A controversial British cleric who toured Orlando in March and preaches that “death is the sentence” for homosexual acts is scheduled to speak in Sydney throughout June.
Farrokh Sekaleshfar, a British-born doctor and senior Shia Muslim scholar, travelled to Orlando two months ago to give a lecture about homosexuality in Islamic law.
He said in a 2013 lecture in Michigan on the same subject that “death is the sentence for homosexual acts” in Islam and this was “nothing to be embarrassed about”.
Sekaleshfar framed the death sentence as an act of compassion. “You have to be happy for that person,” he said. “We believe in an afterlife, we believe in an eternal life … and with this sentence you will be forgiven and you won’t be accountable in the hereafter.”
He is scheduled to speak every evening throughout Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, at the Imam Husain Islamic Centre in Earlwood, in Sydney’s south-west. [The Guardian] Read more
