Muhsin Hendricks, the world’s first openly gay imam, stepped out of a small bungalow in Bethelsdorp, a suburb of Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) on South Africa’s southern coast, just after 10am on Saturday February 15th 2025. He was 500 miles from home on a lightning trip hardly anyone knew about—and, he must have thought, safe.

Hendricks, from Cape Town, had flown the night before into Gqeberha, an hour by plane to the east, to officiate at two marriages. According to Hendricks’s office both weddings were interfaith, between a Muslim and a Hindu—many Muslims consider Hinduism to be sacrilegious idol worship. Neighbours in Bethelsdorp told me that the first union was also same-sex, between two women, which doctrinaire Muslims regard as a sin punishable by death. No local imam was prepared to sanctify either wedding, so the families had turned to Hendricks, 57, the founder of a gay-friendly mosque in Cape Town, where women were allowed to lead services and couples could be married regardless of faith or sexuality.

Hendricks cut an exuberant figure, a Muslim Jesus Christ Superstar in flowing white robes and red silk scarves, with the hair, beard and teeth of a Bee Gee. He had come out in 1996, divorcing the mother of his three children and going on to marry a Hindu man. His radical reinterpretations of the Quran—which he broadcast on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube every week—had won him a global following. But his showiness and unorthodox beliefs came at a price: threats against his life from Muslim hardliners which, in a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world, had to be taken seriously.