RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND CONVERSION

RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AND CONVERSION An Islamic Perspective Introduction T HERE is a heated debate on the issue of religious conversion, some being pro-conversion and others against it. This debate is based on a misunderstanding. Both the parties take conversion as proselytization, that is, one person attempting to change the religion of another person. But this is misleading. It portrays conversion as a bilateral issue, however it is not so. To make one’s choice is everyone’s birthright. Today, this right of an individual has been established as an international norm. Every person is free to choose his education, his job, his business, his life partner, and so is the case of religion as well. Religion is also a matter of individual choice. No one has the right to apply curbs to religious freedom. Modern concept of human rights says it is an individual's inalienable right to choose one's religion. It is affirmed in the United Nation’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights and accepted by all the nations. The right to choose one’s religion is also upheld by the Constitution of India. Religious Conversion Conversion in Islamic thinking takes place in a person’s life as a result of intellectual revolution or spiritual transformation. It is not leaving one religious tradition for another. Conversion is the individual discovering the truth after an exhaustive search and then by choice, abandoning one religion for another. Conversion, in its broadest sense goes much further ; it is a universal principle of nature. It is a historical process—healthy and inexorable and attempting to put a stop to it would be like trying to put a stop to history itself. Who in this world has the power to do so? Conversion is the birth of a new entity resulting from the encounter between old and new schools of thought. This is a universal law established by nature itself. Study of human history reveals one process always at work. Karl Marx had wrongly called this dialectical materialism; It is a dialogueModern concept of human rights says it is an individual's inalienable right to choose religion.