When Dutch and German far-right party members Joram van Klaveren (Party for Freedom) and Arthur Wagner (Alternative for Germany) recently announced their conversion to Islam, their stories were carried around the world by international news outlets. How can it be, the underlying question in most news stories went, that politicians in a movement that mobilises against the Islamisation of Europe can convert to the very religion their parties claim to contest? While their stories made for ideal teaser headlines in an ever-turning news cycle, they were also quickly left behind in the bin of exotic, marginal cases unfit for broader debate.
In reality, these two far-right European converts to Islam are only the tip of the iceberg, a phenomenon that reveals the surprising ways in which Islam and Muslims are being incorporated into the far right and its white identity politics in Europe. Over the past two decades a number of conservative and far-right white Europeans have turned towards not away from Islam – a trend that has not even spared Hungary and its far-right party, Jobbik. At the same time, a significant number of born Muslims have joined the European far right, a movement that as a bloc campaigns against the Islamisation of Europe. Since the early 2000s, Muslim figures in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, France, and Germany have come to play a significant role in the movement as public intellectuals who shape the far right’s message. Of them, some are converts to Islam, some are practicing born Muslims, and others are non-practicing or ex-Muslims.
Since the early 2000s, Muslim figures in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the Netherlands, France, and Germany have come to play a significant role in the movement as public intellectuals who shape the far right’s message.
One of the most widely known Muslim figures in the European far right is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-background “Islam critic” who gained prominence in the mid-2000s beyond the Netherlands as she criticised Islam from the right. Similar cases have emerged in many other European countries. Often called upon as “expert” witnesses, these ex, reformist, or self-declared “secular” Muslims help promote European identity as modern, enlightened, rational and threatened by a regressive Islam.
