This article explores the conversion processes of Polish women of Catholic background to Islam. Data from participant observation of mosque-based, women-only weekend gatherings for converts and in-depth interviews with 29 Polish female converts to Islam are presented to illustrate the dialectic between the persistence and transformation of religious habitus. Our analysis demonstrates that in the conversion process, Catholic habitus remains pervasive, and shapes converts’ engagement with the new religion; however, some elements of it become reflexive and change. We make a case for extending the discussion on habitus transformation by drawing attention to what we term a “translation” of religious beliefs and practices. Women in our study translate the system of Islamic practices and beliefs into a specific Catholic logic that is more intelligible to them and, in the process, recognize some of the power dynamics inherent in the religious field.
In this article, we discuss the main arguments related to female Muslim converts' formation of a religious subjectivity in the context of studying Islam in online spaces. In distinguishing between Western and Eastern Europe, it is our purpose to highlight the significance of online sources for converts who inhabit geographic “peripheries” of Islam. After giving an overview of the literature that discusses Muslim subject formation among converts, we analyse 35 in‐depth, qualitative interviews with Polish female converts to Islam in reference to a theoretical framework that integrates Belenky et al.'s model of epistemological categories of knowledge and the concept of Muslim subjectivity formation. We argue that for the Polish female converts we interviewed, the process of acquiring and revising their knowledge about Islam, through online engagement with individuals, groups, texts, and multimedia content, is vital for developing an ontologically secure Muslim subjectivity.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.