Islam makes a distinction between conversion to Islam and conversion from Islam. The former is called ihtida or hidayah (divine guidance), whereas the latter is irtidad (apostasy) (Watt 1980, p. 722). Islam introduced the concept of din al-fitrah (innate religion) to express that everyone is endowed at birth with a natural ability to know God. The Qur´an states that every soul before creation was asked the question by God “Am I not your Lord?” and the souls answered “Yes!” to it. Thus, Muslims consider all children as Muslims until they reach puberty. The tradition of the Prophet puts that “children are born possessing the fitrah, and it is their parents who turn them into Jews, Christians or Muslims” (Faruqi 1979, p. 92). Therefore, by converting to Islam, one turns to the religion which is already present in him by nature. It is for this reason that some converts to Islam prefers the word revert to convert (Kose 1996, p. 101). In Christianity, one cannot have a conversion experience...
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Kose, A. (2014). Conversion (Islam). In: Leeming, D.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-6086-2_136
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