A controversial British cleric who toured Orlando in March and preaches that “death is the sentence” for homosexual acts is scheduled to speak in Sydney throughout June.
Farrokh Sekaleshfar, a British-born doctor and senior Shia Muslim scholar, travelled to Orlando two months ago to give a lecture about homosexuality in Islamic law.
He said in a 2013 lecture in Michigan on the same subject that “death is the sentence for homosexual acts” in Islam and this was “nothing to be embarrassed about”.
Sekaleshfar framed the death sentence as an act of compassion. “You have to be happy for that person,” he said. “We believe in an afterlife, we believe in an eternal life ... and with this sentence you will be forgiven and you won’t be accountable in the hereafter.”
He is scheduled to speak every evening throughout Ramadan, the Islamic holy month, at the Imam Husain Islamic Centre in Earlwood, in Sydney’s south-west.
Sekaleshfar directed Guardian Australia to a statement on his Facebook page expressing “utmost, sincere condolences to the friends and families of those massacred” in Orlando on Sunday morning.
“The killing of innocent life is never justified by religion. I reflect on the following verse in relation to those who kill innocent life, 5:32 reads ‘it is as if he had slain mankind entirely’”.
Fifty people were killed and another 53 injured when security contractor Omar Mateen opened fire at a gay club in the city. The 29-year-old had been previously investigated by the FBI over possible links to Islamic extremists.
Sekaleshfar said the point of his sermons was not that “any Tom, Dick and Harry go and exercise the sentence”, adding that it could only be carried out by the state in a country where “the majority of people want Islamic law to be exercised”.
“The death sentence isn’t against homosexuals, it’s about people who, in an Islamic country, go in public and commit the act of anal copulation,” he said. “It’s only relevant when you do that act in public.”
He did not believe his audience would be incited to commit violence based on such preaching.
“I may exercise precautions from now on but I doubt that will happen,” he said.
“Theoretically you always have in the back of your mind that people may abuse [my lectures]. I just have to be extra attentive to this notion.”
There is no suggestion that Mateen attended Sekaleshfar’s lectures, or was influenced by his preaching. The 29-year-old is being investigated for links to Islamic State, which consider Shia Muslims such as Sekaleshfar to be heretics.
Sekaleshfar was unclear on whether he would continue to deliver lectures – which focus on a range of other topics – while in Sydney.
“Now I’m here, they’ve given a visa and I don’t want to abuse it,” he said, adding that if the Islamic centre asked him to desist from speaking he would.
The Imam Husain Islamic Centre has been contacted for comment.