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- The United Ulama Council of SA is furious about the Tutu Foundation's criticism of a Muslim Judicial Council fatwa on LGBTQ+ and Islam.
- It backed up the Muslim Judicial Council's view that LGBTQ+ people would fall outside the fold of Islam.
- The Tutu Legacy Foundation and the Tutu IP trust suggested that they catch up with the times and change their religious practices.
The United Ulama Council of South Africa has slammed the Tutu Foundation's criticism of a Muslim Judicial Council (MJC) fatwa, reiterating the MJC's stance that Islam does not permit LGBTQ+ relationships.
They say the Tutu Legacy Foundation and Tutu IP trust crossed the red line by telling them to change their religious practices.
"This intrusion in the space of one faith by another is inexcusable," the council said in a statement on Friday.
READ | ‘God is not a Christian, nor a homophobe’ – Tutu foundations on MJC fatwa on queer Muslims
On Tuesday, the organisations of late Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu and his wife Leah said the MJC's stance was "deeply regrettable".
The organisations explained that all major religions are rooted in ancient scriptures, but said the contexts of their prescripts changed dramatically over the centuries, which has led to a clear change in religious practices.
The Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation's Niclas Kjellstrom-Matseke and Archbishop Tutu IP Trust's Dr Mamphela Ramphele said in a joint statement:
They felt society would be worse off if people had to live "unnatural closeted" versions of themselves.
The position on LGBTQ+ relationships was contained in a recent MJC statement, which also provided a follow-up clarification by its Fatwa Committee that Islam, through its primary sources of legislation, "unequivocally prohibits same-sex actions and, by extension, same-sex marriages".
"The one who contests the rulings belonging to this category has effectively rejected the categorical law of Allah. They have consequently taken themselves out of the fold of Islam," the statement read.
The MJC said Islam's primary source of legislation is the Quran, Sunnah and Ijma - or scholarly consensus - and they all "unequivocally prohibit same-sex actions and, by extension, same-sex marriage".
The council, representing Sunni Islamic scholars, drew on the Quran's telling of events in Sodom and specifically criticises men for satisfying their desires with men instead of women:
Sodom is understood to have been a city in the Dead Sea region that was destroyed, along with Gomorrah, because of the extreme social ills there, as told in religious texts.
The council feels the demand by Tutu's organisations for a change in Islamic "religious practices" is nothing short of an attempt to subvert the text of the Quran and deny Muslims public expression.
Turning to a statement from LGBTQ+ Muslims, the council said the group was trying to equate the fatwa to hate speech by equating with possible harm.
"The clamorous and increasingly aggressive 'LGBTQ' public discourse attempts to mute any voice of 'dissent' and has become increasingly intolerant of those that are critical of same-sex relationships as evidenced by both the responses to the MJC edict (fatwa)."
In 2015, Tutu's daughter Mpho married Marceline van Furth and had to leave the church because she married a woman.
