PETER FORD
Posted on 12/26/2005 6:41:01 PM PST by jailbird
Why European women are turning to Islam
By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
PARIS – Mary Fallot looks as unlike a terrorist suspect as one could possibly imagine: a petite and demure white Frenchwoman chatting with friends on a cell-phone, indistinguishable from any other young woman in the café where she sits sipping coffee.
And that is exactly why European antiterrorist authorities have their eyes on thousands like her across the continent.
|
|
|||
|
|
||
|
|||
|
NO, LISTEN: When Mary Fallot converted, her surprised co-workers asked if she had a Muslim boyfriend. Actually, she explained, she was drawn to Islam by the answers it provided. PETER FORD |
||
|
|||
|
|
||
|
|
|||
Ms. Fallot is a recent convert to Islam. In the eyes of the police, that makes her potentially dangerous.
The death of Muriel Degauque, a Belgian convert who blew herself up in a suicide attack on US troops in Iraq last month, has drawn fresh attention to the rising number of Islamic converts in Europe, most of them women.
"The phenomenon is booming, and it worries us," the head of the French domestic intelligence agency, Pascal Mailhos, told the Paris-based newspaper Le Monde in a recent interview. "But we must absolutely avoid lumping everyone together."
The difficulty, security experts explain, is that while the police may be alert to possible threats from young men of Middle Eastern origin, they are more relaxed about white European women. Terrorists can use converts who "have added operational benefits in very tight security situations" where they might not attract attention, says Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defense College in Stockholm.
Ms. Fallot, who converted to Islam three years ago after asking herself spiritual questions to which she found no answers in her childhood Catholicism, says she finds the suspicion her new religion attracts "wounding." "For me," she adds, "Islam is a message of love, of tolerance and peace."
It is a message that appeals to more and more Europeans as curiosity about Islam has grown since 9/11, say both Muslim and non-Muslim researchers. Although there are no precise figures, observers who monitor Europe's Muslim population estimate that several thousand men and women convert each year.
Only a fraction of converts are attracted to radical strands of Islam, they point out, and even fewer are drawn into violence. A handful have been convicted of terrorist offenses, such as Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber" and American John Walker Lindh, who was captured in Afghanistan.
Admittedly patchy research suggests that more women than men convert, experts say, but that - contrary to popular perception - only a minority do so in order to marry Muslim men.
"That used to be the most common way, but recently more [women] are coming out of conviction," says Haifa Jawad, who teaches at Birmingham University in Britain. Though non-Muslim men must convert in order to marry a Muslim woman, she points out, the opposite is not true.
Fallot laughs when she is asked whether her love life had anything to do with her decision. "When I told my colleagues at work that I had converted, their first reaction was to ask whether I had a Muslim boyfriend," she recalls. "They couldn't believe I had done it of my own free will."
In fact, she explains, she liked the way "Islam demands a closeness to God. Islam is simpler, more rigorous, and it's easier because it is explicit. I was looking for a framework; man needs rules and behavior to follow. Christianity did not give me the same reference points."
Those reasons reflect many female converts' thinking, say experts who have studied the phenomenon. "A lot of women are reacting to the moral uncertainties of Western society," says Dr. Jawad. "They like the sense of belonging and caring and sharing that Islam offers."
Others are attracted by "a certain idea of womanhood and manhood that Islam offers," suggests Karin van Nieuwkerk, who has studied Dutch women converts. "There is more space for family and motherhood in Islam, and women are not sex objects."
At the same time, argues Sarah Joseph, an English convert who founded "Emel," a Muslim lifestyle magazine, "the idea that all women converts are looking for a nice cocooned lifestyle away from the excesses of Western feminism is not exactly accurate."
Some converts give their decision a political meaning, says Stefano Allievi, a professor at Padua University in Italy. "Islam offers a spiritualization of politics, the idea of a sacred order," he says. "But that is a very masculine way to understand the world" and rarely appeals to women, he adds.
After making their decision, some converts take things slowly, adopting Muslim customs bit by bit: Fallot, for example, does not yet feel ready to wear a head scarf, though she is wearing longer and looser clothes than she used to.
Others jump right in, eager for the exoticism of a new religion, and become much more pious than fellow mosque-goers who were born into Islam. Such converts, taking an absolutist approach, appear to be the ones most easily led into extremism.
The early stages of a convert's discovery of Islam "can be quite a sensitive time," says Batool al-Toma, who runs the "New Muslims" program at the Islamic Foundation in Leicester, England.
"You are not confident of your knowledge, you are a newcomer, and you could be prey to a lot of different people either acting individually or as members of an organization," Ms. Al-Toma explains. A few converts feel "such a huge desire to fit in and be accepted that they are ready to do just about anything," she says.
"New converts feel they have to prove themselves," adds Dr. Ranstorp. "Those who seek more extreme ways of proving themselves can become extraordinarily easy prey to manipulation."
At the same time, says al-Toma, converts seeking respite in Islam from a troubled past - such as Degauque, who had reportedly drifted in and out of drugs and jobs before converting to Islam - might be persuaded that such an "ultimate action" as a suicide bomb attack offered an opportunity for salvation and forgiveness.
"The saddest conclusion" al-Toma draws from Degauque's death in Iraq is that "a woman who set out on the road to inner peace became a victim of people who set out to use and abuse her."
In fact, she explains, she liked the way "Islam demands a closeness to God. Islam is simpler, more rigorous, and it's easier because it is explicit. I was looking for a framework; man needs rules and behavior to follow. Christianity did not give me the same reference points."
Could Church blessing of gay unions have anything to do with this?
Close but not quite. Even in the passages you cite there is room for doubt, questioning, and spiritual growth. I truly believe what the muslims like is the ritual. Islam simply lays it all out for you: do this, do this, don't do that, don't do that, pray facing east, pray 5 times a day, give X% of income to charity, etc, etc. It doesn't require a lot of thinking or soul-searching. And that is the problem. It's perfect for modern Europe.
"Odd, the way the less the Bible is read the more it is translated."
-C.S. Lewis
the Protestants, who for all intents and purposes are apostate and no longer true Christians.
Ah, yes. And good ol' Catholics who pray to Mary and all those crazy Saints when the Bible tells you expressly to pray only to God, that's TRULY Christian is it? And letting gays preach to you, now that's God-like! And I'm sorry, but that whole communion thing where you eat that peice of bread makes NO sense. Eating a chunk of bread is NOT going to get you to heaven, dude.
-C. S. Lewis
I certainly don't see how Islam has any answers that Judaism, Christianity, or Zoroastrianism don't provide. Islam is merely a conglomeration of several belief systems, heavily overlaid with the rantings of a lunatic.
Virgins? Personally, I'd prefer a couple of hot pros who know how to cook. ;)
Maybe you should pay more attention to certain parts of your Bible... let's say John 6, for starters.
Because, as the Islam cult-of-death maintains, they have no souls.
Note this young lady's name, face and story. We will be hearing from her in five years (or less) after she is disfigured by beatings and scarred by the loss of her children to an Islamist whackjob who has returned to his Islamic homeland where she has no rights and goats get more respect than a kafir like her.
"Why European women are turning to Islam..."
Because those who do convert are stupid, naiive, moronic, politically correct European ignoramuses. There is no other excuse.
If a woman is born to Islam, I find it difficult to feel anything but a semblance of sympathy for her. She knows no other way, and must do the best she can in the world she is in.
According to Bernard Lewis, in Islam, there are three classes of citizens with limited rights according to the Koran...Slaves, Infidels and Women.
Slaves can be freed.
Infidels can convert.
Women have no recourse.
I will grant that women who are muslims in a secular society probably retain nearly as many rights and privileges as many other women in that society. But Islam views many muslims who are secular as apostates, and apostates are one of the groups against whom jihad is actively encouraged.
European women are looking for the structure that allows for families, feminine ways and guidance. Eurofags and Christianity is no longer providing that. Islam is....
Don't condemn Islam, condemn the new ways of Christianity and Europe.
From the aforementioned Sermon on the Mount, part II:
But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for their much speaking.
Beginning in the Garden, the Evil One has been deceiving women (and men). And it seems to be continuing.
I don't doubt that that covers a good percentage of them, but I maintain that an equal number suffer, not from low self-esteem, but from profound naivete. They've grown up without acquiring any understanding of the nature of evil and, as such, are incapable of recognizing it when it comes calling. Sadly, by the time this poor fool wises up, it'll be too late.
I'm sure some Bosnians here on FR can enlighten us about mixing Muslims and Christians together with people converting willy-nilly.
"...In other words, a cult following...."
Read my tagline.
These two statements are an oxymoron. These new converts are either idiots or hypocrites. My guess is the former.
Always.
That's why conquest is such a huge factor in world history.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.