SYDNEY - A British Islamic scholar who toured Orlando this year and had preached in 2013 that "death is the sentence" for homosexual acts left Australia on Tuesday after the government launched an "urgent" review of his visa because of his comments.
Farrokh Sekaleshfar, a senior Shi'ite Muslim scholar, was in Australia to give a series of lectures at an Islamic center in Sydney on the topic of spirituality.
Sekaleshfar said in a lecture in Michigan in 2013 that in an Islamic society, the death penalty should be carried out for homosexuals who engaged in sodomy.
"Out of compassion, let's get rid of him now, because he's contaminating society," Sekaleshfar said in a talk at that time, according to a recording available online.
There is no evidence of any link between his comments and the American Muslim man who killed 49 people in a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday, the deadliest mass shooting in the United States.