An Islamic scholar who spoke earlier this year at an Orlando mosque has previously said gay people should be killed according to Islamic law “out of compassion.”
“Death is the sentence,” Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar said at a speech at the Husseini Islamic Center in Orlando in 2013. “We know. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about this. Death is the sentence.”
“We have to have that compassion for people,” he continued. “With homosexuals, it’s the same. Out of compassion, let’s get rid of them now.”
Mr. Sekaleshfar spoke again at the Islamic center in April of this year. Orlando citizens at the time said he should not have been invited, given his previous comments on homosexuality.
“It’s appalling. In fact, it’s inciting violence against gays, and I find that reprehensible,” Alan Kornman, an Orlando resident, told Channel 9 News at the time.
The center defended the invitation on free-speech grounds.
The talk came just months before the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, in which a man who swore allegiance to the Islamic State opened fire at a gay nightclub in Orlando, killing 50 and maiming 53 more.
• Bradford Richardson can be reached at brichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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