Middle class Westerners converting to Islam - IOS

[Tinker]

Converting to Islam

Found this interesting on Sunday. Appreciate that these are the views of extremists but still found it very depressing.

Well, I thought it was interesting...

It was, but maybe we're all a bit too wary too post?

I don't think that it is anything to get alarmed about. Isn't there a proverb, "None so zealous as the convert,"? Christianity and Islam are the biggest (only?) world religions in which there is an imperative on practitioners to convert others, hence the histories of missionary activity around the world by both those religions. By contrast, I think that strictly traditionally speaking you can only be a Jew or Hindu by birth (I don't think that applies to Buddhism although I have never heard any history about conversions by the sword or crusades by Buddhists) and those religions don't have any holy imperative to convert others. People who convert to Christianity or Islam tend to be very zealous, I think, just because converts are like that, and we can see that in history. In the same way, members of the Hare Krishna movement (who purists say are not really Hindus) are really enthusiastic too which is why we see them singing and dancing so much! In the seventies the western converts to Islam tended to prefer Sufism, but I think that was just because the seventies were like that, and mystical things were fashionable. Unfortunately, in our decade, violence seems to be more fashionable and that is why the western converts are attracted to a different form of Islam.