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."
bump
"Why European women are turning to Islam"
'cause they won't have to shave their legs? Wait....oh, nevermind.
Didn't understand much of anything since most of it was in Latin...Hey, what a beautiful building tho...
Catholics have worshipped in the vernacular since the mid 1960's. Either the "early 70's" part is true, or the Latin part is true, but they both can't be. I lived through those years and remember them well.
Because Euro-men are Nancy-boys.
She won't be nearly so hot in a burqa.
1972 to be exact...Believe it, or not...Makes no matter to me...
Fat American men have Kripsy Kreme, Star Trek and Internet porn--they don't need Islam.
What a shame that so many continue to think that they must "earn" their way.
Eph 2:8-9: For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.
????
Focus and understanding which requires personal effort via conviction is lost anymore.
How many are actually turning to Islam?
"European women really want to join the Culture of Rape???"
The Religion of Islam is strikingly similar to what a human trafficker would do to trap a woman to become a prostitute. They show the good, and then when they have control, the bad is revealed.
The contradictions in the Koran are massive...and the IMAMs are extremely skilled in spreading the word...They start with someones house, then the community, town/City, state, and country....by separating the classes, races or wherever they can "provoke" the current government and status quo...One person at a time....Then, they blame the authorities and lie about the responses from the government or military, police etc....."See we told you so" type of idea.
They show the nice, peaceful, love your fellow man, etc....and they have completely analyzed the other religions to show where they are wrong. Then, they start pulling people in with incredible charisma. Once they have the convert, they work with them, to build the relationship. It's the same thing as Jim Jones. Islam is actually a very large cult group. For example...The Peoples Temple was initially structured as an inter-racial mission for the sick, homeless and jobless. He assembled a large following of over 900 members in Indianapolis IN during the 1950's. "He preached a 'social gospel' of human freedom, equality, and love, which required helping the least and the lowliest of society's members. Later on, however, this gospel became explicitly socialistic, or communistic in Jones' own view, and the hypocrisy of white Christianity was ridiculed while 'apostolic socialism' was preached." 1 It was an interracial congregation -- almost unheard of in Indiana at the time.
Jones developed a belief called Translation in which he and his followers would all die together, and would move to another planet for a life of bliss. Mass suicides were practiced in which his followers pretended to drink poison and fell to the ground.
The same with Islam, or a human trafficker, they show the good parts until they get the convert. Then about the time the recruit, who is now bringing people in, they get those "obedient eyes", the manipulation begins. They are looking for converts that do not fit the Arab look, for suicide bomber, gathering intelligence, and other uses....Most Americans have no, I mean no idea how it works. The Saudi Prince who offered New York money for rebuilding after 911 was told where to stick their "blood money". However, it appears that Harvard and GWU, stupidly took the 20 million each from a Saudi Prince 2-3 weeks ago to teach Islam in the college. Now, the Prince basically owns Harvard and GWU. I saw how they worked when I was living in Saudi Arabia for four years and in Kosovo for five years. These are facts and not opinions, I might add.
Then she has no f**king clue. Mohammad was a pediphile. Islam and sexual slavery go hand in hand. I guess even the mass rapes of Swedish women by muslim men did not cross her mind either.
gotribe has it. The New Testament is plenty fuzzy. That's why you have liberal denominations, conservative ones, the Catholic Church, etc. Islam is all about ordering people to do specific things. You don't have authors speculating on possible meanings of words and verses, like in Christianity. There's no dissent in Islam.
That's what happens in an environment of moral relativism.
LOL!
Perhaps they should read this:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1547480/posts?page=1
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.