Fatima has also experienced hostility from others who react to her white face beneath the hijab. "They seem to take personal offence at the fact that I have chosen a religion and way of life deemed only suitable for backward women from Muslim countries. The idea that an educated Western woman would choose it puzzles them."

It also puzzles some Muslim-born women. Selay Ghaffar is the director of Humanitarian Assistance for the Women and Children of Afghanistan (HAWCA), an Afghan national NGO dedicated to working for the social wellbeing of women and children who live in Afghanistan or in refugee communities in Pakistan. Much of its work focuses on male violence towards women and children. Ghaffar is clear that women living under Islam find it "extremely difficult, if not impossible" to achieve anything close to equality with men. "Violence and abuse are allowed, even expected, because under Islam the man's word is law."

Dr Haifaa Jawad is Senior Lecturer in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at Birmingham University and is currently writing a book on the contribution of European converts to Islam. She believes that converting to Islam "provides a sense of belonging and a clear identity. Islam has clarity to it that some other religions or lifestyles do not. Some women in the West may feel let down by feminism. But it is probably for spiritual reasons that many women convert. We have to ask, why go through with it despite the negative view of Islam at present?" 

All the women I spoke to insisted that Islam affords them rights as women that no other religion does. As one woman told me: "In Islam, women have a much higher status than in other religions. In Christianity, for example, the women were regarded as someone who did not even have a soul." (This is, of course, untrue.) 

Yasmin is a British-born woman who converted 30 years ago. In her late teens, Yasmin travelled to Yemen with a friend who was looking for her estranged father. She was looking forward to starting university later that year and to a career as a journalist. While there she was gang-raped. "My friend left me. I don't think she could cope. I was desperately lonely and going a bit off my head. A nurse told me Yemeni girls don't get raped because they dress modestly and don't go out alone. It sounds mad but I decided there and then I would convert, and I did."