Conversion to Islam: Narratives of Awakening, Continuity, and Return

Casey, Patrick Michael

doi:10.1111/socf.12523

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Conversion narratives are also notoriously difficult to disentangle, as the passage of time and their subjective nature cast doubt on the reliability of the information they contain (Hill 2021). The inclusion of religious motives may be more of an ex post facto justification for religious change (Johnston 2013; Maruna et al 2006) or simply attest to the adoption of existing formula stories (Casey 2019), rather than the real reason for religious change. On the other hand, it is equally possible to exaggerate other motives as well, particularly where a decision is complex and the boundary between different reasons is blurred.…”

Section: Religious Change In the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Motivations and Types of Religious Change in Contemporary America

Beider

2022

Review of Religious Research

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Background It is estimated that around half of American adults have changed religion or denomination at least once, yet little is known about the effect of different motives on these changes. Purpose This paper seeks to understand the motives driving religious change and the relationship between the reason for religious change on the nature of that change, be it denominational switching, conversion, or disaffiliation. Methods The data come from the Pew 2007 Religious Landscape Survey and 2008 Conversion Recontact Survey. First, reasons for changing religion are presented, followed by a series of binary logistic and multinomial regressions that analyze religious changes, their motivations, and justifications. Results Among the many reasons for changing religious affiliation, motives directly associated with personal aspects of religion are much more commonly cited than mundane rationales, such as marriage or geographic mobility. Disaffiliates are more likely to view their religious change as being motivated by personal religious concerns, whereas denominational switchers and, to a lesser extent, converts tend to cite mundane motives. Conclusions and Implications Decisions regarding affiliation are the most likely to be attributed to personal religious motives, either in an attempt to justify actions to family and friends who have remained religious or because affiliation and non-affiliation are perceived as religiously distinct. Denomination switching and conversion are associated with mundane motives, perhaps due to the rise of religious pluralism, which asserts the validity of a range of religious options, reducing the religious significance of denominational switching and conversion. Thus, personal religious motives play a role in deciding whether to consume religion as a product, while choices regarding a particular brand of religion are attributed to more mundane concerns. This paper adds to our understanding of the interplay between secular, communal, and personal religious motives in shaping religious preferences. In doing so, it sheds light on the nature of such decisions and the broader religious landscape. Additionally, it may provide insights useful to religious leaders on how they might best attract new affiliates.

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Section: Religious Change In the Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Motivations and Types of Religious Change in Contemporary America

Beider

2022

Review of Religious Research

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“…Regarding the post-conversion process, conversions to Islam and Christianity, the world's two largest religions, are the most researched. More or less, both have a missionary agenda (Roald 2006(Roald , 2012Casey 2019;Langston et al 2019).…”

Section: The Dimension Of Continuity: Changing Versus Stablementioning

confidence: 99%

Dimensions of the Relationship between the Individual and Her Unique Worldview Construction

Eidhamar

2021

Religions

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Each individual constructs his own private worldview using elements from established worldview traditions. The biographical character of this formation makes this the individual’s “Unique Worldview Construction” (UWC). The purpose of this theoretical study is to analyse the dynamic relationship between the individual and her own UWC. It describes more how than what he believes in or denies. The variation is exceedingly complex. To make it accessible, the complexity is crystallized into seven dimensions: (1) The authority structure deals with the individual’s perception of herself as being superordinate/subordinate to her own UWC. (2) The importance dimension analyses the span from indifference to involvement among a variety of religious/nonreligious, age, and gender cohorts. (3) The certainty dimension explores doubt versus confidence, using theories like confirmation bias, naïve realism, and cognitive dissonance. (4) The dimension of one’s relationship to rejected beliefs describes different ways of being inclusive/exclusive. (5) The emotional dimension depicts the individual’s weak/strong and negative/positive feelings towards different elements of her UWC. (6) The openness dimension sheds light on the respective traits of being introverted/extroverted regarding one’s private worldview. (7) The continuity dimension explores different development patterns, along with complex pre/post-conversion and deconversion processes. The different dimensions partly correlate to each other.

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Emotional Responses to Religious Conversion: Insights from Machine Learning

Maimun,

Semma

2023

Islam G. & C. Jour

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This study aims to understand the feelings of newly converted Muslims when they narrated their pre- and post-conversion using the Machine Learning model and qualitative approach. The data set analyzed in this paper comes from in-depth interviews with 12 mualaf/ newly converted Muslims from various backgrounds. All recorded interviews were transcribed and filtered to remove any unnecessary or misaligned data to ensure that the data was fully aligned with the interview questions. To analyze emotional changes, we utilize natural language processing (NLP) algorithms, which enable us to extract and interpret emotional content from textual data sources, such as personal narratives. The analysis was performed in Google Colab and utilizing XLM-EMO, a fine-tuned multilingual emotion detection model that detects joy, anger, fear, and sadness emotions from text. The model was chosen because it supports Bahasa, as our interview was conducted in Bahasa. Furthermore, the model also has the best accuracy amongst its competitors, namely LS-EMO and UJ-Combi. The model also has great performance, with the overall average Macro-F1s for XLM-RoBERTa-large, XLM-RoBERTa-base, and XLM-Twitter-base are .86, .81, and .84. Furthermore, two psychologists compared emotion detection results from the XLM-EMO model to the raw input data, and an inductive content analysis was performed. This approach allowed us to identify the reasoning behind the emotions deemed pertinent and intriguing for our investigation. This study showed that Sadness is the most dominant emotion, constituting 46.67% of the total emotions in the pre-conversion context. On the other hand, joy emerges as the most dominant, constituting a substantial proportion of 57.73% among the emotions analyzed from post-conversion emotions data. Understanding the positive impact of religious conversion on emotions may inform mental health interventions and incorporate spiritual or religious elements into therapeutic approaches for individuals struggling with emotional issues, guiding individuals undergoing religious conversion and emphasizing the potential emotional benefits.

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Conversion to Islam: Narratives of Awakening, Continuity, and Return

Cited by 3 publications

References 28 publications

Motivations and Types of Religious Change in Contemporary America

Motivations and Types of Religious Change in Contemporary America

Dimensions of the Relationship between the Individual and Her Unique Worldview Construction

Emotional Responses to Religious Conversion: Insights from Machine Learning

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