Choosing Islam:: a study of Swedish converts

This article discusses the conversion of Swedes to Islam from an individual perspective. Conversion is understood as a process comprising different phases. During this process the religious identity is gradually formed. One phase of the conversion process is that people feel attracted by certain thoughts and lifestyles in the religion in question. For converts in Sweden two spheres of attraction may be distinguished. One is the conception of an essential womanhood and manhood as well as of the patriarchal nuclear family. The other is the idea of a stable system of norms (above all on private morality) and the idea of Islam as the objective truth. Later in the process of conversion is the reformulation phase. Converts have begun to change their thoughts, feelings and patterns of behaviour, particularly through conflicts and at the beginning of the process when earlier experiences are devalued and the new context is idealized. It is, however, paradoxical that the features that originally attracted the converts are later seen as sources of conflict.