Nur Warsame
Australian imam
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nur Warsame (Arabic: نور وارسام;[1] born c. 1984[2]) is a gay imam from Australia. He is a hafiz, i.e. one who has memorised the Quran; he is the second Victorian imam to earn this title.[3]
Warsame was born in Somalia[4] and lived in Egypt and Canada as a child. He moved to Melbourne in Australia as a high school student, and has been an imam since 2003.[3]
Previously married to a woman and with one daughter,[4] Warsame came out as Australia's first gay imam in 2010,[5] As of 2018, he was the only openly gay imam in the country.[6]
He studied partly at Al-Azhar University.[7] He served as an imam at several mosques in Australia before he came out as gay.[8]
Since 2014, he has run the underground LGBT support group Marhaba ('welcome' in Arabic)[3][9] and says he was ostracised by the Muslim community because of his sexual orientation, and intended to open Australia's first mosque which was open to the LGBT community.[5][10] That year, he spoke at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.[11]