 Save 10% with my code BOBBY10 on raw, organic, grass-fed and grass-finished, freeze-dried organ meats from grassland nutrition. Link in the description box. All right guys, welcome back to the channel if you're new Marmos Bobby guys. Today we're going to react to Joram van Klaveren with his video Why I Left the Far Right. This will be a very fascinating video. I myself was very interested in the far right. I was never politically active, however I sympathized with far right ideas, with nationalistic ideas. Joram van Klaveren was a far right politician that wanted to ban Islam from the Netherlands and then I bet to his own surprise converted to Islam himself. Let's have a look. I can totally relate to his statement because as I said multiple times here on my channel, I grew up in Germany and in Germany I was faced with a lot of violence, a lot of crime coming from so-called Muslims. Most of the time they were Turkish, some Americans, Algerians and therefore I associated Islam with violence and can fully understand why Joram here would have seen it as an evil ideology. Of course nowadays I do know that we shouldn't judge a religion by its followers but nevertheless we have to say that the followers are representative of the religion and as somebody that doesn't do any studies into theology this is all you see. That was me back then. This is me now. I'm no longer a member of the far right. Ironically the thing that made me join the far right is the same thing that made me leave. It was Islam and this is my story. My name is Joram van Claveren and I'm a former member of the Dutch parliament who represented the party for freedom, the anti-islamic nationalist party of Geert Wilders. For years I gave everything I had to fight against Islam. I tried to make legislation to shut down all Islamic schools in the Netherlands. I attempted to close all mosques, Ben the Quran and Ben Islam altogether from the Netherlands. As a Dutch politician I opposed Islam in every way possible. Then in 2017 I left parliament and finally had the time to fulfill a long-held desire to write an anti-islam book. I wanted the book that would provide conclusive theoretical groundings for all of the objections I held against Islam as a politician. My book would settle the dispute about Islam with a clear conclusion. Islam is a danger to Europe, to America, to the West and actually to the whole wide world. Absolutely understandable yet again the right-wing narrative is that Islam was consistently fighting over Europe especially to conquer Europe. Look at the Ottoman Empire and we the Europeans fought the bad, bad Muslims off over and over and over again. This is why to this very day the same threat exists. This is the narrative in the far right world. Before writing my book my view about Islam was influenced by the conservative Protestant environment of my upbringing in which other religions and certainly Islam was definitely seen as wayward and wrong. I was also influenced by the cultural aversion towards Islam that many Europeans have which was a result of their historic clashes with the Islamic world and of course the fears and worries I experienced during years of studying comparative religion at the university formed my opinions. Remarkably my studies at the university actually began on September 11, 2001. That's crazy. Many horrors would sadly follow inside and outside of Europe. From the murder of Kalaminsteo van Gogh to kidnappings, anti-semitic terror and beheadings to haphazard stabs, truck attacks and suicide attacks to the proclamation of the caliphate by ISIS. There were even Muslims from the Netherlands who traveled as jihadists to Syria. We had the exact same thing in Germany as well. Many German converts traveled to Syria to fight in the so-called holy wars. Events confirmed and deepened my negative feelings about Islam and motivated me to join Wilders party. I believed that Islam should be fought wherever possible. But as I began writing my book I can totally relate by the way I came across information that not saying that this is my opinion now but it used to be was at odds with the ideas I had. I learned that many of my ideas about Islam stated by Orientalist far-right Westerners and even Islamic extremists had little or no basis in historical Islam. My research often presented me with context and interpretations that were very different from those I had propagated for years in politics. I totally have to agree and as I mentioned already in my Koran video I was shocked. I know this sounds ridiculous to Muslims but for me somebody that never looked into Islam never read the Koran I only had those pre assumptions that have been fed to me by the far-right, by anti-Islamists, by Christian apologetics etc etc. I had absolutely no idea what Islam truly was and after reading the Koran I actually started realizing that most Muslims weren't representative of Islam at all. More nuanced image of Islam slowly developed in my mind. Seeking more information I wrote to various academic authorities on Islam including professor Abdul Hakim Murad of Cambridge University. He pointed out various scholars, books and facts and advised me to read again and more deeply this time. One by one my objections to Islam finished. Islam was no longer a religion that promoted violence, hatred and anti-Semitism or a religion that categorized women and non-believers as inferior humans and stridently opposed democracy. Slowly. With that I cannot agree. I do believe that Islam opposes democracy and I would even say that that is a good thing. I do not agree with our democracy as such a great superior system. Islam on the other hand is a system, a spiritual system, a social system and a political system as well. So therefore I would say that Islam stands in exact opposition to democracy because Islam has its own political system. Please let me know in the comment section what you think about this. My perspective of Islam was changing. I also received surprisingly satisfying Islamic answers to my existing Christian questions about specific darkness such as the Trinity, the sacrifice of Christ and original sin. All that I was learning about Islam influenced my work on the book in such a way that it began to take on the character of a personal search for God. During this search the person of Prophet Muhammad raised the most questions with me. Who was this man, a deceiver, an anti-Christ or was he truly as Muslims believe the last prophet of God? I started to read again about his life but now without the previous biases I had and I saw more than that's what I'm at right now a man with almost supernatural patience, care, love, guidance and above all dedication to his God and to his mission for justice. The arguments against his person and against his prophethood disappeared as I made a comparison with Old Testament prophets. In fact I now understood what the 19th century historian Thomas Carlisle meant when he wrote, the lies which well-meaning seal has heaped around this man Muhammad are disgraceful to ourselves only. Like all radical ideologies, the far right is toxic too. It presents a reality that strips away all nuance. It answers real problems with lies and it fights against a religion, Islam, that is not the enemy. The real enemies are a deficit of empathy and ignorance like the great philosopher Socrates already said. So let us read, study and learn. Extremism is not the answer. My name is Joram van Claveren for the Amnestyen Center. All right guys and this is it for today's video. Absolutely fascinating as I said in the beginning I can really relate with 99% of his story. I had the same views on Islam. He grew up in the Netherlands. I grew up in Germany. Moreover my parents are from the Balkan from North Macedonia and down there we had that internal conflict with the Albanians which were Muslims. So for me Islam was always violent no matter if it was the gang violence in Germany or if it was the Albanian civil war in Macedonia or prior to that the Ottoman Empire. Islam for me was just violence nothing more. And this is where I can relate to Joram because after I did my own research here as well I started seeing Islam in a different light. The veil has been lifted so to speak and I could appreciate the theology of Islam and the people that I met that were culturally Muslims weren't Muslims at all in its literal sense because if we look into the word Muslim somebody that submits his will to God those people were far from it. They were not in touch with God. They were not practicing their own religion. They were into sinful behaviors drugs violence promiscuous sex etc and none of it I could find in the Quran. None of it I could find in Islam. And this is why I urge everybody to do their own research no matter if it is religion politics nutrition do your own research don't just listen to people don't just take it at face value. We are all ignorant to a certain extent but the worst of it is if we're ignorant and arrogant paired in one bundle it's absolutely horrific and unfortunately when I look back I was exactly that I was not only ignorant but arrogant I thought I know it all not realizing that I was deeply influenced by my environment of course we all are but we don't realize it we go throughout life thinking that we can distinguish but everything has an effect on us really think about it how much you are intertwined with your nationality with the political education with the education itself in school with social media with Hollywood etc etc you name it but even daily life experiences that we take at face value as I said you simply see certain stereotypes of people and then you generalize out of a sudden Islam is bad but the reality is you just met some bad people but my message to the Muslims watching here is you are the representatives I know that you are not Islam Muslims will say Islam is perfect but Muslims are not nevertheless you are the representatives and there is a huge responsibility on your shoulders to be well behaved to show the people what true Islam is all right guys and this is it for today's video if you liked it leave it a thumbs up if you haven't subscribed already guys please do so and if you want to support this channel all the links are in the description box below thank you so much as always may god bless you all much love and peace