“Love Jihad”, “Forced” Conversion Narratives, and Interfaith Marriage in the Sikh Diaspora

This paper sets out to critically examine the “forced” conversion narrative circulating across the Sikh diaspora. The “forced” conversion narrative tells the story of Muslim men allegedly deceiving and tricking “vulnerable” Sikh females into Islam. The paper explores the parallels between the “forced” conversion narrative and the discourse on “love jihad” propagated by the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as well as drawing out its particularities within the Sikh community. The paper is informed by new empirical data generated by a series of qualitative interviews with Sikhs in the UK, US, and Canada, and captures the complexities and nuances of my respondents in their interpretations of, and challenges to, the “forced” conversions narrative. The paper adopts a decolonial Sikh studies theoretical framework to critically unpack the logics of the discourse. In doing so, it reveals a wider politics at play, centred upon the regulation of Sikh female bodies, fears of the preservation of community, and wider anxieties around interfaith marriage. These aspects come together to display Sikh Islamophobia, whereby the figure of the “predatory” Muslim male is represented as an existential threat to Sikh being.

Blessed by the Lord: A Visual Portrait of a Jumli Pentecostal Congregation

Many Christian converts in the Sinja Valley of Jumla, northwest Nepal, reveal that they have been struck by the Bible because it referenced real events, especially miraculous cases of healing. These miraculous events provide tangible ‘evidence’ of God’s power that somewhat replicate the expectations that people nurture with respect to the Hindu deities. In such way, miracles play an especially crucial role in supporting the conversion of women and youngsters living in large families, who, partaking as veritable protagonists in Biblical events, are turned into the as quintessentially Christian subjects of a conversion narrative that helps substantiating their radical decision vis-à-vis the rest of their family.

Translation and Polemics in the Anti-Jewish Literature of the Muslims of Christian Iberia: The “Conversion of Kaʿb al-Aḥbār” or the “Lines of the Torah”

Muslim anti-Christian and anti-Jewish polemics from Christian Iberia often include references and quotations from the Qurʾān, the Torah, and the Gospels. Even when they are composed in Romance, the script used in their writing is often Arabic. This article discusses the conversion narrative of “the lines of the Torah,” in which translation is halfway between the faithful rendering of the original and its interpretation by its Muslim scribe. I show in this paper that the ability to convey, or so to speak, to “unveil,” new meanings makes translation a powerful means to convert the opponent and to strengthen the faith in Islam. The analysis aims to shed light on the intellectual and social milieus of “the lines of the Torah,” and deals with translation in other anti-Jewish Muslim writings from the Christian territories: the “Jewish Confession,” or Ashamnu; the chronology in Seder Olam; and the lengthy Muslim anti-Jewish polemic of Taʾyīd al-milla (The Fortification of the Faith or Community).

Chapter 18

When the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the Second World War, Cary Grant finally felt able to apply for US citizenship and then to serve in the US military. He also married Barbara Hutton, and they were dubbed “Cash and Cary” in the press. While he waited for his citizenship papers, he continued making films. In George Stevens’ The Talk of the Town (1942) he vies with co-star Ronald Colman for the affections of Jean Arthur. Anxious that Stevens was favouring Arthur, Grant was unhappy making this film. Afterward, he embarked on the Hollywood Victory Caravan, a fundraising tour of American cities, and he was touched to see the public’s affection for him. With director Leo McCarey and co-star Ginger Rogers, he made Once Upon A Honeymoon (1942). The original story, co-written by McCarey, appears in some respects to be an apologia for Barbara’s Hutton’s previous marriage to a Prussian-born aristocrat who served in the German army during the First World War. Still eager to serve in the military, Grant made one more film at the behest of RKO. Mr Lucky (1943) is a “conversion narrative” in which he plays an initially cynical gangster who ultimately volunteers to serve his country. While making it, the military ruled that no one over the age of 38 could enter the services. Grant, who turned 39 as Mr Lucky was completed, would not be able to serve his adopted country.

Unsettling the Self: the Paradoxes of Narrative Identity in Christian Testimonial Practice

Born-again conversion offers the paradoxical promise of self-transcending self-transformation, which takes narrative form when converts attempt to recount their experiences: how to tell a story of self-transformation, in which oneself is neither the author nor the agent of change? Existing scholarship suggests that conversion narratives work insofar as they resolve underlying paradoxes and stitch together a sense of coherent selfhood. This paper tacks in the opposite direction: the analysis focuses on the tendencies of conversion narratives to blur, blend and double over categorical bounds of selfhood, highlighting paradoxes rather than looking for their resolution. The paper contends, therefore, that conversion narrative practices facilitate converts’ experience of conversion, not only insofar as they resolve paradox and stitch together coherent identity, but also insofar as they cultivate ephemeral experiences and explorations of narrative paradoxes that are inherent to—though often hidden from—most any attempt to find and feel identity.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the subject of conversion by considering issues, themes, theories, and methods in the study of Christian conversion. Conversion is movement from something to something. Its process is dynamic and multifaceted and raises a number of questions: Is the change intellectual, social, psychological, moral, or some combination? Is it an event or a process? Who defines conversion—the scholar, the religious community, the convert? Examining conversion over two millennia of Christian history complicates matters even more, for the meaning of the word and the concept itself varies from person to person, from group to group, and from setting to setting. This chapter examines various theoretical models of conversion (Lewis Rambo’s seven stages, the “conversion motifs” of John Lofland and Norman Skonovd, Henri Gooren’s “conversion career,” and others) and applies these models to a single conversion narrative. The chapter concludes by highlighting a number of broad themes found in the chapters ahead.

The generic matrix Revenge tragedy, history play, murder pamphlet and conversion narrative

This chapter processes a variety of different sorts of contemporary concerns, such as political, confessional and religious issues. It examines how William Shakespeare's plays elicit from its audience and then manipulates a series of narrative expectations derived from a range of different contemporary genres. It also looks into the irruptive intervention of the ghost that has cut Hamlet off from the values and traditions out of which the narrative quest for life is sustained. The chapter points out how the play has utterly undermined all the canons of Renaissance humanist assumption that had hitherto underpinned Hamlet's existence and sense of himself as an actor or social, political and moral agent in the world. It also explains how Hamlet exploits the void by offering the audience a variety of different sorts of story or narrative template with which to make sense of what is happening to the characters.