In Germany, boxing star becomes controversial Salafist preacher

Pierre Vogel became known as the "Islamic conqueror of Germany" after he left boxing, converted to Islam and started calling on fellow Germans to follow in his footsteps.

Vogel succeeded in converting a large number of his compatriots to Islam and spreading Salafist ideas among Germany's Muslims, having received most of his Islamist education in Saudi Arabia.

Born on July 20, 1978, in Frechen, a town in the Rhein-Erft-Kreis, in North Rhine-Westphalia, where Christian evangelism was prevalent, Vogel attended high school in German capital Berlin and became a boxer. 

He started his boxing career at the age of 22. He played 66 matches at the amateur level. He then played for almost two years for German boxing promoter and manager Sauerland Wilfried.

Vogel then moved to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, and joined the Arab Institute for Non-Arabic Speakers at Umm Al-Qura University where he studied Islam.

In 2004 and 2005, Vogel studied the holy Qur'an and then returned to Germany. In 2006, he started lecturing about Islam.

Eloquence

In a 2011 report titled "Radical Islam in Germany: The Convert as Missionary", the non-partisan international think tank Gatestone Institute describes Vogel as "one of the most influential Whahbi fundamentalist Germans".

Vogel, the report says, is not less dangerous than other German Muslims. Well-spoken and eloquent, it added, Vogel could communicate easily with German Muslims and non-Muslims who suffered identity problems.

A fundamentalist to the marrows of his bones, Vogel believed that Islam is the only true religion and that the adherents of all other religions are "disbelievers".

Vogel also believes, the report says, that inviting non-Muslims to Islam is every Muslim's duty.

"He has declared himself a missionary and openly argues that he has a theological evidence of the superiority of Islam," the report says of Vogel.

It adds that he relies on his methods of teaching in advocacy, taking pride in his online lessons. It says Vogel claimed that more than 5 million people watched his online lectures in the span of a year and a half.

He also depended on his background as a teenager before converting to Islam, the report says.

"I know everything: casinos, discos and women," the report quotes Vogel as saying. "I also know why it is better to live another type of life in which one abstains from sex before marriage."

Vogel used to say, the report adds, that biased news always attracts thousands of people who want to learn more about Islam and at the end discover that this religion is the truth.

Germany's public international broadcaster Deutsche Welle quoted Vogel in September 2016 as saying that preachers are something and the Islamic religion is something else.

Vogel always spoke against terrorism and violence. Nonetheless, German authorities were always afraid that his lectures and discourse would radicalize young Germans.

In 2012, Deutsche Welle ran an editorial titled "Salafist Propaganda in Germany", in which it said Germans encouraged Muslims to convert to Christianity 300 years ago.

Today, the editorial said, Salafists are doing the same thing.

"They are, however, claiming that the conversion of Germans to Islam is evidence that the only true religion is becoming victorious at the end," the editorial said.

Vogel claimed to have converted a record number of Germans to Islam when he organized a ceremony to celebrate the conversion of 17 German nationals in Frankfurt in April 2012.