A member of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party has converted to Islam, leaving his position on the organisation’s national executive committee, the Deutsche Welle reported.
“The party has no problem with that,” said AfD spokesman Daniel Friese in the eastern German state of Brandenburg.
He was confirming a report in the Daily Tagesspiegel that party board member Arthur Wagner had converted to Islam.
“That’s my private business,” Arthur Wagner told the German newspaper, who first reported his conversion to Islam.
Mr Friese said the AfD’s national party included groups representing the interests of Muslims, Christians and homosexuals.
“Religion is a private matter. We support the constitutional right of religious freedom,” he added.
Rumours about Mr Wagner’s conversion to Islam followed his resignation from his position in AfD party on January 11.
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Wagner, a German of Russian origin, had been a representative of the AfD since 2015.
He was a member of the state committee with responsibility for churches and religious communities.
The AfD entered Germany’s national parliament after garnering support at last September’s national election on an anti-Islam platform that demanded stricter border controls to stop the number of refugees and migrants entering Germany.
The party’s basic program, which was adopted last year, claimed that “Islam does not belong to Germany.”
