* There’s always someone in the family who has an unusual conversion. Tony Blair’s sister in law has had a conversion experience in Iran:
She decided to become a Muslim six weeks ago after visiting the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the city of Qom.
"It was a Tuesday evening and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy," she said in an interview today.
When she returned to Britain, she decided to convert immediately.
I could be wrong, but sudden conversions to this religion seem pretty rare, unless you’re in an Indonesian prison. Seeing she’s a TV journalist, I would have been more amused if she had started to insist on an on screen burqa instead of just a hijab.
* There are two stories about men in legal trouble in the Middle East for using the internet for sexual purposes. An Egyptian Imam in Dubai is alleged to have sent rude pictures of himself to women via Blackberry (and was the victim of a “sting” by a male policeman posing as a woman). In Saudi Arabia a man who was making money by “renting” on line rooms in which women would strip is facing arrest.
I am curious: just how large are the cyberpolice departments in these middle east countries? If there are going to try to stop every man who sends a rude pic of himself from his mobile phone, they will be the biggest employment field in the region. And if these countries don’t block overseas sites, when will they realise there is no holding back the tide?
Lauren is a noted fruitcake up here in the hyperborean, and nothing she does surprises us. I was, however, impressed by the fact that her conversion took place when she was only 60 pages into the Koran.
ReplyDelete(Oh OK, she still has the power to gobsmack.)