Western converts to Islam

Women are considered a modernising factor in Islam. For decades the active and vocal Muslim feminists represented a progressive and liberating force challenging the traditional understanding of women in Islam and spearheading the efforts aimed at widening the spaces where females could exercise their full potential. Radical Islam, to the contrary, was believed to be and thus portrayed, as inherently masculine and necessarily patriarchal enterprise, somewhat oppressive when it came to women or at least defending the traditional status quo with regards to gender relations and roles. This paper provides an analysis of an emerging trend whereby Muslim women are not only active in the modernising circles but, quite the opposite, become vocal proponents of radical political Islam. Hence, instead of being the much hoped for progressive force, they constitute an avant-garde of the opposite: radical agenda advocating and actively supporting the agenda of political Islam; also in the sphere of political violence. This paper examines how feminisation of radical Islam progressed over time and shows how what hitherto represented a solely masculine privilege and domain, now also belongs to women. Where at first women were not present, with time they became pliable instrument in political struggle, only to gain their own independent voice, agency and a power to act autonomously.

ISBN 978-83-65158-04-8 Bartoszewicz, M.G (2015). Feminisation of Radical Islam. “Studia Erasmiana Wratislaviensia”, Vol. 9, pp. 307-330.

This chapter addresses the issue of religious authority in Berlin Sufi communities in the context of native European converts to Islam and second-generation Muslims who are born to Sufi followers (murids).
It will discuss the following research questions. How is religious authority in Western Sufi groups constructed, and how does it affect interreligious and intrareligious conversions? How does the presence of many native European converts affect local Sufi communities? How do these European converts view Islamic normative tradition and express their religious identity? And how do they influence the defining discourses of local Sufi communities?
I will particularly address intrareligious conversion, regarded here as a
process of religious learning and gradual adoption of religious norms and
practices in Sufi communities. This chapter will also address the institutionalization and collective expressions of religious authority in some Sufi communities in Berlin, namely in the Sufi Center Rabbaniyya and the Tariqah Burhaniyya.

Murad’s Commentary on the Eleventh Contentions is a rare and profound book. It consists of 100 pithy aphorisms - termed "contentions" - on a diverse array of topics ranging through ethics, cosmology, metaphysics, theology, law and history. Each contention is a terse distillation of Murad's often exquisitely crafted ruminations on a given matter followed by his own compressed elucidation (the commentary).  Though sometimes abstruse and esoteric, the book weaves itself into a dense, multi-faceted tapestry of insights into a range of contemporary issues that concern the religious mind.

Part I of this paper seeks to address much of the poor scholastic academic research in regards to Noble Drew Ali, founder of the Moorish Science Temple of America, the very first Islamic organization in the United States of America. Was Noble Drew Ali a mere mystic that worked in a circus and then decided to start an organization? Was he really some illiterate man named Thomas Drew that hid his identity as Timothy Drew, then to become a PROPHET? Did Noble Drew Ali have the requisite information to raise up the so-called "blacks" in the United States of America? All of these questions are answered in this tract.

'The purpose of this dissertation is to systematically review current research which focuses on adapted counselling theories and specialised Islamic based counselling to suit the needs of the Muslim client. A systematic review was conducted by searching electronic databases and relevant published journals, periodicals and text books which offer, discuss and explore alternative approaches to counselling for Muslim clients. The studies were then assessed for their suitability to the search criteria and relevance to the discussion. The strengths and limitations of the eligible studies shall also be presented. Findings indicated that whilst there are some philosophical differences to most Western based approaches to counselling compared to Islamic teachings, incorporating or acknowledging Islamic philosophies and practices into the therapeutic approaches can enhance the psychological well-being of a Muslim (Haque, 2004; Utz, 2009).

Radicalisation, prévention, désengagement, dé-radicalisation : quatre mots-clés intrinsèquement liés, devenus, dans les sphères académiques, étatiques et sociétales concernées, des termes courants depuis les attentats du 11 septembre 2001. Face aux attaques terroristes récentes en France et ailleurs, ainsi qu’au vu de la participation croissante de djihadistes européens dans le conflit en Syrie et en Iraq, les sociétés européennes sont amenées à traiter le phénomène d’une façon plus globale pour remédier à cette situation dangereuse. Nous avons tenté avec ce rapport une analyse qualitative des différents mesures et programmes de prévention, dé-radicalisation et désengagement mis en œuvre dans trois pays européens avec des modèles politiques et sociétaux différents : l’Allemagne, la Grande Bretagne et le Danemark. Notre but était d’éclairer les diverses approches de la société civile ainsi que des institutions étatiques, de recenser les similarités et différences stratégiques existantes dans les trois pays et d’évaluer leur efficacité et durabilité. Dans ce sens ce travail constitue d’une part un aperçu international et général des différents projets de prévention et dé-radicalisation. D’autre part, il met l’accent sur des thèmes plus spécifiques et essentiels, dont la dé-radicalisation en prison, l’intégration des communautés musulmanes locales dans le travail de la prévention et de la dé-radicalisation et le rôle des femmes. L’objectif est d’identifier ainsi les initiatives les plus prometteuses pour la France ainsi que les problèmes récurrents qui y sont liés.

This is a draft of the article. To cite, please use the following details:
Piela, Anna (2015) Online Islamic Spaces as Communities of Practice for Female Muslim Converts Who Wear the Niqab. Hawwa: Journal of Women of the Middle East and the Islamic World, Volume 13, Issue 3, pp. 363 –382.

This article focuses on online narratives of female converts to Islam who wear or plan to wear the niqab. There is little discussion in research literature about motivations leading to adoption of the niqab or experiences of women who wear it. Instead, the discourse on niqab has been sensationalised by tabloid media which construct it as a symbol of otherness and separation from the host culture and, recently, one of radicalisation. This begs the question: why are some converts drawn to it despite negative reactions to the niqab by some Muslims and non-Muslims. Using a mix of narrative analysis and grounded theorising, I examine online discussions in which converted women argue why they wish to wear the niqab, often in contradiction to other Muslims’ views. I draw from Rambo’s conversion model (1993) and Lave and Wenger’s concept of communities of practice to illuminate the process whereby participants learn about Islam and the niqab through social interaction.
Keywords: niqab, conversion, Internet, online forums, gender

‘What else could it be? It is an exotic which, though it may be artificially nurtured like some tropical plant in a hothouse, can never have the vitality it has on its native soil’ (p. 92). Thus did the Liverpool Review dismiss as no more than an audacious cultural experiment the burgeoning community of Victorian Muslim converts that gathered around the iconic and iconoclastic Abdullah William Quilliam in 1890. The subsequent influx of substantial migrant communities into Britain has somewhat complicated matters, and expressions of British Islam today are tightly bound with the imports of foreign culture. Modern incarnations of the Liverpool Review’s verdict abound: a persistent strand of the polyvocal discourse that has exploded around the Muslim presence in Britain insists that a
commitment to Islam—and, by extension, the culture of the Orient it has historically been wedded to—undermines the patriotism expected of British subjects. Put differently, facing Makka to pray five times a day requires one to turn one’s back on Queen and country; or, in the stark dichotomization of the
Poet of Empire, Kipling: ‘East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.’ Identity, allegiance and belonging have thus crystallized into critical buzzwords through which diaspora communities are examined, and the evocative oxymoron captured in the title of this book assails today’s believer just as much as it did yesteryear’s convert.

Despite media and political interest, Salafi women in Britain have not been the subject of in-depth empirical study, until now. This paper argues that their involvement in the group
can be conceptualized as a ‘conversion’, and illuminates this process through evidence from ethnographic research in London. Interviews reveal that conversion to Salafism was often delayed and interrupted by experiments with other approaches to Islam, as the women navigated an Islam ‘market’, trying to identify an ‘authentic’ brand. Initially, many resisted Salafism because they were put off by the group’s poor public image and encounters with ill-mannered adherents.Gradually, however, the women became convinced that Salafism alone represented ‘pure’ Islam, free from opinion, personality,emotion, tradition and culture. The Salafis supported their rulings with the Qur’an and Sunna; were reassuringly rigid in their religious practice; provided a ‘serious’ religious learning environment; were associated with the ‘authentic’ aura of Saudi Arabia; and supplied guidance on even the most minute and mundane of everyday matters. In contrast to other studies of conversion in new religious movements, this research finds that social networks and affective ties played only a limited role. The data support an intellectual, rather than passive or affective, conversion model – contrary to the prevailing discourse on veiled or ‘radical’ Muslim women – and the conceptualization of a new form of conversion, delayed conversion, which may arise in liberal, pluralist religious milieus.

This ICCT Research Paper examines the current extent of Italy's Sunni jihadists in Syria. Italy presents interesting particularities, including a relatively small number of foreign fighters compared to other European countries (around one hundred, and only a small minority with Italian passports, according to recent estimates), the scant presence of domestic recruitment networks operating within the country and the prevalence of individual pathways of radicalisation over group mechanisms. However, the Italian case has not been extensively investigated. This exploratory paper, based on a case study-driven approach, first examines the scale of the problem and then focuses on the individual cases of four Italian nationals who differ in terms of both sex and origin. It also takes into account the different reactions of their families.

Arabic translation of an article by Dr Murad Wilfried Hofmann, former German ambassador in Algeria and Morocco, on the challenges paused by democracy to the Muslim World. The article was published in a collective book مسلمو الغرب بعد أحداث 11 سبتمبر "Muslims of the West after 9-11" edited by the Ministry of Awqaf in Doha.

This contribution to the Common Knowledge symposium on xenophilia documents and discusses the life and work of an important but neglected early British convert to Islam, the fifth Baron Headley, Rowland George Allanson Allanson-Winn (1855 – 1935), and also comments on the nature of the kind of xenophilia that can lead to conversion. The essay argues that Lord Headley's attraction to the Muslim world and his religious conversion in 1913 were typical of a small minority of Britons who chose Islam with the guidance of Indian Muslim missionaries in the first half of the twentieth century. But it also shows that Headley's privileged social position enabled him to become a leader of the nascent British Muslim community and an international ambassador for Islam between the wars. A staunch defender of Islam and Muslims, Headley was not wholly uncritical of them and made public pronouncements especially about the spread of sectarianism in Islam and about how that faith needed to be practiced differently in the West.

''Cred că experiența religioasă ține de domeniul inexprimabilului și al trăirii care antrenează un alt tip de conștiință sau luciditate; trecerea sa în plan discursiv inerent o limitează și, la un nivel mai grobian, creează nevoia de explicații, justificări, polemici despre superioritatea unei religii în raport cu alta. Dat fiind că pentru mine diversele religii – prin dogmele, simbolurile lor – reprezintă limbaje diferite de traducere a Inefabilului, nu am receptat convertirea la islam ca pe o trecere fulminantă de la „falsitate la adevărˮ, ci doar ca pe o redescoperire și reorganizare a unor înțelegeri deja avute și care de fapt au făcut posibilă și internalizarea conceptualizărilor specifice culturii religioase islamice. Fără cunoașterea creștinismului, a budismului, a hinduismului, probabil aș fi rămas opacă și față de bogăția spirituală a islamului, altfel spus, convertirea la islam a reprezentat o continuitate în înțelegerea personală a fenomenului religios, nu o substituire orgolioasă a unei religii cu altă religie.''

This is the first biography of Lord Headley, who made international headlines in 1913 when he defied convention by publicly converting to Islam. Drawing on previously unpublished archival sources, this book focuses on Headley's religious beliefs, conversion to Islam, and work as a Muslim leader during and after the First World War.

Lord Headley slipped into obscurity following his death in 1935, but there is growing recognition globally that he is a pivotal figure in the history of Western Islam and Muslim-Christian relations; this book evaluates the strengths and weaknesses, successes and failures of the man and his work, and considers his significance for contemporary understandings of Islam in the Global West.

Table of contents:

1. Introduction
2. Early Years, 1855-1874
3. Finding the Way, 1874-1896
4. Imperial Engineer, 1896-1900
5. Troubles, 1900-1912
6. Conversion to Islam, 1913
7. Muslim Baron: The First Decade, 1913-1923
8. Pilgrimage to Mecca, 1923
9. Ambassador for Western Islam, 1923-1930
10. Twilight Years, 1930-1935
11. Epilogue
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

British converts to Islam can be hard to locate in relation to the majority and born Muslim minority in society and can experience rejection from both sides. Based on an ethnic lens and framework, they are conceptualised as ‘in-between’ the two, neither fully one nor the other. This article argues that by foregrounding religious rather than ethnic identity, a different pattern of how converts position themselves in society emerges. To do so, it draws on a study of converts’ narratives and investigates the dynamics of how a divide between religion and culture emerges from these narratives. To discuss these dynamics, it draws on Simmel’s influential essay The Stranger in order to develop an analytical reorientation that centralises the religious aspect in order to gain a new relational understanding of converts’ belonging as well as the social aspects of the conversion process itself.

Der interdisziplinäre Workshop widmet sich dem Thema religiöse Konversionen aus historischer und transkultureller Perspektive. Untersucht werden Konversionsverläufe von Individuen, die einen Glaubenswechsel vom Islam zum Christentum oder Judentum (vice versa) vollzogen. Mehrfachkonversionen gehören ebenfalls zum Untersuchungsfeld. Der zeitliche Rahmen umfasst das auf Individualkonversionen bezogen noch wenig erforschte lange 19. Jahrhundert. Ziel des Workshops ist es, anhand ausgewählter Konversionsgeschichten den Prozeß und die Motive des Glaubenswechsels aus komparatistischer Perspektive zu beleuchten, um Parallelen, Differenzen sowie charakteristische Muster und Strukturen in Konversionsverläufen des langen 19. Jahrhunderts systematisch herauszuarbeiten.

This chapter considers Marmaduke Pickthall’s connections and relationships with other converts to Islam in Britain from the period immediately prior to the First World War to his death in 1936. During those last twenty-five years of his life, Pickthall fought tirelessly to defend the Ottoman Empire, converted to Islam and became a leading figure in the British Muslim community. The chapter first documents Pickthall’s early encounters with other British Muslim converts, then focuses on the four years between Pickthall’s own conversion to Islam in 1917 and his emigration to India in 1920, and finally considers his latter years as an émigré. It explores Pickthall’s interactions and relationships with other British Muslim converts who belonged to the contemporary “mainstream” British Muslim community, which was organised through the Woking Muslim Mission (wmm) at Woking, Surrey, and in nearby London. As is the case for most “Woking” converts, there is no evidence that Pickthall visited or corresponded with the well-established, immigrant-led Muslim commu¬nities outside of the metropolis – in, for example, South Shields and Cardiff, where local white women converted to Islam and married predominantly Arab and South Asian Muslims. Rather, Pickthall’s small circle of British Muslim friends and acquaintances before and after 1920 were mostly to be found in and around London. They included both high-profile converts such as William Henry/Abdullah Quilliam (1856–1932; generally known in this period as Professor Henri M. Léon), Lady Evelyn/Zainab Cobbold (1867–1963) and Lord Headley/Al-Farooq (1855–1935; Rowland George Allanson Allanson- Winn), and lesser-known co-religionists such as Bertram/Khalid Sheldrake (1888–1947) and Dudley/Mohammad Sadiq Wright (1868–1949).

This article examines in detail for the first time the later life and work of the Orientalist G. W. Leitner (1840-1899), who retired from Indian government service and settled permanently in England in the 1880s. It explains why Leitner devoted the last years of his life to creating an ambitious Oriental Institute in Woking, Surrey, which included the first purpose-built mosque in Britain. It also considers why and how Leitner went against convention to publicly explain and defend aspects of Islam and Muslim culture, most famously in his 1889 lecture and pamphlet entitled 'Muhammadanism'. It reveals, however, that Leitner's imperialist outlook and preoccupation with class and caste drew him into conflict with some of the leading Muslims in late-Victorian Britain, and argues that his interaction with them exposed the limitations of his Christian charity and benevolence.

British converts to Islam can be hard to locate in relation to the majority and born Muslim minority in society and can experience rejection from both sides. Based on an ethnic lens and framework, they are conceptualised as 'in-between' the two, neither fully one nor the other. This article argues that by foregrounding religious rather than ethnic identity, a different pattern of how converts position themselves in society emerges. To do so it draws on a study of converts' narratives and investigates the dynamics of how a divide between religion and culture emerges from these narratives. To discuss the dynamics of this, it draws on Simmel's influential essay The Stranger in order to develop an analytical reorientation that centralises the religious aspect in order to gain a new relational understanding of converts' belonging as well as the social aspects of the conversion process itself.

A History of Conversion to Islam in the United States, Volume 1: White American Muslims before 1975 is the first in-depth study of the thousands of white Americans who embraced Islam between 1800 and 1975. Drawing from little-known archives, interviews, and rare books and periodicals, Patrick D. Bowen unravels the complex social and religious factors that led to the emergence of a wide variety of American Muslim and Sufi conversion movements.

While some of the more prominent Muslim and Sufi converts—including Alexander Webb, Maryam Jameelah, and Samuel Lewis—have received attention in previous studies, White American Muslims before 1975 is the first book to highlight previously unknown but important figures, including Thomas M. Johnson, Louis Glick, Nadirah Osman, and T.B. Irving.