Dutch former anti-Muslim MP converts to Islam

A Dutch former far-right MP and right-hand man of anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders has set tongues wagging in the Netherlands after revealing he has converted and become a Muslim, news reports said Tuesday.

A Dutch former far-right MP and right-hand man of anti-Islam politician Geert Wilders has set tongues wagging in the Netherlands after revealing he has converted and become a Muslim, news reports said Tuesday.

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

At the time, the “hardliner pleaded for banning the burkha and minarets, saying ´we don´t want any Islam, or at least as little as possible in the Netherlands´,” the daily tabloid Algemeen Dagblad (AD) said.

But the 40-year-old Van Klaveren said he had changed his mind halfway through writing an anti-Islam book, which he told the respected NRC daily “became a refutation of objections non-Muslims have” against the religion.

“If everything I wrote up to that point is true, and I believe that, then I am a de facto Muslim,” he told the NRC.

Van Klaveren converted to Islam on October 26 last year, the NRC added in the interview piece .

“His conversion has surprised both friend and enemy,” the AD newspaper added.