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 whom were forced to convert. Many Moriscos became devout in their new Christian faith and become sincere Christians.
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
H
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
Don Juan of Persia – late 16th- and early 17th-century figure in Iran and Spain; also known as Faisal Nazary; was a native of Iran, who later moved westward; settled in Spain where he became a Roman Catholic
was a traveller, surgeon and entrepreneur who converted to Christianity from Sunni Islam.
M
Sake Dean Mahomed – 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
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
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
Aurelius and Natalia – 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
Q
Qays al-Ghassani – a Christian Arab of the 10 century, from Najran, southern Arabia. He converted to Islam in his youth. He later reverted to Christianity and became a monk. He was tried at Ramla for apostacy but refused to return to Islam and was beheaded.
Emily Ruete - Zanzibari princess born as Salama bint Said
S
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
Saint Serapion of Kozheozersky – former Muslim of Tartar ancestry who converted to Christianity and founded the Kozheozersky Monastery in northern 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 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
Casilda of Toledo – daughter of a Muslim king of Toledo ; 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
U
Ubayd-Allah ibn Jahsh – brother of Zaynab bint Jahsh, brother in law and first cousin of Muhammad and one of the male Sahaba ; he has been cited as one of the four monotheistic hanifs by Ibn Ishaq who converted to Christianity after his migration to Abyssinia
Muley Xeque – 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
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
20th and 21st century
A
Aslan Abashidze – this former leader of the Ajarian Autonomous Republic in western Georgia was born into a renowned Muslim Ajarian family, but later he converted to Christianity.
Saeed Abedini – Iranian-American pastor imprisoned in Iran, Abedini is an American and a former Muslim who converted to Christianity in 2000
Taysir Abu Saada – this former member of the PLO founded the ministry Hope For Ishmael after he converted to Christianity;Yasir Arafat's personal driver
Inaara Aga Khan – second wife of Aga Khan IV who returned to her Christian faith adopting her birth name "Gabriele" after the completion of their divorce.
Mehmet Ali Ağca – Turkish assassin who murdered left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi on 1 February 1979; later shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981; while in prison in 2007 he claimed to convert to Christianity
Magdi Allam – Italy's most famous Islamic affairs journalist
Zachariah Anani – former Sunni Muslim Lebanese militia fighter
Juan Andrés – name chosen by a Spanish Muslim scholar who converted to Catholicism and wrote a well known polemical work against Islam, the Confusión o confutación de la secta mahomética y del Alcorán
Asmirandah – Indonesian actress of Dutch descent; converted to Protestantism in December 2013; owes her conversion to an experience of having dreamed three times of Jesus Christ
Johannes Avetaranian – born Muhammad Shukri Efendi, Christian missionary of Turkish heritage
B
Parveen Babi – former Indian actress and an erstwhile fashion model; born in Junagadh, Gujarat to a Muslim family, and later converted to Christianity during the last years of her life, and was baptised in a Protestant Anglican church at Malabar Hill
Fathima Rifqa Bary – American teenager of Sri Lankan descent who drew international attention in 2009 when she ran away from home and claimed that her Muslim parents might kill her for having converted to Christianity
Sheikh Ahmed Barzani – head of Barzani Tribe in Iraqi Kurdistan and older brother of Mustafa Barzani, Kurdish nationalist leader; announced his conversion to Christianity in 1931 during the anti-government uprising
Mohammed Christophe Bilek – Algerian former Muslim who lives in France since 1961; baptized Roman Catholic in 1970; in the 1990s, he founded Our Lady of Kabyle, a French website devoted to evangelisation among Muslims
Francis Bok – Sudanese-American activist, convert to Islam from Christianity; but later returned to his Christian faith
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
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 CossackUkraine
Bahaa el-Din Ahmed Hussein el-Akkad – Egyptian former Muslim sheikh whose theological discourse with a Christian led him to conduct an intensive study of Christian Scripture, after which he converted to Christianity in January 2005
Sabatina James – 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
Fernão Lopes – 16th-century Portuguese soldier in India who converted to Roman Catholicism
M
Pinkan Mambo – Indonesian singer; converted in 2010; decision taken after admitting she studied various religions of the world and eventually dropped in awe of Jesus Christ
Roy Marten – Indonesian actor whose family was converted to Roman Catholicism during his childhood but who converted later to Indonesian Orthodoxy in 1997
Carlos Menem – former President of Argentina; raised a Nusayri but converted to Roman Catholicism, a constitutional requirement for accessing the presidency until 1994
Archbishop Thomas Luke Msusa – born into a Muslim family; converted to Christianity as a child and later became an archbishop in his home country of Malawi, as well as converting and baptizing his father, a former imam
Muhsin Muhammad – current American football player for the Carolina Panthers, raised in a Muslim household, later converted to Christianity
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
Malika Oufkir – Moroccan writer and daughter of General Mohamed Oufkir; she and her siblings are converts from Islam to Catholici; and she writes in her book, Stolen Lives, "we had rejected Islam, which had brought us nothing good, and opted for Catholicism instead". Oyedepo David. A Nigerian petecostal preacher. Born into a Muslim family in Ilorin Kwara State, Nigeria. Doing well in the Pentecostal movement in Nigeria and the world at large
P
Shams Pahlavi – Iranian princess and the elder sister of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Shah of Iran
Agni Pratistha – Indonesian actress, model and former beauty queen, converted to Catholicism after marriage, although initially denied rumors of conversion
Daud Rahbar – Pakistani scholar of Comparative religions, composer, short story writer, translator, philosopher, contributor to inter-civilization dialogue, musicologist, drummer, singer and guitarist
Abdul Rahman – Afghan convert to Christianity who escaped the death penalty because of foreign pressure
Lukman Sardi – Indonesian actor; converted to Christianity after marriage
Rev. Manigun Sayed], Muslim convert in Manipur, from Manipur, India
Mohamed Alí Seineldín – former Argentine army colonel who participated in two failed coup attempts against the democratically elected governments of both President Raúl Alfonsín and President Carlos Menem in 1988 and 1990
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
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"
Hakan Taştan and Turan Topal – two Turkish Christian converts who went on trial in 2006, on charges of "allegedly insulting 'Turkishness' and inciting religious hatred against Islam"
Maria Temryukovna – Circassian princess, and second wife to Ivan IV of Russia; born in a Muslim upbringing; baptised into the Russian Orthodox Church on 21 August 1561
