[Last Name] 1

Ayushi Jain

Asad Ahmed

B.A. (Hons) English [2018Eng1064]

30 Apr, 2020

Religion and Religiosity: Conversion to Islam

Religious conversion is the acceptance, to exclude others, of a set of values associated

with one specific religious religion. Thus "religious conversion" would describe the

abandonment of devotion to one religion and identification with another. It may be from one

denomination to another of the same faith, from Sunni Islam to Shi'a Islam for example. People

move for numerous purposes to a new faith, including successful conversion through free

option due to changing in values, secondary conversion, conversions in deathbeds, conversion

for ease, marriage conversion, and forced conversion.

Rambo defines conversion as “a process of religious change that takes place in a

dynamic force field of people, events, ideologies, institutions, expectations, and orientations.”

Islam teaches that everyone is Muslim at birth but the parents or society can cause them to

deviate from the straight path. When anyone embraces Islam, they are perceived to be heading

back to the original condition. It is widely accepted that someone who professes Islamic faith,

that is, who acknowledges God's union and Mohammad's prophetic role, is a Muslim and is

subject to Muslim rule. A Muslim need not be born; it is appropriate whether he is a Muslim by

occupation or conversion. Religion relies on conviction according to Islamic theory; an adherent

can renounce Islam much like an unbeliever can embrace Islam. It is up to the courts to

determine if an individual is a Muslim, or not, and this depends on the circumstances of each

case.
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Which are the actual conversion tests? When would we claim a guy either

embraced Islam or rejected it? In the case of Abdool Razack v. Aga Mohamed

Jaffer Bindaneem, it has been argued that-

No court can test or gauge the sincerity of religious beliefs. In all cases where according

to the Mahomedan Law, unbelief or difference of creed is a bar to a marriage with a true

believer, it is enough if the alien in religion embraces the Mahomedan faith. Profession with or

without conversion is necessary and sufficient to remove the disability.

And the Privy Council complied with the statement. But a mere declaration of belief is

not sufficient to establish a conversion for legal purposes. There should in addition be some

evidence of the factum of conversion in addition to the non-convert’s declaration before the

conversion can be given legal effect.

Theories of Muslim migration in India:

Much of India's interpretations of Islamic conversions can be reduced to three simple, or

insufficient theories. The first of them is the idea of the "religion of sword” theory. As a trend in

Islam's Western historiography, it has a long and tired past stretching back to the period of the

Crusades; and it has always had its supporters for Indian Islam, too. But, as Peter Hardy recently

noted, those who argue that Indian Muslims have traditionally been forcefully converted fail to

identify either "force" or "conversion," leading one to believe that a community can and will

alter its religious orientation merely because it has its sword at its neck.

But the most important problem with this idea is its incongruity with the geology of

Muslim conversion in South Asia. Research show that the degree of Muslim political

involvement and the degree of conversion to Islam are in inverse relationship. The regions with
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the population's most drastic conversion, such as eastern Bengal or western Punjab, lay on the

edges with Indo-Muslim rule, while the heartland of law, the upper Gangetic plain, saw a far

lower rate of conversion.

A second hypothesis normally progressed to clarify the changes of Indian to Islam is the

"political patronage" hypothesis, or the view that Indians of the medieval period changed over so

as to get some non-strict favors from the ruling class-relief from taxes, advancement in the

administration, etc. In the mid fourteenth century, for instance, Ibn Battuta announced that

Indians introduced themselves as new proselytes to the Khilji Sutans who thus compensated

them with robes of respect as indicated by their position. Increasingly significant instances of the

"political patronage" phenomenon were the instances of gatherings coming into the employment

of Muslim rulers and along these lines bit by bit acculturating themselves to Indian Islam.

Sufficient however the support proposition possibly in representing the relativity light

occurrence of Islamization in the political heartland, it can't disclose the gigantic changes to

Islam that occurred along the political periphery particularly in Punjab and Bengal. For political

patronage, similar to the influence of the sword, diminishes instead of increments as one pushes

from the Delhi heartland toward periphery.

To clarify the phenomenon of mass conversion to Islam on India's outskirts and not

simply in the heartland, a third hypothesis is every now and again conjured, one which has

adversary long being the most famous clarification of the phenomenon the “religion of social

liberation” hypothesis. Explained by British ethnographer, Pakistani nationals and Indian

Muslims among numerous others, the substance of the hypothesis is that the Hindu caste

system is an unbendingly biased type of social association and that the least and most

corrupted rank, perceiving in Islam and philosophy of social equity, changed over to it as once
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huge mob so as to escape Brahmanical oppression. This hypothesis, as well, had numerous

significant problems.

Toward a New Theory of Conversion: Accretion and Reform

Substantially more with regards to the topography and sequence of Muslim

transformation in India would be a comprehension of mass conversion as a procedure whereby

preliterate individuals on the biological and political boondocks of an extending agrarian

culture got retained into the religious ideology of that society. New change process was

partitioned into two sub forms, that of accretion and that of reform.

From a psychological perspective, the accretion aspect of conversion sees individuals

either including new gods or superhuman agencies to the current cosmological stocks, or

distinguishing new gods or agencies with existing substances in their cosmology. In the

reform dimension process, on the other hand, Islamic supernatural agencies are not only

distinguished from the pre-existing cosmological structure, but the latter is firmly

repudiated. This is accompanied with greater attention given to the all-encompassing power

of one Islamic agencies in particular, the incomparable God Allah , who assumes the

function and powers of all other agencies in the former pantheon. In a history of religious

framework, this corresponds Max Weber has called the process of religious rationalization, that

is, the absorption of many lesser beings by once universal, Supreme God.

In terms of social organization, the accretion aspect of conversion entails no Muslim

communal exclusiveness or even distinctness. In strictly social terms they are still a relatively

indistinct community. In the reform dimension of the conversion process, in any case, the

network sees itself as socially unmistakable and intentionally follows up on that recognition. In
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like manner, the gathering opposes interest in non-Muslims ceremonies, however will, for

instance, embrace Islamic legacy customs, a training which definitively isolates the Muslim

people group from its neighbors. At last, one can recognize accretion and reform in terms of

the general socio – political environment in which each procedure happens.

Throughout the entire existence of Islam in India, one significant explanation that Islam

sank such profound roots in regions, for example, East Bengal or West Punjab was that the

local populace of those regions were far less coordinated into the proficient of the Brahmins

than were the individuals of upper India. Albeit upper India had been for a considerable length

of time the focal point of Muslims organization, the rate of transformation to Islam there was

as a result generally low. The agent of conversions that has, in any case, got the most

consideration is the Sufi. From the religion view point, the political and cultural developments

maybe seen as efforts to perfect a process of conversion having roots deep in the history of the

sub – continent. For India, at least, mass conversion to Islam was a very gradual process

involving to discernible aspects, accretion and reform. Indians who adhered to Islam, the

symbols, rituals, and practices of local religion served as models of or descriptions of the social

orders and its religious life. By viewing the double role of Islam as a dependent and

independent variable, then we can see the conversion process as a constantly evolving,

dynamic interactions between religion and society.

Rowena Robinson observes, “Conversion as a sociological phenomenon is rarely

limited only to a transformation in religious beliefs. Social and cultural changes always

accompany it.” Based on limited literature, we find that group or community conversion lead

to social transformation. Studies show that conversion alters one’s identity. Conversion is a
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major change of situation in one’s life that creates an identity crisis where the convert forms a

new identity based on one’s conversion experience.

Islam makes a distinction between conversion to Islam and conversion from Islam. The

former is called ihtida or hidayah (divine guidance), whereas the latter is irtidad (apostasy)

(Watt 1980) Islam introduced the concept of din al-fitrah (innate religion) to express that

everyone is endowed at birth with a natural ability to know God. The Qur´an states that every

soul before creation was asked the question by God “Am I not your Lord?” and the souls

answered “Yes!” to it. Thus, Muslims consider all children as Muslims until they reach

puberty. The tradition of the Prophet puts that “children are born possessing the  fitrah, and it is

their parents who turn them into Jews, Christians or Muslims” (Faruqi 1979). Therefore, by

converting to Islam, one turns to the religion which is already present in him by nature. It is for

this reason that some converts to Islam prefers the word revert to convert.

How common is religious conversion in Muslim world?

Under certain definitions of sharia, conversion by Muslims to other religions is

forbidden, and converts are deemed apostates (though non-Muslims are permitted to convert

to Islam). Some Muslim clerics are equating this apostasy with rebellion, a crime punishable

by execution. The historical tradition goes back to the seventh century when Prophet

Mohammed commanded the execution of a Muslim man who supported Islam's rivals during

a time of battle. Because apostasy is not, however, a felony under the penal codes of Muslim

nations, the murtad (apostate) is usually not liable to any judicial punishment. “The Quran

contains a provision that says ‘he who has embraced Islam and then abandons it will receive

punishment in hell after Judgment Day,” says M. Cherif Bassiouni, an expert on Islamic law
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at DePaul University College of Law, and thus there is no penalty on earth. Still, in

Bassiouni's view, orthodox scholars misinterpreted Prophet Mohammed's early activities

and found apostasy to be a crime punishable by death. They offer a grace period of up to ten

days for religious believers to rethink their decision until the verdict is reached.

How common is religious conversion in the Muslim world?

While conversions to Islam are ordinary and broadly announced, conversions out of

Islam are commonly kept more secretive. In the West, specialists gauge a large number of

Muslims change to Christianity consistently yet keep their conversions mystery because of a

paranoid fear of requital. “Converts from Islam, especially those who become involved in

Christian ministries, often use assumed names, or only their first names, in order to protect

themselves and their families,” writes Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a Washington-based terrorism

analyst in Commentary. Pockets of Christian minorities are dissipated all through the Arab

world. Intermarriages between Christians and Muslims in some majority Muslim countries, such

as Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, have not been uncommon, though Muslim spouses rarely formally

convert to Christianity.