In a modest room on an industrial estate in the Cape Town suburb of Wynberg, Safia Khan, a 32-year-old university lecturer, takes a seat with her partner Ty. It’s their second visit to the Masjidul Ghurbaah – a mosque belonging to the Al-Ghurbaah Foundation, a non-profit that provides support services to Muslims who are marginalised based on sexual orientation, gender identity and belief.
“The imam was so nice,” says Khan. “He asked what Ty’s pronouns were.” Khan was born into the Muslim faith, while Ty – who identifies as non-binary – is a recent convert.
The pansexual couple are among a dozen or so people who have gathered to listen to Muhsin Hendricks, often called “the world’s first openly gay imam”. There are more women than men and no gender segregation. After giving a talk about gratitude, Hendricks leads communal prayers.
Hendricks has provided a queer safe space for prayers, counselling and Muslim marriage ceremonies since 1998, a defiant role that saw him exiled from the faith by local Islamic leaders in 2007. Undeterred, he continued to spread the message that being gay and Muslim are not incompatible, and is now the subject of a new documentary film, The Radical, which has its European premiere in Berlin this weekend.
Hendricks, 55, sets a calm tone at Masjidul Ghurbaah, which has about 20 regular worshippers, and up to 80 occasional visitors. Some are delighted to be photographed and chat about being openly queer; others come to the unsignposted mosque in secret.
Hendricks says he was “chosen by the people, for the people” in 1998 when he started hosting meetings in his home city for LGBTQ+ Muslims, who treated him like their community imam. “I opened my garage, put a carpet down and invited people to have tea and talk,” he says.
An imam, he argues, does not need a stamp of authority to accept this role. “Islam is not as hierarchical as Christianity,” he says. “An imam basically means a leader.”
In 2011 Hendricks bolstered his role as an imam figure by setting up a mosque space after a friend endured a local sermon condemning homosexuality. “I said, ‘Maybe it’s time we started our own space, so people can pray without being judged.’”
Same-sex marriage has been legally recognised since 2006 in South Africa, which is more accepting of homosexuality than many African countries. According to Masjidul Ghurbaah visitors such as Khan, though, homophobia is still common in the city’s mosques.
“Having a space where you can experience your culture and religion without severe homophobia is very appealing,” says Khan. “You have a spiritual space where you feel, ‘I’m at home.’”
Hendricks, who has worked as an Arabic language teacher and fashion designer, was 29 when he came out to his mother. Born into a Muslim family, he married a woman, had children, then divorced before revealing his sexuality to his family, eight years after his father died.
According to Hendricks, his mother collapsed at the news before saying: “My religion doesn’t accept this”.
After this initial shock Hendricks persuaded his mother to spend 10 days living with him and his then partner. She remained silent for the 10 days, then finally conceded that her son’s relationship was no different from a straight marriage. From then until his mother’s death, Hendricks says, they had a “beautiful” connection.
Hendricks’ relationship with Cape Town’s wider Muslim community is less harmonious. He says that in 2007, after he appeared in the Parvez Sharma documentary A Jihad For Love, the local Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) decreed that Hendricks was “out of the fold of Islam”. Last summer the MJC declared a fresh fatwa on gay lifestyles.
“We just carried on,” says Hendricks, speaking of the 2007 order. He was advised to hire bodyguards but never feared attacks. “Sometimes I’d go into another mosque and people would recognise me,” he says. “Some would greet me and some distanced themselves.”
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Of the MJC’s attempts to exile him, he adds: “It’s a cop-out. Instead of coming to sit with me and saying, ‘Let’s look at your research and see if it’s plausible, maybe we can learn something’, it’s easier to say, ‘It’s out of the fold of Islam.’”
Hendricks is referring to his interpretation of the Qur’an. He says there’s nothing in the text that should be used as blanket condemnation of homosexuality. Those who disagree have attacked him online but he brushes off social media criticism, saying: “Most of the time it’s just diatribes.”
He uses social media more positively, releasing TikTok videos – all sparkly filters, exaggerated looks to camera and the occasional song – with messages about love. He started making them to connect with people during the Covid pandemic, encouraged by his daughter. “I came to realise I was so engrossed in my activism, the fun side of me was lost.”
Hendricks isn’t a chest-beating activist, joking that he is “care-frontational, not confrontational”. In 2019 he went to Kenya to promote LGBTQ+ rights ahead of the country’s high court upholding anti-homosexuality laws .
His current activism projects include creating online videos in Urdu and Hindi discussing LGBTQ+ Muslims. He’s also preparing three-month multifaith training courses with the Global Interfaith Network, which will take place soon in Kenya and Nigeria.
When the courses are completed, Hendricks expects to travel to areas including Kenyan city Mombasa to take the initial classes in person. He’ll tutor people who have reached out to local LGBTQ+ groups such as Pema Kenya about reconciling their faiths with their sexuality.
He sees The Radical, directed by Cape Town-based Richard Gregory, as part of this activism. Khan was inspired to visit Hendricks’s mosque after learning about the film, and there are discussions about further screenings with LGBTQ+ organisations abroad.
Bolstered by this exposure, Hendricks is cautiously optimistic about the future for queer Muslims in South Africa, despite being aware that he is a lone figure. He talks to the few other gay imams around the world, such as Australia’s Nur Warsame and US-based Daayiee Abdullah, but remains the only one in Africa.
“I came out when I was 29, but these days people come out when they’re 16,” he says. “There are more safe spaces available and information. I’m hoping there will be more queer imams, so when I’m no longer around we can continue to exist and grow.”
The Radical will be shown at the Human Rights film festival in Berlin on October 21 and 23, and at the Africa Human Rights film festival in Andriesvale, South Africa (October 21-23).