A South African Imam who devoted his life to the promotion of homosexual rights and tolerance to LGBTQ Muslims was shot in the coastal city of Gqeberha on Saturday, police announced.
Muhin Hendricks was credited by some as the first openly gay imam in the world. In 2018, he founded the Al-Ghurbaah Foundation, a non-profit organization that provided support services For discriminated Muslims for their sexual orientation.
The organization has worked to help Muslims around the world reconcile their faith with their sexual orientation and their gender identity.
A declaration from the Southern Human Rights Committee condemned the murder. He cited images circulating on social networks in which a hooded man came out of a van and fired gunshots through the windows of a car in a residential area before accelerating. The video was not checked by the New York Times.
The Deputy Minister of Justice of South Africa, Andries Nel, said that it was too early to say if the shooting was a crime of hatred, but he said that the police were “hot in the heels of the suspects “.
Hendricks was faced with fierce criticism in the country, especially on social networks.
In an interview on Monday with Newzroom Afrika, a South African digital channelMr. Nel said that there are debates among Muslims in South Africa on the rights of homosexuals, these debates recognize the primacy of the country’s constitutional protections.
“They were unambiguous to reaffirm the values of our Constitution, the values of tolerance of plurality and human respect,” he said.
Mr. Hendricks was an eminent supporter of homosexuals in South Africa, who in 1998 became the first country in Africa to decriminalize homosexuality, when the high court of Johannesburg judged that the existing sodomy laws violated the post- apartheid.
A survey in 2021 by the AfroBarometer Research Network South Africa noted As the second most tolerant country on the continent with regard to homosexual relations, after the island nation of Cabo Verde.
The International Lesbian Association, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersexics said it was “deeply shocked” by murder. Mr. Hendricks had supervised In South Africa and in the world, while they were trying to reconcile their faith and their lives and was “testimony to the healing that solidarity through the communities can bring,” said Julia Ehrt, executive director of the group, in a press release.
South Africa is considered an aberrant value on the continent for its approach to homosexual rights. More than 30 of the 54 African countries criminalize same-sex couples and, in recent years, at least six countries, including Ghana and Uganda, have taken measures towards more severe anti-gay laws.
