What Should We Make of White Lads Who Convert to Islam?
What the fuck are we supposed to make of a white British lad who converts to Islam? I mean a proper ordinary white lad. Call him Callum. Grew up eating fish fingers, got dragged to a church twice by his nan, spent his teenage years drinking cider behind a leisure centre and regarded spirituality as something that happened when the pub had Stella on offer. Then one day Callum announces he’s become Muslim. No more booze. No more bacon. He’s praying five times a day and going to the mosque. What happened there then? Because that’s a fairly fucking substantial change of direction. That’s not switching from Pepsi to Coke. That’s turning the entire car around and heading back down the motorway.
The reaction fascinates me because Britain can tolerate almost any amount of male self destruction without asking serious questions. A lad can spend fifteen years getting smashed every weekend, lose half his wages gambling on football, live on takeaway shit, watch porn until his brain resembles microwaved porridge and wake up every Sunday smelling like the carpet outside a nightclub toilet. Nobody stages an intervention. That’s just Gaz being Gaz. Gaz puts down the pint, deletes the betting apps, starts praying and becomes Muslim? Fucking hell, what happened to Gaz? Has somebody radicalised him? Is he all right? Mate, nobody gave a shit when Gaz was trying to drink himself into an early grave beside a fruit machine. Now he owns a prayer mat and suddenly everyone’s fucking Amnesty International.
I’d want to know why he converted. Of course I fucking would. Wouldn’t you? People pretend asking why is somehow offensive. Bollocks. If my mate changes the entire philosophical framework through which he understands life, death, sex, marriage, morality, God and what happens after he’s buried, I’m going to have a few questions. What convinced you? What did Islam give you that your old life didn’t? Did you read the Quran and believe it? Did you meet Muslims whose lives impressed you? Did you fall in love with a Muslim woman? Were you lonely? Were you looking for rules? Were you looking for belonging? Those are normal questions. If Steve turns up on Monday wearing a Manchester United shirt after supporting Liverpool for thirty years, I’m asking questions before he’s even taken his fucking coat off.
What I find interesting is how many young blokes seem fucking starved of structure. Look at the menu modern life gives them. Work at some job they hate, pay rent to somebody richer than them, stare into a phone, masturbate, order Deliveroo, watch six episodes of some forgettable shite, stare into the phone again, sleep badly and repeat until their hair starts disappearing. What a magnificent civilisation we’ve built. No wonder a religion offering brotherhood, discipline, prayer, fasting, marriage, family, rules and an explanation for why the fuck you’re alive might catch somebody’s attention. Even if I don’t accept the theology, I can see the sales pitch. Compared with another evening scrolling TikTok while eating chicken out of cardboard, five daily prayers probably feels like joining the fucking Foreign Legion.
But I’m not going to romanticise it either. Some converts become fucking exhausting. You know the type. Callum discovers Islam six weeks ago and starts behaving like he personally knew Muhammad. Mate, calm the fuck down. In June you couldn’t find Saudi Arabia on a map and now you’re issuing theological rulings over breakfast. New converts can get that glazed look people get when they’ve discovered something and decided everyone else needs discovering too. It happens with religion, veganism, Bitcoin, cold showers, running and fucking air fryers. Nothing is more dangerous to a peaceful afternoon than a man who changed his life three months ago and now wants to change yours.
And yes, I’d look hard at what he now believes. Why wouldn’t I? Religion doesn’t get a diplomatic passport through my brain because questioning it might upset somebody. If Callum tells me Islam has made him disciplined, generous and sober, fine. If Callum starts telling me women need controlling, gay people deserve contempt, apostates deserve punishment or criticism of religion should be silenced, then we’ve got a fucking problem. I’m not going to nod politely because he’s found God. I’d challenge a Christian saying that shit, so why would I suddenly develop jelly for a spine because the religion has an Arabic vocabulary? Respecting somebody’s freedom to believe something doesn’t mean I have to treat the belief like my nan’s best china.
That’s where Britain ties itself into ridiculous knots. One bunch of people acts as though questioning Islam makes someone a monster. Another bunch acts as though becoming Muslim means Callum has personally betrayed King Arthur. Both reactions are fucking stupid. Islam is a religion. It contains beliefs. Those beliefs can be examined, challenged, accepted or rejected. Callum is still Callum. He hasn’t become Pakistani because he stopped eating bacon. He hasn’t surrendered his passport because he went to a mosque. A white bloke becoming Muslim seems to make some people’s brains flash ERROR like a self checkout machine when you put your shopping bag in the wrong fucking place.
There’s something revealing about that panic. A white British bloke can tattoo Japanese characters down his arm that he can’t read, practise Indian yoga, eat Thai curry, drive a German car, watch American television, wear trainers made in Vietnam and spend his stag weekend staggering around Prague dressed as a penis. Nobody asks whether he has abandoned Western civilisation. Then he becomes Muslim and suddenly Nigel from the pub is behaving like Constantinople has fallen again. What exactly has been betrayed? The Church of England church he never attended? The Bible he never read? The Christianity he remembered once a year because there were Quality Street under a tree?
I’m interested in the bloke who goes all in because that’s where things can get fucking weird. If he changes his diet and starts praying, who cares? If he becomes kinder, more disciplined and stops spending Friday night trying to headbutt a kebab shop window, excellent. But if every old friend gets dumped, every conversation becomes religion, every disagreement becomes sinful and some bloke he met three months ago suddenly has more authority over his life than his own fucking brain, I’m asking what’s going on. I’d ask the same thing if he joined an evangelical church, a political cult or one of those business schemes where everybody sells shampoo to each other and calls themselves entrepreneurs.
I’d also be interested in whether he’s genuinely found faith or found an identity costume. Some blokes don’t seem to know who the fuck they are, so they grab the strongest identity within reach and pull it over themselves like a hi vis jacket. Religion can do that. Politics can do it. Football can do it. Nationalism can do it. Gym culture can do it. Suddenly every answer arrives prepacked and somebody else has already decided what the bloke should eat, wear, believe, condemn and say. That can feel wonderful when your own life resembles the miscellaneous drawer in the kitchen. Batteries, old keys, takeaway menus, three fucking screwdrivers and nobody knows what any of it’s for.
The bit I won’t accept is the idea that I have to choose between treating every convert like a potential terrorist and treating conversion like some beautiful spiritual journey that nobody should question. Fuck both of those options. I can manage more than two thoughts before breakfast. A white bloke can become Muslim because he sincerely believes Islam is true. He can also be searching for belonging, discipline, marriage, certainty or purpose. He can find good things in his new faith and pick up ideas I think are complete bollocks. He can become a better man or an unbearable prick. Religion doesn’t delete personality. Sometimes it improves the furniture. Sometimes it just gives the same arsehole a new fucking carpet.
So what should I make of white lads who convert to Islam? I’d make nothing of the whiteness and plenty of the lad. I’d ask what he believes, why he believes it and what those beliefs have done to him. Has Callum stopped drinking himself stupid and become a decent bloke? Fair enough. Has he discovered God and become the religious equivalent of somebody who bought a guitar yesterday and already wants to play Wonderwall at my fucking barbecue? Then somebody needs to confiscate the microphone. I don’t care whether Callum’s holding a pint, a prayer mat or a fucking air fryer. If he can still think for himself and avoid becoming an insufferable knobhead, we’ll probably get along.