Conversion to Islam is a remarkably simple process, normally entailing no more than saying, with the proper intent, the shahada: I declare that there is no god but God, and that mUhammad is the messenger of God. The Quran explicitly rejects imposition of religious belief, and Islam has historically allowed other religions great freedom. Islam has always been a proselytizing religion; Muhammad converted his earliest followers in the seventh century from the pagan ways of mecca to the worship of a single God, allah. After suffering Meccan persecution, the small community moved to medina, where the small band of Muslims grew to form the nucleus of the Islamic community, or umma. After the death of the Prophet in 632, the Arab Muslim armies burst out of the Arabian Peninsula, conquering enormous swathes of territory of the Byzantine Empire and utterly destroying the Persian empire of the Sassanians. In the resultant Islamicate empire, Islam was the religion of the state, but members of other religious groups were allowed freedom of worship as dhimmis, or “protected subjects.” As a result of the military expansion of the Islamicate empire, the erroneous notion of “conversion by the sword” has historically taken root among non-Muslims. In fact, there was little attempt to convert non-Muslims during the early conquests. In some cases, conversion was actively discouraged, for it deprived the state of a source of revenue, as dhimmis were taxed differently from Muslims. The empire itself, however, clearly emerged through the use of military power, and the dominance of Muslims within that empire should be considered a major, if partial, motivation for later conversion. Nonetheless, it is important to note that non-Muslims living in Islamicate polities generally had freedoms and rights that non-Christians could only dream of in medieval Europe.Among scholars, debate has centered on the question of when conversion to Islam primarily took place, especially in the Islamicate heartlands of the Middle East. The consensus, that the majority of such conversions took place during the ninth century, is probably more correct for some areas, such as Iran, than for others, such as Egypt, where evidence points to a considerably later turning point. A more interesting question, however, is why and how conversion occurred; this question has yet to be taken up in a serious manner. In the outlying areas of Islamdom, particularly in Southeast Asia and Central Asia, but also in South india and Bengal, conversion to Islam came about as a result of different factors, largely the role of traders and sUFis, who were able to offer a different and convincing system of belief and worship that attracted followers. Conversion to Islam continues to contribute significantly to the growth of the community, with major, organized efforts now underway in Africa, where Muslim and Christian missionaries are in direct competition, but also in Europe and North America.
