Why European women are turning to Islam

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.

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."

If you truly believe that to be the case, then you'd take Our Lord's words in John 6 literally, like Catholics and Orthodox do.

The following is from the Matthew Henry Commentary. It's perhaps the best explanation I've seen so far. In brief, Jesus speaks of the spiritual necessity of believing on Him in terms of the physical neccesity for food and drink. Since our bodies do not live forever, no physical food or drink has the power to make them so. Only our spirit lives forever and only a spiritual feeding on Christ will make that life to be in the kingdom instead of in hell.

(Note. Matthew Henry does not agree with certain Catholic doctrines and is not gentle in his regard of them)

(Begin quote)
4. Christ, having thus spoken of himself as the bread of life, and of faith as the work of God, comes more particularly to show what of himself is this bread, namely, his flesh, and that to believe is to eat of that, #Joh 6:51-58, where he still prosecutes the metaphor of food. Observe, here, the preparation of this food: The bread that I will give is my flesh #Joh 6:51, the flesh of the Son of man and his blood, #Joh 6:53. His flesh is meat indeed, and his blood is drink indeed, #Joh 6:55. Observe, also, the participation of this food: We must eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood #Joh 6:53; and again #Joh 6:54, Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood; and the same words #Joh 6:56-57, he that eateth me. This is certainly a parable or figurative discourse, wherein the actings of the soul upon things spiritual and divine are represented by bodily actions about things sensible, which made the truths of Christ more intelligible to some, and less so to others, #Mr 4:11-12. Now,

(1.) Let us see how this discourse of Christ was liable to mistake and misconstruction, that men might see, and not perceive. [1.] It was misconstrued by the carnal Jews, to whom it was first delivered #Joh 6:52: They strove among themselves; they whispered in each other’s ears their dissatisfaction: How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Christ spoke #Joh 6:51 of giving his flesh for us, to suffer and die; but they, without due consideration, understood it of his giving it to us, to be eaten, which gave occasion to Christ to tell them that, however what he said was otherwise intended, yet even that also of eating of his flesh was no such absurd thing (if rightly understood) as prima facie—in the first instance, they took it to be. [2.] It has been wretchedly misconstrued by the church of Rome for the support of their monstrous doctrine of transubstantiation, which gives the lie to our senses, contradicts the nature of a sacrament, and overthrows all convincing evidence. They, like these Jews here, understand it of a corporal and carnal eating of Christ’s body, like Nicodemus, John 3-4. The Lord’s supper was not yet instituted, and therefore it could have no reference to that; it is a spiritual eating and drinking that is here spoken of, not a sacramental. [3.] It is misunderstood by many ignorant carnal people, who hence infer that, if they take the sacrament when they die, they shall certainly go to heaven, which, as it makes many that are weak causelessly uneasy if they want it, so it makes many that are wicked causelessly easy if they have it. Therefore,

(2.) Let us see how this discourse of Christ is to be understood.

[1.] What is meant by the flesh and blood of Christ. It is called #Joh 6:53, The flesh of the Son of man, and his blood, his as Messiah and Mediator: the flesh and blood which he assumed in his incarnation #Heb 2:14, and which he gave up in his death and suffering: my flesh which I will give to be crucified and slain. It is said to be given for the life of the world, that is, First, Instead of the life of the world, which was forfeited by sin, Christ gives his own flesh as a ransom or counter price. Christ was our bail, bound body for body (as we say), and therefore his life must go for ours, that ours may be spared. Here am I, let these go their way. Secondly, In order to the life of the world, to purchase a general offer of eternal life to all the world, and the special assurances of it to all believers. So that the flesh and blood of the Son of man denote the Redeemer incarnate and dying; Christ and him crucified, and the redemption wrought out by him, with all the precious benefits of redemption: pardon of sin, acceptance with God, the adoption of sons, access to the throne of grace, the promises of the covenant, and eternal life; these are called the flesh and blood of Christ, 1. Because they are purchased by his flesh and blood, by the breaking of his body, and the shedding of his blood. Well may the purchased privileges be denominated from the price that was paid for them, for it puts a value upon them; write upon them pretium sanguinis—the price of blood. 2. Because they are meat and drink to our souls. Flesh with the blood was prohibited #Ge 9:4, but the privileges of the gospel are as flesh and blood to us, prepared for the nourishment of our souls. He had before compared himself to bread, which is necessary food; here to flesh, which is delicious. It is a feast of fat things, #Isa 25:6. The soul is satisfied with Christ as with marrow and fatness, #Ps 63:5. It is meat indeed, and drink indeed; truly so, that is spiritually; so Dr. Whitby; as Christ is called the true vine; or truly meat, in opposition to the shows and shadows with which the world shams off those that feed upon it. In Christ and his gospel there is real supply, solid satisfaction; that is meat indeed, and drink indeed, which satiates and replenishes, #Jer 31:25-26.

[2.] What is meant by eating this flesh and drinking this blood, which is so necessary and beneficial; it is certain that is means neither more nor less than believing in Christ. As we partake of meat and drink by eating and drinking, so we partake of Christ and his benefits by faith: and believing in Christ includes these four things, which eating and drinking do:—First, It implies an appetite to Christ. This spiritual eating and drinking begins with hungering and thirsting #Mt 5:6, earnest and importunate desires after Christ, not willing to take up with any thing short of an interest in him: “Give me Christ or else I die.”Secondly, An application of Christ to ourselves. Meat looked upon will not nourish us, but meat fed upon, and so made our own, and as it were one with us. We must so accept of Christ as to appropriate him to ourselves: my Lord, and my God, #Joh 20:28. Thirdly, A delight in Christ and his salvation. The doctrine of Christ crucified must be meat and drink to us, most pleasant and delightful. We must feast upon the dainties of the New Testament in the blood of Christ, taking as great a complacency in the methods which Infinite Wisdom has taken to redeem and save us as ever we did in the most needful supplies or grateful delights of nature. Fourthly, A derivation of nourishment from him and a dependence upon him for the support and comfort of our spiritual life, and the strength, growth, and vigour of the new man. To feed upon Christ is to do all in his name, in union with him, and by virtue drawn from him; it is to live upon him as we do upon our meat. How our bodies are nourished by our food we cannot describe, but that they are so we know and find; so it is with this spiritual nourishment. Our Saviour was so well pleased with this metaphor (as very significant and expressive) that, when afterwards he would institute some outward sensible signs, by which to represent our communicating of the benefits of his death, he chose those of eating and drinking, and made them sacramental actions.

(3.) Having thus explained the general meaning of this part of Christ’s discourse, the particulars are reducible to two heads:— [1.] The necessity of our feeding upon Christ #Joh 6:53: Except you eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, you have no life in you. That is, First, “ It is a certain sign that you have no spiritual life in you if you have no desire towards Christ, nor delight in him.”If the soul does not hunger and thirst, certainly it does not live: it is a sign that we are dead indeed if we are dead to such meat and drink as this. When artificial bees, that by curious springs were made to move to and fro, were to be distinguished from natural ones (they say), it was done by putting honey among them, which the natural bees only flocked to, but the artificial ones minded not, for they had no life in them. Secondly, “ It is certain that you can have no spiritual life, unless you derive it from Christ by faith; separated from him you can do nothing.”Faith in Christ is the primum vivens—the first living principle of grace; without it we have not the truth of spiritual life, nor any title to eternal life: our bodies may as well live without meat as our souls without Christ.

[2.] The benefit and advantage of it, in two things:—

First, We shall be one with Christ, as our bodies are with our food when it is digested #Joh 6:56: He that eats my flesh, and drinks my blood, that lives by faith in Christ crucified (it is spoken of as a continued act), he dwelleth in me, and I in him. By faith we have a close and intimate union with Christ; he is in us, and we in him, #Joh 17:21-23 1Jo 3:24. Believers dwell in Christ as their stronghold or city of refuge; Christ dwells in them as the master of the house, to rule it and provide for it. Such is the union between Christ and believers that he shares in their griefs, and they share in his graces and joys; he sups with them upon their bitter herbs, and they with him upon his rich dainties. It is an inseparable union, like that between the body and digested food, #Ro 8:35 1Jo 4:13.

Secondly, We shall live, shall live eternally, by him, as our bodies live by our food.

a. We shall live by him #Joh 6:57: As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me. We have here the series and order of the divine life. (a.) God is the living Father, hath life in and of himself. I am that I am is his name for ever. (b.) Jesus Christ, as Mediator, lives by the Father; he has life in himself #Joh 5:26, but he has it of the Father. He that sent him, not only qualified him with that life which was necessary to so great an undertaking, but constituted him the treasury of divine life to us; he breathed into the second Adam the breath of spiritual lives, as into the first Adam the breath of natural lives. (c.) True believers receive this divine life by virtue of their union with Christ, which is inferred from the union between the Father and the Son, as it is compared to it, #Joh 17:21. For therefore he that eateth me, or feeds on me, even he shall live by me: those that live upon Christ shall live by him. The life of believers is had from Christ #Joh 1:16; it is hid with Christ #Col 3:4, we live by him as the members by the head, the branches by the root; because he lives, we shall live also.

b. We shall live eternally by him #Joh 6:54: Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, as prepared in the gospel to be the food of souls, he hath eternal life, he hath it now, as #Joh 6:40. He has that in him which is eternal life begun; he has the earnest and foretaste of it, and the hope of it; he shall live for ever, #Joh 6:58. His happiness shall run parallel with the longest line of eternity itself.

Lastly, The historian concludes with an account where Christ had this discourse with the Jews #Joh 6:59: In the synagogue as he taught, implying that he taught them many other things besides these, but this was that in his discourse which was new. He adds this, that he said these things in the synagogue, to show, 1. The credit of Christ’s doctrine. His truths sought no corners, but were publicly preached in mixed assemblies, as able to abide the most severe and impartial test. Christ pleaded this upon his trial #Joh 18:20: I ever taught in the synagogue. 2. The credibility of this narrative of it. To assure you that the discourse was fairly represented, he appeals to the synagogue at Capernaum, where it might be examined.

(End Quote)

"You have a lot of Europeans going to Buddhist, Hindu, and Inca sites around the world, when their is so much culture at their doorstep. It shows that they know what Christianity is, and have rejected it."

There are a lot of reasons for this.
One is that Christianity in Europe was responsible for the deadliest wars in European modern memory until the 20th Century. The 30 years war depopulated Germany by one-third.

Burnings at the stake are horrific crimes against humanity, and they were religious affairs in both the Catholic and Protestant countries. The Spanish Inquisition... the Albigensian Crusade... there has been so much bloodshed on religious grounds. Of course the Church was also part of government, collected taxes, had its own courts and authorities. People always resent government, and the Church - of whatever flavor - was government in the modern era. It has not been that long, and the polemical attitudes and history still prevails. Think about some of the wilder accusations made by Protestants against Catholics, or vice versa. What period does this stem from? The wars of religion. They are not that long ago.

So, there is that overhang of bloodshed and oppression on the part of the established Churches of Europe which has left a deep mark upon the European psyche. It's not an imaginary mark. A lot of people died, and hatreds run deep. Catholics and Protestants in Ireland are still at war; the wounds there are still very fresh. Christianity in Europe does not have a particularly peaceful history, and does have a history of political power. That is part of the problem.

Another part of the problem is the perception that religion has been perpetually at war with science, going back to Galileo. Now, in some cases (such as the case of Galileo himself, actually) this perception is exaggerated or outright wrong. However, Christianity in Europe has not been monolithic, but in civil war since the 1500s. Therefore, it has always suited Protestant detractors of the Catholic Church (remember that Italy, Poland, Southern Germany, Austria and France, where Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler and so many of the great mathematicians lived and worked are all Catholic countries) to point to an alleged hatred of Catholicism for science and learning. It isn't really true (voir: all of the inventors and discoverers who were Catholics), but that doesn't matter. To this day, those who are opposed to the CATHOLIC Church (half of Europe) will unthinkingly trot out Galileo as proof that Christianity hates science.
In the north of Europe it was not really any better. Cromwell shut down everything artistic during his long and brutal dictatorship. So, you have the ability to make serious accusations across the Christian divide, and people have done so (to bolster their own position) for about five centuries. Trouble is, those arguments were made against the backdrop of a European world that was generally Christian and wanted to believe in Christianity. Throw doubters and cynics in the mix, and remove from them the fear of torture, horror and death which all Christian churches inflicted on those who challeneged them across a few centuries of European history, and you have arguments against Christianity in general, as antithetical to science, which can be cited by anyone who doesn't believe against all brands of Christianity the like. The Catholics and Protestants bitter bickering and polemics between them has left vast libraries of polemic literature, each depicting the other as benighted blackguards, hostile to all learning and science or freedom of thought. Both sides were always exaggerating and outright lying in order to bolster their positions. But all of that literature sits there. And it gave the ammunition to the atheists, and the scientists, and the Marxists, when the time came, to pick it all up and simply assert it, against Protestants and Catholics alike, proving - by their own words against each other - that BOTH sides were a bunch of ignorant, violent, oppressive, anti-scientific Luddites. The angry rhetoric of Christian division and factionalism among Christians was picked up by people who are no friends of Christianity to prove - in the Christians own words - the immorality and dishonesty of BOTH sides of the Christian house.

Now add to that the effects of two Revolutions, in France and in Russia, and Marxist and Darwinian thought, and nationalism which accepts no organized authority above the state, and you have more weights on the scales against Christianity in many European minds.

It is difficult to know precisely where to pick up the thread of Christianity for a European. All across Protestant Europe, the national churches are in deep decay. The Church of England is ordaining women and has become so "tolerant" that it practically doesn't teach anything. The Church of Sweden is disciplining ministers who stand against the homosexual movement. There is no "Church of Germany", but the Lutheran north is matched by the Catholic south in being not very observant. The only strongly believing Protestant country in Europe is the northern part of Ireland...and Ireland stands as a reminder to everyone in Europe of how discreditable, really, Christianity can be. Believing Protestants and Catholics in Ireland are still blowing each others' brains out. Everywhere else, the flames of faith have cooled so much that nobody cares enough to blow somebody else up.

Nor does it work to argue that the Irish troubles are not a Catholic/Protestant thing. The combattants themselves say that it is, and one need only read the arguments spewed by either side to see it. Ireland is sort of a running sore that is a reminder to Northern Europeans of what they got away from when they stopped believing their religions all that intensely.

Southern Europe is Catholic, in the West, or Orthodox (and Muslim) in the East. The Balkans are another example to Europeans why religion, strongly held, is a bad thing. The whole Middle East is another reminder. America is full of sincere believing Christians who separate the violence done by Christian people from their Christianity, and who separate Christianity and Islam from each other. But Europeans do not have much faith in the old religions, and they look at religious violence as just that: religion - the inevitable result of what happens when people believe passionately, to the death, in old religious fairy tales.

Catholic Europe is not in precisely the same position as Protestant Europe, because the Protestant Churches in Europe were state Churches, and they dimmed with the dimming of nationalism and national monarchies. The Catholic Church is international, and has its own monarch and government and organization. But country by country, Catholicism has not fared well among the young. In Spain, there is long overhang of Franco's very rigid Catholic dictatorship, with the parallel structures in Portugal. The Spanish and Portuguese have gotten rid of their rigid dictators, and are still in the period when many living adults suffered terrible oppression at the hands of a church-state alliance. The Catholic Church is held accountable in people's minds for this, and rightly too. Nobody can escape the accountability for the acts of his close allies and benefactors. In France and Italy, there is still residual Catholicism, as a social custom, but particularly in France it does not have a lot of force. Protestantism isn't going to get anywhere in France or Italy.

There are the signs and symbols of Christianity everywhere, but with them come a lot of disagreeable and terrible memories of the past as well. In the present, people live in a socially free and comfortable condition. Protestantism has no force (Europeans are simply not going to start believing the Bible - they lose the thread on Genesis; everyone knows that the world is billions of years old and wasn't formed in 7 days. If one HAS to accept that creation story as literally true in order to even enter into the Biblical Protestant sphere, well, that's the end of that for most Europeans), but Catholicism has some very strong social stances which modern people dislike. Particularly, the very strong stance against artificial birth control. Europeans, like Americans, want to have recreational sex. Birth control makes that possible. Nobody in Europe is going to stop having sex because the Pope says so. And nobody wants to get pregnant and have children when they're not ready, or when they're not MARRIED in places like Italy and Spain, where THAT aspect of Catholic culture still overhangs. Italians and the Spanish have sex outside of marriage, but they don't have kids out of wedlock very much.
So, you have the opposition to birth control. Europeans in Protestant countries will ignore the teachings of the hereditary Catholic enemy (while not, themselves, being devoted Protestants either). Europeans in Catholic countries also ignore the teachings of Rome on that critical issue.

Likewise abortion. Abortion is more restrictive in Europe than in the US, because there it was established by law but in the US, by sweeping judicial fiat. Europeans in general see a sharp difference between a baby after several months in the womb and a blastocyst after fertilization. The Church is categorical in its rejection, and the Europeans aren't interested in the anathemas of that old, dictatorial institution. Rome can't burn them anymore, and they are just not going to take orders from those men down there anymore, even if they are Catholics.

And so it goes.

But there remains in people a thirst for the spiritual, a hunger for contact with God and the supernatural. The native form of it, Christianity, has discredited itself in European eyes by too much violence, too much oppression, too much corruption, too much high-handed dictatorial exercise of power, and too much opposition to science to really be an option for most Europeans. They are willing to be VAGUELY Christian, but will reject, wholesale, most of the doctrines of any Christian denomination you present to them.

The flaws of Islam are obvious to Europeans too. But Islam does have a few things going for it. It doesn't have a history of violence and oppression within Western Europe. It has the good press of the romanticized (and exaggerated) accounts of the flowering of tolerant Islamic civilization in Spain, etc. It is not anti-scientific, and it does have a strict moral code which does not, however, forbid birth control.

Finally, there is the rebelliousness element. Many Europeans have the sense that their societies are broken and struggling. And some, especially the young, are not just disatisfied with the legacy religion, but with the civlization itself. Nothing is a greater act of rejection and rebellion than to join up with Islam.

Those are all the reasons, and there is no earthly solution to them.

That is certainly a lot to think about. Europeans do tend to associate religion more with wars and persecutions than Americans do. Many people in countries like Holland, Swizerland, and Germany did get sick of the Protestant-Catholic divide. It started to look pointless and counterproductive to them. The comparable struggle in France or Spain was between "clericals" and "anti-clericals," and it was even more bitter than Catholic vs. Protestant conflicts, at least over the past two centuries.

Peasant, working class or socialist Europeans have long had a sense that religion belonged to "them" -- the government and the ruling classes -- rather than to "us" at the bottom of society. Sometimes, the peasantry could claim religion as its own means of expression against the rulers in the cities, but that's been less of an option for city-dwellers, and as the cities have grown, peasant faith becomes less of a factor in society.

That's the background and it's different from ours in the US, where churches were often formed from the bottom up by ordinary people, rather than imposed on kingdoms and nations by rulers. What happened in the later 20th century probably had a lot to do with European irreligiousness as well: consumerism and the welfare state arrived at about the same time and Europeans looked for their reward and their security elsewhere than in God or the church.

Islam does have a lot of the appeal of the new and different. At the same time it's less alien than Buddhism or Hinduism. In a lot of ways it's a simplified alternative monotheism.

It's funny that people would reject the old no fish on Fridays of the Catholic Church and accept Ramadan. But it's not so strange that people would accept a religion that puts so much emphasis on fasts and pilgrimages over one that continually puzzles over whether one is saved or not.

Part of the appeal of Islam and Judaism over Christianity is the idea that doing the external rites and practices right may eventually bring piety and righteousness (It's also an advantage Catholicism and Orthodoxy have over Protestantism).

If you don't have such external signs and activities and have to continually worry about whether you truly are saved or whether your heart is truly pure, it can be quite a strain. Of course to fast or to make a pilgrimage is no guarantee that one is a good person, but the absence of such rites and rituals doesn't make people better either.

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	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