Sinead O’Connor's Near-Death Experience
The Claim
After years of mental health struggles, singer Sinead O’Connor almost died before converting to Islam.
News posted on
Emerging story
Social media users across a variety of platforms posted about Sinead O’Connor’s mental health struggles following an interview with RTE. Some users even believed she actually died.
Misbar’s Analysis
Misbar's investigation shows that Sinead O’Connor, whose legal name was changed to Shuhada' Sadaqat in 2018 when she converted to Islam, has had mental struggles for years. While her musical career took off, Sadaqat experienced several controversies that affected her public image. On October 2, 1992, she tore up Pope John Paul II’s picture while performing on Saturday Night Live. This was intended as a protest against the sexual abuse of children in the Catholic Church, and led to several adversarial encounters between Sadaqat and other celebrities. When she converted to Islam in 2018, she posted on Twitter: "What I'm about to say is something so racist I never thought my soul could ever feel it. But truly I never wanna spend time with white people again (if that's what non-muslims are called). Not for one moment, for any reason. They are disgusting."
In 2017, Sadaqat released a video saying that she was living out of a motel and had no social support besides her psychiatrist.
In a June 21, 2019 interview with Dave Fanning on RTE 2FM, she said that the video was “screaming to save my life… It actually saved my life. When you are suicidal but you don’t want to die, you’d do anything to save your life.” Sadaqat has reported finding peace after converting to Islam. She said that even though she was raised Roman Catholic, she feels she has “been a Muslim all my life and didn’t even know it… because I have to fight stigma every day in my own life I identified hugely with the stigma that the Muslims have had to deal with so in some ways I’m a bit of a mercenary as well. I see myself as a soldier.”
In a January 4, 2020 interview with Tommy Tiernan of RTE, she said, “I don’t suffer any longer, that’s all in the past, thanks be to God. At the time, the desire I had was to stay alive, and that’s why I was figuring, by any means necessary. For me, there was a lot of loneliness and publicly reaching out but there was also a lot desperation, I was dying, I really was, so I was grasping anything that might keep me alive.”
However, since Sadaqat did not actually try to commit suicide, it is misleading to say that she almost died.
