Dr. Metablog reviews G. Willow Wilson's Butterfly Mosque

Dr. Metablog has written a review of G. Willow Wilson's book, the Butterfly Mosque, detailing her conversion to Islam, which tells some more rather surprising things:

G. Willow Wilson's memoir The Butterfly Mosque (New York, 2010) describes a conversion of a sort that I've never before encountered -- it lacks both a voice from the clouds and a scalding of the heart. Wilson simply sets out with a desire to convert and then hunts for an appropriate religion -- a most odd and unusual procedure. In college, Wilson reports, she was "in the market for a philosophy." Soon after, she becomes a Muslim -- essentially because she wants to be something and can't think of anything better. Here's the key paragraph: "I discovered I was a monotheist.... That rules out polytheism. I also have a problem with authority, which rules out any religion with a priesthood.... And I cannot believe that having given us these bodies, God thinks we should be virgins unless we desperately feel a need to reproduce. That rules out any religion that is against family planning or sex for fun.... Islam is antiauthoritarian, sex-positive monotheism."

It's a series of reasons so quirky that it's hard to take seriously. If I were G. Willow's spiritual counselor, and she came to me with such a shallow argument, I would have said, "go home, young lady, take a couple of years and try to think more deeply."

"I discovered I was a monotheist"? Mere mysticism, no more more persuasive than "I discovered I believed in only one angel." Islam has no priesthood? Depends on how you define priest, doesn't it. No Roman-style priest who acts as an intermediary to God, but a heck of a priestly establishment nonetheless -- boatloads of imans and mullahs and ayatollahs all laying claim to special forms of knowledge. Is Islam sex-friendly? Perhaps in theory, but in practice it's hard to find a more misogynist or homophobic operation out there in monotheismland. I suspect that sex is more cheerful when it's between equal partners.

If anything, Wilson's words tell she's either very naive, or very dishonest. Why, she's a total joke! She grew up in a secularist household, and I assume was raised upon the belief that Christianity, Judaism and even Buddhism aren't sex-friendly? Please. All this tells is that she did not receive a good education, and any career she's got as a writer is undeserved.