I'm a South Asian gay Muslim guy
and I'm proud of all of those things.
I've heard that I've got a fatwa, which is a death threat,
like Salman Rushdie had,
because I openly talk about my sexual orientation and my religion.
I don't want people to go through what I went through,
which was a sham marriage, which was having a kid as well
who I've not seen for 20 years.
So I don't want that to happen to other guys.
I would say that at the age of 14 that I discovered that I was different
from my community.
I did try to commit suicide.
I wanted to end it because I couldn't talk to anybody about it.
I couldn't share my experience or my thoughts with anybody else.
I did leave home at 16, so I slept rough for 6 months.
I had a truck load of my family coming to pick me up
and took me home.
Yes, I was physically abused, not sexually abused,
but physically abused, by my family,
but that made me more determined not to tell my family, not to trust them.
My parents thought that if I got married
and had been with a woman,
I would change my sexual orientation to being straight.
My father mostly coerced me into getting married.
My sister's future husband, he had a sister,
and she had to get married to me,
otherwise if I didn't agree to that, my father would have got my sister
married to a villager in Pakistan,
and she'd have to stay in Pakistan all the time.
So out of loyalty to my sister, who I love dearly,
I got married.
My wife had no inkling about my sexuality.
We lived day by day, yes, there was some emotion there,
we actually produced a child as well,
so there must've been some sort of sexual intercourse there
and it did happen.
When my wife decided she wanted to go back to Pakistan,
I waited six months, she didn't come back.
I went three other times to get her back and she wouldn't come back.
I think she made it easier for me to accept who I was
and I am a gay man.
I didn't want to live a lie.
I have no negative thoughts about my religion.
I was born Muslim in a Muslim household.
I will be living as a Muslim.
You can live as a Christian and as a gay person,
or a Muslim and a gay person,
or a Hindu and a gay person.
You can have both, you don't have to give up one for the other.
For me, my religion is in my heart.
I work for an organisation called Positive East,
which is based in east London.
What we talk about are different aspects of being gay.
My religion will not allow me to be gay.
That's the first thing I hear, is my religion, my family;
my family will kill me if they find out that I am gay.
No they won't kill you, they'll be upset with you,
but they will accept that you are gay.
The things that my father did,
when I actually did tell him just before he passed away,
is that I'm gay and he came and hugged me.
I think he felt proud that's what I'm doing is helping people