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The head of the biggest mosque in Ireland and father of acquitted Ibrahim Halawa has blasted homosexuality as “sinful.”

Sheikh Hussein Halawa has made the shocking statement just days before he is due to welcome home his 21-year-old son, who has been locked up in Egpyt since 2013.

Sheikh Halawa is Ireland’s most senior Muslim cleric and Imam of the Islamic Cultural Centre in Clonskeagh, Dublin, has been living in the country for over 20 years but has very little English.

He told the Sunday Business Post he is “general secretary” for Dublin-based Muslim think tank the European Council for Fatwa and Research (ECFR).

The ECFR is chaired by controversial Qatar-based Egyptian cleric Yusuf al-Qaradawi, 90, a leading member of the Muslim Brotherhood, who advocated the death penalty for homosexuals.

Halawa said homosexuality “has never been debated in the council. It has never been discussed. Never.

“Our place is to say what is Islamically sinful and not sinful.”

(Image: Gareth Chaney Collins)

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He added: “Yes, homosexuality is sinful. The people who do it will take the judgement in the afterlife.”

But Sheikh Halawa, who doesn’t speak English fluently, has welcomed King Salman of Saudi Arabia’s royal decree requesting that drivers’ licences be issued to women who wanted them.

He said: “I am 100% behind the rights of women. My wife, my daughters – they all drive. I don’t have any problem with this.”

The family are currently waiting for Ibrahim to return from Egypt where he was jailed without trail after he was arrested during a siege at the Al-Fath mosque in Cairo.

He was accused along with 500 others, including his three sisters Fatima, Omaima and Somaia, of inciting violence, riot and sabotage.

Ibrahim’s three sisters were released after about three months and were allowed to return home to Dublin, but he remained in jail.

Halawa said: “The paperwork and bureaucracy is very slow, but Inshallah (God willing) he comes in a few days.”

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In the interview Halawa said he is not overly concerned with Islamophobia in Ireland but noted “sporadic” problems in Europe.

He said: “I am in Ireland and I feel I am under sharia. I feel justice. I feel freedom. I feel equality.”

In the interview Halawa again rejected claims that their family are members of the Muslim Brotherhood - which is Egypt’s oldest and largest Islamist organisation.

The current Egyptian government has declared it a terrorist group, a claim it rejects.

He said: “I would not accuse the Muslim Brotherhood of being bad people, but I am not a member of them.

“They have even accused my son Ibrahim and my daughters and all my family of being members of the Brotherhood, but when it was investigated it was realised none of us were members. My son is freed.”

Halawa has recently been criticised by other Muslim leaders in the country for not doing enough to stamp out Islamic radicalism in Ireland.

Halawa said: “Once again I state, should I learn of any one person or group that are planning any act of terrorism or promoting terrorism, I was promptly report them to the Irish authorities.

“I am sure if the state authorities have issues with any one individual they will address the matter efficiently.”

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