CAIRO: Al-Azhar rejects “malicious attempts” to invade Muslim countries with gay marriage, which is “a crime against humanity, a flagrant violation of human rights and a distortion of humans’ freedoms;” the most prestigious religious institution in the Islamic world said in a statement Thursday.
“Homosexuality and moral decline are not a victory for human rights, rather, they contradict with the God Almighty’s honoring and favoring of [humans] over all his creation; it is a degeneration of humanity into the bottom of vice,” Al-Azhar said.
“Powerful international organizations” use all means, including media, conferences, and popular figures to promote homosexuality and legalize it in an “immoral campaign” that aims to destroy humanitarian values and ethics shared by all religions and “consistent with human instincts,” Al-Azhar added.
Both Muslims and Christians in Egypt largely oppose homosexuality; only a few people announced their support to gay marriage on social media after the U.S. legalized it.
Among famed celebrities, only Khaled Abol Naga changed his Facebook profile picture to a rainbow flag ‘widely used as a symbol of gay pride,’ triggering condemnation on talk shows and both criticism and praise on social media. On her Twitter account, TV presenter Mona Iraqi also expressed her support to gay marriage, although she had been slammed earlier this year for reporting a public bathhouse and storming it with cameras over allegation of gay prostitution.
Established in 970, Al-Azhar emphasized that marriage is only between a man and a woman, in accordance with specific guidelines, and that all relationships outside of wedlock are prohibited to “protect humanity from sliding into vice, decadence and social and familial disintegration.”
Bishop Rafael of Egypt’s Coptic Church said homosexuals are in need of “psychological treatment,” and that they can be “cured by the grace of God,” Youm7 reported June 27.
Although there is no specific law that criminalizes homosexuality, gay rights activists say there is a campaign against the LGBT community in Egypt, as homosexuals, mostly men are charged with “debauchery.”