A former far-Right MP who once called Islam "the biggest disease to have hit our country in the last hundred years" has become a Muslim in a shock conversion.

Joram van Klaveren was an MP from 2010 until 2017 for the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) led by anti-Islam and anti-immigration firebrand Geert Wilders. Mr van Klaveren once fiercely advocated Mr Wilders' policies of banning the Koran and closing down mosques.

However, he has now said that he discovered out he had more in common with Islam than he initially thought when he started research for a book criticising the religion, which caused him to completely change his view.

Mr van Klaveren said: "I looked at the Bible on my bookshelf, on the table were books about the Prophet Muhammad.

"The prior years I had a big aversion to Islam. When you then have to conclude that you were wrong, it is not a fun moment. But while searching for God I always felt a certain unease. And that slowly disappeared. It felt a bit like coming home in a religious way."