In his youth Morton Storm was a member of a Danish motorcycle gang. Then he converted to Islam. He was a Muslim for ten years before he realized his ghastly mistake and became an apostate. However, for six more years after that he concealed his apostasy so that he could work undercover for the Danish security police, helping them eliminate some of the terrorists among his Muslim associates.

Below is a talk given by Morten Storm describing his odyssey into and out of Islam. Many thanks to Norse Ghost for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:00 Thanks for inviting me, and thanks to all of you for coming.

00:06 Thanks to the police for being here to protect us; nobody has thanked them yet,

00:12 Have they? …Anyway…

00:18 Wow… you have seen some really good speakers,

00:24 I think you have addressed many important points, so I can only

00:30 tell you a bit about myself. I’m originally from Korsør

00:36 and I converted to Islam in 1997, and then I lived

00:43 in ten years as a fundamentalist, and studied Islam in Yemen and North-Africa,

00:49 then also participated in teaching Islam and training Islamist groups in the UK

00:55 and other places in Europe as well.

01:13 …so here in… that is…

01:19 As a former Muslim, to watch the developments which are now unfolding in Denmark

01:26 makes me worried of course. I’m very active on Facebook, in debate groups,

01:32 and I try to use my experience and my knowledge to warn people about Islam,

01:38 and of course also try to get people away from Islam.

01:41 That is, converts and others before they’re Muslim.

01:44 Sometimes successfully, and often it’s of course a difficult uphill battle.

01:51 But I succeed once in a while. Islam is not a religion or an ideology

01:57 as part of a religion, it’s actually an ideological cult, in my view,

02:03 a cult of hate, whose purpose is to undermine and, say…

02:09 it’s like… for me who…

02:15 it kind of undermined my humanity, and replaced my human values

02:21 and, say… morality. When I converted in ’97, I was member of the Bandidos [motorcycle gang],

02:27 but decided I wanted to be a better person. And I searched for something providing

02:33 a larger meaning in life. Something that would bring me happiness and make me a better person.

02:39 One day when I sat in the library in Korsør and read a book about the prophet Muhammad’s life,

02:45 I thought; this is the religion, the ideology I will follow.

02:51 This is what’s right. It’s the truth. You see, I only read the good things about Islam.

02:58 I read that Islam believes in the same prophets as the Christians and so on,

03:04 so therefore it was a package deal that I… you know, I was a rootless person, I was 21 years old,

03:10 I had never had a family, but Islam was this “package deal” for me,

03:16 which gave me an identity, which I had been searching for. And it’s here…

03:22 this identity, which is so immensely important for all of us humans on this planet. We have a need

03:29 to say… belong. To be part of a fellowship.

03:35 When I then converted to Islam, I was so happy! I could forgive myself. For the first time

03:41 I was able to… I could kind of balance

03:47 the wickedness I had done when I was a biker and the things one is to do according to Islam.

03:53 And when I… the first six months as a Muslim, I was just so happy,

03:59 I moved to the UK, I simply changed my life. I could forgive myself;

04:02 I talked to Jews, I talked to Christians,

04:05 I talked to everybody. But then, I remember one day in London, in Wood Green in North London,

04:12 a Jew, a Rabbi stood there, and he said to me; son, have you converted to Islam?

04:18 I said; Yes. He said: one day you will hate me. I said: No,

04:24 I certainly will not hate anybody, that’s not why I converted to Islam.

04:27 I converted to Islam because I want to forgive myself

04:30 and forgive everybody and be together with them, so, like loving everybody.

04:33 But I didn’t know. I hadn’t understood Islam sufficiently,

04:36 but I found out later. A month later I travelled to Yemen, in ’97,

04:42 to study Islam and learn Arabic. I studied with some of the most fundamentalist groups

04:49 in Salafism, in North Yemen, and then I learned that Islam

04:55 means submission. It does not mean peace. It doesn’t mean as much as people say; oh, Islam

05:01 means peace and so on, and that’s what they were “running around” believing,

05:04 that Islam was forgiveness and peace… No, it certainly is not.

05:07 Because Islam means submission. That you submit to Allah’s laws,

05:13 you submit to his commands, the prophet’s commands, and that is the only, ONLY truth,

05:19 and everything else is false. I was in for less than six months…

05:25 (?) …I became one of the most hateful persons. I hated everything that in any way

05:32 was not in accordance with my conviction. But it wasn’t me who said I should hate it;

05:38 it was the religion, it was Islam that said it. I remember one time I phoned

05:44 my mother and told her: you must never ask me to choose between you and Islam,

05:50 because then I choose Islam. With that, I had converted to Islam completely. This way

05:56 of practicing Islam, it meant that I gave up being Danish, I gave up

06:03 being part of the Danish fellowship, I gave up being Danskere, I became Muslim. It was my

06:09 new identity. Islam is an identity.

06:15 It’s not a race, but it is an identity, a community one converts into and becomes part of.

06:21 It’s a declaration of war, against everything the West stands for:

06:27 freedom, gender equality, tolerance, all of these things

06:33 Islam is against.

06:39 Fortunately, during my travels and in Yemen, in the Middle East,

06:45 I met with Al Qaeda, I met with leaders of Al Qaeda,

06:52 with Al Shabaab; I met religious leaders in Saudi Arabia, I met with

06:58 and studied under these people. I was appointed in the UK, designated the leader of

07:04 Al-Muhajiroon, those are the ones who have also been very active in Syria recently,

07:10 and was then leader for training a group in military training… paramilitary training

07:16 just outside of Luton. My journey through Islam has of course

07:22 given me knowledge, it has given me some experiences, which I believe very few

07:29 people in the world who are still alive have. The friends I had… have been tagging along with

07:35 people who either have blown themselves up in Stockholm, they’ve blown themselves up in Syria,

07:41 they’ve been killed in terror attacks other places, but that is not because

07:47 these people I’ve been together with are extremists.

07:50 The problem is; they’re actually fundamentalists.

07:53 It’s people who follow Islam’s texts literally.

07:59 It’s not people who are sitting around there ADDING things,

08:02 it’s not people who LIE about Islam, it’s people

08:05 who are really honest; they are sincere about Islam and wish to follow Islam

08:12 as it’s written in the texts. And because they have done this,

08:15 it’s precisely what leads them to violence.

08:18 Because Islam is built of — it’s made victorious by violence. Just as the prophet Muhammad said —

08:24 and those are hadith you can find in Bukhari Muslim,

08:27 you can find them in Tirmidi and other religious books —

08:30 he said: I have been made victorious through terror.

08:36 And that’s written in the hadith. And I’m happy to challenge all these…

08:39 I’ve challenged people in the media on these things.

08:42 So Islam is of course a problem. Now it has become a problem for me,

08:48 but… following my journey… we come to 2007,

08:54 and that’s when I realized for the first time that Islam is wrong.

09:00 I had chosen sides. I tried going to Somalia to fight for

09:06 Islamic courts there. They’re called Mahakem al-Islamiya; those are the

09:12 Islamic courts. I had tried them and I got an invitation from them. And I did everything to

09:18 travel there to wage jihad. Jihad, you know, is for Muslims the highest and the most noble —

09:25 it corresponds to a football player that’s chosen to play for the National Team,

09:31 but only for the National Team. He’s to play in the World Championship Final. And when he’s in

09:37 the “tunnel”… oh sorry… when you’re in the “tunnel”, about to enter the field

09:43 and play in the World Championship Final, then the coach comes along

09:49 and pulls you out of the tunnel and tells you: it won’t be you

09:55 who gets to play football. I was prevented from waging jihad in Somalia.

10:01 I could simply not believe that Allah, God, could think of

10:07 preventing me from doing those things that he, through his book the Quran and through the hadith…

10:13 how could he think of preventing me from going out and worshipping him by waging jihad!

10:20 It was for me a humiliation. It hurt so much, that when I came home… I lived in Gellerupparken

10:26 When I came home to Denmark… to Gellerupparken, I began to question

10:32 whether there were contradictions in the Quran. And I found that. I found contradictions in the Quran.

10:38 For the first time in ten years, I dared to question my own religion. Because

10:44 every time there were any doubts during those ten years, I’d always tried to undermine,

10:50 to suppress my doubts. Because you know, Allah knows what I’m thinking, he knows where my heart is,

10:56 and that is… if you have not completely surrendered to Islam, then you’re an apostate of Islam,

11:02 just by having this doubt in your heart. So these are things one was afraid of challenging.

11:08 But, in 2007, in January, I thought; you know what, I’ll Google

11:14 contradictions in the Quran. So I did. And that resulted in my finding lots of websites

11:20 where contradictions in the Quran are addressed. It took me two weeks

11:26 to go through these contradictions, to kind of… (?) … Allah says in the Quran

11:33 if you find any contradictions in this book, it’s not from me. That means it’s made by humans.

11:39 I studied them, checked them out, got them confirmed. And that made me

11:45 realize how wrong I actually was, how dangerous a person I had actually been

11:51 not only towards myself, but towards my fellow human beings.

11:54 I had, among other things, wanted Naser Khader

11:57 to be killed. I wanted Kurt Westergaard killed;

12:01 I actually issued a fatwa for his execution,

12:04 but suddenly, I found myself wearing their shoes!

12:10 They chose to use their freedom of speech. And suddenly I’m standing here in their shoes,

12:16 and choose; I will, goddammit, not be a Muslim. This is my choice.

12:22 I simply choose to leave Islam; I cannot accept it. But as I do this and repudiate Islam,

12:28 I’m fully aware… arette (?)… in Arabic it means; he who… that is… (?) it means… he who is

12:34 an apostate, then you are received by… and he who receives the one who’s apostate,

12:40 he is to be killed. So my freedom, my freedom of speech,

12:44 my freedom of choice as a human being have caused

12:47 me to have to be killed. And that’s how Islam is. And I have chosen;

12:50 I said, “THIS I’m gonna fight against, goddammit!”

12:53 I contacted the PET [Danish Intelligence Service] agents

12:56 who had tried to recruit me earlier, and said;

12:59 I’m here to fight terrorism. And so I did, for almost six years.

13:05 At the highest level, certainly on the front line with my life at stake. And the only thing I regret

13:11 from that period is that I couldn’t do more.

13:14 I only want to be able to do more, and I do that of course

13:17 by coming out to speak to people like you. And now

13:20 I would very much like you to ask me questions, because I don’t know

13:23 what you’re thinking about this, but the experience and knowledge I have

13:26 about Islam should be sufficient to answer

13:29 the questions you might have about Islam. …Yes, (just give me) two seconds…two seconds…

13:35 …what I just want to say; the developments going on with Islam right now.

13:39 You know, I lived many years abroad

13:42 and returned to Denmark, I’ve lived in Denmark 18 months now,

13:45 I watch… it’s incredibly dangerous, this

13:48 development, and it’s so rapid! We underestimate, we underestimate the danger from this

13:54 and the seriousness… I have never seen so many Islamists infiltrate debate groups

14:00 in Facebook and online… in Danish! I’ve never seen them infiltrate as much as they do,

14:03 in the police stations! They have prayer rooms;

14:06 they infiltrate political organisations, and so on and so on and so on. This… to me…

14:12 It’s a war, of course. And that’s going on openly. It’s not that it is a physical war;

14:19 it’s cultural warfare that happens right under our nose,

14:22 and we don’t understand it. Every time we see

14:25 a Muslim blowing himself up over there in Paris, then we notice it. That’s true,

14:31 but what’s actually even more dangerous, is this cultural warfare that Islam is waging,

14:37 and they’re winning! The more we underestimate the gravity

14:43 of this cultural warfare, the more we lose. And therefore we Danes, we need identity,

14:50 we need to be proud of being Danes. We need to return to some traditions and have

14:56 these family traditions which Islam… Islam offers these things, and that’s why

15:02 many Danes choose to convert to Islam, because we lack these benefits.

15:08 It’s a cultural competition that’s going on now, and up to this point we’re about to lose,

15:14 if we don’t wake up and start working together and taking this seriously!

15:33 I hope it was OK…

15:39 Yes, you (Question… inaudible…)

15:57 Yes…so, in Arabic, Islam means…it derives from… it means

16:03 that you submit yourself. Any person who follow Islamic scripture

16:10 and commands, that is, Allah’s commands and the Prophets commands,

16:13 they are Muslims. And he who calls to…

16:16 …when one calls to prayer, it’s called Adhan. He who calls to prayers is called Muezzin.

16:22 So it’s a description, a title. And these people submit 100 percent

16:28 in their hearts, in their actions, in their faith. That’s a Muslim.

16:34 “Mohammedan” was used back in the day, it’s not something that’s… it’s not Arabic, and

16:40 …it’s a term used by the West.

16:53 (Question)

16:59 Q: I don’t know if you recognize yourself from some years ago?

17:02 A: Yes, sure, sure… oh, hang on…

17:05 I can tell you, that as an apostate,