Why are most Western Islamic converts women?

[ingemann]

Maybe western women are more likely to marry muslim men than the other way round?

Actually Muslim women can't marry non-Muslim men.  It's a bit complicated why but at heart it's because that husband may try to prevent her from observing her religion.

I'm sure Bore know that, that doesn't change the fact that outmarriage among Muslims are more common among men than women, and women who marry Muslim men also often convert.

[ingemann]

So I've heard that by some estimates as many as 80% of converts to Islam in Western countries are women. Struck me as pretty surprising, you'd think women would be rather adverse to Islam for obvious reasons.

Well, I think the whole "Islam oppresses women" thing has more to do with Middle Eastern culture rather than what Islam actually teaches about women. Same thing with the Bible, and this problem is also present even with Hinduism. Hinduism, Christianity, and Islam all have texts praising women and holding them in high esteem, almost equal to or even superior to men in some cases, but the culture that is currently present in places like the Middle East and India are pretty mysogynistic.

You can even cite/cherry-pick the Bible (or really any major religion) to justify biblical patriarchy, but in secular nations in the West, women are far less oppressed than in other countries (not that it's perfect).

So, in addition to the intermarriage thing mentioned many times above, an academic study of Islam can lead women to find that Islam is egalitarian with women, but it's just a patriarchal culture present in the Middle East and the Islamophobic fearmongering that gives people the idea that Islam is a mysogynistic/patriarchal religion.

I'm not impressed.

Here's the main difference between Muslims and Christians, outside a bunch of theological illiterate Christians, all Christian branches agree that the Bible are written by imperfect men. The vast majority of Muslims, especially Sunnis on the other hand, believe that the Koran is God's word directly written down.

What do this mean in practice. It means that Christians can say but that's the Old Testaments, it's Paulus's Letters or it was another time etc. Muslims on the other hand, have a much harder time updating their beliefs (unless it's the Hadiths and not the Koran). Because if it's the direct Word of God, it must be a permanent rule. As such it's much harder to put a egalitarian spin on modern Islam, even through it was very egalitarian for the time and place it was written.