Islam Rediscovered
23. Conversion: An Intellectual Transformation
~ 404 ~
It must be appreciated that there are two major
kinds of religious conversion—inner faith
conversion and inter faith conversion. Now let us
take an example of inter faith conversion. There was
a multi-lingual Bengali Doctor of Philosophy, Nishi
Kant Chattopadhyaye, who, having first studied
philosophy, then all major religions, faced
intellectual confrontation with different faiths.
Finally he made an intellectual discovery in
consequence of which he left his ancestral religion,
Hinduism, in favour of Islam. His Muslim name
was Azizuddin. He delivered a lecture, published
later under the title,
Why I Have Embraced Islam
,
which describes in detail the story of his intellectual
development. This lecture has been reproduced in
one of the chapters of this book.
There have also been instances of men and women
who were born in Muslim families, who later cast
off their family religion in order to turn into
secularists, or even atheists in some cases. However,
sooner or later they reached a turning point in their
lives when they came back to Islam as sincere
practising Muslims.
