The shop assistant hands you the card machine and says "Shall I convert that into sterling for you?" What she's actually saying is "Can I pinch a few quid off you?" Don't fall for it, either in shops or at cash machines.
One afternoon, as I struggled to convert that impulse into a show, I gazed at the row of books on my credenza.
"He was worried people would think that I converted because of him, or that I was being forced to convert," said Wentworth, a software engineer in Atlanta and board member of Muslims for Progressive Values, a national advocacy group.
The problem has become such a headache that last year I converted all my credit cards from ones that gave you miles to ones that give you a percentage rebate at the end of the year.
So I did that for a while and then I said, let me see if I can be a sponsor, and that's when I bought my first building: 114 East 84th, which was 37 apartments that I converted into co-ops.
The idea that I converted to Islam in a ceremony in Kilburn, or Karachi, or Kathmandu... anywhere... is rubbish.
"I lived under a tree for a summer, in yurts, in cob dwellings, and in a chicken shack that I converted".
