Israel Matzav

How appropriate: Lauren Booth converts to Islam

I suppose that it was inevitable that this would happen eventually: Tony Blair's sister-in-law Lauren Booth has converted to Islam.

The 43-year-old broadcast journalist, who works for Iran’s English-language Press TV, said she had a “holy experience” while visiting the Fatima al-Masumeh shrine in the city of Qom, a “shot of spiritual morphine.”

I wonder whether the nearby nuclear enrichment facility had anything to do with that shot. Booth was interviewed in Sunday's Daily Mail.

‘Now I don’t eat pork and I read the Koran every day. I’m on page 60. I also haven’t had a drink in 45 days, the longest period in 25 years,' she said.

'The strange thing is that since I decided to convert I haven’t wanted to touch alcohol, and I was someone who craved a glass of wine or two at the end of a day.’

Refusing to discount the possibility that she might wear a burka, she said: ‘Who knows where my spiritual journey will take me?’

Before her awakening in Iran, she had been ‘sympathetic’ to Islam and has spent considerable time working in Palestine. ‘I was always impressed with the strength and comfort it gave,’ she said of the religion.

I think she'd look great in a niqab. Kind of like Mrs. Ahmadinejad. Hey - maybe Mahmoud has a brother....

But for brother-in-law Tony Blair, Booth is nothing but an embarrassment.

She said she hoped her conversion would help Mr Blair change his presumptions about Islam.

During her visit to Iran last month, Booth wrote a public letter to Mr Blair asking him to mark Al-Quds (Jerusalem) day - a protest at Israel's occupation of Palestine.

The missive was a bitter attack on the former Prime Minister, who is now a Middle East envoy working for peace in the troubled region.

'The men, women and children around me withstood a day of no water and no food (it’s called Ramadan, Tony, it’s a fast),' Booth wrote.

'Coping with hunger and thirst in the hundred degrees heat, as if it were nothing. They can withstand deprivation in the Muslim world.

'Here in Iran they feel proud to suffer in order to express solidarity with the people of Palestine. It's kind of like the way you express solidarity with America only without illegal chemical weapons and a million civilian deaths.'

She adds: 'Your world view is that Muslims, are mad, bad, dangerous to know. A contagion to be contained.

'In the final chapter [of his autobiography] you say we need a "religious counter attack" against Islam. And by "Islam" you mean the Al Quds rallies, the Palestinian intifada (based on an anti Apartheid struggle Tony, NOT religious bigotry), against every Arab who fails to put their arms in the air as the F16 missiles rain on their homes and refugee camps and sing a rousing chorus of ‘Imagine all the people...’

Blair's 'presumptions' sound pretty realistic to me.

Blair himself converted to Catholicism upon leaving office as Prime Minister.

Lauren Booth is Cherie Blair's half-sister, which means he only has one of his in-laws to blame for her.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:49 PM