The sun is nowhere to be seen as she stirs the batter in the metal bowl. Her hair is combed into place and she looks fresh, not at all tired for this early morning hour. She smiles as she pours orange juice into a tall crystal glass and batter onto the griddle.

“These pancakes are going to be good,” says Rhyan Ozkaynak, 29. Although raised as a Methodist Christian in southern California, Ozkaynak recently married a Muslim man from Turkey named Onur, and is in the process of converting to the Islamic faith.

Though very active in Christian choir and camp when she was young, Ozkaynak was turned off by her church’s upper middle class African-American community when she was a teenager. “I stopped going to church because people just gossiped and judged what each other wore to service. I didn’t like the message that was being sent,” says Ozkaynak.

She believes that religion is something between herself and God and that going to church didn’t support her personal sense of spirituality. In her recent exploration of Islam she has found many aspects of the faith that she relates to.

American women converting to a Muslim lifestyle is more common than one might think. Rhyan Ozkaynak is not alone - Islam is the fastest growing religion in the world today and Western women make up the largest number of converts, outnumbering male converts by a ratio of almost 4:1.

“I love that you have to fast,” says Ozkaynak as she describes her feelings about Ramadan. “It’s the first time I’ve fasted and I think it has taught me a lot about will power, self control and appreciating food. I’ve tried to diet of course, and I don’t really do it that well, but when you’re fasting for God it’s easy.

Some people in the West have the idea that Muslim women are oppressed and weak because many wear the hijab and cover their hair and skin and choose the role of wife and mother over that of a career woman. Women like Ozkaynak don’t see it that way.

“Most people don’t know anything about Islam, they think it’s all about having multiple wives and locking your women up in the house,” says Ozkaynak, “but the Koran teaches to always respect women - the choice to cover yourself is out of reverence for God, it’s another way to represent modesty.”

Ozkaynak wears a scarf only when she prays and stresses that Muslim women are prized and taken care of by men like the “old-school way of men and women” and believes it’s better for the success of the family unit.

Some modern Western women seem to see it the same way and actually feel liberated by their choice to convert. They don’t view becoming Muslim as oppressive at all, and in fact believe that Islamic women are judged by their intelligence versus their physical appearance, which they feel is often the case in Western society.

Islam’s high regard for family and community and their strict moral and ethical standards are attractive to Western women who have become fed up with what they see as America’s failing family structure, poor societal ethics and the importance placed on material wealth and individual image.

“Islam is a lifestyle, it’s not about going to church once a week,” says Andrea Ibbesaine, who converted in 2002 at the age of 27. Ibbesaine’s mother is a Mormon, her father, an Italian Catholic and she went to an Episcopalian school as a child.

“Being Muslim is just about being as good as you can be, no drinking or smoking and doing five basic things; these things help you connect with God everyday, they are reminders and that’s good for all of us,” Ibbesaine says.

The five things Ibbesaine is referring to are the ‘five pillars of Islam’ and they consist of Shahada, or testament, which is the sentence spoken to convert to the Islamic faith. Becoming Muslim only involves one initial action and that is the recital of Shahada where a prospective convert says; “I witness there is only one God and Mohammed is his profit.”

Converts must fully believe in their words at the time they recite them for conversion to be recognized.

The other pillars include praying, fasting, giving to charity and Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, which should be done at least once in your lifetime.

Tanja Almarwani, 36, was born in Oakland and raised Catholic, she converted to Islam seven years ago after meeting her now ex-husband. Almarwani considers herself a feminist and struggles with the misconceptions people have regarding Muslim women every day. Even her family questioned her choice to convert and still struggle to accept her new lifestyle.

“Islam is a patriarchal religion and there are those that will use that to exploit women but that hasn’t been my experience,” Almarwani says.

In fact she believes the profit Mohammed was a feminist himself. Mohammed said: “Treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers.”

Almarwani believes that Mohammed’s teachings are beneficial to the standing of women in society, but for her family this is a difficult concept to embrace.

“The fact is that Islam gives an enormous amount of respect and dignity to women and demands that society treat them with honor and justice and people who aren’t familiar with Islam don’t really get that,” says Almarwani.

“Muslim women were even the first women to vote, long before any other religion,” she adds with conviction.

Ozkaynak says people just need to educate themselves about the Muslim world before forming an opinion. Although she is now in the process of conversion and understands the Muslim way of life, she used to be skeptical herself.

“I was telling everyone even though I was marrying a Muslim man I wasn’t planning to convert and making jokes about how I wasn’t going to be part of no harem,” she says.

Ozkaynak had her own misconceptions about Muslim women and worries about how she may or may not be accepted, but the more she learned about Islam, the more intrigued she became.

“What people don’t realize is that there are many different types of Muslims, just as there are many different types of Christians. For example, the African-American Muslims that came around in the ‘50s with Malcolmn X and Muhammad Ali have a totally different conversion process. The Nation of Islam is just one of many derivatives of the Islamic faith,” Ozkaynak says.

She still struggles with the idea of no longer celebrating Christmas, mainly because of how it will effect her interaction with her family during the holiday season. On the other hand, she says it will be all right with her to give it up because Christmas isn’t really about God anymore, but more about consumerism, and that’s not a message she wants to teach her future children. She knows she wants to raise her kids to be Muslim.

These women are only some of the growing numbers of Westerners who have found their way to the Islamic faith, each gaining peace and direction from its teachings. Becoming Muslim isn’t difficult, some even consider it the ‘hip’ thing to do these days -and for those of you who believe these women only convert for the sake of a man, Ozkaynak says think again.

“My husband’s never tried to coerce me into fasting or conversion, he couldn’t even if he wanted to, part of Islam is that it has to be a personal choice – you have to put yourself on the path, no one else can do it for you.”