“Two unidentified suspects with covered faces exited the vehicle and fired multiple shots at the car,” said the Eastern Cape police in a statement. “They then fled the scene. The driver later realised that Hendricks, who was sitting in the back, had been fatally shot.”

Authorities have not yet determined a motive for the attack and are asking the public for any information.

The International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) strongly condemned the killing.

“The ILGA World family is in deep shock at the news of the murder of Muhsin Hendricks, and calls on authorities to thoroughly investigate what we fear may be a hate crime,” said its executive director, Julia Ehrt.

Hendricks, who had been involved in LGBTQ+ advocacy since 1996, began hosting meetings for LGBTQ+ Muslims in his home city two years later. “I opened my garage, put a carpet down and invited people to have tea and talk,” he told The Guardian in 2022.

In 2011, after a friend was upset by a sermon condemning homosexuality, Hendricks decided to create a more welcoming space. “I said, ‘Maybe it’s time we started our own space, so people can pray without being judged’,” he recalled.

He founded the Al-Ghurbaah mosque in Wynberg, near Cape Town, which provides “a safe space in which queer Muslims and marginalised women can practise Islam,” according to its website.

Hendricks, who featured in the 2022 documentary The Radical, had previously acknowledged receiving threats. Despite advice to hire bodyguards, he told The Guardian he was not afraid, stating, “The need to be authentic is greater than the fear to die.”

Born into a Muslim family, Hendricks married a woman, had children, and later divorced before coming out to his family at the age of 29.

South Africa, which has one of the highest murder rates in the world, recorded 28,000 homicides in the year leading up to February 2024, according to police reports.-Agencies