Islam versus Europe

The New Statesman reveals today that George Galloway converted to Islam ten years ago.

George Galloway, MP for Bradford West, is a Muslim. He converted more than ten years ago in a ceremony at a hotel in Kilburn, north-west London, attended by members of the Muslim Association of Great Britain. Those close to him know this. The rest of the world, including his Muslim constituents, does not.

Source: New Statesman

Some commenters had already raised this possibility, given that Galloway had married Muslim women and it is prohibited for non-Muslim men to do so.

It's worth reading this extract from an interview with Galloway in the Scottish Catholic Observer. It appeared last year when he ran (unsuccessfully) for a seat in the Scottish Parliament elections. Galloway clearly contrives to give the impression that he is a Catholic.

Now 56, Mr Galloway’s own spiritual journey has been complex. Although he lost his Catholic Faith in his 20s, he began regaining it in his 30s.

“The thing that brought me back to my Faith, and I raise this with some trepidation as I am in an election, was the issue of abortion,” he said. “I was coming under tremendous pressure in left-wing politics to support abortion. Whereas I believed not just from my early Faith but intellectually that this was not a question of rights but a question of the destruction of someone’s rights. The unborn child who was helpless and, moreover, most in need of the protection of society, yet society was legislating and the social consensus had developed that abortion was some kind of progressive thing.”

“In 1982 there was a big push in the Labour party in Dundee on this question and I was practically the only defender of the pro-life position,” he said. “Being forced to sit down and think through all these things brought me back to Faith because if you believe that the unborn child is a human being and has rights then you believe life begins at conception and there is no other point at which it can begin and that takes you on to areas of God.”

Since then, however, he has found that that rediscovered Faith has been a source of great solace.

“It goes hand-in-hand with my politics,” he said. “I believe we are all God’s children, we are all our brother’s keeper and that informs my internationalism and social democratic beliefs.”

It has also made him a defender of God in an increasingly antagonistic secular society.

Source: Scottish Catholic Observer

UPDATE: Galloway is now denying that this conversion ceremony took place although he has pointedly refused to deny that he is a Muslim. See the Daily Mail's account here. The New Statesman sticks by its story.