A prominent member of Germany’s far-right anti-Islam party just converted to Islam

A prominent member of a German far-right political party known for its virulent anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant stance has converted to Islam and stepped down from his leadership role in the party.

Yes, seriously.

Arthur Wagner was a leading member of a state chapter of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, whose slogan “Islam doesn’t belong in Germany” encapsulates its extreme nativist and anti-Muslim views.

The AfD, which is now the third-largest political party in Germany after its stunning success in last September’s elections, has tried to ban the construction of mosques in Germany, called on the country’s border police to shoot refugees and migrants if necessary to stop them from entering the country, and run ads reminiscent of World War II-era Nazi propaganda warning of the threat posed by Muslims coming into Germany.

Wagner himself in the past has accused German Chancellor Angela Merkel of making a “huge mistake” by allowing so many Muslim refugees into the country and warned that “Germany is mutating into a different country,” according to German media.

Which is why his sudden conversion to Islam and decision to step down from his leadership position is so striking.

Wagner has called his decision to convert to Islam “a private matter” and declined to comment further to the press.

But German media reports that the 48-year-old father of two has been spending his free time doing volunteer work with Muslim immigrants, including providing translation help to Chechen immigrants, since he speaks Russian and is of Russian descent. That personal interaction seems to have been the catalyst for his change of heart.

Wagner is far from the first person to radically change his views of Islam after spending time with Muslims or engaging with Islam’s sacred texts.

In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, the United States experienced a spike in the number of Muslims in the country. While some of that was undoubtedly due to immigration, a significant portion came from Americans converting to Islam.

According to Asma Afsaruddin, a professor of Near Eastern languages and cultures at Indiana University Bloomington, many of those conversions were a direct result of Americans’ heightened interest in Islam in the wake of the terror attacks.

“Despite Islamophobia, thoughtful Americans who are curious about the real nature of Islam might go out of their way to discover the teachings of the religion from reliable sources,” Asfaruddin told PRI’s The World back in 2016.

Once people do so, they often quickly realize that the violent, bloody interpretation of Islam promoted by groups like al-Qaeda (and later ISIS) — and portrayed in much of the media — is vastly different from what the texts and traditions of Islam actually teach, and represents the views of a tiny fraction of the world’s 1.8 billion Muslims.

As I’ve written and discussed elsewhere, this is also what happened to me. As a college student at the height of George W. Bush’s “war on terror,” I set out to learn more about the beliefs of terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. And in the process, I came to a much deeper, more nuanced understanding of the religion and practice of Islam than what I had heard from terrorist propaganda and from the media. Eventually, I ended up converting.

But it’s not just with Islam that this phenomenon occurs. There’s a theory in psychology and sociology known as the “contact hypothesis,” which says that prejudice and hatred between different groups — racial, religious, or otherwise — often decreases when the two groups actually have contact with one another.

The idea is pretty simple: Once you get to know people from the other group, you begin to see them not as stereotypes or caricatures, but as real people with all sorts of different views.

That seems to have been the case with Wagner, the far-right politician in Germany. And once his views toward Islam and Muslims changed, he evidently decided on his own to withdraw from his leadership position in the AfD party, or was asked to step down by the party.

For its part, the AfD has publicly said it has no issues with Wagner’s conversion. “Religion is a private issue. We believe in religious freedom as stated in the constitution,” AfD party spokesperson Daniel Friese told the Berliner Zeitung.

And perhaps they really don’t mind it: After all, a white German Christian whose negative views toward Islam changed after contact with Muslim refugees is perhaps the best evidence possible for one of AfD’s main tenets. It certainly bolsters the argument that “the immigration of so many Muslims will change [German] culture.”

It’s fair to say this probably isn’t the change that the far right was expecting, though.