by Julie Bindel, Daily Mail
Across most of the Muslim world, being gay is not a picnic. In Afghanistan, the Taliban imposes the death penalty on anyone convicted of same-sex relations, including public stonings.
Saudi Arabia and Iran have also executed large numbers of gay people in recent years, including by public stoning – while several other countries, among them tourist favourites such as Egypt, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, all keep the death penalty for homosexuality on their statute books.
When Isis controlled parts of Iraq and Syria during the 2010s, the authorities murdered gay men by throwing them off tall buildings. In Gaza, today, Hamas tortures and executes gay people for ‘moral violations’. (Yet Israel, anathema to many Left-wingers, hosts some of the largest and safest gay pride parades in the world.)
Predictably, many Muslims who now live in Europe remain implacably opposed to homosexuality. A 2016 poll of British Muslims found 52 per cent believed it should be illegal in Britain.
Such prejudices can spiral into murder. In 2022, two people were killed and 21 wounded in a mass shooting at a Pride event in Oslo, Norway, by an Isis terrorist screaming ‘Allahu akbar’.
And at the weekend, of course, a radical Islamist named Abdul Ballout savagely attacked Berlin’s Pride parade by mowing down a crowd in his van before getting out and waving a blade, thought to be a machete. One woman was killed and at least 29 others were injured.
Ballout, who was killed on Sunday following a police manhunt, was a self-described Islamist who tried to join the fake caliphate of Isis. Local authorities have been at pains to call him a ‘German citizen’, though his background is Lebanese.
Although there are millions of tolerant, decent Muslims around the world, radical Islam abhors homosexuality and, in its extreme moments, wants to see gays killed.