Dutch former Islam-critic converts to Islam

[Syt]

https://www.dw.com/en/former-far-right-dutch-politician-converts-to-islam/a-47368823

Former far-right Dutch politician converts to Islam

In a move that surprised many of his friends and colleagues, former far-right Dutch politician Joram van Klaveren has converted to Islam. As a former member of Geert Wilders' PPV party he now says he was wrong.

A former Dutch far-right MP and right-hand man to anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders revealed he has converted to Islam. He was known for saying that Islam is "a lie" and the Quran is "poison."

For years, as a lawmaker for Wilders' Freedom Party (PVV), Joram van Klaveren fought a relentless campaign in the Lower House against Islam in the Netherlands.

Back then, according to the daily tabloid Algemeen Dagblad (AD), the "hardliner pleaded for banning the burqa and minarets, saying 'we don't want any Islam, or at least as little as possible in the Netherlands.'"

However, the 40-year-old van Klaveren said he had changed his mind halfway through writing an anti-Islam book, which, on Tuesday, he told the respected NRC Handelsblad "became a refutation of objections non-Muslims have" against the religion.

In an interview with Tijs van den Brink on NPO Radio 1, van Klaveren explained his change of heart.

"If you believe that there is one God and that Muhammad was one of the prophets, besides Jesus and Moses, then you are formally a Muslim," says van Klaveren.

In the interview, NRC added that van Klaveren converted to Islam on October 26 last year, ahead of the release of his book titled: Apostate: From Christianity to Islam in the Time of Secular Terror.

Van Klaveren, who grew up in an orthodox Protestant Christian environment, said of his conversion that he "has been searching for a long time."

"It feels a bit like a religious homecoming for me," he told Dutch newspapers.

When asked how his wife felt about it, van Klaveren told NRC that she was OK with it.

"My wife accepts that I am a Muslim. If you are happy with it, she said, I'm not going to stop you. Incidentally, she never felt the repugnance that I felt for Islam. She was less happy that I was with the PVV. But it is your journey, she said."

Van Klaveren split with Wilders in 2014 after the PVV leader's controversial comments that year when asking supporters whether they wanted "fewer or more Moroccans in your city and the Netherlands."

Wilders was found guilty in 2016 of discrimination charges. The sentence is currently being appealed.

Around five percent of the Dutch population of 17 million people or some 850,000 are Muslim, according to the Dutch Central Statistics Bureau (CBS).

And despite Wilders' objections, the religion is growing, with experts expecting that number to double by 2050.

[garbon]

How strange.

[The Brain]

Does he still hate Islam?

[mongers]

How strange.

He split from Wilder's party, so probably lost a source of income, hence the need for an eye catching product to sale. The story then all but wrote itself.

[Tamas]

How strange.

Maybe not. A politician of Jobbik (back from the times when they were truly viciously, openly Nazi) was a rabid anti-semite, until he learned that he has Jewish origins from one of his grandmother's side. He has, shortly after, converted to Judaism and has become a devout orthodox Jew.

[celedhring]

Some extremists are also extreme in their ideological volatility. I think some people are just addicted to being radical in some way.

There's also what mongers alluded to. Ideological converts are a popular good in Spanish political talk shows.

[Malthus]

Some extremists are also extreme in their ideological volatility. I think some people are just addicted to being radical in some way.

There's also what mongers alluded to. Ideological converts are a popular good in Spanish political talk shows.

This, exactly.

When I was a teen I was interested in a girl exactly like that. She once told me that she had, at one point, been a fanatically devout Catholic, believing in miracles and people with stigmata; the point of this anecdote was to wonder at how dumb she used to be - because now she was a convinced atheist and a radical follower of Trotsky. Even then, I thought 'nothing much has actually changed - you just shifted your allegiance from one absolute belief to another'.

I didn't say as much, because I still hoped to charm her out of her clothes.  That did not work - though I believe she was interested, there was no way she was going to have anything to do with me, unless I became a convinced Trotsky follower, which was not going to happen ...   

[The Larch]

Some extremists are also extreme in their ideological volatility. I think some people are just addicted to being radical in some way.

There's also what mongers alluded to. Ideological converts are a popular good in Spanish political talk shows.

Yeah, I guess you're thinking about people like Pío Moa or Federico Jiménez Losantos around here, they all went from Maoists in the 70s to rabid far righters nowadays.

[celedhring]

Some extremists are also extreme in their ideological volatility. I think some people are just addicted to being radical in some way.

There's also what mongers alluded to. Ideological converts are a popular good in Spanish political talk shows.

Yeah, I guess you're thinking about people like Pío Moa or Federico Jiménez Losantos around here, they all went from Maoists in the 70s to rabid far righters nowadays.

Yep, I was thinking of FJL in particular.

[Zanza]

We have someone like that in Germany:

Horst Mahler (born 23 January 1936) is a German former lawyer and political activist.[1] He once was an far-left militant and a founding member of the Red Army Faction but later became a Maoist before switching to neo-Nazism. Between 2000 and 2003, he was a member of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany. Since 2003, he has repeatedly been convicted of Volksverhetzung ("incitement of popular hatred") and Holocaust denial and served much of a twelve-year prison sentence.

[The Minsky Moment]

Mahler was always an anti-Semite, e.g. consider his reaction and that of the RAF at the killings of the Israeli athletes at Munich.  Leninism->Maoism--> Nazism is just exchanging one incoherent set of rationales for another.

[celedhring]

Also, this guy has become a bit of a running joke in Spain: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jorge_Verstrynge

From cryptofascist to mainstream right, then mainstream left, then far left, then populist left. He's held semi-prominent party posts in all his different eras.

Best of it, is that the guy is coming full circle and nowadays he praises Marine and the FN.

[Syt]

A less extreme version would be Otto Schily in Germany. He was the defending lawyer for members of the RAF, and later a founding member of the Greens. He then switched to the Social Democrats and became a very conservative and hard-line interior minister of Germany.

[Razgovory]

Mahler was always an anti-Semite, e.g. consider his reaction and that of the RAF at the killings of the Israeli athletes at Munich.  Leninism->Maoism--> Nazism is just exchanging one incoherent set of rationales for another.

I thought Mahler was a Jew.  And dead for like 100 years.

[Josquius]

We have someone like that in Germany:

Horst Mahler (born 23 January 1936) is a German former lawyer and political activist.[1] He once was an far-left militant and a founding member of the Red Army Faction but later became a Maoist before switching to neo-Nazism. Between 2000 and 2003, he was a member of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany. Since 2003, he has repeatedly been convicted of Volksverhetzung ("incitement of popular hatred") and Holocaust denial and served much of a twelve-year prison sentence.

The socialist to fascist conversion isn't that uncommon.
Socialism by its nature in standing up for working class people tends to attract quite a lot of working class tribalists as well as those actually interested in equality. Fascism is specially design from the ground up to attract this kind of person as an alternative to socialism.