What happened to my friend?

This is a specific personal question so bear with me – one of my better friends is a girl that I knew from the first year of university (undergrad). We both didn’t really get along with the people in our our program we were pretty good friends well past graduation, more than 5 years. We weren’t the kind of friends that hung together all the time as we lived in separate parts of town but we had close contact online and met for lunches and such.

About 4 months ago all I lost all contact with her – it’s hard to know when as we both will ‘drop off’ sometimes when busy but never for that long. I’ve sent her texts, emails, FB messages, and got nothing.

I didn’t think much of it as I was going through my own ‘things’ and figured she’d make contact again at some point. But today I noticed a past comment left by her on FB was greyed-out, or she had cancelled her facebook account. For people our age (mid-20’s) this is pretty much unheard of. I contacted her closest friend from high school and apparently she received an email a few weeks ago that she had decided to more devoutly focus on her spirituality and had to cast away her old life, including her friends (this is paraphrased).

She’s from Bangladesh and was I assumed Muslim but certainly wasn’t an extreme practicer – she went for drinks once in awhile, went out with boys, had a job, etc. She did however fast and observe the religious holidays.

I’ve just learned of this and both her friend and I have no idea what happened. The last communication to either of us was this email she sent to the other friend – and she didn’t respond so we don’t even know if she really wrote it.

Has this ever happened to anyone before? I’m so confused.