While Writing Anti-Islam Book He Became Muslim! - The Story of Joram Van Klaveren
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How and why did you decide to write an anti-Islamic book? How was your life in regards to faith? What did you believe in? What was your heaviest and most regretful expression that you used for Islam? What was the reaction of the people around you? When you became muslim. I thought to myself, Islam is a lie. Islam is a danger. I got over 2000 death threats and in the end I decided to write an anti Islam book. God give me a sign so that I 100% sure know this is the way. I couldn't sleep for it for two days. I couldn't accept it. It was so, so strange. Assalamu Alaykum, Brother Joram Van Klaveren Thank you for accepting our invitation and we are happy to have you with us.
I want to first ask you, who is Joram? Wa aleikum salam Thank you very much for the invitation. A great honor for me to be here. Joram Van Klaveren was born on January 23 in 1979, in Amsterdam, in a pretty regular family father, mother, brother younger sister, a cat. In Amsterdam, I was born and raised there in a where a practicing Protestant family. After I finished high school, I studied comparative religion. I was a teacher for a few years. There have been a lot of things in the Netherlands, especially in my life. Also, when I look at the bigger picture, when it came to Islam, I became politically active for the Freedom Party.
I became a member of Parliament and in the end I decided to write an anti-Islam book, which started as an anti-Islam book, changed into this search for God and it ended up me becoming a muslim. How was your life in regards to faith? What did you believe in? Before I was a muslim, I was a Protestant Christian from the Reformed Church. We read from the Bible. We all got biblical names. We were all baptized, we went to church, etc., etc. So we were pretty Christian in that way, in that sense. Of course, I believe that there is a creator. I believe in Heaven, Hell, I believe in angels revelations.
And of course what separates the Christians from the Muslims is that I believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and in a more philosophical way, I believed He was God Himself of course, I believed in the resurrection and crucifixion of Christ, of course, and I believed in the atonement. So but because the Trinity is a very complex concept, whether you believe it or not, it's still very complex, because if there is a God in the Bible, it says God is eternal, but if you are eternal and at the same, you die, you cannot be eternal, immortal at the same time. So it was something when I was a little older, 16,17 I started questioning things like that, It's not very logical.
I talked to many, many priests, preachers, even rabbis. And the answers I got weren't very satisfying. That made it for me kind of complex. And in the end I had some doubts about stuff like this. But I said, Well, I set aside and I thought like a judge, I just believe it. And perhaps I'm not smart enough to get the whole picture. And I still believed in God. I still believe that Jesus was a very important person. I believe He was the son of God. But how it exactly was, I left it for what it was. Why did you want to write an anti-Islamic book? How and why did you decide to write an anti-Islamic book? After high school, I went to a university and I did the comparative religion.
And the remarkable thing, I think, was that the first day of me going to college was September 11th, 2001, already thought Ok, these Muslim guys. I kind of crazy and this religion isn't the truth. Then a few years later, was this guy in the Netherlands Theo Van Gogh. He was a famous filmmaker and he was killed in the street. He was shot and they tried to slit his throat and they put a knife in his stomach with a letter on it for another girl, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And it was it said, you are next. So it's strengthens my anti-Islam feelings in such a way that I thought, well, I have to become politically active to do something and stop this evil or harming our country.
You started politics because of Islam. And that really had to do with Islam. That was the reason that I wanted to write a book to explain to people why Islam was a danger for the world. When I was writing my book. Like I said earlier, the questions, the doubts I had about Christianity popped up again. And that was about truth, of course, because I was a believing Christian guy and the Christian questions I had in the end were answered in an Islamic way. Because of course when I started writing the book, a lot of people think that it was a political book, but it wasn't so much in political book. It was a religious book because I wanted to show people why Islam was a danger as a religion.
And I wrote it from a Christian perspective. So in the beginning, I made a comparison between the Christian concept of God and the Islamic concept. So I start comparing it. But because I had these doubts about the Trinity and I saw Tawheed the oneness of God in Islam Yeah, that sounds a little bit more logical. And then I thought to myself, Well, I reread the Bible to see it, to refresh myself, to see, okay, why isn't the concept of Islam the Tawheed concept isn't the Christian concept. But when I was reading the Old Testament and I saw what the Old Testament prophet said, there was one God, one God, one God.
And then I thought, okay, I'll look only at the words of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. And then there's this story in the New Testament that where a guy comes to Jesus and he asks him, What is the most important thing in life? How can I gain paradise? And he said, There are two things he says here oh Israel, here your God is one, treat your neighbor as you want to be treated yourself. So I thought, well, even Jesus Christ is here. Oh, Israel, your God is one. So I thought, well, this whole Muslim concept of God sounds more logical. And it's the same concept that I find in the old and the New Testament.
And I know Christianity as a religion teaches something else, but it isn't the concept of God that I find in the Bible. So after weeks and weeks of study, reading, rereading all kinds of books, I thought to myself, okay, perhaps this oneness of God is something that is true. So that's how it started. What resources did you use while doing your research? Because I was kind of shocked, I started writing to several authorities on these religious matters. And one of the guys that I wrote to was Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad, and he's a professor from Cambridge University. But in a way, it was kind of strange, of course, because I was a politician back then.
Still, I was writing an anti-Islam book with an anti-Islam purpose. And I'm asking this Muslim professor from another country, can you help me? So I told him, I'm writing a book. I have a lot of questions. So I was very plain why I thought why Islam promoting terrorism. I was anti-woman, why is anti-Christian, anti whatever. And after I think six weeks, he sent me a very extensive email and he started explaining directly, answered a lot of my questions. But he also told me, You have to read this article read this book, read that book, ask this person. So he was very extensive in his way of explaining.
But in the end, after I read all these books and articles and made a comparison between prophets from the Old Testament with Muhammad (pbuh). I had no arguments anymore to say they are prophets and he is not. And I thought to myself, Well, if I accept Moses on these grounds and I cannot accept the Prophet, then there is something else. So I thought, why don't I think he is a prophet? And I thought that perhaps because he had many wives. But then again, when you look at Solomon or you look at King David, Abraham there are a lot of people in the Old Testament that had more wives.
And when you look at even outside of the religious books culturally in Europe, in Africa, Asia, everywhere, there were men with several wives for several reasons. So I thought to myself, well, there cannot be a reason either. So one by one, all these reasons felt. In the end I thought, well, I have to say, all of them are not prophets, but I didn't believe that because I thought, well, the things they did, they said, the miracles that happened, etc. They were confirmed in what they said and what they did. So they are. And then I said, Well, then I have to accept that Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) perhaps is a prophet too. So I was doubting it.
So first I thought, well, it's the most evil person I know because of the history. Then I said, Well, perhaps it's not that evil, but he's not a prophet. And in the end I start doubting perhaps he is a prophet. Yeah, that took, of course, me reading a lot of books again. And the one thing that I think was very wise of Abdul Hakim Murad to say was he said, Well, the books you read about with the anti-Islam arguments are written by non-Muslims. He said, If you want to know more about Christianity, you don't read books from atheists. You start reading the books from the Christians. Why do they believe this? What are the arguments? so that you have to do the same with Islam.
So start reading Islamic books from Islamic teachers, from Islamic scholars, etc. and then you can see if you compare the books on the same topic of people who are Muslim and wrote those books and non-Muslim, you can see where they took the wrong turn, where they translated the words in the wrong way sometimes, perhaps even not on purpose, but just because they didn't know where things are added, where things left out of it, so in the end you see There is this other religion almost created because of all these things.
And that's what I did and that's what I also did with the life of the Prophet, because I read a book from Martin Links The Life of the Prophet based on the earliest source of Muhammad. And it was written, of course, by a convert. And his way of reasoning, his way of telling has a way of writing appealed to me because it's culturally the same thing. How do I approach a certain topic, etc.? And it was the first time that I saw him, not so much as a warlord, because that's the picture I had in my mind. But I saw him as a father and I saw him as a friend and a teacher and so much more.
And so yeah, I saw the person in his character and I said, Well, I can say a lot, but I cannot say that this is not a good man. So his character persuaded me to read more and to want to know more What surprised you the most while doing your research? the story about Hint. there was something that like a switch, like I had to change. And it was because I thought Hint, she was the wife of one of the enemies, Abu Sufyan, and in a way, he gave money to kill Hamza r.a., the favorite uncle, the prophet. And that was what happened on the battlefield. He got killed. They even paraded with his ears and cut off his nose and horrible stuff. So the prophet was deeply sad, of course, of what happened.
And years and years later, he became powerful. He came in power in Mecca. And then there was Hint. And I was reading this book and I thought, okay, now she gets crucified or her hands get cut off or something like that. But he says, Well, I cannot look at her right now, but everybody is forgiven. And if you want to stay here and live among the Muslims, it's possible. If you don't want that, you can go. But bloodshedding is over now and I thought to myself that she was forgiven.
If you can forgive someone who kills a relative, especially a favorite uncle, if you even starts parading with parts of his body to show other people that she humiliates you and whatever you stand for it, that means you have such a great character. It's very special. It's something you don't see. And that's what he did. So I thought to myself, Well, it was a really special guy. And when I saw that, I thought, Well, I have these arguments for him being a prophet. I see his character, I see the way he treated other people. I see how he treated his enemies. I think he is a prophet.
But then I thought to myself, Whoa, that's horrible, because I already accept that this oneness of God and now I say He is a prophet. If I tell you there is only one God and Muhammad (pbuh) is his prophet, it's almost shahadah. So I thought to myself, okay, let's close the books, stop. This is going in the wrong direction. And of course I wasn't that anti-Islam anymore because of what I read or what I saw and what I experienced. What I tell you now, it sounds a little like a fairytale, but it really happened in the end.
There were all these books at the table, and when I had this feeling of, Yeah, okay, this is Shahadah in a way, I said, Well, I put all the books away and I put the books on the high shelf. But there were so many books that a lot of books fell off the shelf. And one of the books that fell of the shelf was the Quran. And when I picked it up, my hand was on a page which Surah 22, Ayah 46 and it says “It's not the eyes that are blind, but the hearts.” And I thought to myself, that really is my problem because it wasn't the eyes. I really could see what I written down myself. Nobody forced me to write this book. Nobody said, You have to write this or that.
I started writing myself and I could see it with my own eyes, but I still couldn't accept the fact that I said he is a prophet. There is this one. God, I just couldn't. So it wasn't my eyes that were blind. It was really my heart. I couldn't accept it. I think my Nafs or whatever my ego, I couldn't accept it. And I said, Well, God, I don't care if it's the God from the Bible or the Quran, give me a sign or something so that I 100% sure. know, this is the way. And I went to bed. But when I woke up, I felt very secure in myself. I really feels very secure. I've never been more secure about anything else. The whole anxiety or a whole doubting issue disappeared. Like like snow for the sun.
And I said to myself, Well, I think I'm a muslim. Well, and then, of course, I had to tell other people. What was the reaction of the people around you? When you became muslim? Salaam alaikum, brothers and sisters. We saw that 80% of our audience, including this video, are not subscribed to our channel. As you know, we are a nonprofit organization and advertisements are disabled on our videos. So the only reason we are asking for this is to spread the truth. It may seem like a small act but InshaAllah It may be a means of guidance for many people. Now let's click the subscribe button and let's together walk Towards Eternity What was the reaction of the people around you?
When you became muslim? Most of them were very negative. Of course, for a lot of people, especially some uncles and aunts, it was kind of a shock. They heard it when it was on the news. And I told my mother and my mother start crying and my wife was pretty open. Yeah, she was very cool about it. She said, Well, Islam is what you really believe and that's in your heart. Who am I? And some people from my old work were really aggressive. I got, over 2000 death threats from people who used to support me. Of course, people who voted for me. People said the most horrible things. We will rape your wife, shoot you, you know where your children go to school, stuff like that.
And most of them, of course, are nonsense because they're crazy people writing things on a computer. So it was kind of a hectic time and I had to tell my work, of course, and it was this Christian organization, so to say to the leader of the back, he said, I can't believe it. And he said, Well, I noticed this change when you talked about certain topics on radio. You were kind of a little more mild, not so harsh anymore, but you becoming a muslim. And after I said, yeah, I became Muslim, he said I couldn't sleep for it for two days. I couldn't accept it. It was so, so strange.
But the hardest part for me was telling my grandfather because my grandfather was dying and he was 93, 94 years old, and he was on his deathbed at home. I had to tell him and my mother told me, you have to tell your grandfather was his father. So I said, Well, than you have to come with me. He's like a shield. And I just said, Well, Grandfather, I became Muslim. And then he closed his eyes and I thought he stopped breathing because he was so old. And he really stopped breathing for a while. And then he started breathing again. And he looked at me and he said, Well, at least you didn't became Catholic.
So it's very funny, the last thing and my old boss from the radio, he said, Well, how do we know that you're not becoming a Hindu one day or something else or. And I told him, Well, I never chose a religion. One time, it was when I became a muslim. Before that I didn't choose my religion. I was born in a Christian family. I was raised in a Christian way. And I'm very grateful for all the good things that it brought me. But it was not my decision. And the only time I made a decision was me becoming a muslim. And it was the most like I said, I think the most important decision I made and it was the most rational decision I made.
I never took years and years to decide one thing, only becoming a muslim. But how did. You feel when you made your first Salah? It's of course, a beautiful moment, but very strange as well, because as a Christian, you're not used to pray like that. You pray with your hands together and perhaps on your knees in front of your bath or something. But I think it's very beautiful that you really prostrate, so you really bowed down in the deepest way for your Lord. So that's a very humbling, beautiful thing, I think. And that's yeah, it made me feel very happy. What were the three biggest challenges you faced when you converted to Islam?
Well, becoming a muslim, of course, was a big challenge because I had to tell the world family and that was a big challenge. The part of thinking that it would be very hard to become a muslim, because especially as a Protestant Christian, there aren't so many things you have to do in a religious sense as a muslim, in terms of practice, it is required to pray five times a day. It's required to eat in a certain way. It is required to think in a certain way. You have to be the best in a way, every moment because of relation with your Creator and because of the fact that you have to pray five times a day. It's a constant reminder in a way, of the Creator.
So that makes you much more aware of the fact that you have a Lord then as a Christian. That's how I experience and I thought to myself, Whoa, five times today praying, I cannot do this, I cannot do that, I have to do So that made it hard in the head. But after I became Muslim, it wasn't hard at all. Are you raising your kids as muslim? You try, of course. I don't know when when you're really raise a muslim. It's I think it's a very difficult job, especially in these times. Of course, when I married, I wasn't a muslim. You promised in a way that you raise your children as Christians.
So after I became Muslim, I'm not raising my children as Christians of course if the kids have questions about Christianity, they ask my wife, they get Christian answers, and if they come to me, they get Islamic answers. But most of the time says, Ask your father. My wife cooks halal for everybody. So that's very sweet. She says, Well, I'm not going to cook five meals, so everybody eats the same. You want halal. Everybody eats halal. So in a way, it's it's like an organic process. What was your heaviest and most regretful expression that you used for Islam? I think Islam is a lie because that's something I used to say. Islam is a lie, the Quran is poison.
But when I said Islam is a lie, that's the whole religion and everything that comes with it. So that's like the highest level of Jahiliyya in a way. Yeah, that's something I regret because it was like an umbrella and everything else was under this concept of Islam is a lie because there was the core thought. And of course I do blame myself and I know that a lot of people out there not practicing Muslims that do so. And in a way I understand it because in a political sense and in a social, cultural sense, everything is said and done is still there. I sometimes even hear arguments from people in my old party that I offended in a way.
Yeah, that's something that bothers me, and that's one of the reasons that we found an organization called the (IXC) Islamic Experience Center. And we go to schools primary school, high school, college, universities, but also two departments of the government, other social organizations, churches to take away misconceptions about Islam, to share the message, to show Islam in its true colors. And we do it by virtual reality (VR) with the glasses. So it's a very fun experience as well. And we try to erase in a way the things I've said and done in the past. How should people research about Islam? Do you advise just searching at Google? No, I would certainly not advise Google.
It's the last thing I would advise. I said shut down the computer. No, I think it's very important that people read books, real books with pages and stuff. I would recommend Muhammad (pbuh) It's life based on the earliest source of Martin Links. the book I talked about earlier, it's a green book and I think it's very important for people not just dive into the Quran because it's a very complex book. And if you don't have anybody who can teach you what you read, especially most of the people who don't know anything about Islam are not fluent Arabic, classic Arabic speaking people.
So you will read an interpretation of the Quran or a translation, and most of the time that's not the real deal, of course. So I would advise people just to study the Sīrah study the character and the life of the prophet, because that's what the tradition teaches us as well. His life was the Quran. He was the living Quran in a way, just study his Sunnah and I think that is the best way of discovering Islam. What would you like to say as your final comments? I became much more happier after I became Muslim, so I would like to invite everybody to become Muslim just because it brings peace to your soul and peace to your heart. It is the truth. It resonates with heart and soul.
At least look at it from an Islamic perspective. Try to read and study the life of the Prophet. Try to understand what the Muslims believe. Not so much the behavior of Muslims, because there are a lot of Muslims that don't live like Muslims, including myself. I don't always live like a muslim. I should and we all do. But you should look at the example of all examples and it was the prophet. And if you study his life, perhaps you will find guidance that leads you to the truth.
I want to first ask you, who is Joram? Wa aleikum salam Thank you very much for the invitation. A great honor for me to be here. Joram Van Klaveren was born on January 23 in 1979, in Amsterdam, in a pretty regular family father, mother, brother younger sister, a cat. In Amsterdam, I was born and raised there in a where a practicing Protestant family. After I finished high school, I studied comparative religion. I was a teacher for a few years. There have been a lot of things in the Netherlands, especially in my life. Also, when I look at the bigger picture, when it came to Islam, I became politically active for the Freedom Party.
I became a member of Parliament and in the end I decided to write an anti-Islam book, which started as an anti-Islam book, changed into this search for God and it ended up me becoming a muslim. How was your life in regards to faith? What did you believe in? Before I was a muslim, I was a Protestant Christian from the Reformed Church. We read from the Bible. We all got biblical names. We were all baptized, we went to church, etc., etc. So we were pretty Christian in that way, in that sense. Of course, I believe that there is a creator. I believe in Heaven, Hell, I believe in angels revelations.
And of course what separates the Christians from the Muslims is that I believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and in a more philosophical way, I believed He was God Himself of course, I believed in the resurrection and crucifixion of Christ, of course, and I believed in the atonement. So but because the Trinity is a very complex concept, whether you believe it or not, it's still very complex, because if there is a God in the Bible, it says God is eternal, but if you are eternal and at the same, you die, you cannot be eternal, immortal at the same time. So it was something when I was a little older, 16,17 I started questioning things like that, It's not very logical.
I talked to many, many priests, preachers, even rabbis. And the answers I got weren't very satisfying. That made it for me kind of complex. And in the end I had some doubts about stuff like this. But I said, Well, I set aside and I thought like a judge, I just believe it. And perhaps I'm not smart enough to get the whole picture. And I still believed in God. I still believe that Jesus was a very important person. I believe He was the son of God. But how it exactly was, I left it for what it was. Why did you want to write an anti-Islamic book? How and why did you decide to write an anti-Islamic book? After high school, I went to a university and I did the comparative religion.
And the remarkable thing, I think, was that the first day of me going to college was September 11th, 2001, already thought Ok, these Muslim guys. I kind of crazy and this religion isn't the truth. Then a few years later, was this guy in the Netherlands Theo Van Gogh. He was a famous filmmaker and he was killed in the street. He was shot and they tried to slit his throat and they put a knife in his stomach with a letter on it for another girl, Ayaan Hirsi Ali. And it was it said, you are next. So it's strengthens my anti-Islam feelings in such a way that I thought, well, I have to become politically active to do something and stop this evil or harming our country.
You started politics because of Islam. And that really had to do with Islam. That was the reason that I wanted to write a book to explain to people why Islam was a danger for the world. When I was writing my book. Like I said earlier, the questions, the doubts I had about Christianity popped up again. And that was about truth, of course, because I was a believing Christian guy and the Christian questions I had in the end were answered in an Islamic way. Because of course when I started writing the book, a lot of people think that it was a political book, but it wasn't so much in political book. It was a religious book because I wanted to show people why Islam was a danger as a religion.
And I wrote it from a Christian perspective. So in the beginning, I made a comparison between the Christian concept of God and the Islamic concept. So I start comparing it. But because I had these doubts about the Trinity and I saw Tawheed the oneness of God in Islam Yeah, that sounds a little bit more logical. And then I thought to myself, Well, I reread the Bible to see it, to refresh myself, to see, okay, why isn't the concept of Islam the Tawheed concept isn't the Christian concept. But when I was reading the Old Testament and I saw what the Old Testament prophet said, there was one God, one God, one God.
And then I thought, okay, I'll look only at the words of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. And then there's this story in the New Testament that where a guy comes to Jesus and he asks him, What is the most important thing in life? How can I gain paradise? And he said, There are two things he says here oh Israel, here your God is one, treat your neighbor as you want to be treated yourself. So I thought, well, even Jesus Christ is here. Oh, Israel, your God is one. So I thought, well, this whole Muslim concept of God sounds more logical. And it's the same concept that I find in the old and the New Testament.
And I know Christianity as a religion teaches something else, but it isn't the concept of God that I find in the Bible. So after weeks and weeks of study, reading, rereading all kinds of books, I thought to myself, okay, perhaps this oneness of God is something that is true. So that's how it started. What resources did you use while doing your research? Because I was kind of shocked, I started writing to several authorities on these religious matters. And one of the guys that I wrote to was Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad, and he's a professor from Cambridge University. But in a way, it was kind of strange, of course, because I was a politician back then.
Still, I was writing an anti-Islam book with an anti-Islam purpose. And I'm asking this Muslim professor from another country, can you help me? So I told him, I'm writing a book. I have a lot of questions. So I was very plain why I thought why Islam promoting terrorism. I was anti-woman, why is anti-Christian, anti whatever. And after I think six weeks, he sent me a very extensive email and he started explaining directly, answered a lot of my questions. But he also told me, You have to read this article read this book, read that book, ask this person. So he was very extensive in his way of explaining.
But in the end, after I read all these books and articles and made a comparison between prophets from the Old Testament with Muhammad (pbuh). I had no arguments anymore to say they are prophets and he is not. And I thought to myself, Well, if I accept Moses on these grounds and I cannot accept the Prophet, then there is something else. So I thought, why don't I think he is a prophet? And I thought that perhaps because he had many wives. But then again, when you look at Solomon or you look at King David, Abraham there are a lot of people in the Old Testament that had more wives.
And when you look at even outside of the religious books culturally in Europe, in Africa, Asia, everywhere, there were men with several wives for several reasons. So I thought to myself, well, there cannot be a reason either. So one by one, all these reasons felt. In the end I thought, well, I have to say, all of them are not prophets, but I didn't believe that because I thought, well, the things they did, they said, the miracles that happened, etc. They were confirmed in what they said and what they did. So they are. And then I said, Well, then I have to accept that Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) perhaps is a prophet too. So I was doubting it.
So first I thought, well, it's the most evil person I know because of the history. Then I said, Well, perhaps it's not that evil, but he's not a prophet. And in the end I start doubting perhaps he is a prophet. Yeah, that took, of course, me reading a lot of books again. And the one thing that I think was very wise of Abdul Hakim Murad to say was he said, Well, the books you read about with the anti-Islam arguments are written by non-Muslims. He said, If you want to know more about Christianity, you don't read books from atheists. You start reading the books from the Christians. Why do they believe this? What are the arguments? so that you have to do the same with Islam.
So start reading Islamic books from Islamic teachers, from Islamic scholars, etc. and then you can see if you compare the books on the same topic of people who are Muslim and wrote those books and non-Muslim, you can see where they took the wrong turn, where they translated the words in the wrong way sometimes, perhaps even not on purpose, but just because they didn't know where things are added, where things left out of it, so in the end you see There is this other religion almost created because of all these things.
And that's what I did and that's what I also did with the life of the Prophet, because I read a book from Martin Links The Life of the Prophet based on the earliest source of Muhammad. And it was written, of course, by a convert. And his way of reasoning, his way of telling has a way of writing appealed to me because it's culturally the same thing. How do I approach a certain topic, etc.? And it was the first time that I saw him, not so much as a warlord, because that's the picture I had in my mind. But I saw him as a father and I saw him as a friend and a teacher and so much more.
And so yeah, I saw the person in his character and I said, Well, I can say a lot, but I cannot say that this is not a good man. So his character persuaded me to read more and to want to know more What surprised you the most while doing your research? the story about Hint. there was something that like a switch, like I had to change. And it was because I thought Hint, she was the wife of one of the enemies, Abu Sufyan, and in a way, he gave money to kill Hamza r.a., the favorite uncle, the prophet. And that was what happened on the battlefield. He got killed. They even paraded with his ears and cut off his nose and horrible stuff. So the prophet was deeply sad, of course, of what happened.
And years and years later, he became powerful. He came in power in Mecca. And then there was Hint. And I was reading this book and I thought, okay, now she gets crucified or her hands get cut off or something like that. But he says, Well, I cannot look at her right now, but everybody is forgiven. And if you want to stay here and live among the Muslims, it's possible. If you don't want that, you can go. But bloodshedding is over now and I thought to myself that she was forgiven.
If you can forgive someone who kills a relative, especially a favorite uncle, if you even starts parading with parts of his body to show other people that she humiliates you and whatever you stand for it, that means you have such a great character. It's very special. It's something you don't see. And that's what he did. So I thought to myself, Well, it was a really special guy. And when I saw that, I thought, Well, I have these arguments for him being a prophet. I see his character, I see the way he treated other people. I see how he treated his enemies. I think he is a prophet.
But then I thought to myself, Whoa, that's horrible, because I already accept that this oneness of God and now I say He is a prophet. If I tell you there is only one God and Muhammad (pbuh) is his prophet, it's almost shahadah. So I thought to myself, okay, let's close the books, stop. This is going in the wrong direction. And of course I wasn't that anti-Islam anymore because of what I read or what I saw and what I experienced. What I tell you now, it sounds a little like a fairytale, but it really happened in the end.
There were all these books at the table, and when I had this feeling of, Yeah, okay, this is Shahadah in a way, I said, Well, I put all the books away and I put the books on the high shelf. But there were so many books that a lot of books fell off the shelf. And one of the books that fell of the shelf was the Quran. And when I picked it up, my hand was on a page which Surah 22, Ayah 46 and it says “It's not the eyes that are blind, but the hearts.” And I thought to myself, that really is my problem because it wasn't the eyes. I really could see what I written down myself. Nobody forced me to write this book. Nobody said, You have to write this or that.
I started writing myself and I could see it with my own eyes, but I still couldn't accept the fact that I said he is a prophet. There is this one. God, I just couldn't. So it wasn't my eyes that were blind. It was really my heart. I couldn't accept it. I think my Nafs or whatever my ego, I couldn't accept it. And I said, Well, God, I don't care if it's the God from the Bible or the Quran, give me a sign or something so that I 100% sure. know, this is the way. And I went to bed. But when I woke up, I felt very secure in myself. I really feels very secure. I've never been more secure about anything else. The whole anxiety or a whole doubting issue disappeared. Like like snow for the sun.
And I said to myself, Well, I think I'm a muslim. Well, and then, of course, I had to tell other people. What was the reaction of the people around you? When you became muslim? Salaam alaikum, brothers and sisters. We saw that 80% of our audience, including this video, are not subscribed to our channel. As you know, we are a nonprofit organization and advertisements are disabled on our videos. So the only reason we are asking for this is to spread the truth. It may seem like a small act but InshaAllah It may be a means of guidance for many people. Now let's click the subscribe button and let's together walk Towards Eternity What was the reaction of the people around you?
When you became muslim? Most of them were very negative. Of course, for a lot of people, especially some uncles and aunts, it was kind of a shock. They heard it when it was on the news. And I told my mother and my mother start crying and my wife was pretty open. Yeah, she was very cool about it. She said, Well, Islam is what you really believe and that's in your heart. Who am I? And some people from my old work were really aggressive. I got, over 2000 death threats from people who used to support me. Of course, people who voted for me. People said the most horrible things. We will rape your wife, shoot you, you know where your children go to school, stuff like that.
And most of them, of course, are nonsense because they're crazy people writing things on a computer. So it was kind of a hectic time and I had to tell my work, of course, and it was this Christian organization, so to say to the leader of the back, he said, I can't believe it. And he said, Well, I noticed this change when you talked about certain topics on radio. You were kind of a little more mild, not so harsh anymore, but you becoming a muslim. And after I said, yeah, I became Muslim, he said I couldn't sleep for it for two days. I couldn't accept it. It was so, so strange.
But the hardest part for me was telling my grandfather because my grandfather was dying and he was 93, 94 years old, and he was on his deathbed at home. I had to tell him and my mother told me, you have to tell your grandfather was his father. So I said, Well, than you have to come with me. He's like a shield. And I just said, Well, Grandfather, I became Muslim. And then he closed his eyes and I thought he stopped breathing because he was so old. And he really stopped breathing for a while. And then he started breathing again. And he looked at me and he said, Well, at least you didn't became Catholic.
So it's very funny, the last thing and my old boss from the radio, he said, Well, how do we know that you're not becoming a Hindu one day or something else or. And I told him, Well, I never chose a religion. One time, it was when I became a muslim. Before that I didn't choose my religion. I was born in a Christian family. I was raised in a Christian way. And I'm very grateful for all the good things that it brought me. But it was not my decision. And the only time I made a decision was me becoming a muslim. And it was the most like I said, I think the most important decision I made and it was the most rational decision I made.
I never took years and years to decide one thing, only becoming a muslim. But how did. You feel when you made your first Salah? It's of course, a beautiful moment, but very strange as well, because as a Christian, you're not used to pray like that. You pray with your hands together and perhaps on your knees in front of your bath or something. But I think it's very beautiful that you really prostrate, so you really bowed down in the deepest way for your Lord. So that's a very humbling, beautiful thing, I think. And that's yeah, it made me feel very happy. What were the three biggest challenges you faced when you converted to Islam?
Well, becoming a muslim, of course, was a big challenge because I had to tell the world family and that was a big challenge. The part of thinking that it would be very hard to become a muslim, because especially as a Protestant Christian, there aren't so many things you have to do in a religious sense as a muslim, in terms of practice, it is required to pray five times a day. It's required to eat in a certain way. It is required to think in a certain way. You have to be the best in a way, every moment because of relation with your Creator and because of the fact that you have to pray five times a day. It's a constant reminder in a way, of the Creator.
So that makes you much more aware of the fact that you have a Lord then as a Christian. That's how I experience and I thought to myself, Whoa, five times today praying, I cannot do this, I cannot do that, I have to do So that made it hard in the head. But after I became Muslim, it wasn't hard at all. Are you raising your kids as muslim? You try, of course. I don't know when when you're really raise a muslim. It's I think it's a very difficult job, especially in these times. Of course, when I married, I wasn't a muslim. You promised in a way that you raise your children as Christians.
So after I became Muslim, I'm not raising my children as Christians of course if the kids have questions about Christianity, they ask my wife, they get Christian answers, and if they come to me, they get Islamic answers. But most of the time says, Ask your father. My wife cooks halal for everybody. So that's very sweet. She says, Well, I'm not going to cook five meals, so everybody eats the same. You want halal. Everybody eats halal. So in a way, it's it's like an organic process. What was your heaviest and most regretful expression that you used for Islam? I think Islam is a lie because that's something I used to say. Islam is a lie, the Quran is poison.
But when I said Islam is a lie, that's the whole religion and everything that comes with it. So that's like the highest level of Jahiliyya in a way. Yeah, that's something I regret because it was like an umbrella and everything else was under this concept of Islam is a lie because there was the core thought. And of course I do blame myself and I know that a lot of people out there not practicing Muslims that do so. And in a way I understand it because in a political sense and in a social, cultural sense, everything is said and done is still there. I sometimes even hear arguments from people in my old party that I offended in a way.
Yeah, that's something that bothers me, and that's one of the reasons that we found an organization called the (IXC) Islamic Experience Center. And we go to schools primary school, high school, college, universities, but also two departments of the government, other social organizations, churches to take away misconceptions about Islam, to share the message, to show Islam in its true colors. And we do it by virtual reality (VR) with the glasses. So it's a very fun experience as well. And we try to erase in a way the things I've said and done in the past. How should people research about Islam? Do you advise just searching at Google? No, I would certainly not advise Google.
It's the last thing I would advise. I said shut down the computer. No, I think it's very important that people read books, real books with pages and stuff. I would recommend Muhammad (pbuh) It's life based on the earliest source of Martin Links. the book I talked about earlier, it's a green book and I think it's very important for people not just dive into the Quran because it's a very complex book. And if you don't have anybody who can teach you what you read, especially most of the people who don't know anything about Islam are not fluent Arabic, classic Arabic speaking people.
So you will read an interpretation of the Quran or a translation, and most of the time that's not the real deal, of course. So I would advise people just to study the Sīrah study the character and the life of the prophet, because that's what the tradition teaches us as well. His life was the Quran. He was the living Quran in a way, just study his Sunnah and I think that is the best way of discovering Islam. What would you like to say as your final comments? I became much more happier after I became Muslim, so I would like to invite everybody to become Muslim just because it brings peace to your soul and peace to your heart. It is the truth. It resonates with heart and soul.
At least look at it from an Islamic perspective. Try to read and study the life of the Prophet. Try to understand what the Muslims believe. Not so much the behavior of Muslims, because there are a lot of Muslims that don't live like Muslims, including myself. I don't always live like a muslim. I should and we all do. But you should look at the example of all examples and it was the prophet. And if you study his life, perhaps you will find guidance that leads you to the truth.