Sometimes challenges to jihadist orthodoxies come from the most surprising places. A challenge to the idea that ‘Islamophobia’ equals racism has been made by an influential and seemingly widely supported Islamic cleric.

Yahya Cholil Staquf, the leader of an Indonesia based Islamic sect that claims 90 million adherents that it was some aspects of Islam itself that are creating and sustaining conflict. Mr Staquf wrote an article in the UK Daily Telegraph and quoted by the website of the Christian Barnabas Fund, in which he said that the ‘Islamic mindset must change’. He took aim at the Islamic orthodoxy that fuels both jihadists and other Islamic extremists in places like Europe and called that orthodoxy ‘obsolete and problematic” and “fuelling violence on both sides”.

Mr Staquf is in my opinion correct in his assertions. Many of us do not despise Islam for reasons related to ignorance or mindless bigotry, but because of the theology of Islam that propels some Muslims to do the most appalling things. These terrible things are done either in the name of Islam or because the perpetrators grew up in a culture that promoted Islamic orthodoxy and that has become the world view of these individuals. It is as Mr Staquf said the ‘perpetual enmity’ between Muslim and non Muslim that is encouraged by shariah law and has its roots in the Koran. It is good to see this cleric be honest and admit that Islamic terrorism is everything to do with Islam.

Here’s an excerpt from the Barnabas Fund article.

Yahya Cholil Staquf, the secretary-general of Indonesia’s Nahdlatul Ulama movement, which claims to have more than 90 million adherents, wrote in an article in Britain’s Daily Telegraph saying that the traditional Muslim mindset needed to change.

He called for a rejection of Islamic orthodoxy, condemning it as “obsolete and problematic” and “fuelling violence on both sides”.

Well said there Mr Staquf. Muslim mindsets do have to change.

After detailing Mr Staquf’s criticism of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group on Islamophobia and its equating of ‘Islamophobia’ with racism, the Barnabas Fund website quoted Mr Staquf as saying:

“The truth, we recognise, is that jihadist doctrine, goals and strategy can be traced to specific tenets of orthodox, authoritative Islam and its historic practice. This includes those portions of sharia that promote Islamic supremacy, encourage enmity towards non-Muslims and require the establishment of a caliphate. It is these elements – still taught by most Sunni and Shiite institutions – that constitute a summons to perpetual conflict,” he wrote.

So there you have it, from the pen of a highly educated Islamic leader and scholar, Islamic violence and jihad is not just a corruption of or an innovation to a basically peaceful faith, the seeds for jihad are found at the heart of Islam itself in its scripture. This Islamic leader is saying what many of us who are opposed to Islam have been saying for a while and have been called ‘racist’ for saying so and that is that Islam contains exhortations to violence in the contemporaneous world. I find myself in agreement with Mr Staquf’s prescription to stop the violence, which is for Muslims to drop the dangerous orthodoxies that fuel conflict. If Muslims do not to see Islam hated then it is up to them to counter the religious supremacism and hatred that has characterised Islam for 1400 years. I think that Mr Staquf is on the right theological track, the question is just how many Muslim and individual Muslims themselves will publicly back him?