I was looking for a picture of a gay Muslim wedding cake yesterday, just to poke fun at the wingnuts, but I found this Imam instead. He wasn’t lost, of course; the rest of us were if we thought he couldn’t exist.

Imam Daayiee Abdullah.

I didn’t find a credit for the above photo, but it appears on the Imam’s own website, smaller but less cropped.

The article below is from last April. I found it through this website, which is where I first saw the wonderful photo above. It makes a nice introduction.

Imam Daayiee Abdullah arrives by bus, sweaty and lugging a green bag stuffed with a Koran, two books of poetry by Persian mystic Rumi and three Islamic prayer rugs. Tonight, he’s speaking to a room full of young, gay activists and progressives after a screening of the documentary “I Am Gay and Muslim” at the Human Rights Campaign’s bright white Equality Center in downtown Washington.

But when the openly gay imam takes the stage, he stuns even this audience.

“I think we’re at the start of a movement: a more inclusive Islam in America,” says Abdullah, who runs Washington’s Light of Reform mosque and is thought to be the only publicly gay Muslim leader in the Western Hemisphere.

“So if you have any same-sex marriages,” he says with a soft smile and a shrug, “I’m available.”

Some young Muslims in attendance mumble, “Wow!” and “Seriously?”

[…]

Read the rest of it here: Imam Daayiee Abdullah Welcomes Gay Muslims to Worship, Marry

I also found an article from the Metro Weekly from 2006, which gives more insight into the Imam’s personal and spiritual journey.

A Man for All Seasons
Imam Daayiee Abdullah offers a gay Muslim’s insights for the holidays

[…]

This year, with the Christmas battlefield relatively quiet, a cheerful Abdullah took time from his day-to-day life of running his own foreign-language software company to speak with Metro Weekly. With an educational background in Chinese and Arabic languages, Middle Eastern studies, the Koran and law; extended periods of time spent in Beijing, Cairo, Damascus, Taipei, among other global spots; and decades of activism in the gay community, including moderation of an Internet group for gay Muslim men, there turned out to be quite a lot to talk about.

[…]

‘Cheerful’ seems to be his hallmark. Read the whole interview here.