Conversion to Islam ceremony interview: starting the interview on the right foot

A good interview should be more like a guided conversation between an interviewer and an interviewee. It is key that the interviewer skillfully controls the conversation in order to obtain the desired information. The opening of an interview is considered an important part of any interview as it sets the tone for the rest of the interview. This paper reports on the discourse strategies employed by two daees (propagators of Islam) during a particular da’wah/Islamic propagation communicative event i.e. Conversion to Islam Ceremony Interview. The main objectives of the Conversion to Islam Ceremony Interview are to discover the potential converts’ feelings about their conversion to Islam, their knowledge about Islam and conversion to Islam and to rectify misunderstandings about conversion to Islam. The focus of the paper is on the opening of the interview, that is, the analysis of the spoken discourse strategies that the daees employ to open the interviews so as to create non-threatening atmosphere of interaction and tease out the required contextual information. Ethnography discourse analysis i.e. Ethnography of Speaking is used to analyze the interaction between the daees and the potential converts. The analysis reveals that during the opening of the interview the daees subtly bridge the gap by getting the names of the potential converts’ right, warm up the interview by asking general questions, and collect information and confirm a matter tactfully and swiftly by asking close-ended/yes-no questions