November 04, 2010
It is idealists of this ilk who, according to Swansea University’s Kevin Brice, “seek spirituality, a higher meaning, and tend to be deep thinkers.”
Those who “don”t understand spirituality” could conclude that rather than being “deep thinkers,” converts to Islam want a religion that will absolve them of the need to think for themselves ever again. But that would be too glib. The fact is, there is a vacuum in Western life. That a small but increasing number of Westerners can seek solace in so alien a tradition is less a testament to Islam’s attractiveness than an indictment of mainstream Christianity. Timorous leadership plus trash culture equals alienation in the sort of people who have an emotional need for “the God hypothesis.” As former diplomat Charles Le Gai Easton, a convert, wrote in his 1985 book Islam and the Destiny of Man:
People 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.
With Christianity’s co-option, the mystically motivated have a stark choice between Islam’s stripped-down “truths” or what Lauren’s half-sister and many others have instead”a soufflé of New Age crystals plus eBay plus such reverential hymns as “He gave me lips to eat my chips.” The Muslims may have more religion than they can consume, but maybe we have too little.
As long ago as 1912, the French reactionary René Guenon converted to Islam because he felt there was a Crisis of the Modern World (his best-known book’s title). Ninety years on, Roger Scruton reflected enviously on Islam in his book The West and the Rest, calling the Meccan suras “the great dawn-vision of an impassioned monotheist, from whose soul oppressive shadows are being chased away” and wistfully evoking minarets which “point to God like outstretched fingers.”
Scruton is probably too much a man of the West to convert, but he is aware of the desolate emptiness that many Westerners feel once the shops have closed, and he has the imagination to see that the Islamic world has so far retained a numinous quality that post-Christians miss without even knowing we”re missing it.
It is not only rackety journos who are converting. Jonathan Birt (son of the former BBC director-general John) and Emma Clark (former Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith’s granddaughter) have jumped ship in recent years. Birt estimates that there are 14,200 white British converts to Islam. Although some must lapse, that number will likely increase thanks to conversions of convenience (such as the prisoners who turn to Islam so they can join the “tough kids”) and Islam’s multicultural normalization (such as the BBC’s maddening policy of prefixing “Mohammed” with the sycophantic “The Prophet”).
Perhaps the sad show-off Lauren is no loss, but nonetheless she is a sad symbol of a people going native before they need to, falling away so fast from their heritage that some will never find their feet again.
