Conversion

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CONVERSION

In Islam conversion consists of the recitation of the shahada or profession of faith which is composed of two affirmations from the Qur?an that have been integrated to form a single declaration of faith in the uniqueness and oneness of God and the finality of His revelation to the prophet Muhammad. It reads "There is no god but God [Allah, the Arabic proper name for God used by both Arabic-speaking Muslims and Christians], and Muhammad is the Messenger of God." The Qur?an uses the terms "The Messenger of God" and "The Prophet" synonymously to refer to Muhammad, who is implicitly declared to be the last of God's genuine prophets.

Some Muslim scholars, among them the renowned Persian mystic, philosopher, and theologian al-Ghazali (1058–1111 c.e.), are of the opinion that a declaration of intent (niya), made prior to the recitation of the shahada, is necessary for its validity and for the validity of such ritual acts as prayer, fasting, and almsgiving. On the other hand many Muslim lawyers are persuaded that niya is only necessary for the validity of prayer (salat).

In early Islam conversion was not a condition for membership of the umma or Muslim community. Prior to the surrender of Mecca in 629 c.e. the Jews of Medina had the same rights and obligations as other members of the umma. After the fall of Mecca to Muhammad the zakat (alms tax) was levied on converts to Islam, benevolence being one of the chief virtues of the true believer, and the jizya (a personal poll-tax to be paid, where possible, in money) was imposed on all non-Muslims (with the exception of certain categories of persons including women, the poor, the enslaved, and impoverished monks) who wanted to join the umma.

Jihad and Conversion

While the spread of Islam is a religious duty, the Qur?an also instructs believers that there should be no compulsion in matters of religion (2:256), thus seemingly ruling out coercion as a means of conversion. There are many scholars of Islam, Muslim and non-Muslim, who are persuaded, largely on the basis of this text, that the obligation to perform jihad of the sword (al-jihad bi-il-sayf)—sometimes described as the lesser form of jihad, in contrast to jihad bi-il-nafs or moral and spiritual jihad, as the greater form—is only legitimate where the free practice of Islam is impeded.

Where jihad of the sword is contemplated there is the obligation of the summons, da?wa, which is based on Qur?an 17:15 and 16:25. The summons is meant to inform those to be attacked that Islam does not intend to pursue war for material gain such as property but for the purpose of defending or strengthening Islam. There are differences of opinion between the four principal Sunni schools of law (madhahib) on the necessity of da?wa for people who have previously been summoned to Islam. The Malikites believe it to be obligatory in this case also, the Hanafites recommend it, and the Shafites and Hanbalites say it is a matter of indifference.

Islam has rarely spread, in the sense of converting large numbers of non-Muslims of a territory, through jihad of the sword. The fundamentalist eighteenth-century reform movement in Arabia, the Wahhabiyya, as it is called by its opponents and by Europeans—the members referred to themselves as the Muwahiddun or Unitarians—was essentially a reform movement, not a drive to convert non-Muslims. Where and when jihad of the sword has been used its effect has usually been to establish a Muslim as the ruler of a territory, an outcome that was by no means always followed by large-scale attempts to convert the local population. A partial explanation for this can be found in Islamic political theory according to which the imposition of Muslim rule over a territory is sufficient to make that territory part of dar al-islam (the abode of Islam). The principal carriers of Islam have been holy men, jurists, traders, and, in the case of the spread of Islam to the Western world in modern times, economic migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers

In the time of the prophet Muhammad, conversion by conquest and political submission was basically limited to two societies, the Bedouins of Arabia and the Berbers of the Maghrib. After the prophet Muhammad's death in 632 c.e. the military conquest of the Fertile Crescent and Egypt was swift but did not account for the conversion of most of the population of these regions. This was to come about through a process of acculturation as the local people moved from the rural areas to the garrison towns (amsar) such as Qayrawan (Maghrib), Kufa (Iraq), and Basra (Iraq), as traders, craftsmen, laborers, and domestics who over time adopted the Arabic language and Islam.

Trade, Commerce, Sufism/Mysticism, and Conversion

The image non-Muslims in many parts of the world have had and continue to have of Islam is that of a progressive, modern religion offering literacy, a widely spoken language, numeracy, and the opportunity to participate in a wider commercial, political, and trading network. Islam often spread very slowly and even laboriously, its own progress greatly affected by the changing local economic, political, and religious situation in which it found itself. Islam's development in the Malay-Indonesian archipelago is a case in point. Archaeology tells us that by the late eleventh century there was a Muslim presence in Indonesia, and it would not be surprising given the commercial attraction of the archipelago and its role as a natural staging post between the Middle East and India on one side and China, where there has been a Muslim presence in the South from the ninth century, if Islam did not in fact arrive even earlier. According to Marco Polo who visited North Sumatra in 1292 the kingdom of Ferlak (Perlak) in present-day Aceh was already Muslim. If the process of expansion was slow it was also peaceful. Only in the fourteenth century did Islam spread to Northeast Malaya and Brunei, to the court of east Java, and to the southern Philippines. And it was to take another two hundred years before it found its way in to other parts of the archipelago when Sufism or mysticism (tasawwuf), in institutionalized and noninstitutionalized forms, came to play a pivotal role in the widespread dissemination of Islam among the people of Java and elsewhere. According to tradition Islam was brought to Java by nine saints or walis, and over a long period of four hundred years more gradually penetrated the society at all levels, never, however, displacing entirely other religious traditions.

The importance of Sufism in the conversion of large numbers to Islam elsewhere can hardly be exaggerated. The conversion of Bengal, like that of Java, is also attributed to Sufis. Institutionalized forms of Sufism and principally the Sufi tariqas or brotherhoods, among them the Qadiriyya, Tijaniyya, and Sanusiyya orders, were crucial to the expansion of Islam in North Africa and Africa south of the Sahara, as were the Mevlevi and Bektashi Sufi brotherhoods in Anatolia.

The indispensable role performed by traders, scholars, and holy men in laying the foundations of Islam is evident almost everywhere from the medieval empires of Takrur, Ghana, Mali, Kanem Bornu, and Songhay, to the Nile Valley, the Horn, and the East African coast, and across much of the Asian sub-continent, Central Asia, and as far as China. In all of these regions Islam first arrived with traders who were often clerics or were accompanied by clerics and/or holy men. We know from a variety of sources including the travel writings of the fourteenth-century Moroccan Ibn Battuta (1304–1368/77 c.e.) that the first Muslims in ancient Ghana, Mali, China, Indonesia, Somalia, and elsewhere lived separately and followed their own way of life, making little or no attempt to convert others. In places this period of seclusion was followed by one of engagement with the wider society that usually resulted in mixing or syncretism, a development that gave rise to conservative reaction, sometimes in the form of jihad of the sword.

Exile, Slavery, Economic Migration, and Conversion

Political exiles, convicts, and slaves have also been important vehicles for the dissemination of Islam as in the case of South Africa, where such people began to arrive from Southeast Asia in the mid-seventeenth century and formed the Cape Malay Muslim community. From the mid-nineteenth century Muslims arrived from India to form another distinct Islamic community, some coming as British-indentured labor to work on the sugar plantations, others as merchants and traders, and others as hawkers.

Economic migration has been the main vehicle for the spread of Islam to the Western world in modern times. No more than an exotic appendage to western European religion in the mid-twentieth century, largely through migration, the Muslim faith has become increasingly familiar across the European Union, and comprises an estimated fifteen million members, including relatively large numbers of converts from Christianity and other faiths. While there are no reliable statistics, the number of Muslims in North America would appear to be over four million and the number of mosques to serve them about two thousand.

The Political, Cultural, and Religious Consequences of Conversion

Thus, in the spread and development of Islam, military conquest has never been as important or effective as the creation of an Islamic environment, educational system, trading networks, and generally the building up of Muslim institutions. It was these initiatives that facilitated the development of Islam in Iran over several centuries from a small community of mainly Arab Muslims to one that included the majority of the population by the early years of the eleventh century. Sometimes conversion was an individual affair, sometimes it was collective in the sense that if the leader of a community or ethnic group converted the rest of the people would follow.

This notwithstanding, it is worth noting that the establishment of Muslim rule in a territory, whether by conquest or by peaceful means, did not necessarily constitute a challenge to the existing political order nor was it necessarily the prelude to a campaign by the new government to convert all of the inhabitants of that territory to Islam. Where jihad of the sword has been employed it needs to be remembered that the primary objective has not always been expansion but the reform of the Muslim community, as in the case of the Wahhabiyya movement and as was most likely the case with the Sokoto jihad in northern Nigeria in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.

Examples abound where Muslim rule led to little or no immediate change for the majority of the population under it. In Egypt, Coptic Christians were given governmental posts until the fourteenth century when pressure from the ulema (scholars) forced a change. While the Muslim conquest of India eliminated the dominant Hindu political-military class, the Chhatri, it confirmed the privileged status of the Brahmins who remained the guardians of a cultural vision that was non-Muslim. Even at the height of its power the Muslim community consisted of only a quarter of the population of Delhi and Agra. And the Muslim conquest of Iran and the surrounding regions initially favored the spread of other faiths, among them Nestorianism and Manichaeism, rather than Islam. In Java the introduction of Islam offered a new dimension to existing traditional, Buddhist, and Hindu religious beliefs and practices, bringing few significant changes to the political life of society.

Where Muslims conquer non-Muslim territory Muslim canon law (shari?a) guarantees to protect the life, liberty, and, in a modified way, the property of that section of the local population that has not been captured in arms. These people are known as ahl-al-dhimma (people of the covenant) or simply as dhimmis. All free adults who enjoy dhimmi status must pay the above-mentioned jizya or poll-tax and pay a tax (kharaj) on their real estate, over which they no longer enjoy the right of disposal. Strictly speaking, the status of dhimmis is open only to "people of scripture" (alh-al-kitab), that is, Jews, Christians, and Sabaeans, a category that is interpreted to cover Zoroastrians. In practice most Muslim countries will tolerate all peoples regardless of whether they are "people of scripture" or not.

Where dhimmi status was granted it carried with it the obligation to contribute toward the maintenance of Muslim armies, to dress differently from Muslims, and to renounce such rights as the right to bear arms and to ride on horseback. Legal restrictions were also imposed in relation to testimony in law courts, protection under criminal law, and marriage. Apart from such restrictions, what in practice happens is that a non-Muslim community in a Muslim state virtually governs itself under its own responsible leader who acts as its link with the Muslim government. And where conversion to or from Islam is concerned it is expected that the leadership of the community that has made the conversion will inform its counterpart of the event.

Conclusions

This account of the dynamics of conversion to Islam confines itself for the most part to the Muslim world. It is not exhaustive nor could it be given the great complexity and cultural diversity of that world. Appearance to the contrary notwithstanding, it is not intentionally reductionist. If greater consideration has been given to what might be termed the human, material, observable aspects of the phenomenon of conversion, and little has been said of its intellectual, spiritual, and theological dimensions, this should not be taken to mean that these dimensions are not more important elements of the process of becoming a Muslim or being Muslim.

Conversion in Islam is a radical call to reject all that associates the human with the divine, and on this foundation engages the convert in the task of personal and social transformation. It is a dynamic and multifaceted process of transformation that in some cases is gradual and in others abrupt; in some cases total, in others partial.

The path to Islam is more varied than outlined above. As students of conversion to Islam are aware individuals and whole communities have come to Islam having been first influenced by the personal example of a practicing Muslim, or through a process of intellectual conversion in which scholarly literature has played an important part, or through guidance given in a dream or a vision in which a wali or holy person, and even the prophet Muhammad himself, have appeared as counselors and guides, through mystical experiences, as a result of a search for healing, protection, and security, and for order and discipline in one's life. Either all or a combination of these triggers, and others, have activated the interest of individuals and communities in Islam and led to conversion.