This is just lovely.
The new imam at the Ground Zero mosque and cultural center believes people who are gay were probably abused as children and that people who leave Islam and preach a new religion should be jailed.
Abdallah Adhami’s remarks on homosexuals, religious freedom and other topics have brought renewed criticism of the proposed community center and mosque near the World Trade Center site, which purports to be an inclusive organization.
Adhami, in a lecture on the Web site of his nonprofit, Sakeenah, says being gay is a “painful trial” caused by past trauma.
“An enormously overwhelming percentage of people struggle with homosexual feeling because of some form of violent emotional or sexual abuse at some point in their life,” he says. “A small, tiny percentage of people are born with a natural inclination that they cannot explain. You find this in the animal kingdom at some level as well.”
He says gays must fight this “propensity.”
“When a religious leader of his standing opens up his mouth and spews this kind of ignorance and hateful statements, it does put his greater judgment into question,” said Fred Sainz, a spokesman for the Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest gay-rights group.
Adhami also notes that if a Muslim leaves the faith and “preaches their views, they’re jailed.”
“The only thing you do not have the right to do is spread this conviction, lest you, quote unquote, ‘pollute’ others,” he said when asked to give his personal opinion about apostates.
This oughta make some of the New York liberals’ heads explode. On one hand, this guy is a Muslim and is therefore absolved of all criticism at all times (were he a Catholic priest, you can bet your ass he wouldn’t get a pass). On the other hand, he’s savaging the gays, something liberals absolutely cannot tolerate.
Now they’ll have to figure out which protected class they want to align with. On top of that, it’ll be interesting to see if they beat the drums against Islam the way they do against Catholicism. My guess is they’ll dismiss this as a perversion of Islam, a benefit of the doubt never afforded to Catholics.