Abstract

ABSTRACT Lewis R. Rambo is an American scholar who has gained prominence for his numerous works on religious conversion. For critics, he analysed the data written in the last three centuries on this topic and conducted interviews of various converts to formulate an objective stage model of religious conversion. He divides his model into seven stages that include context, crisis, quest, encounter, interaction, commitment, and consequences. He argues that empirically there is no fundamental difference in the conversion in Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. In the contemporary world, his model is largely used to better understand the process of religious change of an individual or a group. The current study analyses the works of Rambo and argues that although some of the stages of his model seem to be influenced by Christianity, the flexibility of his model allows its application to conversion to Islam as well. Furthermore, it is also argued that to better understand advocate-convert relationship, it is necessary to analyse the stages of encounter and interaction in the light of Islamic rules of da‘wah that seem absent from the model of Rambo.