Wait! You mean all that ‘kill the gays’ talk wasn’t just a joke? Shocking consequences of casual homophobia

By Yanis Iqbal* 

As news broke of openly gay imam and LGBTQ rights activist Muhsin Hendricks’ assassination, Muslim conservatives worldwide found themselves in a peculiar dilemma: how to celebrate the outcome while pretending they had absolutely nothing to do with it.

“Of course, we don’t support violence,” said Sheikh Abu-No-Homo, stroking his magnificently dyed beard. “But, you know, when you spend your whole life normalizing the idea that being gay is a crime against God, sometimes, uh, people take that seriously. Oopsie-daisy.”

Indeed, for decades, casual dinner-table homophobia, chuckled remarks about divine wrath, and passive-aggressive Friday sermons have done the groundwork, lovingly cultivating a generation that hears “God will punish them” and thinks, “Right, where’s my gun?”

On social media, people scrambled to clarify that, while they personally would never pull the trigger, they also weren’t about to lose any sleep over it. “Look, I don’t condone murder,” wrote one user, “but let’s be honest, he was asking for it by existing so loudly.” Another added, “This was unfortunate, but also, why did he have to be gay and Muslim? Pick a struggle.”

At mosques across the world, imams launched into emergency PR mode, issuing statements that all followed the same formula:

1. Start with “Islam is a religion of peace.”

2. Immediately contradict that by saying Hendricks was “leading people astray.”

3. Conclude with something vague like, “May Allah guide us all” (translation: we have no real comment, but let’s all pretend we care about decorum).

Meanwhile, Auntie WhatsApp University was working overtime, forwarding voice notes full of profound theological insights like: “Beta, this is why we tell you not to watch Netflix. One day, it’s rainbows; the next, someone’s getting shot.”

Everyday Muslim homophobes who had spent years insisting “No one actually kills gay people in Islam today, stop being dramatic” found themselves furiously deleting tweets and pretending this was an isolated incident. “How dare you say our casual remarks about burning in hell had anything to do with this? That’s slander. Now, excuse me while I post another ‘funny’ video of a cleric explaining how to stone people properly.”

For those experiencing the kind of cognitive dissonance only possible through decades of indoctrination, mental gymnastics were at an all-time high. “Maybe it wasn’t a religiously motivated killing,” speculated one Islamic apologist. “Maybe he had debts. Maybe it was a lover’s quarrel. Maybe aliens did it.” Meanwhile, a local uncle squinted at the TV, muttering, “Sad… but he should have kept it private, no?”

While human rights groups, activists, and thinking people everywhere condemned the killing, many Muslims settled into a comfortable silence, the same silence that had helped make this possible in the first place. If the last few days have proven anything, it’s this: the real danger isn’t the fanatics. It’s the millions of ‘moderates’ who lay the foundation for them, brick by brick, joke by joke, sermon by sermon—until someone, somewhere, decides to follow through.

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*Studying political science at Aligarh Muslim University, India, author of the book Education in the Age of Neoliberal Dystopia