January 15, 2011 | Sex & Society

Hotel asked to cancel Muslim conference

OutRage!, a British gay rights group, is demanding that The Ibis Hotel in Earls Court, London, cancel a Muslim conference which includes speakers who have called for gays to be killed.

Speakers at the event include Shaykh Abdullah Hakim Quick, who was recorded saying that the Islamic position on homosexuality is “death” and that Muslims will have to do more than “call names” to counter it. Abdur-Raheem Green has also been invited to speak; he is accused of writing that both homosexuality and adultery should be punished by “a slow and painful death by stoning.”

Were the position reversed, says OutRage leader Peter Tatchell, and were members of a conference calling for the death of Muslims, the event would have been canceled immediately. 

”The Ibis Hotel group should not facilitate speakers who promote homophobic discrimination and violence. They should cancel this booking," he said. “Neither the government nor the police would allow an event with speakers who had called for the killing of Muslims to ‘keep society pure.’ "

He is calling on gays and lesbians to boycott Ibis hotels.

Although the Islamic Education and Research Academy, the organization behind the conference, refused to comment, it responded to similar accusations back in 2009 . It claimed quotes painting any of its supporters as extremists were taken out of context.  “Hence the accusations that our speakers are ‘radical’ or ‘extremist’ are completely baseless and absurd, for this would equate to condemning the entire corpus of Islamic scholarly tradition as such,” they said at the time.

The vast majority of Muslims do not harbour hatred towards homosexuals, though it sure sounds like there are a couple in this group. But even if that's the case, how far do gay people want to go to muzzle hateful opinions?

Hotel chain asked to cancel conference with ‘anti-gay hate preachers’ [Pink News]