We converts often fall foul of the expectations of the wider community, for the simple reason we tend to find ourselves able to view issues from both sides. We may be embraced initially, but soon enough, we will be cast aside for failing to toe the line. It happens to nearly everyone. But rest easy. …
Most of us converts live solitary lives. By which I mean, we’re usually the only person in our extended families and friendship groups to take up the path. Indeed, many of us come from environments which make that seem highly unlikely, if not impossible. The sister of hardcore secularists. The son of a Jewish rabbi. …
It is very difficult to be fair. Often our own perceptions and prejudices get in the way of us being fair to others. Yesterday, I was listening to a Muslim convert speaking about his experience moving within established British Muslim communities. Not for the first time, he described feeling like an outcast amongst those raised …
I suppose the difference between the convert and the activist is that the former was moved by their search for the truth, whereas the latter is moved by the politics of identity. Hence the mutual incomprehension and distrust. One is called to communitarianism, the other to honour God. One was seeking goodness and virtue, the …
Last weekend I met an elder-statesman of the convert community, a respected English gentleman who has been Muslim for over forty years — for more years than I have walked on the earth, in fact. He talked about his experience in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when English converts were small in number, and …
