Abstract
Sunni leaders such as the King of Saudi Arabia and Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, together with the Arab media, show much hostility towards denominational conversion to Shiism. Despite this, little has been done to understand the process and the nature of the people who go through it. This paper aims to contribute towards rectifying this, and places denominational conversion to Shiism in a wider conceptual framework for studying personal religious transitions. Seven converts were interviewed, and the results related to hypotheses drawn from the literature on inter-religious conversion to Islam. The results suggest that denominational conversion to Shiism is largely an intellectual, rather than an emotional process, and one that can result in significant social turbulence. Political factors were modest as a cause of conversion in all but one interviewee, though political opinions appear to have changed as a consequence for most. Further research is needed to provide robust qualitative demographic observations.
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