The Beautiful Hijab
October 26, 2010
A WOMAN almost never does something that will bring about social annihilation for herself or her family. Men are more influential in shaping society through idea. Women are more influential in shaping it through form. Mark Richardson at Oz Conservative considers the case of Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of Tony Blair who recently converted to Islam. My guess is that she sought to embrace God in a socially acceptable form. She might have lost more friends if she had become a pious Christian than a pious Muslim. She did not risk social annihilation, not in the self-annihilating, anti-Christian Europe of today. More Western women will probably follow in her footsteps.
— Comments —
Ilion writes:
“My guess is that she sought to embrace God in a socially acceptable form. She might have lost more friends if she had become a pious Christian than a pious Muslim. She did not risk social annihilation, not in self-annihilating Europe of today.”
I think that’s a profound observation and speculation, one I doubt I’d have thought of.
Laura writes:
I can’t imagine any of her friendships would survive if she had her picture taken wearing a Catholic veil and holding a rosary, which is not to say that all her friends would automatically embrace her turn to Islam. Also, in her mind, Christianity is probably a lower-class kind of thing, hokey and conventional. I wonder if she ever seriously considered the precepts of Christianity, whether any of its claims were true or false. Judging from the interview Mark Richardson discusses, she judged it purely on image and reputation. What a strange way to decide what the meaning of existence is. But I know many people, both men and women, who think this way. Christianity is a lower-status thing they judge on image alone.
An elite Muslim woman would not dare to publicly convert to Christianity if she were living in the Muslim world. She would risk her life.
