TONY BLAIR’S SISTER-in-law has announced that she has converted to Islam after a “holy experience” in Iran.

Journalist and broadcaster Lauren Booth, who works for the Iranian semi-state channel Press TV, says that she now wears a hijab whenever she leaves her home, prays five times a day and visits the mosque whenever she can.

Booth explained that she converted six weeks ago after a visit to the the shrine of Fatima al-Masumeh in the city of Qom in Iran. She said she had a spiritual experience while at the tomb:

It was a Tuesday evening and I sat down and felt this shot of spiritual morphine, just absolute bliss and joy.

Booth told reporters that she had stopped eating pork and drinking alcohol, and reads the Qur’an every day. She is currently on page 60.

She added that she had been “sympathetic” to Islam before converting and spent time working in Palestine, saying “I was always impressed with the strength and comfort it (Islam) gave”.

Booth’s move to Islam comes three years after her brother-in-law converted to Catholicism.

In a scathing public letter to Blair about her conversion, Booth said:

Your world view is that Muslims are mad, bad, and dangerous to know… Here in Iran they feel proud to suffer in order to express solidarity with the people of Palestine. It’s kind of like the way you express solidarity with America only without illegal chemical weapons and a million civilian deaths.

Personally I’ve never understood this fear of ‘political Islam’. It seems to me that religious people should always be educated on world events rather than kept in ignorance. Like, say, Midwest Christian Zionists in the US.

Booth is the half-sister of Blair’s wife Cherie, a human rights lawyer.