Religious conversion: analysis of the lived experience of conversion in Tehran

It seems that the state of religiosity among different groups is changing and one of the types of these changes is religious modernization. One of the ways to recognize transformation and changes in people’s lives is to study their lived experience. This research has tried to study the lived experience of the religious conversion in Tehran city to answer these questions: what are the reasons and causes leading to the religious conversion in Tehran city? And what path and process have the newcomers gone through in this change? Conceptual and theoretical foundations of religious conversion as well as data and findings are organized in five chapters. The method used in the current research is narrative research or narrative analysis and the method of collecting samples in a targeted manner and the snowball technique. Narrative samples were 25 Tehrani youths, 20 of whom were interviewed and 19 of them were used in the analysis. The results of the research show that all young converts have experienced four stages in their religious life, which include the stages of familiarity with religion, the peak of religiosity, crisis (doubt) and rejection of belief in values. In the process of changing their religion, the crisis stage has been repeated in dealing with different causes, and in the end, the final result is the abandonment of values. The result of the research shows that socio-political causes as well as socio-psychological causes have been more involved in the lived experience of immigrants than other causes. The results of the research showed that all converts have experienced four stages in their religious life (including the stages of familiarity with religion, intensified religiosity, tension or crisis, and leaving the belief system). The interviewees have faced different reasons in each period; For example, in the stage of getting to know religion through upbringing in the family or school education, they got acquainted with religion.

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