Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims

3 posters

Go down

Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims Empty Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims

Post by guest_07 Mon Jul 09, 2018 3:29 am

The Strange Cases of Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims
Three recent incidents seem to highlight a quirk of sociology.

DAVID A. GRAHAM
JAN 25, 2018

Last fall, Arthur Wagner was part of something remarkable: His political party, the anti-Islam, anti-immigrant Alternative für Deutschland, entered the Bundestag, becoming the first far-right party in the body since the 1950s. This year, Wagner has done something even more remarkable: He has converted to Islam and left AfD.

Wagner was a leading party official in the state of Brandenburg, and had been a representative since 2015. Deutsche Welle drily noted that Wagner is of Russian origin and “was a member of the state committee with responsibility for churches and religious communities.” A party spokesman told the paper his departure was personal. “The party has no problem with that,” the spokesman said of the conversion. Still, one can imagine his new religious identity would create some awkwardness with his old chums. AfD has, for example, used the slogan “Islam does not belong to Germany.”

Even stranger, Wagner is not the first person to leave a far-right, anti-Islam party in Europe and become a Muslim. Arnoud van Doorn, a member of Geert Wilders’s Dutch Freedom Party—which is another far-right, anti-Islam party—left it in 2011, converted to Islam in 2012, and soon after made hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca Muslims are obliged to make at least once in their lifetimes. And in 2014, Maxence Buttey, a local councillor for the National Front (FN), France’s analogous far-right party, converted to Islam and was suspended from the party committee.

In the United States, a grisly story made headlines last year when an 18-year-old former neo-Nazi in Tampa who said he had converted to Islam confessed to killing two (apparently still) neo-Nazi roommates, though that case is so grotesque, and the use of violence so far from mainstream Muslim practice, that it defies comparison to the European examples. (The suspect also shouted a nonsensical, non-Muslim phrase.)

In all cases, the shift from anti-Muslim to Muslim is counterintuitive. One potential factor is the ease of conversion to Islam. One can declare oneself a Muslim after uttering the shahada, with no requirements like the baptism or confirmation needed to become Christian or the process and certification used in Judaism. Someone can announce they are a Muslim without demonstrating any particular devoutness, longevity of commitment, or knowledge of the religion’s precepts. This is not to say than any given convert is not sincere, but that stating someone has converted to Islam doesn’t really clarify much on its own.

These cases of anti-Muslim activists in Europe converting to Islam don’t represent a trend, but there are enough of them to wonder what might inspire such apparently 180-degree turnarounds. When he converted, Buttey, the FN councillor, argued that the far-right movement had more in common with the religion than its members realized. “Both are demonized and very far from the image portrayed in the media,” he told Le Parisien. “Like Islam, the FN defends the weakest. The party denounces exorbitant interest rates charged on the debt of our country, and Islam is against the practice of usury.” It’s hard to imagine many French Muslims accepting a kinship with the FN, but in any case a more fruitful direction might be not to look for what far-right parties share with Islam but rather what forces might attract members to both.

There seem to be some people who are joiners, eager to become part of larger groups. Almost everyone will know someone like this, perhaps someone who is constantly searching for new social groups or joining new organizations, or perhaps even a spiritual seeker-type who flirts with a succession of faiths. The cliche about the “zeal of the convert” exists for a reason.

According to Michael Hogg’s uncertainty-identity theory, people seek to reduce questions about who they are, where they fit in the world, and how people view them. “One way to satisfy this motivation is to identify with a group (a team, an organization, a religion, an ethnicity, a nation, etc.) a process that not only defines and locates oneself in the social world but also prescribes how one should behave and how one should interact with others,” Hogg writes.

Far-right (as well as far-left) political groups benefit from people struggling with such questions. “Extreme groups ... have precisely the properties that are ideally suited to reduce self-uncertainty because they provide a clear and unambiguous sense of self and place in the world,” Hogg and Janice Adelman write in a 2013 paper.

This explains why people like Wagner, van Doorn, and Buttey ended up in the constellation of far-right European parties. One might expect that the brand of Islam they would take up would also be radical—and perhaps even tip over into violent jihadism. As my colleague Julia Ioffe wrote in the aftermath of the white-supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, the forces that draw people (and especially young men) to extreme movements are almost identical, even though political discourse separates them. “The process and structure of radicalization and extremism are the same in different kinds of movements, even when the content of the extremist belief is different (such as with neo-Nazis and jihadists),” J.M. Berger, a fellow with the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague, told Ioffe.

But it doesn’t necessarily happen that way. Hogg and Adelman note that extreme groups present various disadvantages for joiners as well. “People are unlikely to be strongly attracted to them unless uncertainty is relatively chronic, pervasive, or acute, or they have few other viable identity options (see below),” they write.

Mainstream, non-violent Islam can provide many of the same benefits without the social disadvantages. In general, Hogg and Adelman argue that the best venues for reducing uncertainty are “distinctive and well-structured groups that have clear boundaries and membership criteria, and consensual and prescriptive attitudinal and behavioral attributes grounded in a relatively homogeneous world view.” Hence associating oneself with Islam—especially in the context of Western Europe, where Christian cultural identity has suffused society for centuries, and where Islam is relatively marginalized—offers just such a group. Islam is distinctive, it has clear membership criteria and boundaries (one either is or is not a Muslim), and prescribes attitudes and behaviors. (Compared to a political party or to mainstream Christianity, Islam is relatively non-hierarchical.) Importantly, however, taking up fundamentalist Christianity would present a similar payoff for the “convert.”

The idea of far-right critics of Islam converting seems to be new in history, in part because far-right, anti-Islam parties are a new phenomenon. In earlier ages, all of European politics would have been fairly anti-Islam, while there would have been little proximity to actual Muslims or opportunities to mix with them. The rise of the internet, which can facilitate radicalization, also gives joiners easier ways to learn about new identities. There are older cases of Quran skeptics, like the French surgeon Maurice Bucaille, who have converted. (Bucaille became an advocate of the idea that the Quran is scientifically perfect.)

For the recent crop of converts, trying on a new identity does not necessarily mean a new personality. Van Doorn, for example, has since his conversion transferred his vitriol toward Jews, making anti-Semitic comments that he passed off as jokes. He was also convicted in 2014 of selling drugs to minors and other offenses; he claimed he was conducting a sting, but a court rejected the excuse. Van Doorn, in other words, seems to have traded one form of charlatanism for another. This should not come as a surprise, though. His change of religion, and those of Wagner and Buttey, say more about the men themselves than they do about either far-right politics or Islam.


DAVID A. GRAHAM is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covers U.S. politics and global news.

the source

guest_07
First Team
First Team

Posts : 1939
Join date : 2013-10-16

Back to top Go down

Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims Empty Re: Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims

Post by guest_07 Mon Jul 09, 2018 3:48 am


guest_07
First Team
First Team

Posts : 1939
Join date : 2013-10-16

Back to top Go down

Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims Empty Re: Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims

Post by guest_07 Mon Jul 09, 2018 3:51 am


guest_07
First Team
First Team

Posts : 1939
Join date : 2013-10-16

Back to top Go down

Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims Empty Re: Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims

Post by guest_07 Tue Jul 10, 2018 3:16 am

Front National councillor urges French far-Right party to convert to Islam

By David Chazan, Paris
1:34PM BST 25 Oct 2014

A far-right local councillor shocks Marine Le Pen's party by becoming a Muslim and sending Front National officials a video in which he urges them to embrace Islam

A Front National local councillor has embarrassed France's far-Right party by announcing his recent conversion to Islam – and urging fellow members to join him.

Maxence Buttey, 22, offended officials of the anti-immigration party by sending them a video in which he praised the "visionary" virtues of the Koran and urged them to become Muslims.

Mr Buttey, a councillor in the eastern Paris suburb of Noisy-le-Grand, said the Front National and Islam had much in common.

"Both are demonised and very far from the image portrayed in the media," he told Le Parisien newspaper. "Like Islam, the FN defends the weakest. The party denounces exorbitant interest rates charged on the debt of our country, and Islam is against the practice of usury."

Jordan Bardella, a local party secretary, said Mr Buttey had been suspended from a regional FN committee.

"Religion is a private choice which I respect but it must not enter into the sphere of our political activities. The proselytising video which Maxence sent out is unacceptable," Mr Bardella said.

However, Mr Buttey remains a party member and a councillor. The party has no power to sack him from the post.

"Some of my voters will be disappointed by my choice," Mr Buttey admitted. "But I'm ready to explain to them that Islam has a mission to unite all men and women."

He said he found it difficult to believe the "official" version of the September 11 attacks, adding that there was doubt about the "Merah affair" -- referring to the al-Qaeda inspired French gunman, Mohammed Merah, who killed seven people in the south of France in 2012.

"I am against the niqab [full-face veil]," he said, adding that Islam did not call for believers "to cut off heads as the Islamic State group does."

Mr Buttey said he had decided to convert after lengthy discussions with the local imam, whom he met while campaigning for election earlier this year.

"I was Catholic but when I reread the Bible I noticed all its inconsistencies," he said. "When I read the Koran thoroughly, I understood that this religion is more open."

The leader of the Front National, Marine Le Pen, has objected to schools serving Halal meat for Muslim pupils, a controversial issue in France, which has banned the wearing of the full-face veil in public and headscarves in state schools. It has Europe's largest Muslim population, estimated at six million.

source

guest_07
First Team
First Team

Posts : 1939
Join date : 2013-10-16

Back to top Go down

Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims Empty Re: Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims

Post by Myesyats Tue Jul 10, 2018 9:51 am

Le Pen converted to Islam? lol

anyway religion is worst thing to ever happen, and the idea of afterlife is just our conceited and narcissistic belief that we can't not exist

Myesyats
World Class Contributor
World Class Contributor

Club Supported : RO Blank
Posts : 19129
Join date : 2015-05-03
Age : 95

Back to top Go down

Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims Empty Re: Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims

Post by guest_07 Tue Jul 10, 2018 9:58 am

1 case can be a coincidence

but 3 cases did make these as strange cases to non-Muslim

a normal guy turn Muslim is ordinary case

but a hardcore haters turned lover are quite rare,
in these cases, a leader or important persons of hardcore hater

guest_07
First Team
First Team

Posts : 1939
Join date : 2013-10-16

Back to top Go down

Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims Empty Re: Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims

Post by guest_07 Wed Jul 11, 2018 3:39 am


guest_07
First Team
First Team

Posts : 1939
Join date : 2013-10-16

Back to top Go down

Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims Empty Re: Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims

Post by guest_07 Wed Jul 11, 2018 2:30 pm


guest_07
First Team
First Team

Posts : 1939
Join date : 2013-10-16

Back to top Go down

Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims Empty Re: Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims

Post by VivaStPauli Fri Jul 13, 2018 2:52 pm

There's also a couple of former Muslims who found Christianity or agnosticism, and then joined anti-islam right wing parties, so it goes both ways.
VivaStPauli
VivaStPauli
Fan Favorite
Fan Favorite

Club Supported : FC St. Pauli
Posts : 9002
Join date : 2011-06-05
Age : 39

Back to top Go down

Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims Empty Re: Anti-Islam Politicians Turned Muslims

Post by Sponsored content


Sponsored content


Back to top Go down

Back to top

- Similar topics

 
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum