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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012
of a Christian but not the core identity. That is, in their own worldview
and self-awareness, their Christianity is only tangential; it is not
at the core of who they are.
Can we speak of “nominal Muslims” in the same way Is this a
valid comparison when Islam and Christianity (or evangelical Christianity
at any rate) have such different emphases on the relative importance
of orthopraxis and orthodoxy Perhaps a better way of putting
it would be to speak of “cultural” Muslims, embedded in Muslim
majority communities and going with the flow of a religiously legitimated
society without necessarily being deeply committed to Islam
at a “core identity” level.
However Muslims who live in a non-Islamic context, where their
cultural assumptions are not taken for granted by wider society, are
thereby prompted to distinguish between social and core identities.
It is no longer so easy just to go with the flow of a Muslim social
identity. This prompts migrants (or their children) critically to examine
their assumptions and to make choices at the core identity level.
Some decide to follow Islam in a committed, conscious way, some
turn from Islam to another faith or atheism, and some continue to
live with the unresolved cognitive dissonance of clashing worldviews.
Thus all three identity levels have a religious element. Since Islam
lays claim to all these areas in a holistic way, those who leave it
face a daunting task of renegotiating each aspect of their identity.
3 Conversion and Identity
3.1. A transformed identity at each level
Our understanding of Muslim conversion to Christianity is assisted
by conversion studies, which incorporates insights from such fields as
psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, missiology and of
course theology. Perhaps the most influential scholar in recent years
to write on the topic is the American Lewis Rambo. 74 He sought to
74 Lewis Rambo, Understanding Religious Conversion (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1993).
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