“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.

Muslim narratives of desistance among Norwegian street criminals: Stories of reconciliation, purification and exclusion

Stories about sin, regret and forgiveness are fundamental in Islam and other world religions. Islamic revivalism mediates a redemption narrative tailored to street criminals who want to break with the cycle of stigmatization, imprisonment and violence. Drawing on so-called conversion narratives, this article examines the repertoire of such stories among male street criminals in Norway who turn, or ‘return’, to Islam. I have identified three narrative types: reconciliation, purification and exclusion. I explore the content of these stories and the work they do for tellers and their audiences. Arguably, these narrative types represent forms of desistance that open up and restrict particular paths into Islam and out of street crime.

Becoming Jewish, Believing in Jesus

This book investigates a growing religious movement fusing beliefs and rituals deriving from Charismatic Evangelicalism and Judaism. Unlike analogous phenomena found in the West, such as Messianic Judaism (where Jewish-born people identify as believers in Jesus) or Christian Zionism (Evangelicals who emphasize the role of the Jews living in Israel by embracing Zionist activism), it addresses a different dimension of this trend emerging from the Global South. Based on an ethnography conducted during 2013–2015 within a religious community in Brazil, this book explains why former Charismatic Evangelicals (with no Jewish background) are adopting Jewish tenets and lifestyles. Focusing particularly on women’s conversion narratives, it investigates the reasons why Brazilian Charismatic Evangelicals are embracing rules derived from Orthodox Judaism, such as strict dress codes, eating kosher food, and observing menstrual taboos, while believing in Jesus as the Messiah. The analysis indicates that Judaizing Evangelical communities should be understood as a revival seeking to restore Christianity. The incorporation of Jewish elements aims to rebuild the authenticity of Christianity while distinguishing them from Charismatic Evangelicalism and its perceived scriptural inaccuracy, moral permissiveness, and materialism. This revival also involves recovering a collective past. References to a hidden Jewish heritage and a “return” to Judaism are mobilized for justifying strict adherence to Jewish practices. Drawing upon a sociocultural analysis, this study examines the historical, theological, religious, and subjective reasons behind this emerging Judaizing trend in Charismatic Evangelicalism. This book also engages with the literature of religious conversion, cultural change, and debates examining religious hybridization processes.

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.

Infirmitas Leading to Saintly Life

This chapter discusses the importance of infirmity for the narrations of the beginning of a saintly candidate’s path to holiness. While traditional conversion narratives waned in popularity and are next to non-existent in the canonization processes, infirmity could be underlined in the narratives regarding other important aspects of the early stages of a saint’s life. It could mark a moment when the (future) saint made an important decision that defined his or her saintly life, or influence the holy person’s lifestyle and choices. In the case of lay female saints, it could be seen and used as a factor that justified their marital relations or helped to achieve a celibate marriage.

Being a ‘White Muslima’ in the Netherlands Ethnicity, Friendships and Relationships—The Dutch Conversion Narrative

This article, which is part of a larger ongoing project, examines relationships, friendships and levels of belonging in Dutch society, as well as in the Dutch Muslim community in narratives of women converted to Islam. The ethnicity of these women is always visible as ‘native Dutch’ and shapes their conversion narratives. This ethnography raises a number of questions that form the basis for the analysis presented here: How do Dutch Muslim women shape their identity in a way that is both Dutch and Muslim? Do they incorporate Dutch parameters into their Muslim identity, while at the same time weaving Islamic principles into their Dutch sense of self? The findings show how the conversion narrative can be mobilized by Dutch Muslim women to serve identity formation, levels of belonging and personal (religious) choice in the Netherlands, where Islam is largely considered by the non-Muslim population to be a religion that is oppressive and discriminatory towards women and is associated with foreignness and being the Other. It is argued that, in the context of being Dutch and Muslim, these women express their freedom of choice, which is manifested through friendships, relationships and marriages (Islamic vs. civil), while their ethnicity and conversion experience is a visible component in their identity. In so doing, these women push the limits of the archetypal Dutch identity and are able to criticize Dutch society while simultaneously stretching the meaning of Islam and being critical of Dutch Muslim communities to craft their own hybrid identity.

Hagiography as Source: Gender and Conversion Narratives in The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church

Drawing on the work of Jeanne-Nicole Mellon Saint-Laurent, this essay proposes utilizing hagiographies from the The Book of the Saints of the Ethiopian Church, a fifteenth-century Ethiopian collection of saints’ lives, to explore various aspects of conversion. Other scholars employ a similar approach when analyzing hagiographical literature found in medieval Europe. While acknowledging that these texts do not provide details about the historical experience of conversion, they can assist scholars in understanding the conception of conversion in the imagination of the culture that created them. This essay specifically focuses on the role of women in conversion throughout the text and argues that, although men and women were almost equally represented as agents of conversion, a closer examination reveals that their participation remained gendered. Women more frequently converted someone with whom they had a prior relationship, especially a member of their familial network. Significantly, these observations mirror the patterns uncovered by contemporary scholars such as Dana Robert, who notes how women contributed to the spread of Christianity primarily through human relationships. By integrating these representations of conversion from late medieval Ethiopia, scholarship will gain a more robust picture of conversion in Africa more broadly and widen its understanding of world Christianity.