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St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012 stan have further complicated matters by causing resentment against the “Christian” West and, by association, against local Christians. Christians in the region may thus be tarred with a triple brush: as sweepers, as infidels and as traitors. This collective identity has an important bearing on conversion. 4.2 Conversion from Christianity to Islam Christian literature celebrates conversion from Islam but rarely mentions conversion to Islam. In Muslim writings, the same is true in reverse. 79 Yet historically far more people from Christian communities have converted to Islam than vice-versa. This fact is not only honest to acknowledge, but of missiological relevance in places like Islampur where historic Christian communities survive in Muslim contexts. Furthermore, evangelists now planting first-generation churches in Muslim countries would do well to heed lessons of history which are liable to played out in their context too in future generations. 4.2.1 An historical perspective Why did Christians 80 under centuries of Muslim rule convert to Islam Factors varied from period to period and from region to region, which is why specific historical studies in specific contexts are important. 81 Different factors held sway to different extents and in different combinations, according to the specific context. 79 There are occasional exceptions. Among Christian researchers there is Andreas Maurer, who compared the conversion narratives of ten converts from Christianity to Islam with ten in the other direction. See ‘In Search of a New Life: conversion motives of Christians and Muslims’, in David Greenlee (ed.), From the Straight Path to the Narrow Way, (Milton Keynes, UK: Authentic, 2005), 93-108. A rare example from Muslim authors is Mohammad Khalil & Bilici Mucahit, ‘Conversion out of Islam: A Study of Conversion Narratives of Former Muslims’. The Muslim World (2007) 97:11-124. 80 I use the term “Christian” here as a descriptive label for any individual born into a community which calls itself Christian. Only some of those, whether today or in times past, are active followers of Jesus. 81 Philip Jenkins has shown how conversion to Islam, emigration and occasional ethnic cleansing left the once-predominant Eastern churches a mere remnant of their former glory. See Philip Jenkins, The Lost History of Christianity, (New York: St Francis Magazine is a publication of Interserve and Arab Vision 538
St Francis Magazine Vol 8, No 4 | August 2012 On rare occasions, usually triggered by some prevailing political conflict, forced conversion took place at the point of a sword. More systematic under the Ottomans was the practice of turning Christian child-slaves into Muslims to become troops for the imperial army. But when does force become coercion, or coercion become mere pressure The burden of the jizya tax varied under different rulers, but in some periods became an oppressive burden, from which the only means of escape was to convert to Islam and pay zakat instead. Muslim family law also pervasively fostered a one-way expansion of Islam, in that it permitted people to marry into the Muslim community but not out of it. Thus, even if those wives themselves did not convert, their offspring were automatically counted as Muslim. Personal conviction certainly played a part in some Christians converting to Islam. Some were attracted by Islamic apologetics, 82 some by Muslims’ lifestyle and some by the Sufis’ claim to offer blessings and access to God. It seems that Christian populations turned to Islam more quickly in regions where their faith was not firmly rooted in local language and culture; this is one likely reason why the Berber Christians in North Africa, compelled to follow Latin rites under Roman priests, switched to Islam more quickly than did the Egyptian Copts with their indigenous leadership and liturgy. The “stick” of social discrimination for Christians, combined with the “carrot” of social advancement for converts, was another factor in some contexts. Although the so-called “Covenant of Umar” with its heavy discriminatory burden on non-Muslims was not applied uniformly, yet it reinforced a general sense of dhimmi status. Richard Fletcher writes of Christians under Arab rule in Spain, HarperCollins, 2008); also Richard Bulliet, Conversion to Islam in the Medieval Period: An Essay in Quantitative History. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979); N. Levtzion, (ed) Conversion to Islam. (New York and London: Holmes and Meier, 1979); works by Bat Ye’or, etc. 82 Thus it has been argued that some of the Christian apologetics towards Islam in the early Abbasid period was motivated by a desire not so much to draw Muslims to Christianity as to stem the growing haemorrhage of Christians to Islam. St Francis Magazine is a publication of Interserve and Arab Vision 539
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