Actually, there are some good books to read about women who chose Islam. A friend of mine has one that is a book of stories about women who chose Islam. I can’t remember what it’s called or who wrote it though, but if you want to PM me I can try to track it down for you.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s story, though traumatic as it may be, is certainly not the “norm” or “standard” for women in Islam.
I decided to embrace Islam a few years ago after reading the Qur’an. I loved the way the stories of the prophets were told in the Qur’an–the story of Joseph, so many stories about Moses and Abraham. They weren’t told from a historical point of view, but in such a way that it was easy to derive lessons from them to apply to my own life. I also found the fact that the Qur’an included legal verses to be appealing–inheritance, for example, is prescribed in this holy book, to make sure that nobody usurps the rights of other inheritors after a person’s death.
For me, reading the Qur’an was like reading the dry laws of Deuteronomy in the beautiful language of the Psalms–that most especially led me to believe that it was a book that certainly could be written by God, and the more I studied it, the more I believed that.
There is one convert, named Yvonne Ridley, who actually embraced Islam because of the verses in the Qur’an about women! That is what she found most appealing at first, as she looked at the verses about women and found them to ring true to upholding the rights of women.
And ultimately what did it for me, to convert, was really just one verse which simply tells Christians to not say three. I was a Christian at the time, and even though I mostly just accepted the Trinity, I could see how much division it caused among Christians who could not understand it, who could not explain it, who were forced to accept the “mystery” of it–and the Qur’an just says don’t say three, and that will be better for you. I had always addressed my prayers to God alone, and didn’t find it sensible that anyone else could hear them, or answer them.
So when I embraced Islam, it was merely an expression of the faith I always had, that there is no god but God. And Jesus, may the peace and blessings of God be upon him, was a noble messenger sent by God, preaching a message that I believed, the Gospel of forgiveness and righteousness. And that Islam was the same message, with a different messenger, calling people to the same righteous behavior with a very clear difference, the preservation of it for all time, and the completeness of it.
Simply, Islam answered every question I ever had about being a Christian. So I became a Muslim.