Born Mohamed Lotfi Zahed in Algiers, Algeria, in 1977, he arrived in France a year later with his parents. During the Algerian Civil War, he returned to his birth city. Growing up between Algeria and France, he reported having felt "part boy, part girl" as a child. He realized his homosexuality at the age of 12 in Algeria, when he began having feelings for an older, male acquaintance. After a short period during which he took interest in Salafi Islam, the teenage Zahed dated a Frenchman whom he described as a "National Front voter from Vitrolles". He acquired French citizenship at the age of 20, adopting "Ludovic" as his first name. At the age of 21, he decided to come out to his family, getting mixed reactions. Initially rejecting Islam and following Buddhism instead, he eventually followed Islam again, and in 2010 founded the organization HM2F, Homosexuel musulman de France. In November 2012, Zahed set up an "inclusive" Muslim prayer room in Paris, which has been described by the press as "Europe's first gay-friendly mosque". In April 2014, he took part in a series of lectures and seminars on "Rethinking Homosexuality in Islam" organised by Adi Bharat at Boston University. Holding a doctorate in humanities, he completed his doctoral study on the topic "Sexual Minorities at the Vanguard of Changes in the Islam of France", and published his social psychology doctoral thesis on "LGBT Muslims facing obscurantism and homonationalism" in 2016.
Personal life
Zahed is HIV-positive, having contracted the illness as a teenager. In 2011, while same-sex marriage had yet to be legalized in France, he legally married a South African man in Cape Town. They later moved to France, and were united by another, religious marriage ceremony performed by an imam in 2012 in Sevran. In 2014, he was reportedly living with his husband in South Africa.
Political views
Ludovic-Mohamed Zahed has described himself as a "progressive Muslim" who argues that believers should "question institutional dogma" and insists that "neither homophobia or misogyny respect Islamic ethics". Through his works, he has voiced his concerns for the Muslim community in France, and LGBT Muslims in particular, who according to him, are facing both threats of "obscurantism" and "homonationalism". In France, he has openly stood in favor of same-sex marriage.
Controversies
The opening of a Muslim prayer room by Zahed in Paris, which he described as more "inclusive" to LGBT believers, was met with mixed reaction from the rest of the Muslim community in France, with a spokesman for the Grand Mosque of Paris stating that the prayer room was "outside the Islamic community" and that "the Quran condemns homosexuality". In 2014, two Muslim Iranian women were married by Zahed in a religious ceremony held in Stockholm, Sweden, which prompted a group of Algerian Salafists to demand that Zahed be stripped of his Algerian citizenship.
