I’m just curious. Can anyone become a Muslim? What are the Islamic rules on conversion? Can a white person convert to this religion? Has anyone ever met a white Muslim cleric?
As I understand it, Islam is a very agressively proselytizing religion, and a basic goal of their faith is to convert the entire world. Much like Christianity.
That said, I do not know any details as to conversion requirements or ceremonies.
Three minutes with Google, and I find that it is easier than I thought.
from
http://www.themodernreligion.com/convert/islam_conversion_main.htm
Someone can correct me on this, but I think also if any non-muslim person marries a muslim, they will have to convert to Islam.
No more than a non-Catholic() must become a Cathlic() to marry a Catholic(*)
- insert religion of choice here
Now some religions may require conversion to be married within their church/temple/mosque and you may recieve pressure from your SO’s family but that is hardly a rock solid requirement.
White people have converted to Islam before but as I understand it the number of white converts isn’t very high compared to say black converts. Don’t have a cite for that or anything. I ma not be remembering my history right but I think a member of the British parliament once converted to islam and I think he called himself a sheik. Lord Hadley or something was his name.
What’s “white”? Even under the old classical racial classification schemes, Arabs were generally lumped in with the “caucasians” :). With a little digging I can probably find you some pictures of pretty pale, redhaired Arabs and Berbers. But anyway…
Islam is currently ( and has been definitively since at least the 8th century ) a universal religion like Christianity and will take anyone who is sane ( a necessary precondition for informed consent in Islam ) and has a pulse.
The confusion of black vs. white I assume has something to do the pattern of conversion in North America, where much of the proselytization in decades past was aimed at ( or was internal to ) the black community for a variety of reasons. This is still true to some extent, but is probably starting to break down just a bit. Especially since the 80’s when Muslim immigration to the U.S. increased significantly.
- Tamerlane
green: You’re corrected. Islam does not require that anyone convert; however, it is generally held (and, IIRC, in some countries, it’s the law) that a male Muslim may marry a woman of any faith, but a female Muslim may only marry a Muslim man.
I understand that Islam at one time proseltyzed so aggressively that they had a custom of conversion by the sword, i.e., giving a prisoner a choice of converting to Islam or being killed. It may still exist, though I’ve never heard of it occurring in modern times.
I’m not real clear on this point so don’t flame me for bringing it up. Just something I remember reading.
You got the sword in either case!
Decline to convert and you got death: the sword in the neck.
Agree to convert, and (since Islam males are required to be circumcized) you got the sword in another body location.
This is true, but there is little or no direct Quranic basis for these forced conversions. Most modern Muslims will be quick to point out the verses which state that there is no compulsion in religion (e.g., sura 2.256). Other verses, however, range from cold to downright hostile. “Do not take Jews or Christians as friends,” enjoins God in sura 5.51. Elsewhere: “Fight those who do not believe in God… until they pay the tax in acknowledgment of superiority and they are in a state of subjection.” (sura 9.29) And what is to be made of verses such sura 47.4, which unequivocably orders that “[w]hen you meet those who disbelieve, smite at their necks until you have killed and wounded many of them”? Or sura 9.5, which instructs believers to “slay the idolaters wherever you find them”? Though in context these verses may not actually be general edicts, history offers no shortage of wars, massacres, slavery, pillaging, forced mass conversions, and humiliating poll-taxes which Muslim civilizations have perpetrated and then excused with these verses. Perhaps they were simply following the example set by the Mohammed himself, who, according to the Sirat Sayyidina Muhammad Rasul Allah, authorized the dispossession and extermination of the entire Jewry of Medina after he captured the city in 627 C.E.
Of course, lest anyone accuse me of an exclusively anti-Muslim bias, I must admit the evils of Islam are rivalled in the West only by the heights of Judeo-Christian barbarity. The Torah and Bible (which, incidentally, Islam also accepts as holy, if imperfect, scripture) have been (and perhaps in some places, continue to be) read as condoning slavery (Ex. 22:3, 1 Pet. 2:18), ordering the subjugation of women (1 Pet. 3:1, 2 Tim. 2:11-12), and prescribing the death penalty for everything from insolence to homosexuality (Lev. 20:9-13).
My Muslim ex-boyfriend once asked me if I would consider converting. (He was Caucasian, so does that make him an “original” white person? Anyway, he was pretty darn light-skinned, lighter than I am.) My response probably wasn’t as tactful as it could have been; actually, I laughed. Then I got hold of myself and asked him why he would want me to. His answer: “Well, because otherwise my parents would never accept you.” (One of his brothers had married a Russian woman, and his parents refused to speak to her until she converted and had the first couple of grandchildren. I don’t know how they would have spoken anyway, since the parents didn’t speak Russian and I don’t imagine the wife spoke Tabasaran or Azeri.)
I told him not to get me wrong, I have the greatest respect for sincere followers of any religion, which is why I, as a Jewish agnostic, wouldn’t consider disrespecting Islam by converting from one religion I don’t believe in to another religion I don’t believe in. Besides, I figured my own parents would strangle me first, so it wouldn’t be an issue.
But anyway, sure, in other parts of the world especially, plenty of “white” people have converted to Islam. Just look at your average Bosnian Muslim, for example.
Not really. Forced conversions occurred, but they were the exception rather than the rule. Indeed during the first century of Islamic expansion, non-Arab conversion was discouraged ( Muslims formed a non-taxed elite in those early years, so conversion diluted the economic base as well as weakening the elite status of the Arabs ). Large-scale conversion and hostility towards religious minorities, especially towards the Christian populace, did not become common until the 10th-12th century, when the breakdown of the Pax Islamica caused an insecure backlash by Muslim rulers at about the same time as the destruction of the old landed gentry of Iraq and Iran caused a disintegration of non-Muslim communities in those regions. Persecution was fierce at times, but highly sporadic, and even then directly forced conversion was rare - Rather social pressures of various sorts were the primary factor.
Large parts of Egypt and Iran were converted in the 10th and 11th centuries, northern Syria in the 13th and 14th, much of the rest of Egypt also in the 14th. And these were regions that had been under Islamic control since the 7th century.
The most notable large-scale instance of “forced conversion” of a region occurred in Persia in the 16th and 17th centuries, but it was not from non-Muslim to Muslim, but rather from Sunnism to Shi’ism. In this case it was accomplished by banning the teaching of Sunni doctrine, killing or driving out the Sunni “clergy”, and importing Shi’a “clergy” to replace them.
- Tamerlane
Muslim men may marry women who are Muslim or of the People of the Book (Jews and Christians). Women are typically not permitted to marry non-Muslims - although I have yet to find a verse in the Qur’an. The reasoning, not explicitly stated in the Qur’an, is that the man’s faith holds sway in a household - the father’s religion will be the religion of his children. (The case is opposite in Judaism.)
Nonetheless, it is almost routine for a non-Muslim to adopt Islam upon marrying a Muslim man. The wife of former Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan is an example - she converted from Judaism to Islam.
One of my cousins, when he came to America, married an American Christian woman. This, of course, scandalized his family (especially since he was engaged to someone upon leaving Pakistan). Her name is Rebecca, and his parents informed the entire family that she had converted to Islam and adopted the name of “Rabia” (ruh-bee-ah). So, everyone called her Rabia, which she thought was a Pakistani version of Rebecca and somethign easier for her in-laws to use. When I later asked her when she converted to Islam, she said she never did. She had heard of rumors that her in-laws said she converted, but being a good daughter-in-law did not attempt to counter their remarks in public.
Some explication from the Qur’an:
Translation is that of Abdullah Yusuf Ali from http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/quran/.
WRS
Conversion is simple and complex - the basic requirement is stating the shahadah (and circumcision for the uncircumcised).
If one wants to be recognized as a Muslim, then witnesses and whatnot also become involved.
It is also customary for people to adopt a Muslim name.
Conversion to Islam is a bit more clear than conversion to Judaism. Most Muslims will accept a convert without challenging the person’s choice of movement or school of fiqh (most converts don’t even pay attention to choosing one of the four traditional schools - it’s almost like a fifth school has come about) or authorities under which the conversion took place. Obvious exceptions are those who convert to the Ahmadi, Qadiani, “Nation of Islam,” and Ismaili (particularly Aghakhani Ismaili) movements. Wahhabis may or may not accept a person’s conversion to a movement other than their own (as they see themselves as the only Muslims: the rest of the Muslim world is in jahiliyyah or ignorance and in kufr or disbelief). Almost all Muslims recognize conversion to the Wahhabi movement (except for a few liberal fringe movements that rejects Wahhabism).
The reason I say it’s more clear is because there’s no raging debate regarding acceptable conversion like in the Jewish world. The standards for conversion among the Orthodox, Conservbative, Reform, Reconstructionist traditions differ. In this case, Orthodox Judaism is like Wahhabism - all Jews accept Orthodox conversions, and Orthodox accept only conversions following their standards. However, unlike Wahhabis, Orthodox Jews recognize the rest of 'Am Yisrael as true, bona fide Jews. Plus, Orthodox Jews are far, far, far more accomodating and tolerant than Wahhabis. (Wahhabism is secretly despised by a majority of Muslims throughout the world because of its unaccomodating stances, superiority complex, and the Wahhbis’ own contempt for non-Wahhabi Muslims.)
There is a consensus among many more educated Muslims that conversions for the sake of marriage and other conversions of convenience are sham conversions - unless the person shows fruits of conversion, the person is considered a de facto non-Muslim but a de jure Muslim. And they are justified - often the cultural aspects are obeyed but the religious ones (prayer, fasting, obeying the laws of taharah (purity), etc.) are not.
WRS
We be controvertial.
I’m sure that happened, but people of many religions did that as well. No need to recount Christianity’s equally sordid history here.
It’s possible (I can’t cite numbers) that in America, there may be proportionally, if not numerically, more ‘black’ Muslims than ‘white,’ but it’s not due to anything in the faith that rejects white people more than black. An interesting side note: in recent years, more Hispanic people have been converting to Islam, and the number of Latino Muslims is growing rather rapidly. Islam is, last I knew, a growing religion; I guess it should surpass Christianity at some point - at the present, the numbers of Christians and Muslims are pretty close to equal.
It’s also worth noting that, though scripture is contradictory (of course), most reasonable Muslims will say that they, Christians and Jews all believe in the same god.
As the Spanish joke goes: “I don’t believe in my own religion which is the true faith and you want me to believe in yours which is false?” _
Go to Albania. Go to Bosnia. Go to Serbia. You can’t tell the Muslims from the Christians just by looking. They all look equally European. That’s because thay are all equally European.
The Muslims here have been Muslim since the Turkokratia–they were Christian previous to the Turkokratia.
Except that Arabic is the only language that the Koran can exist in. Not quite “a universal religion like Christianity”. Christianity does not have such a one-language policy.
Dogface: The fact that the Qu’ran is in Arabic is completely irrelevant to whether the faith is a universal faith or not.