The intimate and the stranger: Approaching the “Muslim question” through the eyes of female converts to Islam

In 1704 the first volumes of a French version of “A Thousand and One Nights” appeared. That was the century that also saw the use of the Orient for criticizing the West, as in Montesquieu’s satirical Lettres Persanes (1721). Voltaire likewise employed the appeal of the Orient in his moral tales, Zaire (1731), most famously, Candide (1759). He even wrote an essay entitled Mahomet. Diderot followed Montesquieu in using the East to comment on the West. (Goody, 2004: 85)

Historically, relationships between the so-called Muslim and European civilizations have been ambivalent, characterized by attraction and repulsion, recognition and denial. In his fascinating book on Islam and the West’s shared history, Goody (2004) examines the complex and multifaceted forces that govern the ongoing construction of western and Muslim societies as two separate, antagonistic worlds. He demonstrates how the seventh-century Muslim expansion out from the borders of the Arabian Peninsula involved not only conquest but also peaceful and fruitful economic, industrial, artistic, and religious exchanges. From the Crusades to the international commerce of early mercantile Venice, or official visits between European monarchies and the Empire de la porte, the travels of merchants, soldiers and mercenaries, intellectuals, and explorers contributed to the creation of close cultural relationships between Muslim and western worlds, whose mutual creative and scientific influence would continue for centuries to come. Before the final stages of the Reconquista in Spain in 1492, Muslims and Christians had lived alongside one another for centuries. As historian Dakhlia (2005) points out, processes of cultural hybridization precipitated by fluid circulation between and around the shores of the Mediterranean Sea consistently blurred the boundaries between both civilizations. Goody adds that, despite its exoticism, its intellectual and scientific advancements, and its economic and military power, Europeans often perceived the Muslim world as a great threat. Throughout their long and deep common history, Muslims and Europeans have thus alternatively experienced tensions and coexistence, peace and conflicts, cooperation and competition.

Nevertheless, the so-called Muslim world’s contribution to European modernity is often ignored, and Islam is frequently represented as the archetype of Alterity, and consequentially, as the contrasting benchmark for constructing a definition of western civilization. Nowadays, for example, it may seem odd for a person to identify as both Muslim and Quebecois (a French majority province in Canada), an association that can often ensue complex personal conflicts of belonging for second-generation Muslim immigrants or converts. In this regard, both the fear of a powerful military, economic, and religious rival, and the western fantasy of an exotic and sumptuous neighbor have nourished vivid Orientalist representations that continue to underpin hegemonic claims. According to Goody (2004), this constructed putative distinction between the West and the East depicts the “Muslim world” as one of the deepest and the most recurrent representations of Otherness—a claim supported by Huntington, Lewis and others’ reified visions of Muslim societies which, since 11 September 2001, have even more heavily impacted commonly held perceptions of Muslims and Islam. This ideological polarization simultaneously reveals a western fascination for Islam, as well as the deep-running Islamophobia ingrained in western institutional structures “acting as an incubator for Western European ideological and theological unity” (Geisser, 2005) and Christian thought. While 19th century Europe saw a collective imagination reliant on the image of the homo islamicus (the archetypally anti-modern man), current debates surrounding the presence of Muslim populations in Europe revolve around two particular issues: (a) the general status of women and the hijab as the symbol of women’s oppression, and (b) the integration of Muslim populations within democratic societies, whose systems are often portrayed as incompatible, even antithetical to Islamic tradition. In this respect, many authors (Göle, 2005; Kilani, 2004) argue that the representations and roles associated with women represent the main dispute between these seemingly disparate worlds.

Although Muslim religious styles are often perceived as transgressing the secular separation between public and private spheres, Cesari (2004) asserts that much of western public discourse draws on the idea that, unlike other ethnic and religious minorities, Muslims are exceptions to socio-cultural adoption of and adaption to norms and, as such, are a unique category. Current debates surrounding the so-called integration of Muslim populations into secular societies reflect and call attention to the difficult underlying issues at play: social memory, gender relationships, and family models, as well as religious heritage and the role of religion in institutions. Nevertheless, I would argue that, despite being perceived by many as a threat to democratic and liberal societies, these representations of Muslims may play a role similar to Simmel’s image of the judge—perhaps not as objective actors but as mirrors capable of shedding light on the discrepancies, contradictions, and implicit presuppositions upon which secular societies are based. For example, while the French Republic’s laïcité model allows certain denominational institutions to acquire state funding (schools, places of worship, etc.), in Canada, Beaman (2012) rightfully argues that, despite being officially labeled as “secular,” legal and political institutions are heavily permeated by Christian traditions and beliefs. Such “Christianocentrism” also extends to the academic realm; scholars now acknowledge that the very definition of religion (upon which much of the social sciences were elaborated) was itself a historical product of the Christian West (Asad, 2003). It is with these ideas in mind that I frame the question of the Muslim presence and the challenges it presents for western societies.

Muslims as strangers in the West: Critical reflections

In this article, I address the “Muslim Question” in the West as a mirror. In other words, I see Muslim populations, as minority groups that are positioned and constructed as reflections of western symbolic, social, and political structural bases. Through the lenses of social exchange and relations, I touch upon the issue of recognition from a dialogical point of view. For Hegel, recognition bears a deep moral value as it arises from a struggle aimed at transitioning from a state of inegalitarian relationship (the master and slave model) to one where both parties engage in mutual and egalitarian understanding and status (Williams, 1997). Simply put, recognition is the product of dialectical relationships: the recognition I gain from the Other allows me to recognize myself, a process through which I can reach a state of self-consciousness. Following Hegel, German philosopher Honneth (2000) describes recognition as the vehicle for social integration within an organic society based on interdependency. Drawing this important reflection into the political field, Taylor (1994) attempts to demonstrate the consistency of this concept across minority populations within modern societies and nations. For the Canadian philosopher, the recognition process should theoretically endow any and every group with moral attributes, a distinct identity and ultimately, cultural worth. In summary, claims made by groups or individuals should be met with knowledge of the Other and openness to her. Otherwise, argues Taylor, the result is animosity. Although Taylor’s definition of recognition emphasizes the need for democratic societies to treat their citizens equally, it also includes a component of intersubjectivity. My article builds upon this notion and investigates the extent to which the recognition process—which allows the majority to identify with the minority—is contingent on perceived similarity or “Sameness” to the Other. To illustrate this encounter, I propose an analysis of female converts to Islam and advance the notion that recognition can be framed around a dialogical process through which mutual recognition is achieved based on shared experience (be it intimate, social, political, or spiritual). This idea is borrowed from Schiller et al.’s (2011) approach to social contacts and relationships, which “do[es] not negate cultural, religious or gendered differences but see people as capable of relationships of experiential commonalities despite differences” (403). Schiller (2011) labels this communion as “cosmopolitan sociability”; I prefer to define this “simultaneous rootedness and openness to shared human emotions, experiences and aspirations” (399) as a form of Annerkennung, thereby emphasizing the intimacy and feeling of Sameness, these inter-subjective encounters produce (without adopting a political or social stance). That being said, the recognition of “similarity” or “Sameness” of experiences does not preclude potential conflict. In fact, in this context, dispute is considered productive, because it involves sociality, exchange, negotiation, and compromise, and addresses the various challenges associated with building a common living space. As a process, conflict would then become part of social life, and, because of the actors’ flexibility, mobility, and contradictory positions, crises would contribute to positive social change.

Rather than employing a semantic approach to conflict, Göle (2005) focuses on the “contact zones” (28) between Islam and the West such as in the French veil polemic or Turkey’s application for European Union membership. Göle advances that it is precisely on these types of public stages that history unfolds. Islam’s fragmentation and the diversity of its interpretations, as well as social and political contradictions within the structures of Europe and North America are cases in point. The subject of western women embracing Islam can be added to this list. As I argue elsewhere (Mossière, 2010), conversion to Islam can be seen as one of the many expressions of attraction for the Muslim experience that draws on a romantic fascination for exoticism, and as such, an ongoing form of Orientalism. Nevertheless, Otherness can also be experienced as the highest degree of intimacy through recognition of the Self in the Other. Instead of addressing the “Muslim Question” as an “issue,” I propose to treat it as the object of fascination for many non-Muslim-born Europeans (as opposed to converts) and North Americans. That is, I approach it from the other end of the spectrum and focus not on the tendency to differentiate from the Other, but rather the desire to become the Other. In her study of young Muslim converts in Denmark, Jensen (2008) examines how Sameness and differentiation processes are constantly constructed and negotiated. Drawing on Bauman’s (2004) “grammars of identity/alterity” model, the anthropologist argues that converts exemplify the ideas of equality and shared identity by crossing dominant racial and ethnic categorizations. Contrary to prevalent readings highlighting “orientalisation” (through polarization discourses) and “encompassment” (through assimilation discourses), these converts may occupy a liminal space where conflict is subdued. As such, this grammar of fusion and unity conflicts with public discourses, as notions of “Muslimness” and “Danishness” seemingly become compatible and consistent. In a context where prejudices against Islam are mainly constructed around women’s agency, the case of women who choose to embrace Islam is even more emblematic of this cohabitation between seemingly opposed identity components. The same mechanisms are at work within the narratives of the French and Quebecois converts I interviewed.

As Lamine (2008) rightfully points out, the plural nature of Otherness further complexifies this same/other dialectic by similarly revealing the diversity of Sameness. Urban spaces not only facilitate daily encounters with Otherness but also render identity and representation fluid, plural, and multi-layered. In this context, Muslim converts display aspects of the “Local” (reflecting their group of origin and the social majority), as well as aspects of the “Stranger” (which they share with their adoptive group and the social minority). For instance, Bendixsen’s (2010) study conducted in Berlin shows young practicing Muslims care as much for fashion as non-Muslim teens. They claim, “it is possible to be Muslim and German, as well as cool all at the same time” (2010: 275). Like many other studies, her analysis suggests the emergence of new Muslim identities (she refers to as “urban Muslims”) that draw on liberal and modern referents (similar to Haenni (2005)’s “Islam de marché” or commodified Islam) based on technological skills, education, ecological commitments, transnational mobility, and so on.

This article draws on ethnographic fieldwork conducted among Quebecois and French female Muslim converts whose number has risen since 9/11. ¹ Driven by the irony of such an observation in a context where the figure of Muslim women is usually depicted as oppressed and subjugated by their religious heritage, I interviewed 80 women who chose to embrace Islam in France and in Quebec (Canada). By examining their conversion narratives, I deconstruct their new “assembled” Muslim identities, and the ways in which consistency and coherence (both on subjective and social levels) is achieved. The narratives I collected suggest a religious path motivated by a recognition of Sameness and the desire to counterbalance ideological discourse where Islam and Muslims are categorized as radically Other. While the many dimensions of xenophobia and Islamophobia (latent, manifest, institutional, and structural) have been well and abundantly documented (Geisser, 2005), high degrees of reflexivity often displayed by the converts I have met provide an interesting critical discourse surrounding the social and political environments in which they were socialized. Although converts have usually been attributed a privileged position for political mediation and cultural translation (see Gerholm, 1988; Roald, 2004; Vroon-Najem, 2007), I argue that their subjective experiences offer a perspective from inside in such a way that symbolically speaking, converts embody the very “encounter” between Muslim and western societies, and to a great extent, epitomize what is at stake in the process. Whether driven by a sense of universalism or a cosmopolitan attitude (whereby pluralism and diversity are valued), these conversion narratives emphasize converts’ identification processes with Islam and highlight the problems associated with identity modification in secular contexts.

Beyond converts’ critical stance vis-à-vis their society of origin, their rhetoric reveals a dynamic identity-building process and an interplay between continuity and disruption, which adds a new level of reflexivity, thus furthering Simmel’s notion of distance and proximity. Simmel sees the Stranger as embodying insightful Otherness in that he makes what is distant become close and what is close become distant. In other words, even within the local community, natives may seem alien to one another, while in some contexts, the Stranger may be considered to be both surprisingly close, all the while being remote. For Simmel, the Stranger is endowed with three characteristics: objectivity (embodied by the judge), mobility (embodied by the merchant), and the stigma of reification (exemplified by the tax imposed on all Jews, whatever their level of personal wealth) (Watier, 1996). While Muslim populations in the West undoubtedly meet the two last features, I stress their potential in the role as the judges in host societies. Indeed, Simmel reminds us that historically, the Stranger was esteemed for his external stance and ability to provide objective insight into the group and local or community matters. Yet, in discovering her new environment, the Stranger translates it into her own language, much like the Local translates the Stranger’s qualities and posture into her own. This mutual evaluation process is therefore not deprived of value judgments, as sociologist Lamine (2008) posits, in that one’s perception of Otherness is often based on a stereotypical understanding of it. This preconception sometimes results in positive or neutral understandings, but more often than not, on negative prejudices. In this respect, the Stranger is increasingly defined in terms of a semantics of conquest, and thus seen as an invader or an intruder.

In a time of accelerated mobility and growing diversity, the Stranger’s presence raises new political and ethical debates. This, it would seem, begs a furthering of Simmel’s thought surrounding inclusion of religious minorities in secular societies. His work on urban milieu remains relevant in the context of today’s global cities (like in Paris and Montreal where I found most of my respondents); however, the figure of the Stranger is now embodied by migrant populations whose demands for social and political recognition challenge secular societies’ relationship to Otherness.

From their particular position as the central issue between two antagonistic worlds and as the most ostracized figure in both contexts, women’s conversion experiences can inform us on the dialectic of Sameness and Otherness, which features various aspects of Islam and the West’s encounter. In fact, these women’s testimonies differ greatly from the antagonistic rhetoric often employed when discussing Islam. Rather, they echo “pacific coexistence” (Cesari, 2004) at the micro-level of every encounter between Muslim populations and locals, as well as the attraction many Europeans and North Americans have historically cultivated for Islam and Muslim culture. Like other scholars (Cesari, 2004; Marechal et al., 2003; Nielsen, 2007; Roy, 2002; Schmidt, 2004) working on the deconstruction of popular monolithic approaches to Islam, Cesari (2004) advances the possibility for renewed coexistence, reconciliation, and mutual transformation between Islam and the West. This dialogic perspective is more salient in European contexts, where historical ties with the Muslim world run deep. While US and Canadian literature predominantly frames and approaches the “Muslim Question” as an issue of migrant populations’ capability to adapt to local contexts (Abu Laban and McIrvin, 1989; Esposito, 2000; Haddad, 2002), the subject in Europe is treated by a wider variety of intellectual stances. This includes a common polarization of the argument, which Kepel (2004) presents, on the one hand, as a transnational, Salafist interpretation of Islam advocating the Islamization of locals spread by means of new technologies of communication and da’wa, and, on the other hand, as the experiences of second- and third-generation Muslim migrants, whose successful socialization into liberal contexts engender social and economic mobility within local structures, thus transforming them into vehicles for integration. By the same token, the conversion of westerners to Islam dissolves such dichotomies and allows us to identify what Göle (2005) calls “interpénérations,” ² that is “a structural production of proximity and simultaneity [that] overlaps (and cross-references) both the Muslim and the European social experience; colonial past […] migration flow, and more recently, globalization, all contributed to interconnecting and amalgamating human practices.” In such conversion cases, this temporal simultaneity (as I will demonstrate below) also shapes spatial diversity in that the construction of the Stranger figure varies from one society to another.

In Why the West Fears Islam: An Exploration of Muslims in Liberal Democracies, Cesari (2013) identifies “three main reasons that make Islam and Muslims the internal and external enemy of the West” (1). These are related to the politics of securitization that now govern European and North American countries, to the model of secularism that tends to relegate religious manifestations in the private space, as well as to the increasing visibility of salafism that is more and more widely recognized as the authentic Islam. Beyond political motivation, converts’ experiences suggest that symbolic, social and structural forces are at play, which all contribute to a common understanding of Islam in western societies as both undesired and indispensable. This ambiguous relationship as well as the presence of Muslim populations challenge to the symbolic, ethical, and social pillars on which western societies were built, they also confirm the need to re-evaluate normative and political forces that have shaped cultural and social heritage projects in the West. By embracing Islam, converts position themselves on the margins of these societies. In so doing, their narratives allow for a unique perspective on various discrepancies and tensions in France and Quebec. They also shed light on how Islam may frame western identities’ subjectivities. In analyzing these narratives, I view subjectivity as a rhetorical construction and elaborate upon converts’ daily intimate encounters and dialogues with Otherness in social spaces.

Conversions to Islam in the West

Issues of loyalty, belonging, and identification

Although the latest studies on Islam have focused on issues of radicalization (Amiraux and Araya-Moreno, 2014), conversions to Islam in western countries have received renewed interest among academics for the past few decades, especially regarding their decision to embrace the religion of a minority group. As a result, conversions to Islam could exemplify the social and cultural change that take place on the global as well as on local scales. For Allievi (1998), the transnational migration of Muslim populations combined with the local processes of secularization and religious diversification of European and North American societies may explain the current attraction of Islam in those spaces, which unsurprisingly has been described by a large body of scholarly literature on conversions to Islam. Most of those empirical studies are bound within national contexts and seek to identify the motives and experiences of conversion as they try to gauge the possibilities for constructing identity that would negotiate nationality (or ethnicity) and Islam at the same time. ³ A few of these studies compare national contexts (Badran, 2006; Wohlrab-Sahr, 1999), whereas others consider conversions to Islam in specific milieus like prisons (Ammar et al., 2004; Dix-Richardson, 2002), or in virtual spaces through the figure of cyber-converts (Van Nieuwkerk, 2006; Winter, 2000). Lately, conversion to Islam has been approached as an ethno-racial issue, sometimes bringing back the issue of the representation of converts as national betrayers (Galonnier, 2015; Özyürek, 2014), especially in so-called secularized countries (Jensen, 2008; Vroon-Najem, 2007). In her study of Scandinavian converts, Roald (2004) argues that conversions are closely related to the development of Muslim communities and especially to the specific [relationship] to Islam in secular countries. In times of social and political change or uncertainty, religious conversion may be a strategy to solve economic, social, and political tensions, including in private spheres like in mixed marriage unions (Puzenat, 2015). For many Black Muslims in the United States, Islam symbolizes order and discipline; therefore, it may transmits dignity, a feeling of pride and belonging through the identification with movements and figures like the Nation of Islam or Malcolm X (Simmons, 2006). In Switzerland, Wohlrab-Sahr (1999) mentions a “symbolic fight” to situate conversions to Islam in a dual framework between the identity of origin and the new vision of the world.

Literature also shows that women’s attraction to Islam is not alien to the highly gendered nature of Muslim lifestyle as well as to its conservative family model (Ammar et al., 2004; Martin, 1995; Vanzan, 1996). For women, embracing Islam or “reverting” to Islam may actually appear as a strategy of resistance to social changes or local cultural dynamics (Duncan, 2003; Searing, 2003). Converts often express political stances regarding modernity, tradition, among others (Brenner, 1996). For many converts, Islam means a return to values that are typical of the older generation or is perceived as a re-moralization of modern life (Van Nieuwkerk, 2006). Some studies show that embracing Islam is an ongoing process whereby new Muslims gradually adopt Muslim socialization habits, learning how to embody a Muslim habitus or bodily dispositions and discourses (Bourque, 2006; Hermansen, 2006; Winchester, 2008). Interestingly, Mansson (2002) deconstructs how new Muslims produce themselves as new consistent selves, at the intersection of the former structure of reference and the newly embraced religious system. The anthropologist argues that granting attention to the personal and subjective meanings that converts attribute to their narrative and the emotions that color and frame them makes it possible to better grasp the strategies for re-appropriating ideologies that build a continuity between representations that are depicted as conflicting a priori.

Apart from Mansson who adopts a psychological perspective, conversions to Islam have usually been studied through a binary perspective that considers them as passages from the homogeneous Same to a radical Alterity, including issues of loyalty, belonging, and identification. While conversions have mostly been addressed as reflecting an identity issue, I want to situate conversions to Islam in Europe and North America in the long-term history of exchanges, tensions, and mutual influences that western and Muslim worlds have shared. By examining conversion narratives, I propose to locate those exchanges in the subjective realm of reciprocity and fusion/distinction that nuances the binary perspective of conversions to Islam that has dominated their characterization as historical disruptions and dramatic choices.

France and Quebec (Canada) have different relationships to Muslim worlds: while the former has shared a history of love and hate with Muslim populations primarily from Africa for more than 10 centuries, the latter has discovered Islam quite recently, in the 1990s, in the aftermath of various geopolitical events that made this “exotic” religion more present in the local landscape. Although Muslims represent the Stranger in both settings, in France, they are framed with hostility as the archetype of the enemy, whereas in Quebec, they are represented with a mix of curiosity and fear as the different Other.

From 2006 to 2008, I conducted 40 interviews in France and 40 in Quebec with female converts. I focused on their conversion paths within their personal biographies. The decision to embrace Islam was thus situated in the new Muslim’s personal trajectory, starting from childhood and (possible) first religious socialization until the first encounter and discovery of Islam, the shahada (formal ritual of conversion), the adoption of religious practices and rituals, as well as adhesion to a new community of belonging. Observations were carried out at Islamic learning centers for new Muslims during lessons on Islam addressed to converts as well as during social activities organized by the interviewees (dinners, social activities for matching potential partners, etc.). Additionally, I examined more in-depth the social, religious, and family trajectories of 5 of the 40 converts I met in each country. I participated in the converts’ everyday lives, mainly structured around gathering with other Muslims, either at the mosque or in their homes. I also had informal conversations with family members or people from their social circles, as well as with the conversion agents who introduced them to Islam. My first participants were recruited by snowball method, and later, by means of advertisements shared by some converts on private Muslim forums. Apart from a handful of converts who refused to participate in the study for fear of a potential ideological and media instrumentalization of their narratives, the recruitment was unexpectedly highly successful. Many women expressed gratitude for the possibility to speak about their experience in what they saw as a secure and non-discriminating environment.

Fieldwork in France and in Quebec

All participants were socialized in France or in Quebec; most were in their 30 s or younger and the majority were homemakers or students. In both France and Quebec, the vast majority of my subjects resided in large cities although half of them grew up in rural settings. Many of the women had relocated to cities to pursue post-secondary education and sometimes to escape from a close or “narrow-minded” social environment. Although a few had converted to Islam more than 10 years before our interview, most had converted after 9/11. A handful of my interviewees (7) had been divorced at least once, and nearly all of them had remarried Muslim partners at the time of the interview. Most of these partners were Muslim-born, and were not always as pious as their wives, they were usually first- or second-generation immigrants from North Africa and, to a lesser extent, from the Middle East. All respondents identified as both Muslim and French or Quebecois. Moreover, only a small number planned to move to a Muslim country in the future because, although some of these women face religious or social prejudice, liberal democracy remains, in most of these converts’ eyes, the best environment for everyday Muslim life that is, a life based on their interpretation of Islam.

Their conversion paths followed similar steps ⁴ in France as in Quebec although these patterns may differ in chronology and intensity. The conversion experience of Amélie, a 30-year-old Quebecoise woman, exemplifies the first steps of this path: Amélie works as the head of a call center in Montreal while studying administration. When we met, she had embraced Islam for two years and asserted she had always believed in God although she had never “really” practiced any religion in particular. She had met Mourad, an immigrant of Moroccan descent four years earlier. Although Mourad is not a practicing Muslim, he strongly abides by some values, like refusing cohabitation before marriage. Quite intrigued by his behavior that she qualifies as “very quiet all the time,” Amélie decided she wanted to know more about Islam. She then turned to a Muslim woman since “I needed to know how it is to be Muslim for a woman. Because, whether you want it or not, there are more prescriptions for women. It is harder for women.” With 79 of my 80 participants beginning with an interest in Islam triggered by an encounter with a Muslim born person, the converts I met were situated at varying points on this typical path, which follows the processual model of conversion proposed by Rambo (1993). A variety of individual trajectories center on this common scheme. For example, when we met in a mosque in Montreal, Anaïs, a 40-year-old woman was in a relationship with a Muslim-born man. She was trying to learn more about Islam without having said a word of her intention to her entourage. The young woman who taught her the Qu’ran had embraced Islam for a few years and was very committed to the Muslim community while still trying to find harmony with her family members who showed disapproval of her life choice, notably because of her absence from their traditional Christmas party. In France, Patricia who had converted a few years ago, reported she left her Tunisian husband because he did not practice enough, after which she married a practicing Muslim of Algerian descent. In France as in Quebec, for most of the women, the conversion path is mixed with a lifetime experience of alterity; many of them had espoused diverse identities, affiliations, or religious referents in the past (long dresses and a “Jewish” hairstyle, for instance), some had lived their childhoods in sectarian, hippie, or evangelical milieus. These stories of encounter with Alterity usually followed travel, cooperative missions abroad, or mixed marriage unions, residential living in multiethnic areas or virtual activities on the Internet.

Empirical observations show a series of common features among the women I met: all 80 women were passionate, committed, infatuated with justice, and pragmatic; they also often saw themselves as rebels and nonconformists. Most of them reported they had religious beliefs before their conversion or, at least, questions that made them receptive to Islam, a religion they perceived in continuity with their existing religious life. The religious education and experience of my interviewees varied from atheist, secular to pious Christian milieus, and diverse New Age trends. Some explored different religious traditions, so that they may qualify as “serial converts” (Haddad, 2006). The testimony of a few women who quitted Islam soon after their conversion suggests that the Muslim option may only be a temporary stop in their overall trajectory. Put differently, in spite of the diversity of the profiles and of the trajectories I describe, the women’s narratives draw on a series of common themes that display their attraction to Islam, as well as disaffection for a western lifestyle, the most redundant subjects were the everyday discipline of religious life, the rationality of Islamic prescriptions, the spiritual path following conversion, the redefinition of the concepts of modesty and piety, the lifestyle centered on family, the importance of the role of spouse and mother and of conservative values, the strength of community ties, the excessive individualism in contemporary societies, the abusive patterns of sexuality prevailing in the West, the subjectivation of the western female body, and discrepancies within Christianity and in the Catholic church.

These convergences raise the issue of the relationship between experience and narrative. In fact, becoming Muslim means shaping one’s subjectivity, creating a new identity and learning how to put in words the personal and collective memory of the past, the experience of the present and the expectations for the future. Narratives allow a coherence and consistency between personal biography, collective representations, conversion, and the new religious system (Bourdieu, 1994). This operation entails selection and the re-appropriation of diverse elements and representations related to Islam. However, such production does not avoid the particular constraints that govern the production of a rhetoric on Islam in France and in Quebec. Narratives are therefore expected to abide by specific identity categories that draw on the representations related to what it means to be Muslim, French/Quebecois, or a woman. I consider that the narratives I have collected and will present hereafter are designed so as to make the rhetoric ideologically consistent with the norms of the community of adoption, symbolically coherent with personal experience, and socially acceptable for the community of origin. It is therefore with concern for the recognition of the subject, not only for the self but also for one and the other group, that the conversion narratives are constructed. These rhetorical strategies play a key role in establishing dialogue between the Stranger and the Local, reaching thereby intimacy.

Islam in the West: Dissolving Sameness and Otherness

Rhetoric of continuity and disruption

New Muslims usually describe their “Muslimness” as an ontological identity developed before their introduction to this religion. With this in mind, few refer to themselves as “converts” (a term heavily embedded in Christian theology, (Mossière, 2012)), but reference Islamic perspectives and Arabic semantics to assert that, as many participants would say, “In Islam, conversion does not exist.” According to the interpretation of Islam they share, embracing Islam does not involve a change in nature but a return to one’s spiritual essence. Thus, Muslims view the process not as a “conversion,” but as a “reversion” to Islam, drawing on an Islamic cyclical conception of time as opposed to the modern linear representation of time. For example, a young Quebecois woman I interviewed said, “I realized I was very Muslim, without being in that frame or sharing that lifestyle. But I had Muslim principles.” By depicting these reversions as authentic and even inevitable, converts naturalize this process of becoming Muslim: “I live my life very naturally and it happens that it fits in Islam.” Here, religious change is associated with biography (marriage, maternity, disease, an accident, etc.). Even the women who claim they were atheists before embracing Islam mention a spiritual quest “since they were very young.” While this conception of personhood draws on a notion of authenticity and truth that fits Muslim ethics (fitra), it also justifies a rhetoric of continuity, seeking to enable acceptance by new Muslims’ close social circle, as well as by their larger community of adoption. Many respondents reported having held Muslim values unknowingly long before encountering Islam, which made its discovery appear unavoidable or, as they describe it, mektoub. ⁵ A lot of them report: “Islam chose me and not the opposite.” For instance, some claim they avoided pork, wore modest clothes (no mini-skirts), and were uncomfortable with the idea of Jesus Christ as the Son of God before learning these were Muslim tenets. Retrospectively, some respondents saw these tendencies as evidence that they were naturally abiding by Muslim principles, but under the labels of other traditions. In fact, a few of them had embraced different religions or spiritual and ethical systems over the course of their “conversion career” (Richardson, 1978) (such as Buddhism, Hinduism, vegetarianism), before coming to Islam. This notion of predestination does not preclude the fact that embracing Islam corresponds to a voluntary and conscious choice to declare shahada and to adopt Muslim prescriptions.

Identity, social and family ties, as well as personal values are presented as steady, as opposed to lifestyles and social behaviors that would only have changed following conversion. While they clearly distinguish personality from social action, new Muslims also emphasize how conversion made them improve as people: “I wanted my mother to understand that I haven’t changed. Because I truly haven’t changed mentally speaking, my heart, my intentions are always the same, doing well in life and so on. I am still better, a better person, less fearful.” Although changes to lifestyle and social behavior are attributed to conversion, the choice of Islam and its references are related to the individual’s personality: “Is this really related to Islam or is it my personality?… I think it is a combination of both. Indeed … I chose Islam because of my personality and the values I wanted to hold. Each aligns with what Islam promotes.”

The narratives I collected consistently stressed Judaism, Christianity, and Islam’s common monotheistic dogma but placed the latter in continuity with the former two, upholding the Prophet Mohammad in the same prophetic tradition as Jesus and David. Islam was then considered as the authentic and unspoiled version of Christianity. For example, although both traditions were often depicted as sharing some ideals regarding universal fraternity and sharing, the Bible is depicted as unreliable because of its oral transmission while the Christian practices of devotion to the saints are seen as heretical from a Muslim point of view. A pious Catholic woman decided to embrace Islam when she became aware that it did not contradict what she had learned as a Christian:

The imam was saying: “Islam is to believe in a unique God, without any associates.” Okay I believe in that. Then he said, “it is to believe in all the prophets.” Okay I believe in that, it is just that I do not already know Mahommet. I believe in the other Books, but I do not know the Qu’ran yet, I believe in the invisible world, the angels, the Last Day, and that our life is pre-determined, like we have a fate. I also believe in that. So there was nothing that bothered me when I was listening to the lesson. This is something that struck me … as if I were Muslim, but I didn’t know it.

Accordingly, these three traditions share normative family and chastity tenets. These topics were of particular interest to the converts who place great importance on chastity before marriage, as well as gendered distribution of roles, duties, and tasks within coupledom. Converts nostalgically compared modest Muslim practices and gendered relationships with those of past western generations, that is, to the social structures in place prior to the 1960s’ Révolution Tranquille in Québec, or to the lifestyles of French rural populations and working class. In this regard, the baby-boom generation (embodied by their parents) was depicted as a perverted and somewhat amoral population of hedonists lacking social and ethical conscience. In referencing their grandparents and ancestors’ lifestyles, converts aimed to legitimize their stance by situating their principles and practices within a long-standing history where Muslim identity would provide the means to unveil an authentic version of the self. Beyond its perceived alterity, Muslims would then reflect a dimension of Sameness while Islamic tenets would serve as moral criteria for assessing any discrepancy between the self and its true nature.

Although this rhetoric of continuity is deeply anchored in a project of self-legitimization, it deviates from other narratives that I have collected and that contend that Islam provides new adherents with the opportunity to make a “fresh start” because errors perpetuated prior to conversion are considered to be erased by the declaration of faith. For most women I interviewed, especially those with children, this new path was meant to render their sexual past (experienced prior to conversion) acceptable, even if Muslim-born partners strongly disapproved of non-virgin women, thus causing tensions in the union. The emphasis new Muslims placed on continuity was also at odds with their negative assessment of Catholicism (i.e. dogma, modes of governance, and hierarchical and abusive relationships between priests and believers). This redundant critical discourse on religion and the Catholic Church revealed the highly constructed and standardized nature of conversion narratives since most respondents had not been socialized within Christianity and knew very little about Christian culture (apart from stereotypes and myths conveyed by the media and collective representations). These arguments (often anchored in or presented as Muslim tenets) underwent systemization and ultimately led to the elaboration of new symbolic categories and a distinct grammar which served to revisit western subjectivities around an ethical concern for moralizing the subject by means of corporeal practices, and a desire to reform society by restoring its social and ethical historical roots.

For most interviewees, embracing Islam was thus a long-term process that was worked in a constant dialectic between being and becoming. The conversion path would then be a liminal experience as this French convert explained: “I have not become Muslim from one day to another. I haven’t put on a djellaba and gone to Mecca! It happened very slowly with gaps and hesitations.” Conversion narratives should then be framed upon the semantics of the transition, that I more specifically designate as the “rhetoric of passage.”

Non-linearity of paths: hesitations, doubts, and steps back …

The immediate aftermath of the declaration of faith was usually experienced with a high level of enthusiasm because most converts committed themselves intensively to their new lifestyle. This attitude that Jensen (2008) qualifies as a “convertitis” was most of the time only temporary. Afterward, converts became more critical with respect to Islam and in particular with the Muslim community, as well as more confused regarding to their own identity. This second period preceded a common stage when most converts realized the possibility of being Muslim and French/Quebecois concomitantly. The radical and sometimes extreme attitudes that new Muslims display after conversion can explain the confused, contradictory, or changing narratives of new Muslims, as opposed to long-term converts whose discourses are more confident and trained, like this woman who converted 10 years ago. She comments on the more recent recruitees:

Some converts, when they embrace Islam, they act as if there suffered social pressure, as if they were in a microcosm and they had to fight, as if they needed to affirm themselves. You can feel it in their way of being or living. This is the first step, and then it is serenity, and it is like evidence. At the beginning, it is as if you had to sail against the tide, and then you get the calm water.

This woman’s enthusiasm contrasts with the resistances or the strong criticism that converts say they first formulated as they heard from Islam. At the beginning, they would have been reluctant regarding the role and status devoted to women in Islam as well as to the behavioral gendered codes prescribed in the Qu’ran, notably the commonly interpreted possibility for a man to beat his wife in certain circumstances. As they emphasized their own stereotypes regarding Islam summed up with “before I was against Islam,” they built a bridge with their environment of origin so as to best describe and make conceivable their own shifts toward Islam. One Quebecoise explained, “my colleagues do not understand, they actually behave like I used to before I got to know Islam. They just do the same. They judge.” Converts sometimes reported ambivalence between their deep conviction that Islam is the truth, and a strong apprehension with respect to the constraining dimension of Muslim religious practices (veil, five prayers a day, etc.), like this recently converted woman who explained:

I was trying to get information about it but at the deep end of me, I knew it was compulsory. It is not so hard to understand in that it is clearly written in the Qur’an. But I wanted to persuade myself of the opposite. So I was buying books to find somewhere that it was not obligatory to veil.

For other women, worries and concerns appeared as they realized that by embracing Islam, they were endorsing a Muslim identity. Doubts and despondency also accompany the learning process regarding Muslim behaviors and bodily dispositions: “It is not easy at first because you learn Arabic words, you learn the gestures, you learn ablutions, a lot of things, and the prayer and it is complicated at the beginning.” In spite of their rapid and deep wish to embrace Islam, most converts reported having experienced fear and restraints that, accordingly, they would only have been able to surpass by accepting to surrender to God. By and large, autonomy and the feeling of having chosen this religion voluntarily made these prescriptions bearable. The critiques provoked by gendered codes and social norms were however rationalized with respect to the well-founded dimension of those practices or by postponing their comprehension. For example, while the ban to drink alcohol or to eat pork may easily be explained by public security motives for the former, and by issues of hygiene for the latter, women claimed the possibility for a man to beat his wife cannot be understood given the current state of scientific knowledge, although its logic would become more obvious in the future.

As a result, conversion paths are most often chaotic and the religious choice may be bracketed during unsteady periods (travel abroad, teenage years) before being reactivated during central life moments like a pregnancy. Muslim identity was however experienced as a target reference, not to mention that once the religious practices like Ramadan are mastered, converts find it difficult to step back given that “it is easier to put the veil on than to take it off.” Except for one woman who wore the veil until she left Islam, none of the women I met removed their veil after putting it on. The discourses converts produce regarding the decision to change their name best exemplify hesitation and doubt, as well as the process of trial and error surrounding the project of becoming Muslim. In fact, taking an Arabic-sounding name after conversion was not a necessarily common practice among converts, and the analysis of the decision-making process emphasizes the stakes, resistance, and limitations associated with adopting Islam. Converts who were reluctant to change their name evoked a willingness or desire to maintain social and symbolic ties with their group of origin and to respect their family heritage, like this French convert explained:

When I am called Firdaws, I am under the impression I am betraying my parents because in one sense, this is the heritage they have given to me. Yet, I have always told them that my choice of becoming Muslim did not change anything to the fact that I was proud of the education they have given me, and of the choices they have done for me. Since it is thanks to all this that I am the one I am today, and that I am able to do my own choices.

Those who changed their surname frequently disclosed they had always disliked their surnames, like Nathalie who mentioned: “I feel more [like a] Leila than [a] Nathalie.” Some women who changed their surnames emphasized their concern for identity integrity, so they chose a name that best reflects a key aspect of their personality or their personal path, or one phonetically similar to their original name. For instance, Éva adopted the name “Nadjoua,” which signifies “she who is saved” in Arabic, whereas Marie chose the Arabic name “Maryam.”

Hesitations and doubts that pave the way to become Muslim show that the process of dissolving Sameness in Otherness may only occur in the moving and liminal spaces of re-composition, non-determination, and negotiation of the self. If becoming Muslim requires to be recognized as such by the Other, the concern for identity consistency makes imperative the reference to Sameness, turning both figures consistently distant and close at the same time (Simmel), and vanishing in the conversion of the intimate: “I haven’t changed.” Nevertheless, a lot of converts were already occupying these hybrid spaces or were experiencing marginality even before their conversion: Chantale is a French Québécoise who studied in English-speaking milieu; Sophie grew up in Black Africa with a Christian Arab father and a Jewish Canadian mother; Carolina’s family is international and all her brothers are married to women of different national backgrounds. Many of these women were attracted by the marginality that Islam symbolizes in their own milieu in such a way that embracing Islam means claiming affiliation to a liminal space that allows them to navigate between different universes.

Conclusion

Islam in the West: A language for a novel cause

Approaching the question of Islam through Simmel’s image of the Stranger provides insight on the ideological and symbolic baggage Muslim minority women introduce in westerns like France and Quebec (Canada). This process is part of Muslim and European worlds’ long and deep history of cultural, social, economic and political exchanges, cooperation, competition, and conflicts. As an alternative to the Goody somewhat apologetic view, the female converts’ liminal understanding of Islam paints a nuanced picture of an encounter and fusion. In its various forms of affection and vagaries, the dialectic between differentiation and recognition (in the sense of re-cognition) highlights new Muslims’ experiences and narratives, which, as it turns out, reveal as much about the failures and contradictions of western societies as they recall their unfulfilled promises and unrealized ideals.

When asked about their motives for converting to Islam, most women chose to discuss their path toward spiritual awareness. Drawing on tropes like quest for meaning, reflection on life and death, and even, transcendental experiences, new Muslims’ discourses resemble many other typical contemporary narratives on spirituality. Employing narrative analysis does not allow for an assessment of these discourses beyond face value. However, this was not the aim of my study. What is of particular interest for me in relation to the “Muslim Question” is these women’s choices to incorporate Islam into their spiritual paths and the way their narratives inform us of some of the underlying mechanisms shaping their return to religion. In secular societies, Islam not only refers to a religion but it indexes a highly symbolic and significant political language as well. As a polysemous term, it contains a grammar capable of conveying complex and subtle social tensions. Islam offers these converts a platform for expressing feelings of Otherness and marginality within their own societies, along with a stage for new representations of femininity in environments where social identities and ascribed roles are generally normative. Some converts are artists, active militants, and minority rights advocates, whereas others are socially committed volunteers at hospitals or charity organizations. In Quebec, female converts are highly critical of feminist waves that actively alter women’s role and status in society, especially those condoning or contributing to the dislocation of traditional family models. In this respect, Muslim tenets that aim to define clearly gendered rights and duties offer converts stable and reassuring guidelines.

Converts’ narratives disclose a dialectical relationship and experience with continuity and disruption, differentiation, and identification. Despite having been socialized in secular and liberal models, converts to Islam have chosen to embrace an archetypal marginal identity, thereby embodying the long-standing ideological conflict between Muslim and western paradigms. Although they are members of the majority group and cherish some of their liberal and idealistic values, they claim they belong to a minority group. The position they adopt in defense of this ostracized and discriminated-against community draws precisely on a vision of liberalism and tolerance that they attribute to their society of origin (hence, the saying “everybody is allowed to make her own choice”). In so doing, converts do not intentionally distance themselves from French and Quebecois national identities but seek to challenge their current configurations. They thereby propose a political model capable of reinstating values such as global solidarity, egalitarianism, and mutual tolerance, and engendering what Honneth (2000) calls a “social productivity of conflicts.” Their adherence to and interpretation of Islam reflects their wish to reconcile two antagonistic discourses, and reframe them around a third alternative, one that recycles and re-organizes existing components. In taking on the role and status featured by liminality, these women aim to deconstruct secular ideals, not unlike the impact western local culture has had on Muslim practices and interpretations of Islam. While they value the principle of freedom of religion in the public sphere and praise its pluralizing effects, society would ideally be regulated by a non-interventionist mode of governance. As their experience offers an original, creative, and somehow subversive perspective on the “Muslim Question,” female converts to Islam in western societies aim to embody social, political, and religious harmony as a political ideal.