Revert vs Convert
Zaid Shakir said "We fail to see Islam as a religion, and in the 20th century, we have a lot of these semantic gymnastics. So we say, for example, we don't convert to Islam, we revert to Islam, without really thinking about what we are saying. You revert, or something reverts back usually to a previous known state unconsciously. So we say, "The child reverted back to his bad habits", so the child isn't conscious of what he's doing or what she's doing. Whereas conversion involves a conscious decision. This person converted to Communism, he or she studied it and then made a conscious decision to embrace it. So I came here and I was doing an interview, and the interviewer said "When did you revert to Islam?", I said "I never reverted to Islam, I converted to Islam, I made a conscious decision to become a Muslim and I didn't unconsciously revert back to a state that's not even known to me." How can you revert back to something you don't know. A person might say "Every newborn is born in a natural Islamic state". That might be true but he or she doesn't know that, isn't conscious of that. So the parents made that child a Jew, Christian or a Muslim, that's what they are conscious of. So they reverted back to that? So we get into these kind of semantic things that are designed to manifest our sophistication, but they are only making a mess for ourselves individually and collectively"
My Comment:
This is an English language discussion, nothing to do with Islamic culture. As English is a very loose language, allowing constant changes, and we are not talking about a specific historical period in which a precise understanding should be sought, then we should try to speak in the vernacular of the people we are addressing, as we are attempting to be understood. The semantic gymnastics quote is correct, as often this topic is merely a curiosity - far from the attitude of a serious Muslim - who does not waste time with silly semantic curiosities. The term convert is not incorrect, but then the term revert is not incorrect either, if it is understood that we are returning to the fitrah when we embrace Islam. The Islamic discussion in all of this is whether Muslims are said to be on the fitrah or not? If they are, then revert is correct to use.
In any case, if I sense that the person I'm talking to has a bee in his bonnet and is about to get all obsessive about convert/revert, then I'll just use the term revert to avoid the time-wasting conversation, then we can talk about something that is important - like the increase of Islamic knowledge, or the problems of people today etc.
My default position is that I am a convert, as I know very well that I have converted from one belief to another. Every revert is a convert, but not every convert is a revert.
Some dictionary definitions:
- To return to a former condition, practice, subject, or belief.
- to go back to a former practice, condition, belief, etc.
- (Christianity / Ecclesiastical Terms) a person who, having been converted, has returned to his former beliefs or Church [from Latin revertere to return, from re- + vertere to turn] to return to a former habit, practice, belief, condition, etc.