Casablanca- After she had stunned the world with her beautiful voice during her participation in Arabs Got Talent, American young singer Jennifer Grout was believed to have converted to Islam. Earlier this month, Jennifer appeared in a video where she announced her conversion to Islam. The video got about a 900,000 hits in less than a week.
However, Grout told online newspaper Tabloid that she had actually converted to Islam before her participation at Arabs Got Talent show, and that the video was all acted out. The young American said that before the video was posted on YouTube, she had not made her conversion to Islam official yet.
Jennifer went on to add that the video was actually a scene from a Moroccan film she had shot before auditioning for Arab’s got Talent
“Actually the video that everyone has seen is part of a Moroccan film I made before my performance aired on Arabs Got Talent,” Grout was quoted as saying by news website Gulfnews.com.
Grout said she was “upset” and “scared” when she realized that the video had went viral even before she could announce her conversion to Islam to her family and friends and talk to them about her new religion.
“And I originally was upset, and mostly scared, that it ended up on the internet, because I hadn’t even gotten the chance to tell my family and closest friends about Islam before there were headlines everywhere saying I’d converted,” she was quoted by Gulfnews as saying.
Despite her shock at the rapid spread of the news of her conversion, Grout said that she was no ashamed of having converted to Islam. “I am not ashamed of what I believe in,” she added.
In the video, Grout appears reading the Shahada, which means her formal conversion to Islam, then beautifully reciting the first verse of the Quran. Jennifer appears along with two Moroccans from the south, one of whom is believed to be her fiancée or husband.
After having converted to Islam, Grout immediately started practicing her new religion, by doing the daily 5 prayers and giving charity on a frequent basis. She also said that she is planning to fast during next Ramadan.
The 23-year-old, who is originally from Boston, has come to Morocco to learn both the Amazigh language and Moroccan Arabic. She now lives and work in Marrakech along with her fiancee, who is an Amazigh musician.
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