Excerpt:
A Muslim gay activist received dozens of abusive messages, including death threats, after posting a picture of himself and a fellow campaigner appearing to kiss while holding a Moroccan flag at the annual pride parade in Milan, Italy, on Saturday.
Wajahat Abbas Kazmi, the 32-year-old activist and filmmaker, has been living in Italy for the past 17 years and is the co-founder of the LGBT+ rights organisation Il Grande Colibrì. He started the “Allah Loves Equality” campaign in 2015 to highlight homophobia in Muslim-majority countries and has since been marching proudly holding the rainbow banner with the campaign’s name written across it.
“In three years I haven’t had any death threats,” Kazmi told PinkNews. He thought that the display of the Moroccan flag is what fanned homophobic flames. “The majority of people who wrote insults and threats were of Moroccan origins or from the Arab world, [and took issues] especially with the flag rather than the “Allah Loves Equality” campaign,” he said.