Why ARE so many modern British career women converting to Islam?

[BadBoy]

Being an atheist and recent discovery of Chris Hitchens (I know, where have I been... I live in the UK and he doesnt appear here so often) I found the story relating to the title of this thread intriguing and odd, as well as a bit worrying.

I first heard about it on a lightweight weekend chat show here in the UK.

Apparently, these women are usually intelligent, thoughtful (critical thinkers?) and often successful.

Normally the show fails miserably to raise the points needed to be made on a particular argument or question (in my view), but in this case a contributor did suggest that they thought the reasons for these people converting is due to the failure of western culture. What I think she meant by that is the reality of a materialistic lifestyle. i.e they are in search of something that is more meaningful to their lives, has more direction and construction/organisation.

The film American Beauty springs to mind. To me that film is all about exposing the pointlessness of such a white middle class western culture and how behind closed doors people (some people) are sad, or even screaming inside for some kind of meaning to their life. They have the car, the house, a garage full of toys, but tis not enough.

I understand that a certain number of people give up the city career lifestyle and go and provide help within a charity organisation in a developing country etc. Perhaps thats the same sort of thing, escaping the rat race, but perhaps less selfish than adopting islam and having all your choices made for you.

I wonder how many of these converts seriously considered the wonderful world of science and how studying that could enrich their lives?

The converted women do not see islam as somthing that is bad for women.
Do people think the reason for convertion to islam for these type of women is because of their background. I mean islam is large and has many diverse manifestations. Is it just that they are safe because they live in a privileged (equal, or nearly equla) society in the UK and that converting and then living in say Iran would prove to be a very different experience.

To my mind they completely contradict Hitchens as they see Islam as a peace loving femanist organisation. But I guess, if they are seriously finding an inner peace, then what can be wrong with it. As long as they dont attempt to start telling me how I should live my life...


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...ing-Islam.html

Quote:

Tony Blair’s sister-in-law announced her conversion to Islam last weekend. Journalist Lauren Booth embraced the faith after what she describes as a ‘holy experience’ in Iran.

She is just one of a growing number of modern British career women to do so. Here, writer EVE AHMED, who was raised as a Muslim before rejecting the faith, explores the reasons why.

[Filippo Lippi]

The prattle of chat shows and tabloids is rarely factual and certainly nothing to worry about.

[Darat]

First question I have is "how many"?

[The Don]

There was a phone-in on this very subject on Radio 5 a couple of weeks ago.

Firstly in the case of Ms. Booth at least part of the motivation may be that her new employer is Al Jazeera. If someone was trying to ingratiate themselves with their new employer then a religious conversion would be a good start. Hearing her interviewed it struck me that she a had little knowledge of the details of Islam and that she was very much cherrypicking parts of Islam she considered desirable but ignoring those bits which may be more problematical to a modern, Western woman.

If the news story is to be believed (which is itself a big "if") then one reason for the conversions is that religion offers a very simple lifestyle. You no longer have to think for yourself and instead can abdicate responsibility for major parts of your life.

[BadBoy]

Originally Posted by Darat

First question I have is "how many"?

http://en.alukah.net/World_Muslims/0/392/

Quote:

IslamToday/Agencies

4/1/2011

The number of Britons choosing to become Muslims has nearly doubled in the past decade, according to one of the most comprehensive attempts to estimate how many people have embraced Islam.

Up to 100,000 converts to Islam are living in the UK,according to a report published today for Faith Matters organisation..

Using a number of sources, including a survey of more than 250 British mosques, census data from 2001 and conversion figures in Europe, the researchers from Swansea University estimate that there could be as many as 100,000 converts - of all ethnic backgrounds - in the UK, with white women leading the growing number of people embracing the Muslim faith.

By comparison, the report estimates that the Muslim convert population of Britain may have been a mere 60,000 people in 2001.

First, by using data from the Scottish 2001 census - the only survey to ask respondents what their religion was at birth as well as at the time of the survey - researchers broke down what proportion of Muslim converts there were and then extrapolated the figures for Britain as a whole.

Then, study by Kevin Brice, of Swansea University found 5,200 people converted to Islam in the UK last year.

Also, a survey was conducted of 122 converts last year which showed 56% were white British, with women making up 62% of respondents. The average age at conversion was just over 27.

[BadBoy]

Originally Posted by Filippo Lippi

The prattle of chat shows and tabloids is rarely factual and certainly nothing to worry about.

No, I think its real.

To be clear though. Im not worried that they converted to Islam, but that they converted to a religion.

It would be interesting to find out how many people have converted to any religion in any one year, and the proportion that were to islam.

I would be also interesting to compare this to the number of people loosing their faith, probably a much more difficult question to find the answer to.

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

The first question I'd ask is whether it's true. I certainly wouldn't trust any article from The Daily Mail concerning Islam to be factually accurate.

[Puppycow]

How many are converting? The article does not appear to give hard numbers.

Quote:

‘Evidence suggests that the ratio of Western women converts to male could be as high as 2:1,’ says Kevin Brice.

That's pretty vague. Were there 10 women and 5 men? Or a thousand times that? What's the rate of men and women converting to other religions?

If it's true, maybe because women are naturally more submissive than men? Islam means submission (to Allah). Also, women just seem to be more religious than men in general. Go to any church on Sunday and see if the women don't outnumber the men.

I like the one who says she converted "for feminist reasons."

Or maybe they like the clothes. The ones pictured seem to.

Quote:

Moreover, he says, often these female *converts are eager to display the *visible signs of their faith — in particular the hijab — whereas many Muslim girls brought up in the faith choose not to.

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Originally Posted by BadBoy

http://en.alukah.net/World_Muslims/0/392/

Ah, so that's rather misleading, then. Saying "the number of people converting has doubled" implies that the rate at which people have converted has doubled. What the data the article cites shows, however, is that the total number of people who have converted has nearly doubled. What length of time the initial 60,000 converted over isn't noted. The rate could actually have slowed down, for all those figures show.

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Originally Posted by BadBoy

To be clear though. Im not worried that they converted to Islam, but that they converted to a religion.

Did they? Who is to say that they weren't already religious?

[BadBoy]

Originally Posted by The Don

it struck me that she a had little knowledge of the details of Islam and that she was very much cherrypicking parts of Islam she considered desirable but ignoring those bits which may be more problematical to a modern, Western woman.

I got that impression on the program I watched awell. They cherry picked the bits the suited. One convert lady was getting very agitated, but I have seen this with born again christians espicially. They get very anxious when people question their faith. Instead of sitting cooly and just thinking "I know where its at and I dont need to justify myself", they get very agressive.

But, perhaps over the next 100 years, a new type of western Islam will be created with a different more liberal outlook?

[BadBoy]

Originally Posted by Sceptic Tank

The first question I'd ask is whether it's true. I certainly wouldn't trust any article from The Daily Mail concerning Islam to be factually accurate.

Yes, I know. It was just the first article that came up on google. The TV show was on the BBC though. Not that that makes it true.

[BadBoy]

Originally Posted by Sceptic Tank

Did they? Who is to say that they weren't already religious?

Yes your correct. The people on the show were mixed, but certainly there were some who had converted from Christianity. There was even one bloke who had converted from Islam to Judaism.

Perhaps you right, the statistics are not all that convincing are they.

[Professor Yaffle]

Quote:

A new report has suggested that there may be 100,000 white converts to Islam in the UK, and that people are converting at the rate of about 5,000 a year.

The report had huge coverage in the media, including a misleading headline in the Daily Mail, which claimed wrongly that 100,000 had converted in the past decade. Actually the report, written for the charity Faith Matters by M.A. Kevin Brice of Swansea University, Secretary of the Muslims in Britain Research Network, says that there were 63,042 people of White British ethnicity who declared themselves to be Muslims in the 2001 Census, and that the number may since have risen to 100,000.

Were all these original 63,042 converts? Sceptics suggest they included a lot of second-generation Muslims who regard themselves as British – as they are – and may also be white, if their parents hailed from Turkish Cyprus, Bosnia or Albania. So there is room for doubt.

[snip]

Counting conversions to Islam is very difficult. Even so, this particular estimate is much closer to guesswork than statistics.

http://www.straightstatistics.org/bl...ng-or-guessing

[BadBoy]

Originally Posted by Professor Yaffle

http://www.straightstatistics.org/bl...ng-or-guessing

I guess this threads dead in the water. So much for my critical thinking skills hu.

As soon as I saw the daily mail was top of the googled list I should have rethought things a bit.

Thanks Proffessor

[Puppycow]

Originally Posted by BadBoy

I guess this threads dead in the water. So much for my critical thinking skills hu.

As soon as I saw the daily mail was top of the googled list I should have rethought things a bit.

Thanks Proffessor

No worries. The numbers may not be precise, but I think the general gist of them is probably more or less correct. That is, more women than men probably convert. In the US, more women than men attend church regularly.

See here.

The same is true in Canada.

[HansMustermann]

So you have about 5000 conversions a year, out of a population of 62 million. That's less than 1 in 12,000.

I'd hardly count that as some mass phenomenon. In fact, it's kind of very low even compared to how many people do stupid stuff to troll for attention. Or people just doing crazy stuff, period. I mean, about 1% of the population are schizophrenic at any given time IIRC. About 10% are retarded.

I wouldn't devote much time thinking about such outliers. When you get to 1 in 12,000 odds, all sorts of crazy stuff can be expected, and not very representative for the rest of the population.

[Cainkane1]

Originally Posted by BadBoy

Being an atheist and recent discovery of Chris Hitchens (I know, where have I been... I live in the UK and he doesnt appear here so often) I found the story relating to the title of this thread intriguing and odd, as well as a bit worrying.

I first heard about it on a lightweight weekend chat show here in the UK.

Apparently, these women are usually intelligent, thoughtful (critical thinkers?) and often successful.

Normally the show fails miserably to raise the points needed to be made on a particular argument or question (in my view), but in this case a contributor did suggest that they thought the reasons for these people converting is due to the failure of western culture. What I think she meant by that is the reality of a materialistic lifestyle. i.e they are in search of something that is more meaningful to their lives, has more direction and construction/organisation.

The film American Beauty springs to mind. To me that film is all about exposing the pointlessness of such a white middle class western culture and how behind closed doors people (some people) are sad, or even screaming inside for some kind of meaning to their life. They have the car, the house, a garage full of toys, but tis not enough.

I understand that a certain number of people give up the city career lifestyle and go and provide help within a charity organisation in a developing country etc. Perhaps thats the same sort of thing, escaping the rat race, but perhaps less selfish than adopting islam and having all your choices made for you.

I wonder how many of these converts seriously considered the wonderful world of science and how studying that could enrich their lives?

The converted women do not see islam as somthing that is bad for women.
Do people think the reason for convertion to islam for these type of women is because of their background. I mean islam is large and has many diverse manifestations. Is it just that they are safe because they live in a privileged (equal, or nearly equla) society in the UK and that converting and then living in say Iran would prove to be a very different experience.

To my mind they completely contradict Hitchens as they see Islam as a peace loving femanist organisation. But I guess, if they are seriously finding an inner peace, then what can be wrong with it. As long as they dont attempt to start telling me how I should live my life...


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/ar...ing-Islam.html

I can't understand why anyone especially a woman would want to convert to Islam. Are you certain this is accurate? As for western culture failure we are far ahead of Islamic culture when it comes to human rights especially womens rights. Surely this is wrong.

[slingblade]

A comment, in general: I'd think it'd be much different being a Muslim woman in the UK, than being a Muslim woman in Afghanistan.

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by Cainkane1

I can't understand why anyone especially a woman would want to convert to Islam. Are you certain this is accurate? As for western culture failure we are far ahead of Islamic culture when it comes to human rights especially womens rights. Surely this is wrong.

You're still assuming that they actually put that much thought into it and aren't, say, just trolling for media attention.

I mean, heh, I did even worse myself. In college, I'd actually carry a Quran around and ask people at the college to repent. Doesn't mean I actually took that religion seriously. (I also obviously didn't put any thought into what happens when you piss some devout islamists with that kinda stuff, either.)

Others will be just disilusioned people joining some woo to give meaning to their lives (e.g., think how many join easter or new age woowoo sects) or, really, whatever.

[Jack by the hedge]

So (if we allow ourselves some assumptions about the various surveys reflecting unbiased ratios) there are claimed to be about 5,000 converts per year in the UK, just over half are white British and somewhat less than two thirds are female. No info on which faith or none they convert from, nor why.

The implication is that about 1,750 white British women convert to Islam per year.
I immediately wonder how many white British women marry muslim men every year.

<edit to add> The only British muslim convert I know is male. He converted in order to marry a muslim girl. From California.

[Professor Yaffle]

Originally Posted by Jack by the hedge

So (if we allow ourselves some assumptions about the various surveys reflecting unbiased ratios) there are claimed to be about 5,000 converts per year in the UK, just over half are white British and somewhat less than two thirds are female. No info on which faith or none they convert from, nor why.

The implication is that about 1,750 white British women convert to Islam per year.
I immediately wonder how many white British women marry muslim men every year.

<edit to add> The only British muslim convert I know is male. He converted in order to marry a muslim girl. From California.

Quote:

A separate online enquiry among 122 converts in August and September found that 38% were men and 62% women (although, surprisingly, marriage was not the key driver for conversion in at least 45% of instances).

http://www.brin.ac.uk/news/?tag=converts

So maybe about half? Possibly?

[brenn]

As an outsider, it seems to me the British must have some complex or syndrome that drives them to try to destroy themselves and their society - this could just be one more of many symptoms.

[Darat]

Originally Posted by brenn

As an outsider, it seems to me the British must have some complex or syndrome that drives them to try to destroy themselves and their society - this could just be one more of many symptoms.

Eh?

[DC]

Originally Posted by brenn

As an outsider, it seems to me the British must have some complex or syndrome that drives them to try to destroy themselves and their society - this could just be one more of many symptoms.

care to explain ?

[BadBoy]

Originally Posted by brenn

As an outsider, it seems to me the British must have some complex or syndrome that drives them to try to destroy themselves and their society - this could just be one more of many symptoms.

maybe. Maybe not. I personaly dont have a problem with them becoming Muslim, as long as it didnt affect my freedom.

I was just wondering why on earth they would want to. There must be some driving factor. But Im willing to believe that the stats here are so unreliable that its not worth analysing too much.

[BadBoy]

Originally Posted by brenn

As an outsider, it seems to me the British must have some complex or syndrome that drives them to try to destroy themselves and their society - this could just be one more of many symptoms.

its called dogging

[lopeyschools]

Originally Posted by brenn

As an outsider, it seems to me the British must have some complex or syndrome that drives them to try to destroy themselves and their society - this could just be one more of many symptoms.

I guess all those years of empire were an attempt at suicide?

[zooterkin]

Originally Posted by Sceptic Tank

The first question I'd ask is whether it's true. I certainly wouldn't trust any article from The Daily Mail concerning Islam to be factually accurate.

FTFY


a

[HansMustermann]

Originally Posted by lopeyschools

I guess all those years of empire were an attempt at suicide?

And they were really bad at it

(At suicide, that is.)

[Soapy Sam]

Originally Posted by brenn

As an outsider, it seems to me the British must have some complex or syndrome that drives them to try to destroy themselves and their society - this could just be one more of many symptoms.

It's not so much destruction as constant reinvention.
All societies do it, but the timescales vary.

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Originally Posted by brenn

As an outsider, it seems to me the British must have some complex or syndrome that drives them to try to destroy themselves and their society - this could just be one more of many symptoms.

Are you talking about football?