Why Christian Women Convert to Islam

By Rosemary Sookhdeo

Women are being attracted to Islam in increasing numbers. The author explores the reasons why they convert and highlights the problems that they face. She examines the issues confronting women who marry Muslims and addresses the long-term implications of conversion. This is an essential guide to a vital topic for parents and church leaders.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Nov 26, 2012
• ISBN: 9780988593008

Book preview

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INTRODUCTION

Recently my husband and I were taking a meeting in a small town in New Zealand on "How to Understand Islam. It was a relatively remote place and certainly out of the way. After this meeting a woman came to see me looking very worried and distressed. Then it came out: her daughter had just become engaged to a Muslim man, a refugee from Afghanistan who had recently arrived in New Zealand. She wanted to know: what could she do about it? She couldn’t understand how this had happened, as her daughter had been brought up in the church, attending Sunday school and later youth activities. What had gone wrong? After leaving school her daughter had been working amongst refugees and that was how she came to be in close contact with Muslim men.

This is not an isolated incident. After every meeting we take at least one person comes to speak to me about a member of their family or a friend who has married or is about to marry a Muslim man and as a result is converting to Islam. Sometimes they speak about their own marriage to a Muslim man and share with me what they experienced. I listen to their stories, which are often heart-rending. There is one question I always ask them: what would have stopped you? I have been listening to these women’s life experiences for many years now.

Ever-increasing numbers of Christian women are marrying Muslim men and converting to Islam. It is happening across the church and society at large. The Christian parents I meet come from a range of denominations: some are members of the Brethren, some are Anglican, some are Baptist and some are from other evangelical traditions. Their sons and daughters have been brought up in the Christian faith and many have accepted Christ into their lives. They have been church members, have attended youth groups and have been an integral part of the church. They have gone to university and been members of the Christian Union. Some of these young people are now Muslim but many have one thing in common: parents who are regular church members who have brought them up in a strong Christian tradition, who love them and pray constantly for them.

However it is not only young people who are marrying Muslims or converting to Islam by conviction. After a church meeting in which my husband was speaking on How Christians should understand Islam, a woman in her late fifties came to speak to him. Much to his amazement, she told him that the main purpose of her coming to the meeting was to become a Muslim and she thought he would be able to help her. She was just an ordinary woman who had looked at society and felt it was crumbling and its moral base was deteriorating. She had looked at the Church and felt it had nothing to offer. So she began to look at Islam, which she thought could be an alternative, as it appeared attractive from the outside. She was searching and was willing to try anything that would give her spiritual satisfaction. She is representative of a number of men and women who are converting to Islam. They are so disillusioned with Christianity and society they think this alternative will have the answer.

Another category of Christian women who are converting to Islam include those who are divorced or have become widowed and are very lonely. These are often women in their fifties or older who are educated, own their own home and are financially well off. It can be because of their financial status that they become targets for marriage by Muslims and conversion to Islam.

I was present with my husband at a Christian Leadership Conference when he took a seminar on How to Understand Islam after 9/11. This conference was being held by a well-known Christian fellowship group that represent hundreds of churches both in Britain and overseas. Once a year they bring all the leaders together for a time of teaching and fellowship. It was in the middle of this seminar that a young man stood up and said to the six hundred people present that he wanted to become a Muslim. There were gasps of horror around the room, as no-one could believe what they were hearing. How could a Christian in church leadership be saying this? Was it a joke? No it was a very serious situation. My husband very wisely said that he was sure someone could help him after the seminar.

We tend to think that certain categories of people are immune from any notion of conversion to Islam and these categories include church workers, church leaders and missionaries. But this is not so. It was in the 1980’s that I knew a woman missionary in Pakistan who was sent home because she formed a relationship with a Muslim man. Relatively recently an evangelical missionary society had one of its missionaries in Africa convert to Islam. In another missionary family the wife and children had to return home for a short while for family reasons. They received a letter from the husband telling them not to bother to return as he had fallen in love with a Muslim girl and was going to marry her and convert to Islam.

All these examples I have quoted are typical of something that is becoming more and more common. Recently we were at a church in the East End of London and a friend of ours whom we have known for forty years mentioned that his daughter had been going out with a Muslim man. There are members of Parliament whose children have married Muslims. Lord Birt, the former Director of the BBC, has a son who has converted to Islam. And Tony Blair’s sister-in-law converted to Islam after having what she called a holy experience when she visited the shrine of Fatima in the city of Qom in Iran. She said it felt like a shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy. She arrived back in Britain and converted immediately to Islam.

In the village where I live, which has a population of 4,000, I know of four women who have married Muslims. Two of them are daughters of a retired vicar who was a missionary in the Middle East; one is the daughter of a neighbour who now lives in Oman; and the fourth was married in Turkey and is now in hiding with her daughter.

It is difficult to know how many western or Christian women are converting to Islam every year, but it is a substantial number. My husband was speaking at a major Christian conference of about 300 people from different parts of Britain, and he asked for a hand count of those who knew somebody who had converted to Islam. Fifty per cent raised their hands. He has asked the same question a number of times in large meetings and the count has been on the average at least thirty per cent. Figures were published in 2010 indicating that in the previous ten years in Britain 100,000 people have converted to Islam, the majority of these being women.

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MARY WAS LIVING A DREAM

MARY'S STORY

It all started with an innocent holiday in a North African country with my friend, where I had gone for a time of rest and recovery in the sunshine and warmth. When I first met Qasim I was not interested in him at all, in fact I thought he was interested in my girlfriend. He was handsome, quick witted, funny and intelligent, and appeared to be very western. He had done well at school but was unable to go to secondary school as his family couldn’t afford it. We had a communication problem as he spoke no English, only conversational French, whereas I spoke broken French. As we attempted to communicate he was attentive and thoughtful, and there just seemed to be something about him that was different from anyone else I had met, and I felt he was for me. Qasim made me feel that I was special. He had a way of