NU Chairman KH. Yahya Cholil Staquf recognized as one of the 20 most influential Muslims in the world
AMMAN, Jordan, 1 December 2022 — The Muslim 500, the world’s premier index of Muslim power and influence, has acknowledged KH. Yahya Cholil Staquf as among the world’s 20 most influential Muslims in its newly released 2023 edition. This comes amid a rising tide of international recognition for the Nahdlatul Ulama Chairman and organizations that he has founded, including Bayt ar-Rahmah, the Humanitarian Islam movement, the Center for Shared Civilizational Values, and the G20 Religion Forum, or R20.
At number 19, Mr. Staquf is ranked just nine places below Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia — an indication of Nahdlatul Ulama’s enormous influence. The Muslim 500 describes Nahdlatul Ulama as “the world’s largest Muslim organisation, [which] teaches that the primary message of Islam is universal love and compassion.”
In its profile of Mr. Staquf, The Muslim 500 quotes the NU Chairman as saying:
“Our goal is not to remake the Islamic world in our image. Rather, we seek to establish a credible version of orthodox Islam toward which — with the appropriate global encouragement — other Muslim societies could choose to move.”
The Muslim 500 is published by The Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, a research entity affiliated with the Royal Aal al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought, headquartered in Amman, the capital of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Share this communiqué via