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Chapter 6: Female Conversion to Islam: The Sufi Paradigm
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chapter 6 Female Conversion to Islam The Sufi Paradigm Haifaa Jawad Conversion to Islam is increasingly attracting attention worldwide. It is said that Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the contemporary world, and that despite the negative image and bad publicity about the faith, the number of people converting to Islam is on the increase.1 There is no reliable figure as to the number of converts worldwide, or at the national level in individual Western countries, primarily because censuses in most Western countries do not ask about religious affiliation. In Britain, where this issue was brought up in the last census, that of 2001, the question was confined to religious background only; the issue of religious conversion was left out. Moreover, most mosques and Islamic centers all over Britain (and by extension Europe and America) do not issue certificates of conversion, nor do they record the number of persons who convert to Islam, let alone their age group or social, economic, or educational backgrounds—an issue that makes the attempt at estimating approximate numbers too haphazard. Having said that, however, one can certainly affirm that the religion is claiming some followers , especially in the Western world. To take one simple example, which could be used as a gauge to indicate the number of people who are attracted to Islam: in 2002, the Muath Welfare Trust, a community center catering to the needs of the Muslim community in Birmingham, England, ran a “New Muslims” project. The leader of the project reported twenty-four converts. Seventeen among them were white women and the rest, seven, were men. One man was of African Caribbean origin; the other six were white.2 Inthepast,thedominantgroupembracingIslamwascomposedofthoseof either African Caribbean or African American background, whereas recently a string of white people have become Muslim. In the UK, some of these white people come from affluent backgrounds, such as, for example: Joe AhmedDobson , the son of former cabinet minister Frank Dobson; Mathew Wilkinson , a former head boy of Eton; Nicholas Brandt, son of an investment banker; Jonathan Birt, son of the former director-general of the British Broadcasting 154 t r a j e c to r i e s a nd pa r a d i g m s Corporation (BBC), John Birt; and the son and daughter of Lord Justice Scott, who investigated the arms to Iraq deal. Despite the stereotypes that portray Muslim women as oppressed and mistreated, it has been noted that more women are converting to Islam than men. For example, in Britain, women converts outnumber men by two to one (British Muslims Monthly Survey 2002), while in the United States they apparently outnumber them by four to one (Wadud 2003, 275). The majority of the women are said to be white, young, and unmarried. The director of the Florida chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations states: “In the past there were more African-Americans coming into Islam, now I am seeing an influx of white, Caucasian females.”3 In Britain, it is interesting to note that some of these women, such as the daughter of Lord Justice Scott, Jemima Goldsmith, and the former TV presenter Kristiane Backer, come from middle -class backgrounds. The number may not be so significant, but the fact of conversion itself, especially among the elite, is revealing—to some, utterly incomprehensible—given the extremely negative image of Islam in the West and the consequent tensions and difficulties generated by conversion to this religion. In this chapter I will deal with the issue of how Sufism, or Islamic mysticism , underpins or permeates the general Islamic principles that have found acceptance or attraction among Westerners, especially women. My approach in this context is theological rather than sociological, looking at how Sufism has informed the overall Islamic principles, thus making them ever more appealing to certain sectors within Western society. The key theme to be explored here is the ways in which Sufism—or the Sufi perspective on Islam —has contributed to the process by which Islam is made not just into an interesting approach to life, but into an acceptable, and, for some, an irresistible way of life. This phenomenon is all the more important given the increasingly grim picture of Islam that prevails in our times. But before dealing with the main theme, we need to put the subject into perspective and look at the phenomenon of conversion to Islam in a wider context...