Thanks, shminux. I'm quite accustomed to being quickly rejected. (I've been "conferencing," we used to call it, since the 1980s on the W.E.L.L., where I was a moderator.) The common comment is tl;dr. But when I'm succinct, I'm also not understood. Getting it just right, under most conditions, can be a tad difficult in writing, which is very narrow-bandwidth. Sometimes it's not clear that there even is a "just right." The optimized writing, for some readerships, might be none at all.

Now, to your questions. Along with most who accepted Islam as adults, we don't say "converted." I started out as an agnostic/atheist in my teens, but then life demonstrated something else to me, and that's a long story. I was, for a time, a student of Buddhism, and could still be called a Buddhist. I translated the Heart Sutra from the Sanskrit, in my 20s, and had some great correspondence with Edward Conze. Fun.

However, I eventually read the Qur'an, and saw something in it, a, shall we say, familiar message. Some of it seemed really weird. So, eventually, I began to read it in Arabic. The weirdness almost entirely disappeared. Artifact of translation. Again, this would be a long conversation in itself.

I did not "choose Islam over other religions." There is no "over" and, in a sense, there is no "other" as well. Rather, I accepted what I came to understand was the Qur'an. I trust it as a "message from Reality." The definition of "Muslim" can be boiled down to that, essentially.

But everything is a message from Reality.

The Qur'an appears to me as remarkably clear, but that certainly could be because Arabic is a context-driven language, each word is derived from root meanings, with the specific meaning being supplied by context, and that context includes our individual understandings.

If I thought that beating women is a-okay, there is a famous verse that could confirm it for me. However, given my own context, that verse, as commonly translated, seemed quite weird, uncharacteristically unjust, really bad advice. Looking at Arabic, the word translated as "beat" is "adrib." The word means "strike," the correspondence in English is pretty good. "Beat" is repeated striking, and would be shown as a different grammatical form. "Beat" is a terrible translation. By men, of course.

Okay, "strike." Still sounds bad, eh? However, what does "strike" mean? It's only in a context where physical striking is expected that we come up with the negative meaning. "Strike up the band" doesn't mean whack them. "Strike a metaphor" -- an actual Qur'anic usage -- doesn't mean "crush it." Say something "striking" or take a 'striking" action -- something to get her attention -- is probably the meaning, to me. And I could then relate this to the textual context, and it makes sense. Do something unexpected. Being a bully is boring, it doesn't work, not to create fulfilling marriages.

And for the Buddhism question, my turn to ask. What does "work better" mean?