Unwritten Lives

It has been one year today since the world’s first openly gay imam, Muhsin Hendricks, was murdered in South Africa on 15 February 2025. To date, there have been no arrests, demonstrating once more the impunity with which hatred and violence against members of the LGBTQI+ community in South Africa are met. To mark the first anniversary of Hendricks’ murder, Unwritten Lives is today reposting Muriithi Kariuki's seminal essay on the routine silence and everyday erasure that underpin homophobic violence. "The destruction of queer lives does not begin with a hammer, a bullet, or a judge’s gavel … It begins with silence. With isolation. With erasure."

It has been 20 years since the UK’s first same-sex civil unions took place on 19 December 2005. Adnan Ali and Eric Stobbaerts were one of the first gay couples in London to form a civil partnership on that historic day. They are both busy men with global lives. Unwritten Lives was glad to catch up with them in London, where the couple spoke with Ishtiyaq Shukri.