Monika Pakos found God while driving through Mississauga.

It wasn’t quite how the 22-year-old imagined such a life-changing moment would take place.

She had been researching religion, and specifically Islam, for two years after a university class on world religions sparked an interest. And, lately, thoughts of conversion had crossed her mind.

But Pakos, who grew up in a Polish Catholic household, wasn’t quite sure what she had to do to take the final leap of faith. So, as she drove to her job at a restaurant last November, she called up a local Islamic centre.

The woman on the line told her it was easy: just have belief in your heart and then recite the Islamic creed in the presence of a witness. It was so easy, in fact, that she could do it right then.

“Right now?” asked Pakos as she tried to remain focused on the road.

“All you have to do is repeat it after me,” the woman replied.

Pakos paused briefly, and then began to repeat the words: “There is no God but God and Muhammad is his messenger.”

Seconds later, even before she parked, it was over. She was officially a Muslim.

“Once it happened, I felt so relieved,” says Pakos. “It happened so suddenly . . . but it felt right.”

Over the past few decades, the GTA has become fertile ground for religious converts. It’s estimated that every year, thousands of people across the city leave the faith they were born into — or the absence of faith — and are “reborn” into a new one.

The diversity of the city encourages inter-religious marriages and exposure to a variety of faiths, the two most common reasons for taking the plunge. And mass immigration from around the world — including officially secular countries such as China — has also given organized religion a whole new audience to preach to.

Statistics show religion is fading fast from the public sphere, which makes converts all the more remarkable, even anomalous. According to Statistics Canada, 25 per cent of Canadians — up from 1 per cent in 1961 — say religion has no role in their lives. And 17.5 per cent say they have no religion — up from 12 per cent a decade earlier.

Committing to a new religion is a life-changing decision, one converts often struggle with. And once they’ve switched, they have a greater burden to bear: many people see them as saviours.

“Converts are often accepted within the communities they join because they validate that community’s claim to have a particular and perhaps privileged approach to truth,” says Nicholas Terpstra, a history professor at the University of Toronto who has extensively studied religious conversions. “That said, converts can challenge communities and be resented for it, because they don’t know or accept the many small compromises with which communities negotiate that gap between what their scriptures proclaim or require and what believers actually live in the day to day.”

Growing up in Angola, Eduardo Brito was the only kid on his street who hadn’t been baptized. His father was an atheist.

After the birth of his sons in Toronto, Brito, a project manager with retailer H&M, decided to revisit the Catholicism that surrounded him in his youth. “I didn’t want my kids to go through the confusion I felt as a child.”

Last Easter, after spending a year in the conversion process, known as the rites of Christian initiation of adults, Brito was accepted into the Catholic Church — through the rituals of baptism, confirmation and communion. His wife was confirmed and welcomed into the church on the same day.

Converts in pluralistic countries such as Canada and the U.S are among the lucky ones, free to choose or leave a religion as they please. A Pew Forum Poll from 2007 found that half of Americans said their faith was different from the one they were raised with: those who had grown up with religion had left it altogether or adopted a new faith, while those who grew up with no faith had since joined one.

But elsewhere in the world, conversion is seen as more a political than spiritual move. In some countries, conversions are strictly controlled by law and in extreme cases, can be punishable by death.

Malaysia, for example, has laws that espouse religious freedom, but the constitution gives the government power to restrict Muslims from converting to another religion — although members of other religions can convert to Islam. In India, some states with predominantly Hindu populations have introduced laws requiring those intending to change religions to tell the district magistrate at least 30 days in advance. Failure to do so can lead to a police investigation, prosecution and sanctions.

In Canada, the challenges of converting are much more subtle. Some converts struggle with winning approval from family and friends, or with fielding their scorn.

“Of course, nobody will call you crazy, but you feel like people are thinking, ‘You are going to a lot of trouble . . . and for what?’ ” says Brito, who adds that even his sister tells him he’s “changed” since he became Catholic.

The process of conversion is often unintentional. Some who adopt a new religion say they weren’t looking for one and then, all of a sudden, they stumbled upon a feeling or a philosophy that called to them. Years of study can come to a head in a single moment, seemingly inspired by the heavens above.

The night before she converted to Islam, Nichole Hosein had a dream. The 27-year-old French teacher had been grappling with the decision to convert since her days at the University of Waterloo, but she feared her Christian parents’ strong disapproval. One night five years ago, she knelt down and asked God if she was doing the right thing. Then she dreamt that an angel in the form of a towering light, in which she could see the form of a person, stood next to her bed and told her she was making the right choice.

Sometimes, exposure to people or a community is enough to convince someone to convert. But, most often, the impetus is romantic love.

“Love is a very powerful force,” says Imam Hamid Slimi, the chair of the Canadian Council of Imams, who has performed conversions in the past. Slimi estimates that in the Muslim community, 80 per cent of women who convert do so for marriage, and 90 per cent of men. “For some people, it’s not finding solace or spirituality, or finding God. It’s because you love someone very much, and are willing to do anything for them, including changing your religion.”

In 2001, nearly 20 per cent of people married someone outside their faith, according to Statistics Canada, up from 15 per cent two decades ago. Of that 20 per cent, Jews and Christians were the most likely to be in inter-religious unions. In 2001, 17 per cent of marriages involving a Jew were inter-religious, compared with 9 per cent in 1981. More than half of inter-religious unions in Canada were between a Catholic and Protestant.

But these are not simply conversions of convenience, religious leaders stress. In Judaism, for example, serious discussion is mandatory before one can even enter into the conversion process, says Rabbi Adam Cutler of Toronto’s Conservative Beth Tzedec Congregation.

“For the majority, the impetus or final push is because of a Jewish partner,” he says. “But we are very clear at the beginning, and we check at the end, that this can’t be the sole reason for conversion. It’s a pretty major commitment, and a life-changing experience. If it’s not what you want, that becomes pretty evident.”

The lengthy conversion process for all three movements includes a year or more of study, acceptance from the three-person tribunal called the Beit Din , a cleansing bath called a mikvah and, in the case of males in Conservative and Orthodox Judaism, ritual circumcision.

Traditionally, those two movements movements have played a little hard-to-get, turning potential candidates away as many as three times before accepting their intention to become Jews.

“There is some push-back — we really make sure they are serious and sincere,” says Cutler, adding that Jews don’t actively proselytize, as Christians and Muslims do. Despite this, around 150 people in the GTA convert to the Jewish faith each year. The Reform and Conservative movements accept 50-60 each, while the Orthodox community accepts between 30 and 35 people a year.

But it is one thing to convert and another to live life as a convert. Once the spiritual high wears off, reality sets in.

In the majority of cases, the convert is seen as a boon to the community. Gregory Beath, who works in the Office of Formation for Discipleship with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, says that while the number of converts is relatively small compared to the overall word Catholic population, their presence is vital to the church. In 2011, more than 2,000 people over the age of 7 became Catholic in the GTA — up more than 20 per cent from the year before.

“The faith of the whole community is . . . deepened,” he says.

Rabbi Cutler says that in his synagogue, about half the active, involved members are converts.

But does the fervour of converts make up for the thousands who leave organized religions each year?

That’s difficult to assess, faith leaders say. The number of Catholics has been rising modestly, at 1 to 2 per cent a year, for the past decade in the GTA, but primarily because of immigration and birth rates, not conversions.

The same goes for Islam. Slimi estimates that the average mosque will conduct around 10 conversions a year. Due to the often private nature of Islamic conversions, there is no official record of how many take place every year. In England, where the Muslim population is around 2.7 million, more than three times that of Muslims in Canada, a recent study found 5,000 people convert to Islam every year.

“There is this perception that there are so many conversions happening in the GTA, but that is simply not true,” says Slimi.

And he feels there is a more pressing challenge to deal with: retaining the converts who have made it so far.

Tabatha Cunningham, 37, an entrepreneur who converted to Islam 17 years ago, says she has had periods in her life when she simply refers to herself as a woman of faith and no longer a Muslim.

“Sometimes people get so absorbed in becoming an ideal Muslim that they almost forget what it’s like to be an ideal responsible citizen,” says Cunningham, who was raised in a conservative Christian family. She is writing a book about her experience, which has included two bad marriages and a lack of social support from the broader community. “It can be a real messy world for a new convert without proper guidance.”

As a result, many Muslim converts she knows have left the faith altogether. “They become so disillusioned that they simply stop practising,” said Cunningham, who married soon after she joined the faith.

For some converts, the challenge is integrating into the community.

Chloe Korenblum was an atheist who converted to Judaism two years ago after meeting her husband, a Conservative Jew. Even before then, says the now-25-year-old, she felt she had a “Jewish soul.” But despite her devotion to the faith, the reaction from the Jewish community has been mixed.

She says Orthodox and Reform Jews don’t consider her to be fully Jewish.

“But it’s confusing, because it’s a very big sin to not be welcoming and kind to a convert. People get around it by saying that she did a conversion that is lesser than our beliefs, so we don’t have to follow that rule.” She adds that people within her own extended family have told her she “isn’t really Jewish.”

Korenblum says it’s a frustrating fact of life for the Jewish convert, but not enough to dissuade her from her faith. “It makes me want to be a better person, overall. And it’s not like you can go back: once you’re Jewish, you are Jewish.”

Six months later, Pakos is getting accustomed to life as a convert. Soon after she told her parents, they kicked her out of the house. She says she has found some support through an introductory class on Islam for new Muslims, but still has moments of doubt.

“The hardest thing has been my relationship with my mother,” she says. “Money problems, living alone I can live with. But I know my mother is really unhappy, and I just don’t if that is something I can live with.”

Could the family strife change her mind?

“I feel like I have made the right choice,” she says, adding that imams and sheiks have told her 90 per cent of converts face family resistance. “It will take time, but I feel like God is with me.”

Chloe Korenblum, 25

Plans to enter social work

Was: Atheist

Now: Conservative Jew

Throughout her life, Chloe Korenblum (née Noel) felt she had a “Jewish soul.” Although her parents were atheists, she grew up with Jewish friends in Toronto’s Riverdale neighbourhood and was exposed to the culture. After she went on a trip to Israel, she started to feel a “strong connection” to the faith.

“I thought to myself, why am I not a part of this?” she says.

While living in Paris, she started going through the conversion process with the Reform movement. But when she came to Toronto, she met her husband, Henry, a Conservative Jew, who encouraged her to take on his faith.

“He said if I was a Reform Jew, some people in the Conservative moment would not accept the Reform one in the same way,” says Korenblum, who converted in 2010.

The Jewish conversion process is complicated and can take a year — if not longer. The basic rituals are similar for the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox branches of Judaism, but fundamentals of the belief can differ significantly.

Rabbi Adam Cutler of Toronto’s Conservative Beth Tzedec Congregation says all candidates need a sponsoring rabbi, who meets with them a few times a year to monitor their progress. They are enrolled in an introductory course on Judaism, in which students learn Hebrew and about Jewish culture and the high holidays.

“After about a year, if I see they are attending the class and fulfill all the requirements in terms of keeping kosher, practising Sabbath, and attending synagogue, I will make a recommendation of them to the rabbinical court, the Beit Din ,” says Cutler, who is currently sponsoring 11 candidates.

The candidate then stands in front of the three-member Beit Din for an interview that takes approximately 20 minutes. “By this point, I serve as a gatekeeper,” says Cutler. “I am not going to recommend someone who I don’t think will pass.”

In the Conservative and Orthodox denominations, and in some Reform congregations, men who have not been circumcised must undergo a medical circumcision in the hospital. For men who are circumcised, there is a symbolic taking of blood from the same area.

Then both men and women take a ritual bath, called a mikvah , which ends the official conversion process.

Korenblum says that was the most meaningful experience for her.

“You can’t wear anything. No nail polish, no jewelry, no makeup, nothing.” She says that during the process, you enter into a pool and dunk your head three times while prayers are being recited, and then recite some words in Hebrew.

“You are cleansing your past life and starting fresh as this new person. It’s an amazing feeling.”

Nichole Hosein, 27

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French teacher

Was: Christian

Now: Muslim

She never really thought much about religion while growing up as Nichole Frenette in Nova Scotia. Everybody she knew was Christian, though most didn’t practise.

“By the time I went to university I had totally given up on religion,” Hosein says.

When she got to the University of Waterloo to study French, she realized she wasn’t like the other kids in her dorm. They would go out to party, but she preferred spending time in residence cooking and watching movies. She eventually realized she wasn’t alone — the dorms would be filled with Muslim kids, who also preferred to stay in.

It was during this time she began to learn more about Islam, and eventually she felt ready to convert. But her Christian parents were furious. When she asked them to stop cooking with pork or alcohol — two requirements of the faith — they would slip it into her food deliberately, she says.

Then she turned to God for help, praying for a sign. That night she dreamt an angel stood next to her bed and told her she was making the right decision.

“The dream was so real that I couldn’t differentiate if I was asleep or awake,” recalls Hosein, now a French teacher in Hamilton. “People think I am crazy when I tell them. But it was all I needed. I went to the mosque the next day and became a Muslim.”

In Islam, the conversion process is simple. All you have to do is declare the oneness of God and belief in Muhammad, says Imam Hamid Slimi, chair of the Canadian Council of Imams. It can be done publicly at a mosque or even in private, according to some religious leaders.

“We don’t have the concept of baptism in Islam,” he explains. “The human intervention is not necessary, in our view. Nobody can bring you closer to God but yourself. We emphasize on the direct relationship between you and God.

Slimi does suggest people devote 40 days after their conversion to studying the faith.

After her conversion in 2007, things became difficult for Hosein. Her parents didn’t speak to her for two years. Over time, after she got married (to Ian Hosein, a Muslim) and had a son, Noah, now 6 months old, her relationship with them has improved, Hosein says.

“We have made a compromise. When I see them, I wear a hat and don’t wear my scarf. It is what it takes to have them in my life.”

Eduardo Brito

Project manager for H&M

Was: Atheist

Now: Catholic

Eduardo Brito was born into a family of Catholics: his mother practised the faith, and his sister had been baptized. But his father, who had abandoned the church, was adamant that Eduardo would not be Catholic.

So, as a child growing up in Angola, then a Portuguese colony, Brito always felt like the odd one out. “I was the only one of my friends and family who wasn’t baptized,” he says.

For years, he stayed away from the church. “When you are in the secular environment, it’s easy to dismiss religion . . . you get very entrenched in your secular ways,” says Brito, now living in Toronto and the father of two sons, 7 and 11. “It’s a lot easier, to tell you to the truth.”

Eventually, however, he began to explore other religions — Hinduism, Buddhism and a host of Eastern philosophies.

When his sons were born, he realized he wanted them to be baptized. “I felt I had to straighten this up for my kids, once and for all.” (Parents do not have to be Catholic Church members for their children to be christened.)

But it was a difficult decision, as neither he nor his wife was “fully” part of the faith: he wasn’t baptized and his wife had not been confirmed.

And not everyone has been supportive. “It’s a difficult conversation to have, to tell people what you are doing,” says Brito. “I try to contain it, because I know they will be rolling their eyes soon.”

He thought the process would involve simply walking into a church and converting a few weekends later. But he soon discovered it would take more than a year.

It begins with talking to a parish member or priest about the convert’s desire to become Catholic, says Gregory Beath, who works in the Office of Formation for Discipleship with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto. This is followed by the period of the catechumenate, in which one publicly expresses his or her intention to join the church.

Then there is up to a year of study. Finally, on the night before Easter, the candidates are formally accepted into the church though baptism, in which water is poured on their heads, confirmation, which involves being anointed with holy oil, and communion, which entails swallowing consecrated bread and wine.

“It’s a profound experience,” says Brito, who was christened last Easter.

Since then, he says his faith has become an active part of his family’s life. They attend church on Sundays and spend time learning the about Catholicism together.