Why
British Women are turning to Islam
THE SPREAD OF A WORLD CREED
The Times - Tuesday, 9th November 1993 -Home-news Page
Lucy Berrington finds the Muslim Faith is winning Western admirers despite
hostile media coverage
Unprecedented numbers of British people,
nearly all of them women, are converting to Islam at a time of deep divisions
within the Anglican and Catholic churches.
The rate of conversions has prompted predictions that Islam will rapidly become
an important religious force in this country. [1] "Within the next 20
years the number of British converts will equal or overtake the immigrant
Muslim community that brought the faith here", says Rose Kendrick, a religious
education teacher at a Hull comprehensive and the author of a textbook guide to
the Koran. She says: "Islam is as much a world faith as is Roman
Catholicism. No one nationality claims it as its own." Islam is also
spreading fast on the continent and in America.
The surge in conversions to Islam has taken place despite the negative image of
the faith in the Western press. Indeed, the pace of conversions has accelerated
since publicity over the Salman Rushdie affair, the Gulf War [2] and the plight
of the Muslims in Bosnia. It is even more ironic that most British converts
should be women, given the widespread view in the West that Islam treats women
poorly. In the United States, women converts outnumber men by four to one, and
in Britain make up the bulk of the estimated 10,000 to 20, 000 converts,
forming part of a Muslim community of 1 to 1.5 million. Many of Britons
"New Muslims" are from middle-class backgrounds. They include Matthew
Wilkinson, a former head boy of Eton who went on to Cambridge, and a son an d
daughter of Lord Justice Scott, the judge heading the arms-to-Iraq inquiry.
A small scale survey by the Islamic Foundation in Leicester suggests that most
converts are aged 30 to 50. Younger Muslims point to many conversions among
students and highlight the intellectual thrust of Islam. "Muhammad"
said, "The light of Islam will rise in the West" and I think that is
what is happening in our day" says Aliya Haeri, an American-born
psychologist who converted 15 years ago. She is a consultant to the Zahra Trust,
a charity publishing spiritual literature and is one of Britain's prominent
Islamic speakers. She adds: "Western converts are coming to Islam with
fresh eyes, without all the habits of the East, avoiding much of what is
culturally wrong. The purest tradition is finding itself strongest in the
West." [3]
Some say the conversions are prompted by the rise of comparative religious
education. The British media, offering what Muslims describe as a relentless
bad press on all things Islamic, is also said to have helped. Westerners
despairing of their own society -- rising in crime, family breakdown, drugs and
alcoholism [4] -- have come to admire the discipline and security of Islam.
Many converts are former Christians disillusioned by the uncertainty of the
church and unhappy with the concept of the Trinity and deification of Jesus.
Quest
of the Convert - Why Change?
Other converts describe a search for a religious identity. Many
had previously been practicing Christians but found intellectual satisfaction in
Islam. "I was a theology student and it was the academic argument that led
to my conversion." Rose Kendrick, a religious education teacher and
author, said she objected to the concept of the original sin: "Under
Islam, the sins of the fathers aren't visited on the sons. The idea that God is
not always forgiving is blasphemous to Muslims.
Maimuna, 39, was raised as a High Anglican and confirmed at 15 at the peak of
her religious devotion. "I was entranced by the ritual of the High Church
and thought about taking the veil." Her crisis came when a prayer was not
answered. She slammed the door on visiting vicars but traveled to convents for
discussions with nuns. "My belief came back stronger, but not for the
Church, the institution or the dogma." She researched every Christian
denomination, plus Judaism, Buddhism and Krishna Consciousness, before turning
to Islam.
Many converts from Christianity reject the ecclesiastical hierarchy emphasizing
Muslims' direct relationship with God. They sense a lack of leadership in the
Church of England and are suspicious of its apparent flexibility. "Muslims
don't keep shifting their goal-posts ," says Huda Khattab, 28, author of
The Muslim Woman's Handbook, published this year by Ta-Ha. She converted ten
years ago while studying Arabic at university. "Christianity changes, like
the way some have said premarital sex is okay if its with the person you're
going to marry. It seems so wishy-washy. Islam was constant about sex, about
praying five times a day. The prayer makes you conscious of God all the time.
You're continually touching base.
Footnotes
1 This is one of the reasons why there is an onslaught of bad press against
Islam and the Muslims. Whoever considers Islam carefully with its principle
belief tawheed (the Uniqueness of Allah, His and His sole right to
subservience, worship and legislation), the sum total of its injunctions,
formulated by Allah (which are harmonic and define the true nature, position,
rights and responsibilities of both sexes), and its justice in every sphere of
life (social, economical and political) for all categories of people - wives,
husbands, children, orphans, women, the poor and indigent, the poverty-stricken
- will realize why it poses a threat to tthe leading elite of the western
civilizations (i.e. those who benefit most from the unfair and unjust forms by
which the people are governed). It is in the hands of such people that the
control of peoples beliefs and ideas lie (via television, Magazines, Films,
Education) and naturally this advantage is used to maintain the existing status
quo. Muslims are not governed by and enslaved the false beliefs and ideas of
humans, they are enslaved to and governed by Allah alone. This is the essence
of Islam - That enslavement is to none but to Allah alone and everything
besides Him is undeserving of worship and subservience.
2 It is now an established fact that around 5,000 of the US Troops who were
stationed in Saudi Arabia became Muslims during and shortly after the Gulf War.
3 Much of the alleged oppression of women is due to localized culture which is
based on a superstition that is more akin to Hinduism. It is, however, portrays
it as being Islamic in origin which in turn seriously affects the 'independence
of thought' of those who do not bother to pursue the matter in an objective
manner - which includes most people.
4 One of the biggest industries in the West is that of entertainment and
amusement. This is essential to maintain the false idea of progress, that what
comes next is better and worth enduring for. Peoples minds are preoccupied with
their own pleasures and other pursuits while others are being murdered,
slaughtered, women raped, innocent babies and children butchered with axes and
knives, innocent bystanders in robberies and muggings killed, the aged battered
to death by adolescents, thousands dying of drug abuse, thousands of innocent
lives destroyed by the consumption of alcohol, drunkards beating their women
and children ... the list is endless. The entertainment industry is one of the
effective tools in the 'normalization of the thought process', the
'desensitization of the humanistic concern', and the intensification of the 'my
pleasure and gratification is what is most important' syndrome.