"I Left My Political Career to Embrace Islam"! Former Anti-Islam Politician Became Muslim

 

Arnoud van Doorn, a name once synonymous with anti-Islamic rhetoric and political controversy, has undergone a profound transformation. Known for his past criticisms of Islam, van Doorn's journey from a prominent critic to a devout Muslim is a remarkable story of personal evolution and spiritual awakening. This biography explores van Doorn's early life, political career, ideological shift, and eventual conversion to Islam, providing an in-depth look at how his beliefs evolved and the impact of his conversion on his life and public perception.

After months of research and reflection, Arnoud van Doorn decided to embrace Islam. His conversion was a significant and personal transformation, marked by a profound change in his beliefs and lifestyle. Van Doorn publicly announced his conversion in 2013, revealing his new faith to the world and the reasons behind his decision.

Arnoud van Doorn's journey from a prominent anti-Islamic politician to a devoted Muslim is a story of profound personal transformation. His experiences reflect the complexity of individual belief systems and the potential for change in the face of new insights and experiences. Van Doorn's life serves as a powerful example of how personal growth and spiritual awakening can lead to a reevaluation of one's beliefs and values.

The Rise Of Anti-Muslim Parties In Europe With Joram Van Klaveren

 

Its truly amazing that such an enemy of Islam became such devout and active Muslim. Alhamdulilah!

Why the West is Wrong about Islam with Peter Oborne

Across The Balkans: Croatia’s Muslim Minority and Belgrade’s Only Mosque

 

Who are the Tatars? Europe's Oldest Remaining Islamic Community

Genocide in Bosnia: A Warning to Muslims in the West

Barely more than 20 years ago in the heart of Europe, we witnessed mass murder, expulsion and systematic rape committed against tens of thousands of innocent victims – simply because they were Muslims.

A whole network of concentration camps was used to imprison, torture and kill Muslims as part of the genocide in Bosnia. Hundreds of thousands were forced out of their homes. Rape centres were set up where tens of thousands of Muslim women were imprisoned and repeatedly raped by soldiers. In Srebrenica during just 5 days of July 1995 more than 8000 Muslim men and boys were rounded up by the Serb army, murdered and dumped in mass graves.

The campaign of extermination against the Muslims in Bosnia extended to every trace of Muslim religion and culture. Serb militias dynamited mosques in areas they occupied and the Serbian army specifically targeted sites of cultural importance to Muslims such as the Oriental Institute in Sarajevo – burning more than 5000 ancient manuscripts. The perpetrators of this genocide sought to extinguish even the memory of Muslim life in Bosnia.

These Muslims were white Europeans, just like their non-Muslim neighbours. They spoke the same language as their non-Muslim neighbours. They wore the same clothes and led the same lifestyle. Yet they became the victims of a horrific genocide while the world stood by and watched.

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Europe and the veil

Wearing the headscarf may allow some women to embrace their Muslim identity, but what happens when that decision puts them in direct conflict with the state and the wider society in which they live? Sondoss worked as a nurse in a public hospital when she began to transition towards the hijab. At first, colleagues asked quiet questions, then louder ones, whether, for example, she was turning into an extremist.

How did "Allah" make its way onto Viking clothes?

400 years ago Spain forcibly converted Muslims to Christianity – then expelled them. Have we learned nothing?

One episode is surprisingly absent from our era of terror wars and terrorist atrocity. Between 1609 and 1614 Spain expelled between 300,000 to 350,000 Muslim converts to Christianity known as Moriscos or "little Moors" from Spanish territory, and destroyed the last remnants of the Moorish kingdom of al-Andalus that had begun nearly eight centuries before.

The Moriscos were all nominal Catholics, descendants of Muslims who had been forcibly converted at the end of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The decision to expel them followed more than a century in which Spain's rulers had attempted to wipe out every trace of their Islamic faith, and their cultural and even culinary traditions.

The expulsion of the Moriscos followed more than a century in which Spain's rulers had attempted to eradicate every trace of Iberian Islam. Having forcibly transformed its Muslims into Christians, Spain made no serious attempt to instruct these "converts" in their new faith and never entirely believed that such a transformation was possible.

Many leading clerics and statesmen simply believed that the Moriscos were incapable of Christianity and even unworthy of it, and preferred repression and the Inquisition to gentleness and persuasion. Spain's rulers were unable to distinguish between Islamic religious belief and cultural practice, and punished the Moriscos for any outward expression of their "Moorishness", whether it was their festive dances, eating couscous or the wearing of the full-face veil.

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Europeans greatly overestimate Muslim population, poll shows

Members of the public in European states including France, Belgium, Germany and the UK greatly overestimate their country’s Muslim population and the rate at which it is growing.

An Ipsos Mori survey that measured the gap between public perception and reality in 40 countries in 2016 found French respondents were by far the most likely to overstate their country’s current and projected Muslim population.

The perception gap: how well do you know your country? Take our quiz

 

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The average French estimate was that 31% of the population was Muslim – almost one in three residents. According to Pew Research, France’s Muslim population actually stood at 7.5% in 2010, or one in 13 people.

French respondents were also widest of the mark when it came to the projected Muslim population in 2020. The average prediction was that Muslims would make up 40% of the French population in four years’ time, almost five times the 8.3% Pew Research projection.

The French were not the only ones to hold such misconceptions: Italian, German and Belgian respondents all guessed that more than a fifth of the resident population was Muslim, while in reality the figure ranges from 3.7% in Italy to 7% in Belgium. All three countries also greatly overstated the expected proportion of Muslim residents in 2020.

Source

A 1400 YEAR-OLD RELIGION AND ITS 21ST-CENTURY REPRESENTATIVE

Love this brother. He is an inspiration alhamdulilah.

He believes that Muslims often isolate themselves in an effort to protect their faith and identity, something that is, in fact, damaging for the community. “We are living in a society where people do accept and tolerate other views. We should reach out and not be afraid”, he urges his fellow Muslims. His recent invitation to members of the LGBT community to the mosque’s end of Ramadan meal in June reflected this sentiment of inclusion. “As Muslims we must reach out to others’’, he says, “we must not treat people differently because of their lifestyle or beliefs”. Although such an expression of kindness and support appears radical in relation to the more stereotypical image the religion being strongly doctrinal, Al-Qadri cites the teachings of Islam as the foundation for his argument, where you must treat people as human beings first – something which he says has been lost among many Muslims.

Nonetheless his actions were still somewhat radical, and he came under criticism from the group that he represents for reaching out in this way. Some felt that this gesture was akin to him condoning homosexuality, but in the face of the controversy, he stands by his actions. “Inviting them does not mean that we condone or that we agree with [homosexuality]”, he explains. “It means that despite our disagreement we can still share a meal together”. Although he does not condone the act, he believes that the LGBT community, like Muslims, share similarities. The two minority groups have both been marginalised and should join together against a common injustice. He gives a practical example to support his decision to invite LGBT members to the event, which he hopes that Muslims will be able to appreciate, drawing a comparison between the two Islamic sins of drinking alcohol and homosexuality: “Muslims, when they have friends that are consuming alcohol, they would be okay with it, they will sit down together, they will interact together, but they won’t drink themselves and they will not treat the person that drinks alcohol differently. But they will treat someone who is gay differently, and that is something that is not understandable”. Al-Qadri emphasises that the teachings of Islam are to treat people as humans first, and the success of the meal, which had over over 20 LGBT members alongside some Muslims all enjoying themselves together, stands as testament to that.

Full article.

CrossTalk on EU migration crisis

Interesting debate.

More Norwegians convert to Islam

     This really moved me :)

‘Religious experience’ on Utøya
Morten Ibrahim Abrahamsen, now a 23-year-old man from Hamar, converted after surviving the massacre of July 22, 2011 on the island of Utøya that was carried out by another young but right-wing anti-Islamic extremist. Abrahamsen told Aftenposten he had a religious experience while he desperately tried to hide from the lone gunman Anders Behring Breivik, who killed 69 people at the Labour Party’s youth summer camp that Abrahamsen was attending.

“I met a lot of resistance, also publicly, from people who thought I was vulnerable and had all but been forced to convert,” Abrahamsen said, after he’d declared his faith to representatives of the Islamic organization Islam Net in Oslo. It’s been a target of controversy for organizing conferences featuring radical Muslim clerics, for segregating men and women who attend and for spreading the word about Islam from information stands on the street, among other things.

“But now it’s been nearly four years (since the massacre and his conversion) and I’m thriving with my religion,” Abrahamsen told Aftenposten. “I have found the sense of calm I was looking for.” He and several of the others interviewed oppose extremism and claim the Koraninstructs them to follow the laws of the land where they live. They cannot, according to Abrahamsen, demand introduction of sharia law that can impose death sentences for such things as infidelity, homosexuality or abandoning the faith, while he noted that sharia law itself “is often not practiced as it should be, and many people who gain power often make mistakes.”

Full article.