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Once again, I was presented with an ultimatum. It was either I joined Da ΚΏ wah or I was out of the house and on my own. This time, I chose to do the missionary work and toured Swaziland and Namibia before coming back home, only to find out that word had gotten out about me being gay. I faced segregation by the Muslim community as well. Nobody would sit or stand next to me in the Mosque. It affected me so much that I almost slipped into depression. homosexuality or that I would try to sexually abuse the boys. Besides the disrespect, it was heart-breaking to think that my own family would see me in such a way. I moved back into the granny cottage, and my cousins still wanted nothing to do with me. Everyone else lived in the main house while I was alone in the cottage. I would only go into the main house during lunch and breakfast. I had dinners alone. This segregation was because my family believed that I would somehow influence them with my
CAM: Going back to discrimination, it's almost as if you cannot practice Islam if you're not heterosexual. From your experience, can one still be who they are and practice their religion? that everyone is loved by Allah, and that includes me. Three years later, my family resurfaced, unreformed, and passing religious judgment on my inevitable damnation. arrived, I received a message from my family rejecting me, telling me that I was dead to them and that I would die of HIV/AIDS. Being all alone, Cape Town offered me the new start that I needed, and I even started practicing Islam again. I came to understand Later on, I met a family friend who encouraged me to be myself. I decided to move to Cape Town for a fresh start, at that point I had stopped practicing my religion. When I
Suhail: Yes, there's no separation of the two.
June 2023 | Collective Action Magazine
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