendricks, who runs a support group for gay and lesbian Muslims, disagrees with this belief and says that one of the aims of his group is to create God-conscious homosexuals. Imam (religious leader), in 1998 he was a co-founder of the Al-Fitrah Foundation to help LGBT Muslims reconcile their sexuality with their faith.
"Because of my sexuality, I became withdrawn as a teenager. I spent a lot of time crying and resenting myself for who I am. I could have used that time constructively. I lost my teenage years because of that. There is a positive side to it though. If I did not have that experience, I would not have had the desire to save other teenagers from the agony of resenting themselves for who they are."
"I don't want to be provocative. But there are Muslims homosexuals who have turned their backs on Islam because they are told by the imams who preach from the pulpits that there is no place in Islam for gays and that they would all go to hell. I believe that just because I am gay does not mean I can't practise Islam or be a Muslim and I've used the Qur'an to back up this belief".
He cited the story of Sodom and Gomorra, which he says is the only chapter in the Qur'an which deals with homosexuality. Hendricks says
"It sees God destroying men because of male rape, sodomy and promiscuity. But there is a difference between sodomy and homosexuality. And the story says nothing about homosexual love".
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