AFP: TANGIERS, Morocco — Novelist Abdellah Taia, who has won acclaim in France and readers abroad, has challenged a taboo in his native Morocco and won't back down: he is the first writer to come out as gay in a country that bans homosexuality.
For 37-year-old Taia, who has lived in Paris for the last decade, being homosexual and Muslim are not mutually exclusive. He "feels Muslim" and is from a country where Islam is the state religion.
"I am the first Moroccan writer who has spoken openly about his homosexuality, to acknowledge it, but without turning my back on the country I'm from," he said."My homosexuality, I already felt it from the age of 13, at school.
"But despite this, I feel Muslim. There is no incompatibility between Islam and choices of sexual identity," he told AFP on a recent visit back to Morocco. >>> Omar Brouksy | Wednesday, December 29, 2010
