'Reformed' white supremacist apologises to Muslims on Reddit

A self-confessed former member of the racist "alt-right" white supremacist movement has taken to the internet to apologise to Muslims for fuelling hate against them.

The Redditor, who has a long history of anti-Muslim posts under the screen-name 'puppyred', said on Wednesday that he had changed his mind on Islam after he read Quranic passages on tolerance and acceptance.

"Throughout more than 2 years, I genuinely believed that all Muslims were against western civilization. That they were all following an inherently violent ideology," the user posted in the /r/Islam Reddit community.

"I genuinely thought that refugees were Islamic soldiers should've been all deported since they came only to rape white women and to kill infidels. I genuinely thought that all this was due to the Quran,"

The user explained that he recently had a change of heart after a Muslim Redditor sent him a post explaining the Islamic rulings on freedom of beliefs and the prohibition of compulsion in religion.

"The post ended up proving to me how I was making false assumptions. It showed how ignorant I was. I realized how deluded I was… how I was fueling hate for no real reason," he added, before making an apology.

	Islamophobic hate crimes spiked in the US [Twitter]

The alt-right is a loosely defined right-wing part of the internet that is rabidly anti-Muslim, anti-immigration, anti-feminist, anti-political correctness and rails against the political establishment.

The offshoot conservative movement, which embraces a mixture of populism, racism and white nationalism, has vehemently supported US president-elect Donald Trump.

During his campaign, Trump proposed a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to the US and raised the possibility of creating a database to track Muslims living in the country.

The response on Reddit to the ex-racist's apology has been overwhelmingly positive.

"I really commend your honesty and courage. No easy task, especially online. You've set a really nice example for all of us," said one user, "Apology accepted. Mistakes happen, internal reflection really does make a huge difference," said another.

Islamophobic hate crimes spiked in the US after the launch of Trump's fiery election campaign.

Nearly 900 incidents of hate and intolerance were recorded across the country in the first ten days after Trump's election, many by assailants apparently emboldened by his victory, an advocacy group reported last week.

That said, there were those in the online community who reserved judgment, given the user's very recent history of posting memes mocking liberal attitudes towards minority groups, and referring to "Muslim rapists" and "Adolfela Merkel" and her "beloved refugees".

User 'PostFunktionalist' posted: "im pretty sure this account just got its password guessed, people typically don't go from "posting alt-right memes" to "wow perhaps I was wrong about my identity" in 2 days."

Also arousing suspicion was the fact that the original poster, a frequent contributor to groups such as 'sjwhate' and 'whiterights' did not reply to any of the dozens of comments commending their change of heart.