Janet Jackson and her Qatari husband Wissam Al Mana have just become parents to a baby boy. The good news has made headlines across the world, particularly given Jackson’s age of 50 years, but it has also been accompanied with speculation that the singer has secretly converted to Islam. Janet Jackson is thought to have converted Islam before the birth of her first baby.
Photographs have emerged of her covering up her head (albeit in an Adidas poncho) with what appears to be an Islamic veil underneath. She has ended concerts telling fans ‘Insha Allah’, which translates to ‘If Allah wills it’, and many have noticed she has recently been covering up more of her flesh on stage.
Neither Jackson nor Al Mana, 42, have commented on her faith – and any possible change – but religious conversions after marriage are common. Zara Gluch, 30, converted to Islam when she was 22 years old, after her Muslim boyfriend began talking to her about his faith. At the time, she was known as Edyta Gluch, having grown up in Poland in a Christian household.
Janet and Wissam
“When I was in Poland my friend once had a Muslim boyfriend and I remember saying to my mum, I would never go out with a Muslim man – I would never change my religion,” she says. “But when I met my boyfriend, I read about it, and it was a totally different picture. Before it was bad and evil to me.”
Now she’s married to that same boyfriend, runs a DIY shop with him and the couple have two young children. She tells me: “He says I have more (Islamic) knowledge than him because I keep reading about it and studying it. I want to know everything.
“People who are born into Islam just go do whatever they saw their parents do and it’s not always religious – most of the time it’s culture. I’m more religious than my husband.”
She has given up the short skirts, short-sleeved tops and high heels of her past in favour of loose clothing and a headscarf – even though her husband tried to persuade her not to wear the headscarf.
Zara Gluch with Daughter
But Gluch says it’s what she wants: “It’s about covering yourself. Since I have started covering myself, I feel people respect me more, they look at me differently. People used to (catcall) me before and say things. Now they don’t. I feel like Islam is the true religion for me.”
She is not alone. Khadijah Elliott, an English teacher, converted to Islam more than 10 years ago when she married one of her former students who was Muslim. Due to visa issues, the pair married in Kabul, but weeks after the wedding her husband disappeared, and Elliott was told by his family that he had been killed.
Devastated and confused, she returned to England and continued life as a Muslim woman. Like Kayani, she had issues from the local Muslim community: “If you come from an English background, a lot of Muslims find that difficult to understand. Because you have to change that and put aside your own culture, you’ve got to either find a new one or hover between the two.
Malaika Kayani
“It can be very difficult. Some families who are born Muslim want to stick to their own culture rigidly.”
Elliott says that her husband never pressured her to convert, but says: “He’d been in this country for a few years so he’d adapted to the Western lifestyle. He encouraged me to find out things for myself.”
But this isn’t always the case. Malaika Kayani who runs a Nottingham-based group called Sisters in the Community, which aims to help vulnerable or isolated female Muslim converts who are struggling to fit into their communities, tells me she’s aware of some women being pressured to ‘be more Muslim’ by their partners.
“There are men that are misguided and think they have got to put the pressure on. I’m wondering if a lot of that is how they have been raised. There are also some people who say you can’t be Muslim and be a feminist. But I disagree. Some women think it’s their duty to be at home. But a lot of the women I know are happy to work or volunteer, like I do.”
She converted to Islam aged 42 after befriending Muslims for the first time in her life. “I listened to the Koran and I felt like it had touched my soul,” she says. “It was unexpected – I was a staunch feminist and a Buddhist. But I wanted to learn more, and Muslim people advised it was better to convert and learn it rather than learn from the outside. I thought, just go for it.”
So after living as a woman called Debbie for 42 years, Kayani changed her name and converted. It meant giving up alcohol, switching to halal meat, and eventually wearing a headscarf. Around the same time, she began a relationship with a Muslim man who is still her partner today, and the two have had a Nikah – an Islamic marriage – to legitimize their relationship in the community.
The religion is everything she wanted, but with her conversion came a new range of difficulties. She felt isolated from her previous life: “To say my family weren’t happy was an understatement. Their first question was, are you going to have to cover up? My friends said if you get married to a Muslim man, he’ll make you his slave.”
Her daughter also decided to convert to Islam at the same time, and that brought with it more criticisms: “Most people think I have brainwashed her or scared her into becoming Muslim. But she’d tell you it’s all her decision.”
Kayani’s family are more supportive now, but she still faces prejudice from people living locally in her predominantly white town. She doesn’t wear her headscarf in her local area because of the looks and insults she receives – “It’s not that I’m scared because it’s dangerous; it’s just uncomfortable. Sometimes you don’t have the strength to be brow-beaten every day.”
She tells me when she wears her headscarf on the bus, people avoid her – one elderly woman made her toddler grandchild sit on a dirty step instead of a spare seat next to Kayani – and the abuse is getting worse: “After the Paris attacks, it’s even [worse]. I feel like it’s high-risk going out with your headscarf on.”
But at the same time, Kayani had issues trying to befriend existing Muslims: “I didn’t really fit in. I was still learning. I didn’t wear the headscarf and I was a bit different. They weren’t all all-encompassing or all-embracing regardless.
“People try to encourage you to do better. So if you’re not behaving a certain way or you don’t know how to pray, or the way you’re dressed – people will suggest ways you can practise better. If someone says ‘you can’t do this’ I don’t respond well to that. For a convert that can be a lot of pressure.”
She has advice for anyone considering converting to Islam: “When you’re about to convert everyone can be really excited and you’re about to be embraced by this massive family. But obviously the excitement dries down and a lot of converts end up feeling really isolated. As a convert you’re in between two communities. The Western one you have been part of your whole life, and then the Muslim community you’re trying to integrate in as well.”
Culled from the UK Telegraph
