Cambridge lecturer Tim Winter sorry for homosexual slurs

A leading Cambridge lecturer who was once named Britain’s top Muslim thinker has apologised for comments he made in which he described homosexuality as an “inherent aberration” and sinful.

Tim Winter, who is director of studies at Wolfson College as well as Dean of the Cambridge Muslim College, said the controversial remarks were made 15 years ago when he was at a retreat in the US and “in the grip of a kind of zealot enthusiasm.”

But there was confusion over exactly when some of the comments were made, with some videos on YouTube appearing to be from a similar retreat in Turkey in 2011.

Some students have called for Mr Winter, brother of sports journalist Henry Winter, to be dismissed from his influential post.

A former pupil of Westminster School, he converted to Islam as a teenager and in 2010 was named in the world’s top 50 most influential Muslims. In various videos posted on YouTube and the internet, the 53-year-old academic calls homosexuality “inherently ugly” and says gay people are “ignorant people who don’t know what their bodies are for”.

In an email to the Standard, Mr Winter said: “I have explained to the students that the YouTube clip they understandably objected to was at least 15 years old, and represented views I no longer hold.”