Universities cancel homophobic cleric’s visit

Universities in the United Kingdom have been forced to cancel a visit by a homophobic Muslim cleric after it emerged that he had preached that gay people were “worse than animals”, writes Miranda Prynne for The Telegraph.

Mufti Ismail Menk was invited to speak at six respected institutions next week but the tour was scrapped when student unions and university officials raised concerns about his extreme anti-gay views. The Zimbabwean cleric had been planning to address students at Oxford, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Cardiff and Glasgow.

But the institutions were left red-faced after learning that Menk, who studied in Saudi Arabia where same-sex acts are punishable by death, had been recorded saying: “With all due respect to the animals, [gay people] are worse than those animals.” The preacher has branded homosexual behaviour as “filthy” and “wrong” and claimed gay people take part in “acts of immorality”.
Full report on The Telegraph site