If you, like me, grew up receiving religious education, you likely encountered conversion stories. For Muslims, an important topic of our weekend school education in the United States is the siirah (biography, "gospel") of the Messenger Muhammad ﷺ. It is replete with stories of how courageous and noble individuals, beginning with his wife Khadija and cousin `Ali, recognized him as God's Messenger. Implicitly and explicitly, those who rejected him were cruel and venal.
Susan Jacoby examines how European Christians told stories about conversion, which, under the scrutiny of modern historical method, turn out to have concealed varying degrees of coercion, and how the post-fascist Catholic Church has attempted to shift blame away from itself for the most grievous period of coercion, the enslavement and murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany.
