Conversion from Islam to Christianity

Alberto MONTANER, «La mora Zaida, entre historia y leyenda (con una reflexión sobre la técnica historiográfica alfonsí)», en Historicist Essays on Hispano Medieval Narrative in Memory of Roger M. Walker, London, Maney Publishing for the MHRA, 2005 (Publications of the Modern Humanities Research Association, 16) [ISBN 1904350313], pp. 272-352.

Trotz der Wahl des "Hoffnungsträgers" liberal orientierter Iraner, Hassan Rohani, zum Präsidenten der Islamischen Republik im Juni 2013 hält der Druck auf christliche Gemeinden in Iran an. Mit zunehmender Tendenz werden persischsprachige Christen und Iraner muslimischer Herkunft u. a. am Besuch christlicher Gottesdienste und Zusammenkünfte gehindert. Neben evangelischen und freikirchlichen Gemeinden ist seit August desselben Jahres auch die katholische Kirche in Gestalt der Dominikanerpfarrei in Teheran von staatlichen Repressalien betroffen. (...)

Conversion to Islam in the 8th-10th centuries has largely been treated as a one time act, which completely separated the convert from his/her previous social and familial ties. Recently a handful of studies have pointed to pervasive patterns of vacillation between traditions, suggesting that conversion may have been something that happened multiple times during the course of an individual's life. Significantly, the available evidence also suggests that Christians, in certain social contexts or for reasons of expedience, performed social and linguistic actions appropriate to Islam, without abdicating their primary allegiance to Christianity.

Both Muslim and Christian sources witness to such "religious code switching." The eighth and ninth century martyr lives of Elias of Damascus and Bakchos the Younger, for example, provide mimetic accounts of this behaviour, while serving as didactic warnings to
their Christian audiences to avoid acting like Muslims. This injunction is also echoed in the Palestinian Summa Theologiae Arabica, in which the author denounces the habits of 'waverers' (muthabthabūn), who professed their beliefs in a manner similar to those employed by Muslims and were educated amongst them. This phenomenon was also commented upon in contemporary Islamic legal sources from Arabia and Baghdad. Aḥmad b. Ḥanbal (d.855 CE), Ibn Abī Shayba (d.c. 849 CE), and ‘Abd al-Razzāq (d.c. 826 CE) all transmit aḥādīth concerning the willingness of Christians to adopt and adapt Muslims modes of confession, while also prescribing religious code switching by suggesting that certain Islamic rituals be imposed on Christian women in the context of inter-confessional marriages and divorces.

However, despite the multiplicity of the evidence, the concepts of conversion and Islamization have rarely been studied in relation to these often nebulous patterns of inter-communal interaction. Employing the theory of multiple actor identity forwarded by B. Lahire and P. Burke, this paper will seek to address the limitations of the current conceptual
framework surrounding conversion to Islam during this early period.

Why do Muslims come to Christ? Five case studies that underline the key factors as Living God in Christ, the living Word, and the living Body of Christ. Conversion has been understood either "from above" (i.e. God's role) and "from below" (i.e. human responses). In this paper, we will look at what are called "conversion narratives" in which Muslims who came to Christ recount the factors that contributed to their coming to faith. We will show that these ex-Muslims encountered the living Jesus found in the living Word of the Bible and this was frequently aided by members of the living Body of Christ. This short paper surveys five sample studies: a case study of 170 conversion narratives mostly from Sudan; a case study of Palestinians and Bangladeshis; a paper examining the written testimonies of 173 Muslims worldwide who came to faith in Jesus Christ, a study of 750 former Muslims, and a study in Kenya of 17 urban ex-Muslims.

Bamford, D.;
Eric R. Dursteler, Renegade Women. Gender, Identity, and
Boundaries in the Early Modern Mediterranean. Baltimore (MD), Johns Hopkins University Press 2011.
E. Natalie Rothman, Brokering Empire. Trans-Imperial Subjects between Venice and Istanbul, Ithaca (NY) and London, Cornell University Press 2012.
Rosetta 17: 123 – 131.

NB:There is a formatting error in the official PDF download version of this review, which ahs been corrected here.

Present-day scholarship on religious conversions diverts from classic Protestant paradigms of sudden conversions and instant transformations of the self. Instead, it stresses that converts make active choices that are influenced by specific contexts and historical changes. This becomes evident in an ethnographic study of one controversial aspect of the recent refugee influx in Germany: the so-called mass conversions of Iranian refugees from Shia Islam to Christianity, which have been highly publicized and criticized since the height of immigration in 2015. The analysis draws on interview data with Ira-nian refugee converts and their pastors in Protestant churches in North Rhine-Westphalia between October 2017 and January 2018. The study reveals the need to theorize the sym-biotic connection between religious contacts, forced migration, and conversion to Chris-tianity. It applies Rambo's (1993) stage model of conversion and the analytical concept of secrecy (Jones 2014, Manderson et al. 2015, Simmel 1906) to demonstrate that the Iranian refugees' conversions are shaped by contexts, crises, encounters, quests, interactions, commitments, and consequences (Rambo 1993) as they negotiate the forces of secrecy, risk, transparency, and the benefits of being a Christian. The goal of this paper is to find thematic patterns in their narratives that can be systematized and can build a foundation for further study.

The paper demonstrates the the application of concepts and findings of network theory (also without the use of quantitative models, since the source evidence is too fragmentary) provides new frameworks for the description of religious conversion across and along Islamic-Christian borders in the late medieval Eastern Mediterranean.