File photo of a German who converted to Islam reading in the Qura'n

BERLIN, October 25 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - The number of Germans who accept Islam "is rising each year" and they "are getting younger and younger," confirmed the director of a Muslim cultural center in the capital Berlin.

"Many are looking for new lifestyles and some sense of direction," Herzog-turned  Mohammed – a former Protestant who worked in a social welfare center for Turkish immigrants for many years, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Saturday, October 25.

To all appearances Herr Herzog is an average German, but on Sunday, October 26, he will be one of a growing number of his compatriots to observe the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, one of the five pillars of their faith, according to AFP.

Herzog converted to Islam in 1979 when he realized that "the Qur'an gathered together everything I had ever believed in."

Today he is the director of a Muslim cultural center in the capital Berlin and he maintains that the number of Germans who embrace Islam "is rising each year."

The central institute on Islam archives estimates that about 12,400 people born in Germany to German parents are Muslims, with the total Muslim population set at around 3.5 million people, most of them of Turkish origin.

Each year, the institute issues between 350 and 400 documents in German and Arabic, complete with identity photograph, as proof people have converted.

"It would be an exaggeration to talk of a rash of conversions," the center director Salim Abdullah told AFP.

Nevertheless, the document gives its owner the right to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, another of the five pillars of Islam which has to be performed at least once in a lifetime, provided the believer is both financially and physically able.

Norbert Mueller grew up with almost no exposure to religious instruction, but he says he has found warmth and "the feeling that he belongs to a community" with his Turkish and Arab friends in the northern city of Hamburg.

A 41-year-old practicing lawyer, Mueller embraced Islam in 1991 and has married a Muslim woman from Iran.

When he was a student, he used to go to bars with other Germans, but some grew irritated when he refused to drink a beer with them.

"I never realized that alcohol played such an important role in one's social life," says Mueller, who now mainly frequents other Muslims.

"Impossible To Know How Many"

According to Monika Wohlrab-Sahr, a Leipzig University professor and author of a study on religious conversions in Germany and the United States, it is impossible to know how many people have become Muslims.

Professing one's faith before another Muslim is enough to convert, she says.

"The majority are people whose spouses are Muslims. Nothing obliges though to convert," Wohlrab-Sahr says.

"Many of them have difficult pasts that pose them problems, they are looking for discipline in their lives."

By becoming Muslims, though, they are confronted with other problems.

"The newest of converts have to deal with a new world which they have to assimilate," says Norbert Mueller.

"They have to find their way and for that reason some give the impression they are observing the rules 150 percent, but it's usually a passing phase."

Nor does Wohlrab-Sahr see this as a big issue.

"One could say that some new converts follow the rules in a particularly strict way. But that's a tendency one finds with all converts, Catholics included," she says.