Official in party that says Islam does not Belong to Germany converts to Islam

 

Arthur Wagner, a leading AfD party official in the state of Brandenburg, Germany has converted to Islam. This is noteworthy considering he comes from a party which takes an adversarial position toward Islam, holding that “Islam does not belong to Germany.” The AfD has seen its political fortunes ascend the past year as it made major inroads on its anti-immigrant, anti-Islam platform in elections.

Wagner, didn’t give any detailed reasons for his conversion or resignation from the AfD. His only comment has been that he converted for “personal reasons,” and that he was not pressured to quit after his conversion by the AfD. It would stand to reason however that despite the AfD’s claim that it doesn’t discriminate against Muslims it would be difficult to be a member of a party whose avowed stance is anti-Islam. The Atlantic published an article titled “the strange cases of anti-Islam politicians turned Muslims.” The article also gets into a bit of murky psycho-social analysis about conversion, and a not completely factual claim about their historically not being any or many cases of European critics converting to Islam before the rise of anti-Islam political parties. In fact there are many stories of European converts from the past who were critics of Islam or anti-Islam, many of them would settle in Muslim nations.