Wajahat Abbas Kazmi is a 32-year-old activist and filmmaker who has been living in Italy for the past 17 years. In addition to being the co-founder of the LGBTI rights organisation Il Grande Colibrì, he started the campaign ‘Allah Loves Equality’ in 2015 to highlight homophobia in Muslim-majority countries. Kazmi has since been marching proudly holding the rainbow banner with the campaign’s name written across it.

Threats

In July 2018, Wajahat Abbas Kazmi received dozens of abusive messages, including death threats, after sharing pictures of himself and a fellow gay-rights activist appearing to kiss while holding a Moroccan flag at the annual pride parade in Milan. Kazmi reported around 40 abusive messages in several languages, including French, Arabic, and English. Most of the messages were sent by anonymous people or people using fake accounts, which made the process of reporting the abuse harder.

Il Grande Colibrì has since filed a complaint informing the national law enforcement agencies and CILD member Rete Lenford - a network of lawyers that provides legal support for people against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity - of the case, in order to identify the source of the death threats and prevent further discrimination from occuring. Antonio Marchesi and Riccardo Noury, respectively president and spokesperson of Amnesty International Italy, have expressed support for the colleague.

Individuality

Kazmi’s work, for which he was awarded CILD’s Civil Liberties Award as Young Activist in 2017, represents an important step in LGBTI rights affirmation, as it emphasises the importance of individuality within an increasing multiplicity of identities and offers an interpretation of LGBTI community that is different from official models.

Through a film that narrated the daily lives of LGBTI people in Pakistan, Kazmi showed how an intersectional minority in Pakistan comprised of individuals fighting for the freedom to live out both their sexual orientation or gender identity and religious identity, has pushed against intolerance, religious dogmatism, and fundamentalisms underpinning the ideology and practice of the majority.

Religion however, as he pointed out during an event on the role of LGBT communities in the Jewish-Muslim Dialogue organised by CILD and Magen David Keshet Italy, does not necessarily supplant or limit sexual orientation or gender, as religion completes individual identity, and without religion, people might feel missing an important component of their identity.