A girlfriend who was about to get married was telling me about her wedding plans recently when she said, almost as an aside: ‘Oh, and I’ve converted to Islam.’
Her fiancé was a Muslim but she thought it no more than a minor detail — like ordering the corsages, or finalising the table plan — to arrange a private ceremony before the big day in which she took on his faith. I think she expected me to say ‘How lovely. And have you decided on the centre-pieces?’ But instead I blurted out: ‘You’ve done what?’
‘It’s fine. I really don’t mind,’ she continued, whilst puffing on a Marlboro Light. ‘It was easy. I just had to say a few words and it was done. I don’t have to wear a veil or go to mosque or anything. It doesn’t seem to make any difference at all.’ Apart from the fact that her children, when they come along, will be brought up Muslims. ‘Well, it will be nice for them to have a faith, and a set of rules to live by,’ she said.
‘But you have a faith and a set of rules to live by,’ I argued, feeling more and more offended. ‘You’re a Christian.’ I wanted to add, ‘You go to nightclubs, drink alcohol, wear skinny jeans, tight tops and make-up. Why on earth are you converting to a faith which thinks you are the infidel?’ But I didn’t say that, of course.
‘I’m really not that bothered,’ she assured me. ‘I’m not a practising Christian. It doesn’t make any difference to me either way.’
‘But, hang on. If all Christians took that view, wouldn’t we disappear? There would be no such thing as Christianity.’ My friend shrugged. She could not see what I was making a fuss about. And maybe I did have to ask myself why I was so deeply insulted. I think it was the casualness of the thing that struck me as disturbing. My friend maintained that reciting the shahada, the profession of Islamic belief, in front of an imam did not matter.
It may not matter to her, but I wager it mattered a lot to the imam, to her new husband and to his Turkish family. And it will matter to millions of Christians who, like me, are worried about their community selling out.
It seems everyone has a story to tell these days about a friend becoming a Muslim. There’s a growing trend for mixed marriage and conversions to Islam in particular on the rise. Asking around my immediate social circle produced a tale from almost everyone about a woman they knew, or knew of, who had recently converted. Those stories are borne out by fledging statistics, which are only just beginning to give us a picture of the change that may be happening.
The growth of Islam in Britain is often still put down to immigration, but a study last year estimated that the number of Islamic converts in Britain has risen by two-thirds from 60,000 in 2001 to about 100,000. Around 5,200 people in the UK become Muslims each year. And while there are no figures on marriages specifically, we do know that 62 per cent of conversions are women and that the average age at conversion is 27, which is pretty much the age most women get married now.
This doesn’t seem to bother the Church of England much. After all, we have an Archbishop of Canterbury who thinks the adoption of certain aspects of Sharia law in British communities ‘seems unavoidable’ and might even help social cohesion. And perhaps it shouldn’t bother me. But something about the speed and ease of these apparent epiphanies makes me uneasy.
Islam is a special case, when it comes to conversion. To convert to Judaism is incredibly complicated, in some traditions involving a rabbi rejecting you three times before allowing you to embark on a lengthy and painstaking process. Catholics are notoriously picky and arguably spend more time and energy than recruiting in deselecting large numbers of their existing members for infringements such as divorce and remarriage. They demand that converts undergo weeks, sometimes months of preparation which is to end in their saying they believe the entire Catholic doctrine: a hurdle many cradle Catholics could not clear. Many Hindus still believe that theirs is an identity that can only be had from birth and as such there is no formal process for conversion to -Hinduism.
By contrast, Islam allows anyone to recite a single short sentence and sign a piece of paper. An internet search turns up dozens of sites instructing on the quickest way to convert — including doing it in your own living room, on your own — and there are any number of forums with Muslims giving pre-conversion Christians helpful advice on how to pronounce the shahada in Arabic.
You call it “Leaning on a lamp post”. I call it loitering with intent.’
You call it “Leaning on a lamp post”. I call it loitering with intent.’
But notwithstanding the eagerness of her new faith to welcome her, why should my friend, an Anglican Christian by birth, so meekly submit to this faith-swap? Could it be that when it comes to relationships, as Carrie Bradshaw might say, the party without much grounding in their own religion invariably gives way to the one with a strong sense of religious identity?

More here.