A former Islamic extremist has spoken about his journey to accepting LGBTI people and people of other faiths in an interview with conservative website Breitbart.com.

The former Jihadist spoke anonymously to Humanist and Cultural Muslim Association founder Saif Rahman in an article published yesterday, saying that he once thought gays and lesbians were ‘sexual deviants’ and ‘people who lavished in sin.’

‘In my perception gays suffered from an extreme lack of manliness and were further characterized by debauchery, lack of sexual discipline, cowardice and worldliness,’ he said, ‘They were the polar opposite of what a Muslim man should be.’

‘In my mind a Muslim man had only one single purpose in life: he is a born soldier whose whole existence has no other purpose than to wage and to die in war. Gays are dangerous since they undermine national morale and give an example of cowardice. Being gay and soldier at the same time was simply unimaginable to me.’

The Jihadist, who converted to Islam as a teenager and was later convicted over his actions, also spoke about the paranoia among Islamists of being perceived to be gay themselves.

‘Because of the meaning it carried for us, the label “gay” was applied wider then it should be,’ he told Rahman.

‘We considered men who dressed too smoothly, and thus worldly, and especially those that displayed cowardice and a reluctance to wage jihad as “gays.”

‘Any man could become gay if his faith slackened. Homosexuality was just a state of extreme perversion and sinfulness.’

However the former Jihadist told Rahman that he began to find logical inconsistencies in his beliefs about homosexuality that lead him to question his faith.

‘I only seriously started to develop views on the issue when my skepticism of Islam was seriously undermining my [faith] and I felt the strong urge to provide all my beliefs a rational foundation,’ he said.

‘It was at that moment that I decided there were no good arguments to justify being against homosexuality: it is not a threat to demographics (too few to have an impact), it is not unnatural (it’s hard wired into the brain, and its common in nature), there is no reason to assume gays are morally sick or perverted, the idea they are cowards has no foundation.’

The former Jihadist told Rahman that it had been a relief to shed his former prejudiced views

‘The … change was relatively sudden. It was a total re-evaluation, which was made possible because I didn’t bother to confirm to already established beliefs anymore,’ he said.

‘From the moment I left Islam I stopped being an antisemite, homophobe and misogynist in an instant. The hate simply disappeared. The revaluation of values was radical but liberating.’

The Humanist and Cultural Muslim Association aims to create a world where people with an Islamic heritage are free to live on the basis of reason, experience and shared human values regardless of their beliefs.