Three different types of experience are reconstructed in the study correspondig with three different types of conversion. It refers to experiences of personal devaluation in the realm of sexuality and gender relations, as well as to the experiences of uncertainty in the course of changing gender arrangements. This type refers to experiences of failure or destabilization of highly valued careers. Through conversion of Islam, which in this case is perceived as a religion of discipline, the former ambitions become stabilized or transferred into alternative careers. This study combines a functional perspective on conversion with the analysis of the specific form of religious conversion.
Conversion is conceptualized as the symbolic transformation of crisis experience.
It is shown how specific forms of religious expression are related to certain kinds of life experience and how they function to articulate and transform this experience.