Irish singer Sinead O’Connor has announced she has converted to Islam and said she has changed her name to Shuhada’ Davitt.
The 51-year-old has been posting selfies of herself wearing hijabs on Twitter in recent days, as well as a video in which she sang the Azan, or call to prayer.
She tweeted on October 19: “This is to announce that I am proud to have become a Muslim. This is the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian‘s journey. All scripture study leads to Islam. Which makes all other scriptures redundant.”
https://twitter.com/MagdaDavitt77/status/1055498371610361857?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
O’Connor, who now goes by Davitt, achieved widespread success in 1990 with her cover of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’, a song written by the late Prince.
Controversy has followed her career. The singer ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II during a Saturday Night Live appearance in 1992 as a protest against the Catholic Church.
In the late 1990s, she was ordained a priest by the Irish Orthodox Catholic and Apostolic Church, which is an independent Catholic group not in communion with the mainstream Catholic church.
She came out as a lesbian during an interview in 2000, which she later retracted.
Originally from Ireland, the singer has been a firm supporter of a united Ireland, under which the United Kingdom would relinquish control of Northern Ireland.