Religion is considered a system of life, and even one of the most important social systems influencing all other systems. “In addition, it is an effective and essential element in the integration and harmony of culture.”, Religion, as an ideological system, expresses a distinctive approach to the ideas of an individual or group. Likewise, ritual rituals represent the tendency to preserve values ​​and resist change, and they undoubtedly work to continue them. It supports values ​​and customs and includes moral sanctions to control the communication of individuals with each other, which achieves stability and social stability and maintains… The social system and compatibility with it.” Thus, it is considered one of the mechanisms of social control in societies, which is why Durkheim placed it at the top of social systems. Through its provisions and teachings, religion achieves harmony in social behavior, and when the religious bond is strengthened, cohesion, solidarity, interdependence, and social integration are achieved through participation in religious values, beliefs, and practices. But do these religious standards and social ties apply in a multi-religious society?

The certain truth is that no society is devoid of pluralism and diversity, especially in the religious and ideological aspect. Therefore, sociology seeks to explore the social systems and structures of human groups. It is interested in studying their internal structures and dialectical relationships. It also seeks to analyze the social foundations of the principles that govern human groups, trying through a comparison of different patterns. Social and human factors determine the causes and general laws of its development.

Therefore, we find that in all countries and regions of the world there are different human groups among themselves, each of which is trying to prove its existence by preserving its historical or ideological heritage. These groups are called the “minority.” The problem of minorities today is presented at the civilizational level of any political and societal entity.“, Especially the minority that seeks to preserve its cultural and religious specificity within a majority that is completely different from it. Religion is considered a way of life for all individuals and groups because of its mutual interactive relationships with other social systems that make up society. But the question that arises is: What will society be like in light of religious pluralism and conflict of religions?

This is what we tried to study in our book “The Transients, a socio-anthropological study of the phenomenon of religious conversion from Islam to Christianity in Tunisia,” through which we revealed the religious diversity in Tunisia, especially since for many decades the idea prevailed that 99 percent of Tunisians are Muslims, but in reality These statistics are specific to the period before independence, but today no official or scientific census has been conducted that includes this phenomenon, even from official structures, especially the Ministry of Religious Affairs, in addition, of course, to the fact that the previous political regimes (Bourguibi and Novemberi) promoted the idea of ​​a “unitary society.” Including the idea of ​​religious homogeneity, and this illusion has prevailed in our society for more than 65 years, which represented a real obstacle to accepting the religiously different other. In Tunisia, there is a significant number of Baha’is, non-religious, and atheists, especially Christians, who are the focus of our book, and they are all Tunisian citizens who have converted. From Islam to these religions and beliefs. What is the meaning of religious conversion?

The concept of religious conversion

Religious conversion (la conversion) means “return, change of direction.” This word indicates every kind of return or change of situation. The Latin word conversion has a relationship to two contradictory words in the Greek language: on the one hand, the word epistrophê, which means a change in direction and incorporates the idea of ​​return (return to the origin, return to oneself), and on the other hand, the word metanoïa, which means a change in thinking, repentance, and incorporates the idea of ​​transformation. With the idea of ​​rebirth “la renaissance,” which leads us to the existence of a conflict in the concept of la conversion between the idea of ​​returning to the origin and the idea of ​​new birth.

Religious conversion, in its absolute definition, is a change of belief, whether in the same religion, such as the conversion from Sunni Islam to Shiite Islam or vice versa, or the transition from one religion to another religion, such as the conversion from Islam to Christianity or to the Baha’i faith…

In this context, Dr. Muhammad Talbi defines religious conversion “It turns others away from their religion“As for the followers of the Christian religion, they call the new converts “passers-by,” a term that carries in its connotation a distinction above other religions, as the meaning of “passers-by” is emerging from the darkness into the light of Christ. As for Muslims, they consider every person who converts from the religion of Islam to be necessarily an “apostate,” which is a religious term that applies to anyone who converts to Islam and then abandons his belief in it. According to jurists, an “apostate” is punished by death in Islamic law, despite the absence of explicit Qur’anic verses about this matter. . Popular memory also has a share in defining the religious convert, and he is usually called “the convert,” which is a colloquial word historically linked to the issue of naturalization in the colonial era, “tourner sa veste,” meaning “turning his clothes around.” This word was associated with every Tunisian who naturalized with French nationality at the time, and he It was something that the general public did not like, so they called it a stigma for naturalized people. Then this stigma came to be applied to every religious convert, and this stigma, in its symbolic meaning, carried an implicit accusation of unpatriotism, not to mention the combination of religion or belief, espionage, and betrayal of the homeland.

The act of religious conversion is only binding on the individual, as it is a matter entrusted to his person. It also embodies his doctrinal and faith independence. It is an effective model for building the self away from social identities that have become fragile in light of the spread of globalized spaces. This is what is called “un bricolage identitaire,” and usually Globalization and religious transformations are often combined, and some even consider the latter to be one of the results of the former, because what distinguishes this era is “the simultaneous presence of all religions and all cultural patterns separated from their temporal and spatial context, and ready for acquisition by believers who incorporate religious elements that are foreign to their scope.” The phenomenon of globalization offers unprecedented prospects for the global and immediate dissemination of religious messages. Thus, globalization did not marginalize the religious, but it worked to separate the religious from the cultural and make the religious independent.

Religious conversion is considered unacceptable in Tunisian society, and this is what Professor Abdel-Wahab Hafeez confirmed in his article entitled “Religion and Freedom of Conscience, the Curve of Great Transformations,” stating that Tunisians completely reject any individual from his society converting to any other religion, whether Christian, Baha’i, or even He turns to the Shiite doctrine, even if there is relative acceptance, but “the relative nature of rejection turns into severe rejection with a high rate of 88 percent when historical identities and old rivalries awaken.”

Tunisians have a confusion between the issue of religion as an individual belief or practice and national identity as a group affiliation, meaning that the actual recognition of the Tunisian individual’s patriotism is linked to belonging to the same social order, especially the religious one.

What may be treated as personal freedom in general turns into a danger to the group’s entity, that is, the danger of “disintegration.” The position on non-Islamic religions represents another test of the operation of both the mechanisms of continuity and loyalty to identity on the one hand, and the winds of religious change on the other hand.” In an article by French researcher Katia Boissevain, entitled: Le baptême adulte de chrétiens tunisiens: public rite of private engagement, she emphasized that the idea of ​​“treachery and betrayal” always haunts the religious convert, whether that be on the social or political level, especially the religious one. Especially since Tunisia, through her research into the perceptions of its individuals, is a homogeneous, indivisible state, and religious transformations constitute a violation of this imaginary homogeneity, as she put it.

She also confirmed that Tunisians have a confusion between the issue of religion as an individual belief or practice and national identity as a group affiliation, meaning that the actual recognition of the Tunisian individual’s patriotism is linked to belonging to the same social order, especially the religious one, because Tunisians, according to her research, are convinced that “the God of Islam” is the true God. Before him, all other religions are negated, and thus the dominance of the view of condescension towards non-Muslims, considering that their values ​​are inferior compared to the Islamic value system.

Also, religious conversion for most Tunisians is tantamount to separation from the social body, and it is a “betrayal” of its systems and values. In short, it is the abandonment of the affiliation with which social unity is established. Here we discover the extent of the social influence of religion, through which it regulates the levels of the relationship between the different religious actors. Social stigmatization of trans people is a collective punishment for the individual who deviates from the prevailing pattern set by the group, and thus he is considered a deviant from the overall norm and must therefore be isolated.

This behavior is the result of social trauma, and here we want to market a fact that we learned through field research, which is that most of the respondents do not know that they live within a diverse society, whether on the religious, sectarian, or sectarian side, and when we informed them of the different religious sects that coexist within their society, we noticed a state of denunciation and aversion. Whether it is through facial movements or verbally, such as saying, “I seek refuge in God from every great sin,” “Among us are those who have departed from the faith,” “I ask forgiveness from God.” And other expressions that express strong denunciation.

The majority believe that all Tunisians are Muslims, and therefore their ignorance of religious pluralism has generated a state of denunciation, which was confirmed by Professor Salah al-Din al-Jurshi in an article entitled “Religious and sectarian pluralism in Tunisia: Challenges of diversity and its management,” published in the articles of the report on the religious situation in Tunisia for the year 2015. 92 percent of the respondents stated that they did not accept the conversion of a Tunisian Muslim to Christianity, and here we return to the depth of belonging to the Islamic religion, but we must note the importance of knowing society for its diversity and its various components, despite the fact that diversity in Islamic societies represents a problematic trend in light of the ideological and intellectual conflicts in which it lives. Therein, but the question raised here is: What are the reasons for religious transformation in Tunisian society?

Reasons for religious conversion

The prevailing idea in Tunisian society is that those who converted from Islam to Christianity are individuals who sold their belief in exchange for material temptations offered by Christianization movements, but field research refuted this perception because the reasons are multiple. We find, for example, those who converted to the Christian religion out of faith and most of them are from financially well-off families, and therefore they are… They do not need the temptations of missionaries, just as the religious conversion from Islam to Christianity is a state of movement, rebellion, and social change resulting from several crises, such as the crisis of the image of the father who practices violence on his children in the name of religion (violating them for not praying, expelling them from the house for not fasting…), so most The respondents experienced dark paternal images that were the main reason for their separation from what the father represented, including the religious perception. Through a close reading of most of the testimonies we obtained regarding the transition to Christianity, we found that the representations of the converts about the “father” were almost the same, of course depending on the life paths of each person. Transient, and we have concluded in our research that there are two images. The first image is the image of the father, who in turn represents the family, and the second image is the image of Islam as a religion and affiliation represented by the father. The crisis here was linked to the father, and therefore the change of belief in this case, regardless of the presence of the missionary, of course, is the result of A psychological crisis caused by the negative image of the father that has become entrenched in the children’s memories.

During the field research, we saw several images bearing the same connotations of aversion to the symbolism of the father’s authority and the pain that accompanies it. According to what many converts reported, it was a turning point in their lives to move toward the embrace of Christ. Here we discover that conversion is a separation from the cultural and social before the religious, which is what The Moroccan researcher Ayad Ablal called it “the Oedipal revolution of religion.”

The political model of crises that constituted a shock in Tunisian society, especially during the revolution. The spread of manifestations of violence in the name of religion, such as the killing of members of the Tunisian army and members of the security forces, and the occurrence of bombings in the center of the capital. All of these manifestations represented an important factor in the process of religious conversion from Islam to Christianity.

Among other crises, we find the factor of immigration and the issue of containment, especially for illegal immigrants who did not find help from the Arab Muslim communities there and found it from followers of the churches there. Here we pointed out that religious conversion is social and cultural change in the first place, as the search for religious meaning was essentially linked to dysfunction. The core of the performance of the social system, and thus the search for a religious alternative in which balance and psychological and emotional satisfaction are achieved, which is what they found within the Italian society, which is characterized by spiritual and human values ​​and which it considers an ideal society compared to the Muslim society.

Another crisis is the crisis of the political model, which was a shock to Tunisian society, especially during the revolution. The spread of manifestations of violence in the name of religion, such as the killing of members of the Tunisian army and members of the security forces as well, and the occurrence of bombings in the center of the capital. All of these manifestations represented an important factor in the transformation process. Of course, we do not forget the impact of the rule of the Political Islam movement on Tunisian society and the deterioration of economic and social conditions that accompanied it. The transformation here is a transformation as a result of Islamophobia.

Finally, the book “The Passers-by” also dealt with the history of Christianization in Tunisia through various historical eras, starting from the Hafsid era, then the Bashi, to Al-Husseini, to independence, and up to today. We also discussed how Christian movements developed their polarizing methods according to temporal changes and what accompanies them. Of cultural, social and technological change as well. We have focused on a very important issue, which is the idea of ​​religious pluralism and citizenship. Here we asked a fundamental question: Is citizenship based on the unity of religion or on the idea of ​​enjoying rights and carrying out duties, and does belonging to a religious minority make you a citizen of a degree? Again in Tunisia?