Sinead O’ Connor Announces She Is ‘Proud To Have Become A Muslim’

Former Catholic priest and singer Sinead O’ Connor has renounced Christianity and converted to Islam.

The Daily Mail reports that the ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ singer took to Twitter to announce her surprise decision to become a Muslim and change her name to Shuhada Davitt. In Arabic, Shuhada means ‘Martyrs’.

The Irish pop star, who has struggled in the past with mental health issues, posted a picture of herself on the social media site proudly wearing a hijab.

The mother-of-four captioned the photo with the words, “This is to announce that I am proud to have become a Muslim.”

Sinead explained, “This is the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian’s journey. All scripture study leads to Islam. Which makes all other scriptures redundant. I will be given (another) new name. It will be Shuhada.”

The singer was once ordained a priest in the 1990s by a fringe Catholic group calling itself the Irish Orthodox and Apostolic Church. This was considered shocking behavior as the Catholic Church had a strict no female priest policy.

In 2011 Sinead lashed out at the Catholic Church over the child sex abuse scandal. She called the Vatican ‘a nest of devils’ and petitioned for an ‘alternative church’ to be established. She also claimed that ‘Christ was being murdered by liars’ in the Vatican.

The singer explained that her friend Elaine gave her the hijab. She added that when she put the garment on she got ‘chills all over her body.’

Sinead has also uploaded a video of herself chanting the Adhan, which is the Islamic call to prayer

She wrote, “Here is my attempt at singing the Azan [sic]. I got some pronouncition [sic] wrong because emotions took me from my page…but there’ll be hundreds of others onstage to come.”

She later apologized for the mistakes and claimed when she had practiced chanting the Adhan at least another 30 times she’d ‘make the world stop turning.’

Sinead also thanked her fellow Muslims for their encouraging support and all their kind messages of welcome.

This is not the first time Sinead has changed her name. In 2017 she made the bold move of becoming Magda Davitt. Explaining the reason behind her dramatic decision she said she wished to be ‘free of parental curses’.

Since converting to Islam, O’Connor has also changed her Twitter profile image. It is now a Nike tick with the caption ‘wear a hijab. Just do it.’