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nearby town for Friday prayers. The building was not what I expected – there was no golden dome, nor a minaret from which the muezzin would call the faithful. It was a nondescript bungalow in a side street. But the intensity of the congregation and the warmth of their welcome to me, a stranger, a pale European, was moving.
    The imam was an elderly man with watery eyes and a thick, powder-white beard. He spoke in a low soft voice that trailed into a whisper as he asked me about the Prophets and the Pillars of Islam. He had little Danish and Ymit translated for me. Did I accept the Five Pillars of Islam – that there is no God but God and Mohammed is His messenger, performing prayer, paying the Zakat (charity to the poor), fasting in the month of Ramadan and performing Hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca)?
    Did I accept that Jesus was not the Son of God?
    I answered yes, even though the finer points of theology and doctrine were beyond my understanding.
    At the end of this series of questions, I had to recite the Declaration of Faith, the shahada .
    ‘There is no God but God, and Mohammed is the messenger of God.’
    There was a pause. And then the imam said, ‘You are now a Muslim. Your sins are forgiven.’
    Ymit translated and then embraced me.
    ‘Now you are truly my brother,’ he said, his eyes glistening. ‘But youare not really a convert, more a revert. In Islam, we believe that every person is born a Muslim because we are all created by God and there is only one God.
    ‘You should be circumcised,’ he said with a grin, ‘but it’s not compulsory. It’s more important that you now take a Muslim name.’
    My life had undergone a momentous change. It was uplifting; I had been purged. Guilt evaporated, a fresh start beckoned.
    ‘I think you should be “Murad”,’ Ymit said. ‘It means “goal” or “achievement”.’
    It seemed appropriate.
    I did not become a strictly observant Muslim immediately. In fact, my friends had an unconventional way of celebrating. We converged on an apartment to consume several six-packs of beer. It was my first communion – Korsør style. I could always repent later, they laughed.
    To begin with, the forgiving of sins, absolution through prayer, was a large part of Islam’s appeal to me. I soon learned and would cite a saying of the Prophet:
    ‘Suppose there is a river that flows in front of your house and you take a wash five times in it. Then would there remain any dirt and filth on you after that? Performing daily prayers five times a day is similar to that which washes away sins.’
    The Koran and the sayings attributed to the Prophet were especially generous to the dedicated ‘revert’ who took his religion seriously. In the words of one such saying – or hadith : ‘If a servant accepts Islam and completes his Islam, Allah will record for him every good deed that he performed before [adopting Islam]; and will erase for him every evil deed that he did before.’
    I did not leave the Bandidos immediately and even took several members along with me to the mosque. This did not go down well with senior members of the gang, who called me to a meeting to tell me to keep my beliefs to myself.
    Samar, even though she was from a Christian family, was more accepting. She thought my conversion showed a maturity that was a welcome departure from my gang lifestyle. She did not seem to harbour any anti-Muslim feelings and we continued to make plans together.
    It was – of all people – the Korsør police who inadvertently pushed me towards a much stricter adherence to my new religion.
    On a glorious June evening, days after the summer solstice and with the sun still high in the sky, I joined some friends at a Kurdish restaurant in Korsør to watch the world heavyweight title fight – the bizarre bout in Las Vegas between Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield.
    A police car passed and then came back to the restaurant. Two officers got out.
    ‘Morten Storm,’ one said, with a look of