Thirty-five men and women converted to Islam in UAE in the past six months, an official said.
“The Muslim code of conduct and the good treatment some people had received at the hands of UAE nationals were the major reasons for dozens of people of various nationalities converting to Islam in the past few months,” Abdulla Al Qurasi, acting director of the Ras Al Khaimah department of Islamic affairs, told the Gulf News.
He said that between January 1 and July 1, four Ethiopian women, two Indian women and two men, one Romanian woman, eight Sri Lankan women and one man, two Russian women, two Kyrgyz women, a woman from Kazakstan, a woman from Uzbekistan, two Ukrainian women, a man from Nepal, a Chinese woman and nine Filipinas had converted to Islam.
He said the number was relatively large, noting that the average was eight to 10 in a year.
He said many of the women were housemaids who had been well treated by the national families for whom they worked and this had been a factor in their conversion. Many said they had felt they were members of the family rather than housemaids.
Those who converted to Islam, he said, usually got certificates from the department which allow them, if they wished, to change their names at their embassies in the UAE. Some, he said, would change their names to new Muslim ones, others would keep their original names, and many more would change their names orally, keeping their original names in their passports – Albawaba.com
