Islamic Britain lures top people

[AYOUB]

February 22, 2004

 

Islamic Britain lures top people

 

Nicholas Hellen and Christopher Morgan

Times Online

 

 

MORE than 14,000 white Britons have converted to Islam after becoming disillusioned with western values, according to the first authoritative study of the phenomenon.

Some of Britain’s top landowners, celebrities and the offspring of senior Establishment figures have embraced the strict tenets of the Muslim faith.

 

 

 

The trend is being encouraged by Muslim leaders who are convinced that the conversion of prominent society figures will help protect a community stigmatised by terrorism and fundamentalism.

 

Zaki Badawi, chairman of the Imams and Mosques Council, said: “The community has been unfairly targeted and these developments encourage it in a time of difficulty.” Meanwhile, the Muslim Council of Britain has co-opted Joe Ahmed-Dobson, son of Frank Dobson, the former health secretary, to chair its regeneration committee.

 

The new study by Yahya (formerly Jonathan) Birt, son of Lord Birt, former director-general of the BBC, provides the first reliable data on the sensitive subject of the movement of Christians into Islam. He uses a breakdown of the latest census figures to conclude that there are now 14,200 white converts in Britain.

 

 

Speaking publicly for the first time about his faith this weekend, Birt, whose doctorate at Oxford University is on young British Muslims, argued that an inspirational figure, similar to the American convert Malcolm X for Afro-Caribbeans, would first have to emerge if the next stage, a mass conversion among white Britons, were to happen.

 

“You need great transitional figures to translate something alien (like Islam) into the vernacular,” he said. “The image of Islam projected by political Islamic movements is not very attractive.”

 

Initially, Birt said, he had no coherent reasons for converting, but: “In the longer term I think it was the overall profundity, balance and coherence and spirituality of the Muslim way of life which convinced me.”

 

The faith has made inroads into the Establishment. It emerged this weekend that the great-granddaughter of a British prime minister has converted. Emma Clark, whose ancestor, the Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith, took Britain into the first world war, said: “We’re all the rage, I hope it’s not a passing fashion.”

 

Clark, who helped design an Islamic garden for the Prince of Wales at Highgrove, his Gloucestershire home, is now helping create a similar garden for a mosque in Woking, Surrey, on the site of a car park.

Many converts have been inspired by the writings of Charles Le Gai Eaton, a former Foreign Office diplomat. Eaton, author of Islam and the Destiny of Man, said: “I have received letters from people who are put off by the wishy-washy standards of contemporary Christianity and they are looking for a religion which does not compromise too much with the modern world.”

 

Others have come to Islam through love or marriage. Kristiane Backer, a former girlfriend of the cricketer Imran Khan, said she was introduced to the religion through love but converted after her break-up. She has shrunk from speaking publicly about her religion before because of fears it might affect her work prospects.

 

“Imran sowed the seeds, but when (the relationship) finished (the faith) took on a momentum of its own,” she said. Backer, who is drawn to Sufi mysticism, said white converts had to overcome prejudice both from those born into Islam and from non-believers.

 

“In the mosque women come up and say to me, ‘You have hair showing: you must cover up completely.’ I say, ‘Mind your own hair, you’re here to think about God’.”

 

She has ditched the revealing wardrobe she had as an MTV presenter, but, equally, will not wear headscarves about town. “I don’t show any legs or cleavage, or at least not together,” she said.

 

Some prominent converts are even more wary. The Earl of Yarborough, 40, who owns a 28,000-acre estate in Lincolnshire, declined to discuss anything about his faith. “I have nothing to say to you,” said Yarborough, who has apparently taken the name Abdul Mateen.

 

Muslim leaders are harnessing modern campaigning methods to promote their faith. Groups have sprung up on the internet publishing “trophy lists” of white converts.

 

The state-funded school in London founded by Yusuf Islam, formerly the singer Cat Stevens, has turned to Premiership footballers to provide role models. Sources close to the school say converts including Nicolas Anelka, the Manchester City striker, and Omer “Freddie” Kanoute, of Tottenham Hotspur, have made visits.

 

Fresh evidence came this weekend that Islam has received formal acceptance at the heart of the Establishment. The Queen has approved new arrangements to allow Muslim staff at Buckingham Palace time off to attend Friday prayers at a mosque: a member of staff in the finance department is the first to take advantage of it.

[Dhagax-Tuur]

Assl All Wr Wb

 

MaanshAllah, it is a wonderful news, brother. It seems the entire British aristocratic members are turning to Islam.

 

But one thing I hate about the article is that the writers are sort of implying that Islam is a product that Muslims are promoting to get more non-muslims to convert. Nay, Islam is Allah's deen and we are basically there to convey the message to anyone who would listen. And this people have heeded, thus embraced Islam and saved themselves An-Naar.

 

Which reminds me the ayah: 'Wallaahu Qaniyun canil caalamiin' = You are not doing anything for Allah, one is only saving his soul from Jahannama.

 

Btw, JizaakAllah for sharing. It is good news. Just shows that Islam is not for a particula sector of society. It is there for anyone that Allah (sw) leads to.

[AYOUB]

Geel-Jire

But one thing I hate about the article is that the writers are sort of implying that Islam is a product that Muslims are promoting to get more non-muslims to convert. Nay, Islam is Allah's deen and we are basically there to convey the message to anyone who would listen. And this people have heeded, thus embraced Islam and saved themselves An-Naar.

I agree bro, but thats the best you can get out of a Yahudi-owned newspaper. The above piece has two writers for a reason.

 

Here is another article about a reporter who embraced Islam:

 

 

-------------------------------------------------

Articles of faith

 

Yvonne Ridley was a hard-drinking, hard-nosed news reporter until her capture by the Taliban and subsequent conversion to Islam. She tells Eloise Napier how the Koran changed her life

 

Tuesday February 24, 2004

The Guardian

 

It was September 28 2001 - just 17 days after the destruction of the World Trade Centre. Yvonne Ridley, a 43-year-old single mother, and chief reporter at the Sunday Express, had been sent to Islamabad in nearby Pakistan to cover the start of George Bush's "war on terror". In search of a scoop, she had dressed in a burka and made an illegal sortie over the border into Afghanistan.

It was on the return journey, just two miles from the border, that her careful plans unravelled, with disastrous consequences. Ridley was passing by a Taliban checkpoint when her donkey bolted. She was just attempting to scoop up the reins when her camera slipped from her shoulder and into full view of a Taliban soldier.

 

Ridley thought she was either going to be gang-raped or stoned to death. "I wondered how much pain I could take and prayed that, whatever happened, I would die quickly," she says. In the event, she was only taken to jail, first in Jalalabad and then in Kabul, and held for a total of 10 days. In her diary, she recorded: "They [her Taliban captors] constantly refer to me as their guest and say that they are sad if I am sad. I can't believe it ... I wish everyone at home knew how I was being treated. I bet people think I am being tortured, beaten and sexually abused. Instead, I am being treated with kindness and respect. It is unbelievable."

 

Her capture was to mark a watershed in Ridley's life - it began her own road to Islam and her decision to become a committed peace campaigner. She quit her job at the Sunday Express and moved to Qatar, leaving her only child in the UK.

 

"I always wanted to be an actress," says Ridley with a lopsided smile. It is now two years and three months since her capture, and we are sitting beside a swimming pool in the well-heeled compound where she lives in Doha, Qatar's capital. It is midwinter, and the heat from the sun is gentle on our backs. Far from wearing the voluminous robes sported by many Muslim women in Qatar, she is clad in green combat-style trousers and a large black T-shirt bearing the words "Don't panic, I'm Islamic!"

 

When, last year, Ridley converted from C of E to Islam, some commentators suggested that she was suffering from Stockholm syndrome - the psychological condition in which captives divest themselves of former beliefs and adopt those of their captors. Ridley rejects this, saying that at no time did anyone try to brainwash her. She tells me that, at one point, she was visited by a cleric who asked if she wanted to convert to Islam. She refused but said that she would read the Koran if she ever got out. She kept her word, and what began as an academic exercise became a spiritual journey.

 

It seems ironic that such a strident believer in the equality of the sexes should choose a religion that appears to encourage the subjugation of women. "On the contrary," she says, "the Koran makes it clear that women are equal in spirituality, worth and education. What everyone forgets is that Islam is perfect; people are not."

 

What has impressed Ridley more than anything else is the sisterhood among Muslim women. "They are always helping each other in matters such as childcare, fundraising and studying. They want each other to do well. I hadn't expected this. In the west we're all too busy pinching each other's boyfriends, and criticising each other's clothes or weight."

 

The daughter of a miner from Durham, Ridley started in provincial newspapers before progressing to jobs with the Daily Mirror, the News of the World, the Sunday Times and the Daily and Sunday Express. "I reached the rank of editor by being one of the boys, although I didn't recognise this until much later," she says.

 

Things changed when Ridley had her daughter, Daisy - the result, as she bitterly regrets admitting, of a burst condom. Suddenly, she couldn't do the after-work drinks where all the networking was done and deals were struck. For her, motherhood was "like being in a three-legged race with a ball and chain on the legs". Her solution to the problem was to send Daisy, now 11, to boarding school in the Lake District. (Daisy's father and grandparents live close by and provide a stable home life for her.) In the holidays, Daisy often flies out to join her mother and the two of them take off on travel expeditions.

 

As we wander back to Ridley's villa, with its airy rooms and marble floor, I comment that private education doesn't come cheap. She gives me a semi-smile. "In my bleakest, blackest moments I look at Daisy and I think: 'Porsche Boxster!' "

 

Ridley has no zeal to convert the rest of the world to Islam, and is happy for Daisy to be brought up a Christian - although "of course, it's a very good stepping-stone to Islam." In the background, the call to prayer echoes through the windows. I ask her if she prays five times a day, as good Muslims are supposed to do. She says she tries to, although she hasn't appeared to do so while I have been with her - despite having heard the call several times already.

 

The indiscriminate bombing of civilians during the war in order to destroy Afghan morale affected Ridley more than anything before or since. As a result of her disgust, she contacted the anti-war campaigner and Labour MP, Alan Simpson. He persuaded her to talk at the Stop the War Coalition rally in Trafalgar Square in September 2002. Since then, she has travelled across the world addressing anti-war conferences, meetings and rallies.

 

Her retainer with the Sunday Express ended in February 2003 and, shortly afterwards, al-Jazeera offered her a job as senior editor of its English-language website. Life at the new job was rosy to start with but, within six months, a secretary from the office was sent round to her home with the message: "You've been terminated."

 

Her dismissal has never been fully explained by the news station, though a spokesman cites "administrative reasons". Reading between the lines, it seems that Ridley was just more trouble than she was worth. Not only did she attempt to set up the first branch of the National Union of Journalists in the Middle East, but her reports on the conduct of US soldiers in Iraq are also said to have angered the White House. When al-Jazeera suggested she sign an inferior contract, Ridley refused. In retaliation, her former employers declined to sanction her exit visa and so, when I visited her, she was stuck in Doha, twiddling her thumbs while the lawyers tried to thrash out the problem.

 

Unprompted, she reveals that al-Jazeera is sitting on several Osama bin Laden videotapes, none of which has been released because of White House fears that they will incite more terrorist attacks. She then mentions that the UK intelligence services called her in for questioning after her business cards were found on terrorist suspects. With a certain panache, she refused to be questioned in Scotland Yard and, instead, insisted on meeting her interviewers in Patisserie Valerie on London's Old Compton Street. With rows of croissants and strawberry tarts sitting prettily behind the glass counter, she told the officers firmly: "If I was involved in anything suspicious, do you think I'd be ****** enough to give my card to a known suspect?"

 

Next, Ridley brings up the subject of possible sleeping al-Qaida terrorist cells in the UK. "My theory is that MI6 knows full well who some of the players are," she says. "I suspect there is an unwritten agreement that nothing [terrorist attacks] will happen in the UK, so long as MI6 is kept in the loop." I ask her how she has come to this conclusion, and her answer is simple. "Through talking to people from all backgrounds - the intelligence service, the Muslim world ..."

 

Later that evening, we visit a restaurant close to her home. The food is delicious, although Ridley, now swathed in dramatic black robes, eats little and instead puffs cherry tobacco from a large, ornate hookah. A few of her former colleagues from al-Jazeera join us. They are all British Muslims, bright and younger than Ridley. They have an open affection for her and, when the conversation is not centred on office gossip, they tease her gently. She entertains everyone with an anecdote from her Taliban odyssey. The last few days of her incarceration were spent in a Kabul jail, where a group of evangelical Christian missionaries were imprisoned. They were accused of trying to convert Muslims to Christianity, a charge they hotly denied. When Ridley made a second trip to Afghanistan the following year, she discovered that the Christians' headquarters had been located right next door to Osama bin Laden's former house. They had had no idea.

 

Ridley's first novel, Ticket to Paradise, has just been published in the US. Rife with thinly disguised scandal, it is likely to stir up a hornet's nest in Fleet Street. More novels and a move into politics look likely; she is considering standing for the European parliament. She has no regrets about the path her life has taken. The sobriety that has come with her new lifestyle has made her realise that much of her old confidence was founded on alcohol.

 

"I don't know how long my celebrity/notoriety is going to last, but I am going to use it for as long as I am able, to highlight injustices and atrocities," says Ridley. "Hopefully, it will change perceptions, or at least get people talking more about what is happening - and how bombs and bullets are not necessarily the answer."

 

· This interview appears in full in the March 2004 edition of Harpers & Queen.