OK, maybe conversion to Islam isn’t such breaking news… May 1, 2007

…but Reuters thought it was.

This past Thursday, Reuters ran the story entitled: “Are you nuts?” A woman converts to Islam about a Dutch woman, Rabi’a, and her story of conversion to the devout niqab-wearing Muslimah she is today.

Rabi’a Frank is a 31-year-old Dutch woman who converted to Islam in 1994…She is married to a Moroccan man who grew up in the Netherlands, and they have three sons.In 2005 she began to wear the niqab face veil and is one of about only 50 women in total to do so in the Netherlands, according to estimates by the Dutch Muslim community. Bubbly and spirited, Rabi’a spoke to Reuters in her home, where she unveiled to reveal a blonde pony tail and western clothes.

“I was young when I became interested in Islam and when you are young, nothing is strange, you just dive in. It is a bit of a cliche — I had a Moroccan boyfriend. At first I wanted to learn more about his culture. I got out library books about Morocco and then I got to Islam. I read about it in secret. I didn’t want to give him the impression that I was doing it for him…

“I can’t really pinpoint when I first started thinking I should wear the niqab. But when I first became a Muslim I was in love with Islam. I was like a sponge, everything was Islam, Islam, Islam. After a few years that feeling became less intense yet I wanted it again — I wanted to do something more for Allah. Seeing other women in a niqab touched something in me. I told my husband I wanted to wear it too. ‘Are you nuts?’ he said. He was not happy about it, but my feeling didn’t go away.

“Wearing the niqab has nothing to do with being ashamed of your femininity or being oppressed. It is just a way to express more love to God.

“It is nonsense to suggest that by wearing a niqab I don’t take part in society. When you walk through the streets or go shopping, how much contact do you really have even without a niqab? It is not as if you talk to everyone you meet. A woman once said ‘I can’t make contact with you,’ but I thought, ‘well did we ever make contact before?’”

I always like reading stories like this. I always like reading stories of people who convert to ultra-Orthodoxy, but remain chill, remain cosmopolitan, remain well-adjusted. Devout observance obviously does not make one a terrorist, closed-minded, intolerant, bigoted, or backward, and ultra-Orthodox converts like Rabi’a serve to prove this.Rabi’a relates her decision to take shahadah and become Muslim was not readily taken well by her parents:

“When my mother heard of my conversion she rushed into my room screaming and crying, yelling: ‘Why did you do that, what are you thinking?’ It was awful. I thought to myself: ‘That reaction is exactly why I didn’t tell you.’”Wearing the hijab felt like a form of liberation. Every day I had had to walk past some builders and they would whistle at me. Then the morning I walked past in my hijab they didn’t.

“On the one hand I felt so happy, thinking, ‘Finally, this is who I am,’ but on the other hand I wanted to say ‘Hey, look, I am still the same girl underneath.’”

And that’s what many people don’t realize when it comes to converts to ultra-Orthodoxy. We really are — for better or for worse, as for many of us, therein lies the source of our spiritual struggles — quite often, the same underneath.Sometimes they can be the same progressive, forward-thinking people underneath. Just circumscribed by different guidelines. And perhaps with a different dress code.

Those people who consider “fundamentalist” and “bigot” (or worse, “terrorist”) to be absolute synonyms often can’t comprehend when one of their peers or relatives takes on such a drastic change in lifestyle. They fear the person losing their mind a la John Walker Lindh or Muriel Degauque. They see something as being “wrong”, for instance, in Rabi’a’s case, with any woman who in her right-mind would want to cover up such large areas of skin in 2007.

Indeed, they even may consider it “breaking news” shocking enough to merit three pages on an international newswire.

But, by and by, as PhillyBurbs.com quotes one evangelical as noting, “although many mainstream religions are losing members, those such as Orthodox Catholics, Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Protestants are growing and attracting the young.”

No, Rabi’a’s not “nuts”.

Kudos to Rabi’a and all others who maintain their sanity and identity while maintaining their stance against secularism. No terrorism, no bigotry, no division necessarily.

Just a relationship with G-d based on text. Ken yirbu.