Nur Warsame
Australian gay imam (born 1984)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nur Muhammad 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, after a suicide attempt that made him "much stronger",[5] in 2010.[6] As of 2018, he was the only openly gay imam in the country.[7]
He studied partly at Al-Azhar University,[8] and served as an imam at several mosques in Australia before he came out as gay.[9] He has gone on Hajj 6 times.[10]
Since 2014, he has run the underground LGBT support group Marhaba ('welcome' in Arabic)[3][11] 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.[6][12] That year, he spoke at the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.[13]