Lauren Booth sets the record straight about her Islamic adventure

Al Quds al Arabi, the London-based pan-Arabic newspaper, interviewed Lauren Booth about her conversion to Islam.

First, she said that she simply converted to Islam, not to any particular sect within Islam. I guess she needs to get past page 60 of the Koran to make such a decision. She said she did it after returning from Iran, not in Iran.

Some newspaper mentioned that she swam in Gaza in a bikini the last time she was there. She denies this, saying she kept her clothes on and swam early in the morning so no one would see, and anyway now that she converted all of her sins are gone so it doesn't matter, but she might sue the newspaper that claimed she was in a bikini.

Well, I did find a picture of her at the beach in Gaza...

At her Iranian employer PressTV, she adds:

It is definitely not easy for a Western woman to convert to Islam. Everything that you have been shown about the way that Islam is treated in the West says to you that this is going to be difficult.

Your practices and your daily life are going to change. We only like changes that come out of diet but someone suggesting a new gym routine, or to, actually, commit to praying 5 times a day, to commit changing your lifestyle, to commit trying to be a better person and to understanding Islam and to make that into your life.

It took her about three seconds to convert to Islam, and her love of the spotlight is giving her headlines that she adores. And she's saying that it is difficult?

Anyway, I'll let Julie Burchill have the last word:

It's hard to know where to start when describing the sheer ickiness of Booth. That she works as a paid stooge for the murderous Iranian regime's television channel has to come pretty near the top. A woman, choosing to act a front for a gang of thugs who uphold the punishment of death by stoning for adulteresses! This is surely Stockholm Syndrome gone gaga.

Her entirely inappropriate addiction to the spotlight, although she was obviously designed as one of Nature's plus-ones, is another stand-out feature. A failed actress, a mediocre hack, it's pretty fair to say we would never have heard of her had her half-sister not married a man who became Prime Minister. And now her meal-ticket is Mohammed.

Yes, it seems that even the faith she was raised in isn't narrow-minded, patriarchal and oppressive enough for the sensation-hungry Booth, who having tried everything else is so jaded that she can only get a kick from self-denial. (There does seem to be a particular affinity between Catholics and Muslims – Jew-hating is a great bonding agent.) And a kick it is – she describes her engagement with faith in terms that veer between the drooling of a clammy adolescent ("this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy") and that of a recovering alcoholic clinging desperately to the wreckage of her sobriety ("I haven't had a drink in 45 days!")

We've all done embarrassing things, but the spectacle of Booth attempting to rap in the celebrity jungle does seem to indicate that she is the sort of dweeb who would do anything to get in with the tough kids – who she now perceives as being the Muslims.

Maybe like a lot of Western cowards, she thinks that if she sucks up to Islamism hard enough she will be spared its rage. Personally, I prefer to aspire to the words of the great Spanish anti-fascist activist Dolores "La Pasionaria" Ibarruri; "It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees."

As I pointed out in this column a while back, the website Iranian.com, a voice of the country's exiles, recently ran a photo of Miss Booth in full modesty drag, with the headline HAS THIS WOMAN GONE MAD? and the comment "in donning the hijab, she is kowtowing to the very fundamentalism that holds the fate of Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani in its hands ... To use the language that Booth might to describe Israel's excesses, it is shameful and disgusting that she a) works for Press TV, and b) agrees to wear Islamic headgear on screen."

What sort of woman freely converts to a religion which supports the oppression, torment and murder of thousands of Christians, homosexuals and spirited women, worldwide, every year? The sort of woman who writes love letters to a serial killer, I reckon. Still, might as well look on the bright side. Go on, Lauren, treat yourself to a full-face and – most essentially – mouth-covering burka!

If your Iranian paymasters and puppet-masters won't spring for it, I'd be more than happy to.