5 Reasons We Should Stop Calling Converts “Reverts”
One day not too long ago, I was waiting in the checkout line at Whole Foods when I noticed the cashier’s name tag read “Mohammad.”
That immediately excited me. I always like to connect with the cashier, but this time I’d get to say salams as well.
As the woman in front of me was finishing bagging her groceries and Mohammad turned his attention towards me, I savored the moment:
“As-Salaamu alaikum!”
I was looking forward to a moment of connection.
Mohammad would probably ask about my Islam, then we’d talk about what mosques we went to, and if we might have run into each other in the community before and not realized it.
But instead of hearing first from Mohammad, I heard from the woman who’d just finished her bagging.
“Where did you learn ‘as-salaamu alaikum’?” she asked me abruptly, with a slightly accusatory tone.
Do you see what just happened there?
What could have, and should have, been a moment of connection I had with a brother—or even a brother and a sister, as I hadn’t known that the woman in front of me was Muslim as well—became a moment when I had to push back against suspicion.
Instead of connection, I was pushed away.
Mohammad and I did get to talking about the mosques we frequented, and our experience being Muslim in Rhode Island, but he quickly steered the conversation towards asking me if he could teach me anything.
May Allah reward Mohammad for his generosity and for checking in with me.
But may He also help Mohammad eventually understand that it is wrong to assume that someone who looks ethnically European has a lack of knowledge about Islam that any born Muslim can fill.
Now, I could proceed in this email to write from a place of hurt and anger about what I’ve gone through in the community as a “white revert.”
But that would just be reinforcing the boundary.
And playing into Shaytan’s game.
That’s how we kick off the “Oppression Olympics,” as one of my supervisors from when I was in academia would call it.
I start talking about my pain, and then someone else who’s gone through more than I have feels the need to get up and talk about their pain, and on ad infinitum.
Instead, let me propose something different.
Let me help you understand how we can move beyond the artificial boundaries permanently.
By the subject line of this email, I owe you an explanation of why “convert” is a better choice than “revert” when it comes to Muslims who were not born Muslim.
That numbered list will come.
But before I offer you that, I’d like to argue that we should stop singling out “reverts” or “converts” altogether.
If you get nothing else from this message today, remember this:
No one is born Muslim. Islam is a road with no final destination.
Allow me to explain.
When I worked as the “Convert Care Coordinator” at Ta’leef Collective, we had a recurring internal discussion around whether the term “convert” was helpful at all.
And this at an organization—Ta’leef—whose primary mission was to help those who were newly committed to Islam.
The answer I’ve come to over the years is that “convert Muslim” is as helpful a term as any other term of identity or experience prefixed to “Muslim.”
“Black Muslims,” “young professional Muslims,” “American Muslims,” etc. are terms that connote shared experience, and therefore it can be helpful for them to come together to help each other, connect on a deeper level, and build resources that serve that segment of the Muslim population most effectively.
But when used as primary and constant markers of identity, besides just plain “Muslim,” they set up artificial boundaries within the broader community.
And such is the case with “convert Muslim.”
“Converts” are those who are not born into Islam.
But who is born into Islam?
Sometimes we answer that question with reference to a saying from the Prophet ﷺ that is often mistranslated as “Everyone is born Muslim, and then their parents change them into a Jew, a Christian, etc.”
But that’s a distortion of the hadith.
What he actually said can be better translated as “Everyone is born upon an innate disposition.”
The Fitrah, the primordial nature of every human being, is that part in us that acknowledges God’s presence and knows we owe Him servitude.
But no one is born Muslim.
“Muslim” in Arabic is the active participle formed from the verb “Aslama,” which is a Form IV verb (وزن أفعل), meaning that it has an intensely active nature.
Active nature on top of active nature.
Being Muslim is an active choice to take on Islam.
It happens when one comes into maturity as a responsible individual.
Ok, maybe you were born into a house in which Islam was part of your environment.
Then you have a head start.
But it doesn’t change the fact that at some point, you have to make a conscious choice whether you’re going to traverse the path of Islam or not.
And just as there are those who “convert” to Islam as teenagers and those who do later in life, there are those who grew up with Islam in their house or in their neighborhood who choose to submit as young boys and girls, and those who choose much later in life.
Also, pinpointing an exact time when you committed is hard, for almost everyone, “convert” or not.
You might call me a convert. When exactly did I convert?
Was it when I was seven years old and told my mother I wanted to commit to a church so I could hear the word of God on a regular basis?
Was it when I was twelve and asked God to show me how to pray several times a day in a way that He wanted me to, so I could show my servitude and gratitude to Him?
Was it when I was twenty three and learned how to pray properly once I had the chance to go through a traditional Islamic legal text with a qualified teacher?
You might have heard my life story and identified my “conversion” at the point when I sat in the prayer room of my college’s Muslim Student Association as an eighteen-year-old and said the two Testimonies of Faith in front of a group of witnesses.
But before that point and after that point, there has been a lifetime of individual decisions of submission.
When we look at it closely and critically, the line between “convert” and “born” Muslim, especially in the West, starts to blur.
Even if you grew up in a “Muslim household,” do you think you have more in common with a child who grew up in a God-fearing Christian home, or with someone whose parents culturally identified as Muslim but didn’t pray or recite Qur’an in that home?
A friend of mine who had grown up in a Muslim household once told me that he’s witnessed a number of conversions (shahadahs) in his mosque and wished he had the chance to renew his shahadah when he felt like he’d veered off course in life and wanted to recommit to Allah.
And why shouldn’t he have that chance?
No one is born Muslim. Islam is a road with no final destination.
The final destination is Allah.
And Allahu akbar.
God is Greater.
There is always more of Him to submit to.
May Allah facilitate our journey towards Him.
If you need help in your journey, let me know how I might be of service. I currently run a coaching program that helps people integrate their spiritual/religious intentions of Islam with their professional and personal lives. If you’d like to discuss that program, follow the link here:
https://calendly.com/
As always, thanks for reading.
Oh, and here’s your numbered list, as promised:
1. The word “revert” is based on a mistranslation of the words of the Prophet ﷺ.
2. “Revert” implies going backwards, not forwards.
3. “Revert” implies that whatever progress that new Muslim might make, it will always be less compared to those who didn’t have to go backwards.
4. “Revert” implies that what has passed in her life needs to be annulled, without acknowledging that it has been the means to bring her to Islam.
5. No “revert” actually uses that term himself at first. It becomes yet another way for other Muslims to correct the new Muslim and tell him that he’s saying things all wrong.
And Allah knows best!
-Adnan