How did Joram Van Klaveren became a Muslim? Full Story (Decided to write anti islam book)

Anti islamist politician became a muslim. Joram van klavaren anti islamist. Anti islamist politician converted to islam. Member of Freedom Party has became a Muslim. Why people in europe becoming muslim? Reverting to islam.

How did Joram Van Klaveren became a Muslim? (Decided to write anti islam book)
How did Joram Van Klaveren became a Muslim? (Decided to write anti islam book) Credit: Towards Eternity

Table of Contents

Introduction

How and why did you decide to write an anti-Islamic book? How was your life regarding Faith? What did you believe in? What was the darkest, most regretful thing you said about Islam? When you converted to Islam, how did those in your immediate vicinity respond?  I thought to myself, Islam is a lie. Islam is a danger. I got over 2,000 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.

Who is Joram Van Klaveren?

I was born on January 23, 1979, in Amsterdam, in a pretty regular family: father, mother, a brother, not a younger brother, a sister, a cat. I was born and raised there in a practicing Protestant family. After I finished high school, I studied comparative religion. I was a teacher.

For a few years, there happened 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 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 with me becoming a Muslim.

How was Joram Van Klaveren life regarding Faith? What did Joram believe in?

Before I was a Muslim, I was a Protestant Christian from the Reformed Church. We all received biblical names, read passages from the Bible, were baptized, attended church, etc.

So, we’re pretty Christian in that way. In that sense, of course, I believed that there is a Creator. I believed in heaven and hell. I believed in angels, Revelations, and, of course, what separates the Christians from the Muslims is that I believed that Jesus Christ was the son of God. Yeah, in a more philosophical way, I believed he was God himself. Of course, I believed in the resurrection and crucifixion of Christ, and I believed in the atonement, but because the Trinity is a very complex concept, Whether there is a God or not, it remains highly complicated since, if one exists, the Bible claims that God is eternal.

But if you are Eternal and at the same time, you die, you cannot be Eternal and 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 priests, preachers, and even rabbis, and the answers I got weren’t very satisfying. That made it difficult for me kind of complex, and, in the end, I had some doubts about this stuff. Like this. But I said, well, I set it aside, and I thought, okay, I just believe it, and perhaps I’m not smart enough to get the whole picture, and I still believed in God. Jesus, in my opinion, was a really significant individual. I think he was the son of God, but I’m not sure precisely how that happened.

How and why did Joram Van Klaveren decide to write an anti-Islamic book? 

After high school, I went to a university and I did comparative religion, and a remarkable thing, I think, was that the first day of my going to college was September 11, 2001. I already thought, okay, these Muslim guys are kind of crazy, and this religion isn’t the truth. Then a few years later, this guy in the Netherlands called Teo Van Gogh was a famous filmmaker and 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 for another girl, Ayan Hirsi Ali, and it said, ‘You are next.’ So, it strengthened 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, yeah, and that really had to do with Islam. That’s the reason I wanted to write a book to explain to the people why Islam was a danger to the world. When I was writing my book, like I said earlier, the questions and the doubts I had about Christianity popped up again, and that was about the truth. Naturally, since I was a devout Christian, my queries about Christianity were ultimately addressed in an Islamic manner since, naturally, when I started writing the book, a lot of people thought it was a political book, but it wasn’t so much a political book; it was a religious book because I wanted to show people why Islam was a dangerous 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 started comparing it. But because I had these doubts about the Trinity, and I saw Tawheed, the Oneness of God, in Islam, I thought, yeah, it sounds a little bit more logical. And then I thought to myself, ‘Well, I reread the Bible to refresh myself and say,

why isn’t the concept of Islam, the Tawheed concept, in the Christian concept?

When I was reading the Old Testament, and I saw what the Old Testament Prophet said, it was 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 where a guy comes to Jesus. What is the most important thing in life?” he says. How can I gain paradise?’ And he said there are two things. He said, ‘Hear, O Israel, hear, your God is one. Treat your neighbor as you want to be treated yourself.’ So, I thought, ‘Well, even Jesus Christ says, ‘Hear, O 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, and rereading all kinds of books, I thought to myself, ‘Okay, perhaps this Oneness of God is true.’ So, that’s how it started.

What resources did Joram Van Klaveren use while doing his research on Islam?

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 Murat, 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 asked this Muslim Professor from another country, ‘Can you help me?’ So I told him I was writing a book; I had a lot of questions. So, I was very clear. I thought,

‘Why is Islam promoting terrorism? Why is it anti-woman? Why is it anti-Christian? Anti-whatever?’

After, I think, six weeks, he sent me a very extensive email, and he started explaining and 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, and so on.’

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 (peace and blessings be upon him), I had no arguments anymore to say they are prophets, and he is not. “Well, if I accept Moses on these grounds, and I cannot accept the prophet, then there is something else,” I reasoned to myself. Thus, I reasoned,

‘Why don’t I think he is a prophet?’

And I thought, ‘Oh, perhaps because he had many wives.’ But then again, when you look at Solomon or you look at King David and Abraham, there are Many of the Old Testament figures had many spouses. And when you look at even outside of the religious books culturally, in Europe, in Africa, in Asia, everywhere, there were men with several wives for several reasons.

So, I told him, I said, ‘Well, that cannot be a reason either.’ So one by one, all these reasons fell, and 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, they were confirmed in what they said and what they did. So they are. I therefore concluded that I might have to acknowledge Prophet Muhammad’s potential prophetic status. Thus, I had my doubts. So first I thought, ‘Well, he’s the evilest 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 started doubting, that perhaps he is a prophet. Yes, it obviously required me to read a lot of literature again. The one thing that I think was very wise of Abdul Hakim Murat.

He said well the books you read about with the anti-Islam arguments are written by non-Muslims. He advised against reading publications written by atheists if you wish to learn more about Christianity. You start reading the books from the Christians.

Why do they believe this? What are the arguments?

So, you have to do the same with Islam. So, start reading Islamic books from Islamic teachers, from Islamic scholars, etc. Then you can see if you compare the books on the same topic of people who are Muslim and wrote.

Those books and non-Muslims. You can see where they took the wrong turn, where they translated words in the wrong way sometimes, perhaps even not on purpose but just because they didn’t know where things were added and where things were left out. So, in the end, you see there’s this other religion almost created because of all these things. And that’s what I did. 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. His way of reasoning, his way of telling, and his way of writing appealed to me because it’s culturally the same thing as how I approach a certain topic, etc. And that was the first time I saw him—not so much as the warlord I had imagined, but I saw him nevertheless. 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 said, well, I can’t 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 Joram the most while doing your research?

On the story about Hindha, there was something that was like a switch, like I had to change and it was because I thought hence was the wife of one of the enemies, Abu Sufyan, and in a way, they gave money to kill Hamza, the favorite uncle of 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 upset, of course, what happened and years and years later he became powerful, he came to power in Mecca, and then there were hints, and I was reading this book, and I thought okay He responded, “Well, I cannot look at her right now, but everybody is forgiven, and if you want to stay here and live among the Muslims, that’s possible.”

Now she is crucified, or her head gets chopped off, or anything like that. You can go if you don’t want that, but the violence has ended. And if you can forgive someone for killing a relative—especially a favorite—then she was forgiven, I reasoned uncle of you even starts parading with parts of his body to show other people that she humiliates you and whatever you stand for, it 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, he was a really special guy, and when I thought 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 accepted this Oneness of gods and now I say he is a prophet.

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Joram Van Klaveren Shahada moment

If I say there is only one God and Muhammad is his Prophet, it’s almost Shahada. 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, what I saw, and what I experienced. What I tell you now, sounds a little like a fairy tale, but it really happened. In the end, there were all these books the table, and when I had this feeling of yeah, okay, this is Shahada in a way, I said, well, I put all the books away, and I put the books on the highest shelf, but there were so many books, a lot of books fell off the shelf, and one of the books that fell off the show was the Quran, and when I picked it up, my hand was on a page with Surah 22.

I had 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 was a prophet, there is this one God. I just couldn’t, so it wasn’t my eyes that were blind, but it was really my heart. I couldn’t accept it. I think my nuts, my nephs, 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 feel very secure. I’ve never been more secure about anything else than the whole anxiety or the whole doubting issue disappeared like snow for the sun. I thought 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 Joram Van Klaveren, when Joram 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. When it appeared on the news, they heard about it. I told my mother, and my mother started crying. My wife was pretty open, yeah, she was very cool about it. She said, well, if Islam is what you really believe and that’s in your heart.

Who am I?

And yeah, some people from my old work were really aggressive. I got over 2,000 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. Then most of them, of course, are nonsense because they’re crazy people writing things on their computer. It was a busy time, and I had to tell people about my work—a Christian group, naturally. So to say that the leader of the back said, I can’t believe it. And he said, I noticed this change when you talked about certain topics on the radio, you were kind of a little milder, not so harsh anymore. But you become a Muslim, and after I said, yeah, I became Muslim, he said, I couldn’t sleep 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, yeah, you have to tell your grandfather, it was her father. So I said, well, then you have to come with me. It’s got like a shield, I mean, I just said, well, grandfather, I became a Muslim, and then he closed his eyes, and I thought he stopped breathing because, yeah, 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 become Catholic. So that’s very funny, the last thing.

And my old boss from the radio said, well, how do we know that you’re not becoming Hindu one day or something else and I thought told them, well, I never chose a religion one time, and it was when I became a Muslim. Before that, I didn’t choose my religion, I was born in a Christian family, and I was raised in a Christian way, and I’m very grateful for that all the good things that had brought me, but it was not my decision. The only time I made a decision was when I became a Muslim. I 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.

How did Joram Van Klaveren feel when he made his first Salah?

That’s, of course, a beautiful moment but very strange as well because as a Christian, you’re not used to praying like that. You pray with your hands. together and perhaps on your knees in front of your bed or something, but I think it’s very beautiful that you really prostrate, so you really bow down most deeply for your lord, so that’s a very humbling beautiful thing, I think, and that, yeah, it made me feel very happy.

What were the three biggest challenges Joram Van Klaveren faced, when Joram converted to Islam?

Well, becoming a Muslim, of course, was a big challenge because I had to tell the world about a family, and it was a big challenge, the part of believing that converting to Islam would be extremely difficult. Because especially as a Protestant Christian, there aren’t so many things you have to do in a religious sense as a Muslim. It is necessary to pray five times a day as a discipline. 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 your relationship 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 experienced, and I thought to myself, “Whoa, five times a day praying? I cannot do this. I cannot do that. I must perform.” That’s why it was difficult mentally. But after I became Muslim, it wasn’t hard at all.

Is Joram Van Klaveren raising his kids as a Muslims?

Well, you try, of course. I don’t know when you’re really raised as a Muslim. It’s, I think, 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, they ask your father. My wife cooks Halal for everybody. So it’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 like an organic process.

What was your heaviest and most regretful expression that you used for Islam?

Since I used to say it, I believe that Islam is a lies. Islam is untrue. Poisonous is the Quran. However, when I say that Islam is light, I mean the entire religion and all of its principles. That’s the peak of, if you will. Yes, that is something I regret as it served as a kind of umbrella which the rest of the concept of Islam is false. Because there was the core thought. And of course, I do blame myself. And I know there are a lot of them.

People out there, not practicing Muslims do so. And in a way, I understand it because in a political sense and in a social-cultural sense, everything that 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 among the reasons we established an organization. It’s called the ixc Islam Experience Center. We go to schools, primary school, high school, college, and universities, but also to departments of the government, and others social organizations, and churches to take away misconceptions about Islam, to share the message, to show Islam in its true colors. We do it in virtual reality with glasses, so it’s a very fun experience as well. And we try to erase, in a way, the things I said and done in the past.

How should people research about Islam?

Do you advise just searching on Google? Now, 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 Pages and stuff. I would recommend “Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources” by Martin Lings, the book I talked about earlier. It’s a great book, and I think it’s very important for people not just to 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 script, study the character and the life of the Prophet because that’s what the tradition teaches us. Well, his life was the Quran. He was the living Quran in a way. The easiest method to learn about Islam, in my opinion, is to simply study his Sunnah.

Joram Van Klaveren final comments?

I became much more happy after I became Muslim. I would like to invite everybody to become a Muslim 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 admit that 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 find guidance that leads you to the truth.

According to the Reports of Towards Eternity

Joram Van Klaveren FAQ’s

Q1: How was Joram Van Klaveren’s life in regards to faith?

Ans: the Trinity is a very complex concept, Whether there is a God or not, it remains highly complicated since, if one exists, the Bible claims that God is eternal.
But if you are Eternal and at the same time, you die, you cannot be Eternal and 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.

Q2: Is Joram Van Klaveren raising his kids as a Muslims?

Ans: 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, they ask your father. My wife cooks Halal for everybody. So it’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 like an organic process.

Q3: What resources did Joram Van Klaveren use while doing his research on Islam?

Ans: 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 Murat, 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 asked this Muslim Professor from another country, ‘Can you help me?’ So I told him I was writing a book; I had a lot of questions. So, I was very clear.

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