Islam
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00:00How and why did you decide to write an anti-Islamic book?
00:06How was your life in regards to faith? What did you believe in?
00:10What was your heaviest and most regretful expression that you used for Islam?
00:15What was the reaction of the people around you when you became Muslim?
00:19I thought to myself, Islam is a lie, Islam is a danger.
00:23I got over 2,000 death threats and in the end I decided to write an anti-Islamic book.
00:30God, give me a sign so that I 100% sure know this is the way.
00:36I couldn't sleep for it for two days. I couldn't accept it, it was so, so strange.
00:41Assalamu alaikum brother Joram van Klaveren, thank you for accepting our invitation and we are happy to have you with us.
00:46I want to first ask you, who is Joram?
00:49Wa alaikum salam Ahmed, thank you very much for the invitation, it's a great honor for me to be here.
00:54Joram van Klaveren was born on January 23 in 1979 in Amsterdam in a pretty regular family,
01:01father, mother, brother, another brother, younger, a sister, a cat.
01:05In Amsterdam, I was born and raised there, we're a practicing Protestant family.
01:11After I finished high school, I studied comparative religion.
01:16I was a teacher for a few years. There happened a lot of things in the Netherlands, especially in my life.
01:22Also when I look at the bigger picture when it came to Islam, I became politically active for the Freedom Party,
01:28I became a member of parliament and in the end I decided to write an anti-Islam book.
01:33Which started as an anti-Islam book, changed into this search for God and it ended up me becoming a Muslim.
01:42How was your life in regards to faith? What did you believe in?
01:45Before I was a Muslim, I was a Protestant Christian from the Reformed Church.
01:50We read from the Bible, we all got biblical names, we were all baptized, we went to church, etc.
01:56So we were pretty Christian in that way, in that sense.
01:59Of course, I believe that there is a creator, I believed in heaven, hell, I believed in angels, revelations.
02:04And of course, what separates the Christians from the Muslims is that I believe that Jesus Christ was the son of God.
02:10In a more philosophical way, I believed he was God himself, of course.
02:14I believed in the resurrection and crucifixion of Christ, of course.
02:17And I believed in the atonement.
02:19But because the Trinity is a very complex concept, whether you believe it or not, it's still very complex.
02:25Because if there is a God in the Bible, it says God is eternal.
02:29But if you are eternal and at the same time you die, you cannot be eternal and mortal at the same time.
02:35So that was something when I was a little older, 16, 17, I started questioning things like that.
02:40It's not very logical.
02:41I talked to many, many priests, preachers, even rabbis.
02:45And the answers I got weren't very satisfying.
02:48That made it, for me, kind of complex.
02:50And in the end, I had some doubts about stuff like this.
02:53But I said, well, I set it aside and I thought, okay, I just believe it.
02:57And perhaps I'm not smart enough to get the whole picture.
02:59And I still believed in God.
03:01I still believed that Jesus was a very important person.
03:04I believed he was the son of God.
03:06But how it exactly was, I left it for what it was.
03:10How and why did you decide to write an anti-Islamic book?
03:14After high school, I went to university and I did comparative religion.
03:19And the remarkable thing, I think, was that the first day of me going to college was September 11, 2001.
03:26I already thought, okay, these Muslim guys are kind of crazy.
03:29And this religion isn't the truth.
03:31Then a few years later was this guy in the Netherlands called Theo van Gogh.
03:35He was a famous filmmaker and he was killed in the street.
03:38He was shot and they tried to slit his throat.
03:40And they put a knife in his stomach with a letter on it for another girl, Ayaan Hishali.
03:45And it said, you are next.
03:47So it strengthened my anti-Islam feelings in such a way that I thought, well,
03:51I have to become politically active to do something and stop this evil of harming our country.
03:57You started politics because of Islam.
03:59Yeah, and that really had to do with Islam.
04:01That was the reason I wanted to write a book to explain to people why Islam was a danger for the world.
04:06As I was writing my book, like I said earlier, the questions, the doubts I had about Christianity popped up again.
04:11And that was about truth, of course, because I was a believing Christian guy.
04:15And, yeah, the Christian questions I had in the end were answered in an Islamic way.
04:20Because, of course, when I started writing the book, a lot of people think that it was a political book.
04:24But it wasn't so much a political book.
04:26It was a religious book because I wanted to show people why Islam was a danger as a religion.
04:31And I wrote it from a Christian perspective.
04:33So in the beginning, I made a comparison between the Christian concept of God and the Islamic concept.
04:38So I start comparing it.
04:40But because I had these doubts about the Trinity and I saw Tawheed, the oneness of God in Islam,
04:45I thought, yeah, it sounds a little bit more logical.
04:48And then I thought to myself, well, I reread the Bible to see, to refresh myself.
04:53Okay, why isn't the concept of Islam, the Tawheed concept, isn't the Christian concept?
04:57But when I was reading the Old Testament and I saw what the Old Testament prophets said,
05:01it was one God, one God, one God.
05:03And then I thought, okay, I'll look only at the words of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
05:07And then there's this story in the New Testament where a guy comes to Jesus and he asks him,
05:13what is the most important thing in life?
05:15How can I gain paradise?
05:17And he says there are two things.
05:18He says, hear, O Israel, hear, your God is one.
05:21Treat your neighbor as you want to be treated yourself.
05:24So I thought, well, even Jesus Christ says, hear, O Israel, your God is one.
05:28So I thought, well, this whole Muslim concept of God sounds more logical.
05:32And it's the same concept that I find in the Old and the New Testament.
05:35And I know Christianity as a religion teaches something else,
05:39but it isn't the concept of God that I find in the Bible.
05:42So after weeks and weeks of study, reading, rereading kinds of books,
05:47I thought to myself, okay, perhaps this oneness of God is something that is true.
05:51So that's how it started.
05:53What resources did you use while doing your research?
05:56Because I was kind of shocked, I started writing to several authorities on these religious matters.
06:01And one of the guys that I wrote to was Sheikh Abdul Hakim Murad.
06:04And he's a professor from Cambridge University.
06:07But in a way, it was kind of strange, of course, because I was a politician back then still.
06:11I was writing an anti-Islam book with an anti-Islam purpose.
06:15And I'm asking this Muslim professor from another country, can you help me?
06:19So I told him, I'm writing a book.
06:21I have a lot of questions.
06:22So I was very plain why I thought, why is Islam promoting terrorism?
06:26Why is it anti-woman? Why is it anti-Christian? Anti-whatever.
06:30After, I think, six weeks, he sent me a very extensive email.
06:34And he started explaining, directly answered a lot of my questions.
06:37But he also told me, you have to read this article, read this book, read that book.
06:41Ask this person.
06:42And so he was very extensive in his way of explaining.
06:45But in the end, after I read all these books and articles
06:49and made a comparison between prophets from the Old Testament with Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him,
06:55I had no arguments anymore to say they are prophets and he is not.
06:59And I thought to myself, well, if I accept Moses on these grounds and I cannot accept the prophet, then there is something else.
07:07So I said, why don't I think he is a prophet?
07:10And I thought, oh, perhaps because he had many wives.
07:12But then again, when you look at Solomon or you look at King David, Abraham,
07:16there are a lot of people in the Old Testament that had more wives.
07:19And when you look at even outside of the religious books, culturally, in Europe, in Africa, Asia, everywhere,
07:26there were men with several wives for several reasons.
07:29So I thought to myself, well, there cannot be a reason either.
07:31So one by one, all these reasons fell.
07:33And in the end, I thought, well, I have to say all of them are not prophets.
07:37But I didn't believe that because I thought, well, the things they did, they said, the miracles that happened, etc.
07:43They were confirmed in what they said and what they did.
07:45So they are.
07:46And then I said, well, then I have to accept that Prophet Muhammad perhaps is a prophet too.
07:50So I was doubting it.
07:52So first, I thought, well, it's the most evil person I know because of the history.
07:57Then I said, well, perhaps it's not that evil, but he's not a prophet.
08:00And in the end, I started doubting, perhaps he is a prophet.
08:03Yeah, that took, of course, me reading a lot of books again.
08:06And the one thing that I think was very wise of Abdul Hakim Murad to say was,
08:11he said, well, the books you read about with the anti-Islam arguments are written by non-Muslims.
08:16He said, if you want to know more about Christianity, you don't read books from atheists.
08:20You start reading the books from the Christians.
08:22Why do they believe this?
08:23What are the arguments?
08:24So he said, you have to do the same with Islam.
08:26So start reading Islamic books from Islamic teachers, from Islamic scholars, etc.
08:30And 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,
08:37you can see where they took the wrong turn, where they translated words in the wrong way,
08:41sometimes perhaps even not on purpose, but just because they didn't know where things are added, where things left out of it.
08:47So, and in the end, you see, there is this other religion almost created because of all these things.
08:52And that's what I did.
08:53And that's what I also did with The Life of the Prophet, because I read a book from Martin Links,
08:57The Life of the Prophet based on the earliest source of Muhammad.
09:00And it was written, of course, by a convert.
09:02And his way of reasoning, his way of telling, his way of writing appealed to me because it's culturally the same thing.
09:08How do I approach a certain topic, etc.
09:11And 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,
09:17but I saw him as a father and I saw him as a friend and a teacher and so much more.
09:22And so, yeah, I saw the person and his character.
09:25And I said, well, I can say a lot, but I cannot say that this is not a good man.
09:29So his character persuaded me to read more and to want to know more.
09:33What surprised you the most while doing your research?
09:36The story about Hind, there was something like a switch, like I had to change.
09:41And it was because I thought Hind was the wife of one of the enemies, Abu Sufyan.
09:45And in a way, it gave money to kill Hamza, the favorite uncle of the Prophet.
09:50And that was what happened on the battlefield. He got killed.
09:52They even paraded with his ears and cut off his nose and horrible stuff.
09:57So the Prophet was deeply sad, of course, of what happened.
10:00And years and years later, he became powerful. He came in power in Mecca.
10:04And then there was Hind.
10:05And I was reading this book and I thought, OK, now she gets crucified or her head gets cut off or something like that.
10:11But he said, well, I cannot look at her right now, but everybody is forgiven.
10:15And if you want to stay here and live among the Muslims, it's possible if you don't want that, you can go.
10:19But bloodshedding is over now.
10:21And I thought to myself that she was forgiven.
10:23If you can forgive someone who kills a relative, especially a favorite uncle of you,
10:28even starts parading with parts of his body to show other people that she humiliates you and whatever you stand for,
10:35that means you have such a great character.
10:37It's very special. It's something you don't see.
10:39And that's what he did.
10:40So I thought to myself, well, it was a really special guy.
10:43And when I thought that, I thought, well, I have these arguments for him being a prophet.
10:47I see his character. I see the way he treated other people.
10:50I see how he treated his enemies.
10:52I think he is a prophet.
10:53But then I thought to myself, well, that's horrible because I already accepted this oneness of God.
10:58And now I say he is a prophet.
11:00If I say there is only one God and Muhammad is his prophet, that's almost shahada.
11:04So I thought to myself, OK, let's close the books. Stop.
11:07This is going in the wrong direction.
11:09And of course, I wasn't that anti-Islam anymore because of what I read, what I saw and what I experienced.
11:14What I tell you now, it sounds a little like a fairy tale, but it really happened.
11:17In the end, there were all these books at the table.
11:19And when I had this feeling of, yeah, OK, this is shahada in a way.
11:23I said, well, I put all the books away and I put the books on the highest shelf.
11:27But there were so many books that a lot of books fell off the shelf.
11:30And one of the books that fell off the shelf was the Quran.
11:32And when I picked it up, my hand was on a page with Surah 22, Ayat 46.
11:38And it says, it's not the eyes that are blind, but the hearts.
11:42And I thought to myself, that really is my problem because it wasn't the eyes.
11:47I really could see what I read and doubt myself.
11:49Nobody forced me to write this book.
11:51Nobody said you have to write this or that.
11:53I started writing myself and I could see it with my own eyes.
11:56But I still couldn't accept the fact that he is a prophet.
11:59There is this one God.
12:01So it wasn't my eyes that were blind.
12:03It was really my heart.
12:05I couldn't accept it.
12:06I think my nafs or whatever, my ego, I couldn't accept it.
12:09And I said, well, God, I don't care if it's the God from the Bible or the Quran,
12:14give me a sign or something so that I 100% sure know this is the way.
12:19And I went to bed.
12:20But when I woke up, I felt very secure in myself.
12:22I really felt very secure.
12:24I've never been more secure about anything else.
12:26The whole anxiety or the whole doubting issue disappeared like snow for the sun.
12:32And I thought to myself, well, I think I'm a Muslim.
12:34Well, and then, of course, I had to tell other people.
12:37What was the reaction of the people around you when you became Muslim?
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13:07What was the reaction of the people around you when you became Muslim?
13:10Most of them were very negative, of course.
13:12For a lot of people, especially some uncles and aunts, it was kind of a shock.
13:16They heard it when it was on the news.
13:18I told my mother and my mother started crying.
13:20And my wife was pretty open.
13:22Yeah, she was very cool about it.
13:24She said, well, if Islam is what you really believe and that's in your heart, who am I?
13:28And yeah, some people from my old work were really aggressive.
13:31I got over 2,000 death threats from people who used to support me, of course.
13:36People who voted for me.
13:37People said the most horrible things.
13:39They would rape your wife, shoot you.
13:42You know where your children go to school, stuff like that.
13:45And most of them, of course, are nonsense because they're crazy people writing things on a computer.
13:50So it was kind of a hectic time.
13:52And I had to tell my work, of course, and it was this Christian organization.
13:56So to say that the leader of the pack, he said, I can't believe it.
13:59And he said, well, I noticed this change when you talked about certain topics on radio.
14:04You were kind of a little more mild, not so harsh anymore.
14:07But you becoming a Muslim?
14:09And after I said, yeah, I became Muslim.
14:11He said, I couldn't sleep for it for two days.
14:13I couldn't accept it.
14:14It was so, so strange.
14:16But the hardest part for me was telling my grandfather.
14:19Because my grandfather was dying and he was 93, 94 years old.
14:23And he was on his deathbed at home.
14:25I had to tell him.
14:26And my mother told me, yeah, you have to tell your grandfather.
14:28It was his, her father.
14:30So I said, well, then you have to come with me.
14:32It's kind of like a shield.
14:33And I just said, well, grandfather, I became Muslim.
14:36And then he closed his eyes.
14:38And I thought he stopped breathing because, yeah, he was so old.
14:41And he really stopped breathing for a while.
14:43And then he started breathing again.
14:45And he looked at me and he said, well, at least you didn't become a Catholic.
14:48So it was very funny.
14:51The last thing, and my old boss from the radio, he said, well, how do we know that you're not
14:55becoming a Hindu one day or something else?
14:58And I told him, well, I never chose a religion one time.
15:01And it was when I became a Muslim.
15:03Before that, I didn't choose my religion.
15:05I was born in a Christian family.
15:07I was raised in a Christian way.
15:09And I'm very grateful for all the good things that it brought me.
15:11But it was not my decision.
15:13And the only time I made a decision was me becoming a Muslim.
15:16And it was the most, like I said, I think the most important decision I made.
15:20And it was the most rational decision I made.
15:22I never took years and years to decide one thing, only becoming a Muslim.
15:27How did you feel when you made your first salah?
15:29It's, of course, a beautiful moment, but very strange as well.
15:32Because as a Christian, you're not used to pray like that.
15:35You pray with your hands together and perhaps on your knees in front of your bed or something.
15:39But I think it's very beautiful that you really prostrate.
15:42So you really bow down in the deepest way for your Lord.
15:46So that's a very humbling, beautiful thing, I think.
15:50And that made me feel very happy.
15:52What were the three biggest challenges you faced when you converted to Islam?
15:56Well, becoming a Muslim, of course, was a big challenge.
15:59Because I had to tell the world and family.
16:01That was a big challenge.
16:02The part of thinking that it would be very hard to become a Muslim.
16:06Because especially as a Protestant Christian, there aren't so many things you have to do in a religious sense.
16:11As a Muslim, in terms of practice, it is required to pray five times a day.
16:16It's required to eat in a certain way.
16:19It is required to think in a certain way.
16:21You have to be the best, in a way, every moment because of your relation with your Creator.
16:26And because of the fact that you have to pray five times a day, it's a constant reminder, in a way, of the Creator.
16:32So that makes you much more aware of the fact that you have a Lord than as a Christian.
16:38That's how I experienced it.
16:39And I thought to myself, whoa, five times a day praying.
16:41I cannot do this. I cannot do that. I have to do...
16:44So that made it hard in the head.
16:46But after I became Muslim, it wasn't hard at all.
16:49Are you raising your kids as Muslims?
16:51Well, you try, of course.
16:53I don't know when you're really raised as a Muslim.
16:55I think it's a very difficult job, especially in these times.
16:58Of course, when I married, I wasn't a Muslim.
17:01You promise in a way that you raise your children as Christians.
17:04So after I became Muslim, I'm not raising my children as Christians, of course.
17:08If the kids have questions about Christianity, they ask my wife.
17:12They get Christian answers.
17:13And if they come to me, they get Islamic answers.
17:15But most of the time, she says, ask your father.
17:18And my wife cooks halal for everybody.
17:20So that's very sweet.
17:21She says, well, I'm not going to cook five meals.
17:23So everybody eats the same.
17:24You want halal, everybody eats halal.
17:26So in a way, it's like an organic process.
17:29What was your heaviest and most regretful expression that you used for Islam?
17:34I think Islam is a lie.
17:36Because that's something I used to say.
17:38Islam is a lie. The Quran is poison.
17:40But when I said Islam is a lie, that's the whole religion.
17:43And everything that comes with it.
17:45So that's like the highest level of jahiliyyah in a way.
17:48Yeah, that's something I regret.
17:50Because it was like an umbrella.
17:52And everything else was under this concept of Islam is a lie.
17:55Because that was the core thought.
17:56And of course, I do blame myself.
17:58And I know there are a lot of people out there not practicing Muslims that do so.
18:02And in a way, I understand it.
18:03Because in a political sense and in a social cultural sense, everything I said and done is still there.
18:08I sometimes even hear arguments from people in my old party that I offended in a way.
18:13Yeah, that's something that bothers me.
18:15And that's one of the reasons that we founded an organization.
18:18It's called the IXC, Islam Experience Center.
18:20And we go to schools, primary school, high school, college, universities.
18:24But also to departments of the government, other social organizations, churches.
18:28To take away misconceptions about Islam.
18:31To share the message, to show Islam its true colors.
18:34And we do it by virtual reality with the glasses.
18:36So it's a very fun experience as well.
18:38And we try to erase in a way the things I said and done in the past.
18:42How should people research about Islam?
18:44Do you advise just searching at Google?
18:46No, I would certainly not advise Google.
18:49It's the last thing I would advise.
18:50I'd say shut down the computer.
18:52No, I think it's very important that people read books.
18:54Real books with pages and stuff.
18:56I would recommend Muhammad is Life Based on the Early Resources of Martin Links.
19:00The book I talked about earlier.
19:01It's a green book.
19:02And I think it's very important for people not just dive into the Quran.
19:06Because it's a very complex book.
19:08And if you don't have anybody who can teach you what you read.
19:12Especially most of the people who don't know anything about Islam.
19:15Are not fluent Arabic, classic Arabic speaking people.
19:19So you will read an interpretation of the Quran or a translation.
19:22And most of the time that's not the real deal of course.
19:25So I would advise people just to study the Sirat.
19:28Study the character and the life of the prophet.
19:31Because that's what the tradition teaches us as well.
19:33His life was the Quran.
19:35He was the living Quran in a way.
19:37Just study his Sunnah.
19:38And I think that is the best way of discovering Islam.
19:42What would you like to say as your final comments?
19:44I became much more happy after I became Muslim.
19:47I would like to invite everybody to become Muslim.
19:50Just because it brings peace to your soul and peace to your heart.
19:54It is the truth.
19:55It resonates with heart and soul.
19:57At least look at it from an Islamic perspective.
20:00Try to read and study the life of the prophet.
20:02Try to understand what the Muslims believe.
20:05Not so much the behavior of Muslims.
20:07Because there are a lot of Muslims that don't live like Muslims.
20:10Including myself.
20:11I don't always live like a Muslim.
20:13I should. We all do.
20:14But you should look at the example of all examples.
20:16And it was the prophet.
20:17And if you study his life.
20:19Perhaps you will find guidance that leads you to the truth.
20:30For more information visit www.osho.com