Conversion to Islam in Western societies is not a new phenomenon. It can be captured from two major angles – (1) the anthropological approach, which highlights the individuals’ choice to adopt another religion and lifestyle and (2) the security angle, which underlines the threat. The relation of some converts to terror activities made this point of view more accessible.

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These two major angles create numerous professional challenges to journalists regarding how to cover these people and their actions. In this paper, the authors wanted to achieve few targets: (1) to shed light on how often converts to Islam are mentioned in the German media and from which angle, (2) to identify the media workers and politicians’ challenges while dealing with the converts to Islam and (3) to give recommendations to media workers and politicians on how to better deal with this sensitive topic.

The analysis of the media discourses in Germany offered interesting insights on this phenomenon, due to several reasons: in the wake of the 9/11 events, public debates spread about Muslim presence in Germany which had long been neglected, resulting in initial interest on converts to Islam. In early 2007, a survey stated the substantial rise of conversions to Islam in the country. Later that year, the German public learned of the arrests of the members of a terror cell which comprised two German converts to Islam. This context made it appealing to investigate the change in the quantity and frequency of the news items which cover converts to Islam.

In order to show the increase in the number of items along the years and the change in the discourse after the exposure of the Sauerland cell, the authors chose to conduct news items counting in two major German newspapers, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ). In this simple way they were able to demonstrate the change in the coverage regarding this topic along 1993-2010.

For decades, Europe has been dealing with growing numbers of Muslim immigrants. Analyzing the public’s and journalists’ perceptions can shed light on the broader picture of Europe regarding the relationship between the non-Muslim majority and the Muslim minority, including various conflicts regarding integration issues and the current challenges diverse societies are confronted with.