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List of converts to Christianity from Islam

History

Section contains alphabetical listing of converts from earlier times until the end of the 19th century

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  • Constantine the African – Baghdad -educated Muslim who died in 1087 as a Christian monk at Monte Cassino
  • Converso – substantial numbers of Iberian Muslims who converted to Catholicism in Spain or Portugal, particularly during the 14th and 15th centuries. These New Christians of Moorish Berber origin were known as Moriscos. Over 1 million of these Moriscos were converted from Islam to Christianity, many of them by force, but many also became sincere and devout believers in public.

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  • George XI of Kartli – Georgian monarch who ruled Eastern Georgia from 1676 to 1688 and again from 1703 to 1709; an Eastern Orthodox Christian, he converted to Islam prior to his appointment as governor of Qandahar; later converted to Roman Catholicism
  • George of Hungary ( 1422-1502) – Ottoman slave that escaped and reverted back from Islam to Christianity.

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  • Umar ibn Hafsun – leader of anti-Ummayad dynasty forces in southern Iberia; converted to Christianity with his sons and ruled over several mountain valleys for nearly forty years, having the castle Bobastro as his residence

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  • Imad ud-din Lahiz – prolific Islamic writer, preacher and Qur'anic translator

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  • Sake Dean Mahomed (born Sheikh Din Muhammad) – Indian traveller, surgeon and entrepreneur who introduced the Indian take-away curry house restaurant in Britain; first Indian to have written a book in the English language; converted to marry Jane Daly, an Irish Protestant, as it was illegal for a non-Protestant to marry a Protestant. Later became a devout follower.
  • Enrique de Malaca – Malay slave of Ferdinand Magellan, converted to Roman Catholicism after being purchased in 1511 *some source said he was never converted to Christianity
  • Abdul Masih – Indian indigenous missionary; ordained Anglican and Lutheran minister; often referred to as the most influential indigenous Christian to shape nineteenth-century Christian missions in India; religious author
  • Ahmed ibn Merwan – Seljek Turk lieutenant during the First Crusade. He converted to Christianity sometime after surrendering Antioch to the Crusaders.
  • Mizse – last Palatine of King Ladislaus IV of Hungary in 1290; born into a Muslim family in Tolna County in the Kingdom of Hungary; converted to Roman Catholicism
  • St. George El Mozahem – Coptic saint

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  • Aurelius and Natalia (died 852) – Christian martyrs who were put to death during the reign of Abd ar-Rahman II, Emir of Córdoba, and are counted among the Martyrs of Córdoba; Aurelius was the son of a Muslim father and a Christian mother. He was also secretly a follower of Christianity, as was his wife Natalia, who was also the child of a Muslim father.
  • Ibrahim Njoya – Bamum king; back and forth conversions from Islam to Christianity
  • Nunilo and Alodia – 9th-century sisters recognized as Catholic saints and martyrs in Moorish Spain, executed for apostasy for converting to Christianity

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  • Omar ibn Said – writer and scholar of Islam, enslaved and deported from present-day Senegal to the United States in 1807, formally converted to Christianity in 1820, though appears to have remained at least partially Muslim.
  • Begum Samru – powerful lady of north India, ruling a large area from Sardhana, Uttar Pradesh
  • The Sibirsky family – foremost of many Genghisid (Shaybanid) noble families formerly living in Russia
  • Shihab family or alternatively Chehab family – prominent Lebanese noble family; having converted from Sunni Islam, the religion of his predecessors, to Christianity at the end of the 18th century. Descendants were Maronite rulers of the Emirate of Mount Lebanon
  • Bashir Shihab II – Lebanese emir (prince) who ruled Ottoman Lebanon in the first half of the 19th century; his family was Sunni Muslim; some of them converted to Maronite Catholic Christianity at the end of the 18th century
  • Skanderbeg – Albanian military leader; was forcibly converted to Islam from Christianity, but reverted to Christianity later in life
  • Maria Aurora von Spiegel (born Fatima) – Turkish mistress of Augustus II the Strong and the wife of a Polish noble

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  • Tabaraji of Ternate – Indonesian sultan; converted to Roman Catholicism after 1534 and baptised with the name Dom Manuel
  • Casilda of Toledo – daughter of a Muslim king of Toledo (called Almacrin or Almamun); became ill as a young woman and traveled to northern Iberia to partake of the healing waters of the shrine of San Vicente; when she was cured, she was baptized at Burgos; venerated as a saint of the Catholic Church

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  • Muley Xeque (Arabic: مولاي الشيخ Mawlay al-Shaykh) – Moroccan prince, born in Marrakech in 1566; exiled in Spain, he converted to Roman Catholicism in Madrid and was known as Philip of Africa or Philip of Austria

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  • Zaida of Seville – born an Iberian Muslim; when Seville fell to the Almoravids, she fled to the protection of Alfonso VI of Castile, becoming his mistress, converting to Christianity and taking the baptismal name of Isabel
  • Zayd Abu Zayd – the last Almohad governor of Valencia, Spain; remained a loyal ally of James I; in 1236 he converted to Roman Catholicism, adopting the name of Vicente Bellvis, a fact which he kept secret until the fall of Valencia
  • Abu'l-Maghra ibn Musa ibn Zurara – last Zurarid emir of Arzen

20th and 21st century

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  • Moussa Dadis Camara – ex-officer of the Guinean army who served as the president of the Republic of Guinea; Roman Catholic Christian convert from Islam
  • Emir Caner – Swedish-American College-President and renowned Christian Spokesman and Critic of Islam
  • Ergun Caner – Swedish-American Author and Baptist Minister
  • Rianti Cartwright – Indonesian Actress, Model, Presenter and VJ; two weeks before departure to the United States to get married, she left Islam to become a baptized Catholic with the name Sophia Rianti Rhiannon Cartwright
  • Chamillionaire (born Hakeem Seriki) – American Rapper, born a Muslim but later converted to Christendom
  • Djibril Cissé – French international Footballer
  • Hansen Clarke – U.S. Representative for
  • Eldridge Cleaver – initially associated with the Nation of Islam, then Evangelical Christianity, then Mormonism
  • Michał Czajkowski – Polish-Cossack writer and political emigre who worked both for the resurrection of Poland and the reestablishment of a Cossack Ukraine

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  • Joseph Fadelle (born Mohammed al-Sayyid al-Moussawi) – Roman Catholic convert from Islam and writer born in 1964 in Iraq to a Shiite family
  • Rima Fakih – Lebanese-American actress, model, professional wrestler and beauty pageant titleholder; Miss USA 2010; converted to Maronite Christianity
  • Donald Fareed – Iranian televangelist and minister
  • Hazem Farraj – Palestinian-American writer, minister, and televangelist

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  • Sabatina James (born 1982) – born in Dhedar, Pakistan; Austrian-Pakistani book author; started a new life in Vienna, changing her name and converting to Catholicism; baptized in 2006
  • Esther John – born to a Pakistani Muslim family; converted to Christianity; became a nurse to rural communities in Northern India and was later murdered
  • Mario Joseph – born into a Muslim family, he became a notable Imam before the age of 18, but subsequently converted to Catholicism whereupon he was tortured and forced to flee to Europe
  • Lina Joy – Malay convert from Islam to Christianity; born Azlina Jailani in 1964 in Malaysia to Muslim parents of Javanese descent; converted at age 26; in 1998, she was baptized, and applied to have her conversion legally recognized by the Malaysian courts

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  • Youcef Nadarkhani – Iranian Christian pastor who has been sentenced to death for apostasy
  • Diana Nasution – Indonesian singer, converted to Protestantism after marriage
  • Marina Nemat – Canadian author of Iranian descent and former political prisoner of the Iranian government; born into a Christian family, she converted to Islam in order to avoid execution but later reverted to Christianity

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  • Malika Oufkir – Moroccan writer and daughter of General Mohamed Oufkir; she and her siblings are converts from Islam to Catholicism and she writes in her book, Stolen Lives, "we had rejected Islam, which had brought us nothing good, and opted for Catholicism instead".

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  • Nabeel Qureshi – former Ahmadiyya Muslim; converted to Evangelical Christianity in 2005; became an internationally recognized apologist with Ravi Zacharias International Ministries

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  • Nazli Sabri – Queen consort of Egypt; converted to Catholicism in 1950 and took the name "Mary Elizabeth"
  • Kyai Sadrach – Indonesian missionary
  • Mohammed Sanogo is a senior pastor, author and missionary from Ivory Coast.
  • Lukman Sardi – Indonesian actor .
  • Rev. Manigun Sayed – Muslim convert in Manipur (born in 1965 and converted to Christianity in 1985), from Manipur, India http://www.light4m.yolasite.com
  • Bilquis Sheikh – Pakistani author and Christian missionary
  • Walid Shoebat – American author and former member of the PLO
  • Nasir Siddiki – Canadian evangelist, author, and business consultant
  • Amir Sjarifuddin – Indonesian socialist leader who later became the prime minister of Indonesia during its National Revolution
  • James Scurry – British soldier and statesman
  • Rudolf Carl von Slatin – Anglo-Austrian soldier and administrator in the Sudan, Believing his troops attributed their failure in battle to the fact that he was a Christian, Slatin publicly adopted Islam in 1883 and took the Islamic name, Abd al Qadir, He received absolution from the Pope for his conversion to Islam, which he had reversed
  • Albertus Soegijapranata – born in Surakarta, Dutch East Indies, to a Muslim courtier and his wife who later converted to Catholicism; the first native Indonesian bishop; known for his pro-nationalistic stance, often expressed as "100% Catholic, 100% Indonesian"
  • Patrick Sookhdeo – British Anglican canon

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References

See also