Converting to Islam at 43

I was reading news on the internet (via popurl.com) and I came across the headline “Lauren Booth converts to Islam” I highlighted the line because the name was not typically one that would be connected to Islam, being a woman, and the summary stated “Sister-in-law to Tony Blair”. This got my attention being a person so close to an international leader who had, in 2007, converted to Catholicism.

Mr. Blair’s wife was born Cherie Booth and Lauren is a half-sister who is a journalist and human rights activist (according to Wikipedia). She works for Press TV which is an English television station owned by Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting. Her experience in recent years has been in the middle-east and has been pro-palestinian.

Women in their early 40’s don’t usually convert, especially to a religion like Islam without something changing in their life. The first thing I thought of was that she had married a man from the middle-east, a check told me that wasn’t it, she was married to a minor actor/screenwriter Craig Darby (not even on IMBD) and has 2 children. So what gives?

In 2009 she had 2 events that might be a clue. She had a fight with her husband, via Facebook and actually changed her status to “single”. Now this might and is nothing but a couple days later Darby had a bad motorcycle accident that put him in a coma. The second event was that all this became known in the media.

There were several articles on these chain of events and although she was treated as a sympathetic person who just got angry for a moment and felt terrible, it still had to take a big toll on her personally. Her husband did recover after about 6 months with several issues including vision and memory.

None of the articles gave any reason for her conversion, but that she has worn traditional clothing and given up pork, alcohol and prays 5 times per day. This is a woman offered in 2001 to model for playboy! I have to believe that she was forced to asses her life and she wasn’t happy with it and despite Islam’s harsh treatment of woman in the middle-east and world wide, she is going for it. No word if her husband or children are converting but if they don’t that divorce maybe coming soon. (guardian.uk)