Ed Sheeran: Why is he in the middle of the controversy?

The Malaysian Islamic Party (PAS), the third largest party in the country’s parliament, is demanding the government cancel a concert by British singer Ed Sheeran because of his support for the LGTBI community.

One of the main religious leaders of the opposition formation, Penang Mufti Wan Salimissued a fatwa this week urging authorities to ban the performance because it could “violate Islamic law” because of the musician’s background in supporting the lesbian, gay, transsexual, bisexual and intersex (LGTBI) community.

Ed Sheeran was planning perform next February 24 at Bukit Jalil National Stadium, in Kuala Lumpur, where tickets are expected to sell out.

“Ed Sheeran is clearly a supportive person LGTBI culture, they even wrapped themselves in a rainbow flag at previous concerts. “It’s quite dangerous!” condemned the PAS youth leader in the state of Selangor on Facebook on Friday.

It is not the first time that the radical platform opposes the concerts of Western groups, last year the leaders of PAS and their followers protested against the performance of Coldplay, which they also accused of supporting LGTBI community.

Despite the protests, which were later repeated in Indonesia, the show went off without incident.

In recent years, associations that guarantee human rights have warned of growing intolerance towards LGTBI collective in Malaysia, where homosexual acts are a crime.

These requests to cancel concerts come after controversies started last July during the Good Vibes music festival, where the singer of the British group The 1975 Matthew Healy gave a speech in which he criticized the Malaysian government and laws that criminalize same-sex relationships.

After the band leader’s words, bassist Ross MacDonald came over and kissed Healy on the mouth for a few seconds.

The incident led the organizer to stop – one song later – the band’s performance, while Ministry of Communications and Digitization canceled the remaining two days of the festival and in October demanded that all concerts be equipped with an emergency mute button “in the event of any untoward incident”.