A Muslim woman shocked a London radio host when she said she believes gays should be killed because her religion mandates it. Listen to this gay Muslim man’s awesome response.
Iain Dale is a British radio host, pundit, and political blogger in London. He is also gay. This week Dale was host to a gay Muslim man who is trying to promote acceptance within the Muslim community for LGBT people.
Both men, however, were surprised when a 22-year old Muslim woman, Zainab, called into the talk show to say she thinks, based on her devout religious beliefs, that gays are an “abomination” and should be put to death.
“If people want to be gay, go ahead and be gay, don’t get my religion involved in it and try and twist my religion and say, ‘Yeah, we’re Muslim and gay,’ just say you’re gay, why do you have you say you’re Muslim and gay?,” she demanded to know.
When Dale asked her, “Why shouldn’t gay people also have religious views?,” Zainab had an immediate response, claiming that if gay people “had religious views that were sincere, they wouldn’t be gay, because they would know it’s an abomination.”
Zainab also insisted people choose to be gay, and that people are motivated to be gay because of how society promotes homosexuality. She also equated homosexuality with pedophilia, saying, “both of them are disgusting acts.”
Dale told her he found it difficult to even argue with her because she’s “been completely brainwashed,” and denounced her views as “disgusting.”
But Zainab was undeterred.
“My religion is very clear what happens to gay people,” she told Dale, who was then forced to remind her that “gay people in Iran” are “thrown off buildings and killed.”Â
“I don’t know what the exact punishment in the Quran is for gay people,” Zainab responded, “but it is the death penalty.”
Dale asked her if she thought that is acceptable, and if she believes the Quran is “right” that “all gay people should be put to death?”
“I believe the Quran is the word of God and it hasn’t been changed, like the Bible,” she said.Â
Dale told her that her parents should be ashamed of themselves for bringing her up the way they did.
He then turned the conversation over to LGBT activist Sohail Ahmed, who is Muslim and gay.
“I always feel very ambivalent when I hear these discussions,” Ahmed confessed, “because just a few years ago, I would have agreed with everything that young lady said.”
“Even though I’m gay myself, I held those exact same views. It may sound strange and it might sound disgusting, but I understand where she’s coming from,” he continued, but stated, “she’s still wrong.”
Ahmed also called her belief, that all gay people choose to be gay, “an intellectually dishonest position,” and that, thanks to science, medicine, and psychiatry we know there’s “a biological underpinning to human sexuality.” He also attributed her hate speech not to bigotry but to being “uneducated, or perhaps naive.”
Dale disagreed, saying he thinks Zainab “has been educated to believe these things.”Â
Ahmed went on to explain, hopefully with Zainab still listening on the radio, that when he was young, because of his religion, he believed he was “someone evil, someone terrible,” and that he was “somehow demonic” and “possessed by the devil.” He says he cried and prayed every night God would make him straight.
But he says it was only when he “decided to review all the scientific literature on homosexuality” that he grew to accept himself.
Do you think Ahmed did a good job denouncing and refuting Zainab’s comments? Is this what should happen when religious extremists choose to inflict their beliefs upon the general public?
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Image by Jasn via Flickr and a CC license
Hat tip: Huffington Post UK
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