Fazal Mahmood was 14 years old and living with his Muslim family in Northern England when he began to question his sexuality. It was 1974 and there weren’t many places he could go for answers. The people he knew didn’t talk about these things. One day Mahmood found a book about homosexuality in his local Bradford library. It sat in a glass case. When he asked to see it the librarian wondered why, and told him it was for perverts and sodomisers. Mahmood read it anyway, but the words went over his head. Two years later, still confused and looking for answers, he decided to run away from home. He made it as far as London before his family caught up with him. It was 1976, and it would take Mahmood another 10 years to build up the courage to tell them that he was gay.
Sitting today in his London kitchen, a 52-year-old Fazal Mahmood is talking about his subsequent 26 years spent working with other LGBT Muslims in Britain. It began with a youth group he started in Bradford in 1986, and has carried through to his involvement today with the London-based LGBT Muslim support group, Imaan.
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