Excerpts:
Sheikh Farrokh Sekaleshfar, who studies and teaches religion in Iran, has openly called for the killing of gay people. “Death is the sentence,” he said in 2013. Just this spring, he spoke at the Husseini Islamic Center near Orlando. The 200 Muslim leaders who issued the statement can wash their hands of Sekaleshfar and his conclusion all they want, but they will find themselves in the same literalism trap.
We can talk all we want about Islam's relationship with America, about Islamophobia, about homophobia. But the issue is Islam itself. Can we still read the Quran and the prophet’s words literally in the 21st century? Until we can ask that question in American mosques, Islam will have an uneasy relationship with modernity.
