Sinéad O'Connor officially changed her name after converting to Islam
Poppy Bilderbeck
Featured Image Credit: HGL/GC Images / Nick Wall/Mirrorpix/Getty Images
Sinéad O'Connor converted to Islam five years ago revealing her name change on social media.
On 23 October 2018, the legendary Irish singer - who's family confirmed yesterday (26 July) has sadly passed away - revealed she'd changed her name to Shuhada after converting to Islam.
O'Connor was born Catholic but soon became outspoken in her opposition of the church.
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O'Connor was placed in the An Grianán Training Centre - which had previously been one of the infamous Magdalene laundries - at the age of 14 after being caught shoplifting and bunking off school.
The facility was run by Catholic monastic order Order of Our Lady of Charity.
While the training centre helped her develop her writing and music, it was also a traumatising time for O'Connor, who said she experienced 'panic, terror and agony' when sent upstairs to 'sleep in the old folks home,' as per Spin magazine.
In 1995, she appeared on After Dark and spoke about the Catholic Church in Ireland and the sexual abuse which went on.
A few years later, in October 1992, while performing a version of Bob Marley’s 'War' on Saturday Night Live, O'Connor ripped up an image of the Pope to protest against the abuse of children in the Catholic Church.
While the singer went on to commend the Christian faith for helping her through her experiences of child abuse and noting she still believed in God, she continued using her platform as a performer throughout the 2000s to raise awareness of the Catholic church sexual abuse scandals.
O'Connor - best known for her song 'Nothing Compares 2 U' - condemned the Vatican as being 'a nest of devils' in a piece for The Sunday Independent and called for an 'alternative' church to be created.
In 2018, she asked Pope Francis to excommunicate her and in 2018 she converted to Islam.
Before changing her name upon her conversion to Islam, O'Connor first legally adopted the name Magda Davitt in 2017.
She made the change to be 'free of the patriarchal slave names' and 'free of the parental curses'.
However, in a post to Twitter on 23 October, 2018, O'Connor revealed her new name Shuhada Davitt - later Shuhada Sadaqat.
She explained her decision to change her name was 'the natural conclusion of any intelligent theologian’s journey'.
The singer continued: "All scripture study leads to Islam. Which makes all other scriptures redundant."