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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Minarets and the Conversion of a Swiss Politician: Separating Facts from Fantasy
by: Jason Hamza van Boom on February 5th, 2010
[This story also appears at Illume Magazine, an American Muslim news site.]
The recent passage of a ban on the construction of minarets in Switzerland has a very interesting side story. A member of the political party that pushed for the minaret ban announced that he had become a Muslim. Outside of Switzerland, the mainstream media has ignored this. Muslims around the world, however, have picked up on this story, circulating it on blogs and on Facebook. In the process, however, the story has become distorted into a fairly bizarre shape, and so creating some confusion. Meanwhile, at least one anti-Muslim blog has picked up on the story. Looking at the comments it appears that some opponents of Muslim immigration want to dismiss the fact of his conversion all together. Nevertheless, it is a verifiable fact that a Swiss elected official belonging to the Swiss People’s Party - the principal backer of the minaret ban - converted to Islam.
Daniel Streich, who holds an elected local office and was a long time member of the Swiss People’s Party, announced his resignation from his party. He had been a devout, bible-reading and church-going Christian. Two years ago, however, he converted to Islam. He kept his conversion under wraps. The Swiss People’s Party’s recent campaign against minarets, however, became too much for Streich. He made his conversion public, and denounced the campaign as a“witch hunt”.
From The New York Times (Feb. 28, 2010):
Changing Face in Poland: Skinhead Puts on Skullcap
Adam Lach for The New York Times
Pawel in the Warsaw synagogue. A former truck driver and neo-Nazi skinhead, Pawel, 33, has since become an Orthodox Jew, covering his shaved head with a yarmulke and shedding his fascist ideology for the Torah.
By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: February 27, 2010
WARSAW — When Pawel looks into the mirror, he can still sometimes see a neo-Nazi skinhead staring back, the man he was before he covered his shaved head with a skullcap, traded his fascist ideology for the Torah and renounced violence and hatred in favor of God.
“I still struggle every day to discard my past ideas,” said Pawel, a 33-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jew and former truck driver, noting with little irony that he had to stop hating Jews in order to become one. “When I look at an old picture of myself as a skinhead, I feel ashamed. Every day I try and do teshuvah,” he said, using the Hebrew word for repentance. “Every minute of every day. There is a lot to make up for.”
I may be cynical, but I cannot help but suspect that Pawel/Pinchas will profit a lot more from his conversion than Daniel Streich will from his.
[The recently published book Microtrends by Penn and Zalesne discusses Pro-Semitism in modern culture.]
