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Europeans Revert to Islam for Peace: US Paper
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Sarah Joseph, an English revert who founded "Emel," a Muslim lifestyle magazine.
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CAIRO,
December 27, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) - Islam is a message that appeals
to more and more Europeans who are “looking for inner peace and
reacting to the moral uncertainties of Western society”, Muslim and
non-Muslim researchers told a leading US paper Tuesday, December 27.
Although
there are no precise figures, observers who monitor Europe's Muslim
population estimate that several thousand men and women revert each
year, The Christian Science Monitor (CSM) said.
Mary
Fallot, who reverted to Islam three years ago after asking herself
spiritual questions to which she found no answers in her childhood
Catholicism, told the paper she finds the suspicion her new religion
attracts "wounding".
"For
me, Islam is a message of love, of tolerance and peace," Fallot
said.
Only
a fraction of reverts are attracted to radical strands of Islam,
researchers told the paper, adding that even fewer are drawn into
violence.
A
handful have been convicted of terrorist offences, such as Richard
Reid, the "shoe bomber" and American John Walker Lindh, who
was captured in Afghanistan, according to CSM.
"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."
More
Women
The
Monitor quoted experts as saying that admittedly patchy
research suggests that more women than men revert.
However,
contrary to popular perception, only a minority do so in order to
marry Muslim men, it added.
"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 revert in order to marry a Muslim woman, she
points out, the opposite is not true.
Fallot
laughed 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 reverted, 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 explained, 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 behaviour to follow.
Christianity did not give me the same reference points."
Belonging
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"There is more space for family and motherhood in Islam, and women are not sex objects," Nieuwkerk said.
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Those
reasons reflect many female reverts' thinking, experts who have
studied the phenomenon told the daily.
"A
lot of women are reacting to the moral uncertainties of Western
society," Dr. Jawad said.
"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 reverts.
"There
is more space for family and motherhood in Islam, and women are not
sex objects."
Political
At
the same time, argues Sarah Joseph, an English revert who founded
"Emel," a Muslim lifestyle magazine, "the idea that all
women reverts are looking for a nice cocooned lifestyle away from the
excesses of Western feminism is not exactly accurate."
Some
reverts 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 said.
"But
that is a very masculine way to understand the world" and rarely
appeals to women, he added.
After
making their decision, some reverts take things slowly, adopting
Muslim customs bit by bit, the paper noted.
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
reverts, taking an absolutist approach, appear to be the ones most
easily led into extremism, the paper claimed.
Sensitive
The
early stages of a revert'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 explained.
"New
reverts feel they have to prove themselves," Dr. Ranstorp added.
"Those
who seek more extreme ways of proving themselves can become
extraordinarily easy prey to manipulation."
At
the same time, Al-Toma said, reverts seeking respite in Islam from a
troubled past.
She
gave Muriel Degauque, a Belgian revert who blew herself up in a
suicide attack on US troops in occupied Iraq last month, as an example
of this type.
Degauque,
who had reportedly drifted in and out of drugs and jobs before
reverting to Islam, might be persuaded that such an "ultimate
action" as a suicide bomb attack offered an opportunity for
salvation and forgiveness, she added.
"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."
Called
by French and Belgian media as "la kamikaze Belge," Degauque
left the impression that all Muslim reverts exhibit extremist
tendencies.
The
EU launched a drive against terrorism after the 9/11 attacks and
stepped it up after the Madrid train bombings 14 months ago.
Muslim
minorities have taken the brunt of the anti-terror measures, which
include predawn raids and stop-and-search campaigns, for no reason
other than being Muslims.
Recently,
Europe’s main rights and democracy watchdog, the Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), expressed concern at
increasing Dutch intolerance towards Muslims and the “climate of
fear” under which the minority was living.
A
recent report by the International Helsinki Federation for Human
Rights (IHF) also said that Muslim minorities across Europe have been
experiencing growing distrust, hostility and discrimination since the
9/11 attacks.
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