I sort of get why Islam seemed like a good idea to Mira when she joined.
She must feel like she has no control. When she moved to Japan she had very little education and no real skills. There was a little YouTube income and I'm sure her family was helping a bit, but aside from that she was working these hostessing jobs that sound grueling. After giving that up, her survival seemed to be based on mooching off of any guys she could sucker into a relationship. She wants a sense of control, since her life seems so out-of-control.
Then all the drama between her, Rachel, and a couple of her fans went down, and she had tons of people telling her she's a terrible person. When you're met with that much opposition, you need a way to rationalize it. The healthy response is to investigate and reflect until you determine if what you did was right or wrong, and if you are clearly in the wrong, the healthy thing is to try to make amends and improve. Mira didn't take that route and just made excuses, which left a moral tension and probable cognitive dissonance.
Then she got a crush on Rody. It's a natural reaction to become very interested in the subject of an infatuation's life, interests, etc. So, it's understandable that Mira developed an interest in Pakistani culture.
By converting to Islam, Mira must have been trying to appeal to Rody, even if that wasn't completely conscious (though I'm sure it was, moreso than she's willing to admit). But it was also the perfect rationalization for Mira being in the right, and dismissing all the haters. They're all sinful, and she's morally superior because she understands Islam better than anyone.
Another thing is that people insult her intelligence often, because she speaks so poorly, and has such a weak grasp on politics and reality. Islam gives her absolute certainty over questions of morality, but it's also given her a way to engage in discussions of politics and international relations in a way she was previously too inept to, giving her an air of intellectualism, if only to herself. So, she can also feel intellectually superior to the people she argues with. She's adopted an extremely conservative, pro-Saudi ideology, with an extreme level of xenophobia toward liberalism, Shia Islam, feminism, and random countries from China to Sweden. She's mindlessly bought into this reprehensible ideology, but I can't call her brainwashed because it's the first time she's actually held a comprehensive political ideology.
In other words, Islam has been a comprehensive solution for her to many problems - it was a way to try to get closer to Rody, it was a way to feel morally superior to her detractors, it was a way to feel intellectual, and it gave her more control over her own life. It must have given her some level of confidence.
However, I also don't think it's sustainable. Her fundamentalist, Salafist form of Islam is very demanding and high-effort. Even if she's lying about her commitment to the religion, ostracism and the effort it takes to dress the way she does comes at a heavy cost, and without a nearby Muslim community to engage in, I can't imagine how she can keep it up. She's also received plenty of pushback from the Muslim world - she gets in arguments daily with actual Saudi youths on Twitter, Rody seems to hate her, and we speculate she's been denied entry to Saudi Arabia. Her Islamic fantasy is falling apart, which is why it's only a matter of time before she abandons it.
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