A somewhat unusual conversion...

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A dear female friend of mine is a member of the small eclectic Wiccan coven I belong to. She has been visiting the worship houses of other paths for about a month now, and announced a few days ago that she has converted to Sunni Islam. I respect anyone following their heart in spiritual matters, but WTF?!?!?!?!?! The kicker is, she still plans on doing divination (cartomancy) and herbalism; in short she plans on being a Muslim witch. As far as I am aware, mainstream Islam frowns on witchcraft. She is also a strong-willed, spirited woman - something else the Koran takes a dim view of. She insists that it won't affect her friendship with the rest of us, but she refuses to participate in circle because of our supposed Polytheistic ways (the truth is actually more complicated than that). I wish her godspeed, but feel she is setting herself up for persecution and disappointment. Any thoughts?

Interesting.
I saw a book on the shelf of Barnes and Noble that was a Jewish guide to the occult. Apparently it was for readers who want to be Jewish Wiccans- which I thought was a contradiction in terms-like being a Sunni Muslim Witch.

What is it about Islam that excites her?
Im not putting down Islam, but it seems so odd that someone would gravitate to both Islam and to wicca.

Maybe she should consider becoming a Sihk. The Sihk faith is an Indian hybrid of Islam and Hinduism. I think of HInduism as being much more wicca-like than any of the Abrahamic faiths. So in Sihkism she might be able to have her cake and eat it to.

I think a lot of people want to be a "something", and Islam is definitely a way of life. I agree with you that she's going to be brought up short, but what can you do? My partner started taking catechism classes to become a Roman Catholic (she was raised as an atheist) when the then pope came out against the Iraq War. When that same pope came out against gays three months later, she threw her crucifix in the trash. Oddly, as a pagan, I felt quite at home going to church with her.Some have said that the church didn't abolish the old religion, they adopted it.

i think she finds comfort in the concept of a all-good, unified deity; as opposed to the multiple, potentially terrible deitys of paganism. ive tried to subtly steer her towards Sufiism or Jewish Kabballah, to no avail.

So from one weird religion to another. What are you worried about exactly? Surprisingly, there are some devout Sunni Muslims who do "tebseer" or fortune telling and s**t like that. That's a form of witchcraft, you could say.

Doing a quick web search, many (though a decreasing number) Muslims do believe in the Jinn, spirits living in a parallel world, who, like humans, have free will and will be judged in the end. Fortune tellers are thought to be in touch with the Jinn, and it is very much frowned upon. The evolution of monotheism is very interesting. I've read that the Canaanites were originally from a larger, polytheistic culture (if you don't believe Genesis and that they were monotheists all along) and ended up focusing on Yahweh. The apocryphal Gospel of St. James, thought to be an important document to the christian gnostics, has a god that is the monster child of the creator god and Sophia. Sophia is so ashamed of him that she puts him in a cloud and he believes he is the only god, also called Yahweh.As for the frightening deities, neither christians nor muslims have really solved the problem of why a perfect and good god would have created evil, in spite of countless attempts. I don't believe in a creator god, but I do believe there are many less than omnipotent beings in a mostly parallel universe, though some of them claim to be the only one. I score 148 out of 200 but have a lot of factors that could contribute to an Aspie type personality so I'm not sure about my status (my partner thinks I'm somewhere on the spectrum). In growing up, we all need a sense of control, and since nothing really made sense and I spent a lot of psychic energy trying to control things that either couldn't be controlled or might have had a more practical solution, so now I try to really open myself up to learning new approaches before resorting to the unseen world. There's an old saying, "Pray to Allah, but tie up your camel.". Goddess bless.

Wicca to Sunni Islam is indeed a strange conversion.

I am not religious myself, but in some ways I would like to be. But I am curious about the thinking processes involved in contemporary religious conversions.

I imagine in previous centuries a person would convert to an invading power's religion either through being awestruck at that invading power's strength or technological advancement, or for politically convenient reasons, or even to preserve their own life.

I expect conversions for political or personal reasons are still common. I even know a person who became a Christian after his relative (he says) was cured of blindness by another Christian.

But what about people who do not fall under these categories? Do they choose a religion that they find attractive on an intellectual level, and then train themselves to actually have faith in it?

If so, perhaps converting from Wicca to Sunni Islam is not so strange. If you are going to go from honouring the spirit of nature to honouring one God, then you might look at Islam with its billion or so followers (and rising) and assume that is the correct one to plump for. Besides, the Trinity in Christianity is pretty confusing.