UvA-DARE (Digital Academic Repository) Sisters in Islam. Women’s conversion and the politics of belonging: A Dutch case study Vroon, V.E. Publication date 2014 Document Version Final published version Link to publication Citation for published version (APA): Vroon, V. E. (2014). Sisters in Islam. Women’s conversion and the politics of belonging: A Dutch case study. General rights It is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), other than for strictly personal, individual use, unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Disclaimer/Complaints regulations If you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: https://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. UvA-DARE is a service provided by the library of the University of Amsterdam (https://dare.uva.nl) Download date:02 Oct 2021 Women’s Conversion and the Politics of Belonging A DUTCH CASE STUDY Vanessa Vroon-Najem Sisters in Islam ISBN 978-90-9028135-3 Omslag: Albertine Kars, Creatie op de Mac BV Sisters in Islam Women’s Conversion and the Politics of Belonging A Dutch Case Study ACADEMISCH PROEFSCHRIFT ter verkrijging van de graad van doctor aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam op gezag van de Rector Magnificus prof. dr. D.C. van den Boom ten overstaan van een door het college voor promoties ingestelde commissie, in het openbaar te verdedigen in de Aula der Universiteit op woensdag 09 april 2014, te 11:00 uur door Vanessa Eleonoor Vroon geboren te Amsterdam Promotiecommissie Promotor: Prof. dr. A.C.A.E. Moors Overige leden: Prof. dr. P.L. Geschiere Dr. M.J.M. de Koning Dr. J.A. McBrien Prof. dr. B. Meyer Prof. mr. dr. R. Peters Faculteit der Maatschappij- en Gedragswetenschappen Voor oma en grootmama Contents Acknowledgements Chapter 1. The Politics of Belonging 1 1.1 Categorizing Citizens 6 1.2 The Culturalist Turn 10 1.3 Categorizing Muslims 14 1.4 The Islamic Revival 20 Chapter 2. Doing Ethnography 27 2.1 Positionality 28 2.1.1 Starting Out as a Stranger 30 2.1.2 Positioned as a Partial Insider 31 2.1.3 Auto-Ethnography as a Native Anthropologists? 32 2.1.4 A Part-Time Hijabi 35 2.2 Doing Fieldwork 39 2.2.1 Observations & Conversations 40 2.2.2 Online Sources 43 2.2.3 Visual Methods 46 2.3 Engaged Anthropology 47 2.3.1 Our Lord in the Attic: Spiritual Virgins 48 2.3.2 Amsterdam Museum: I’m Fasting 51 Chapter 3. Trajectories to Islam 57 3.1 Theorizing Conversion 60 3.2 Women and Conservative Religions 64 3.3 Conversion as a Process 68 3.4 Significant Others 74 3.5 Dilemmas of Dress 82 3.6 Choices & Consequences 90 Chapter 4. Pious Sociality and Ethical Communality 101 4.1 Processes of Community Formation 102 4.2 Five Grassroots Initiatives 106 4.3 Geographies of Sacralized Space 117 4.3.1 Mosques 119 4.3.2 Public Space – Private Space 122 4.3.3 Cyber Space 125 4.4 Conversion as a Communal Event 130 4.5 Sisters in Islam 138 Chapter 5. Aspirations and Ambiguities 151 5.1 Globalization, Translocality, and the Local Practice of Islam 153 5.2 Authority and Authenticity: The Search for Reliable Knowledge 162 5.3 Abstractions, Ideals, and Everyday Life 180 5.4 The Quest for a Deculturalized Islam 189 Chapter 6. The Politics of Conversion 199 6.1 Dealing with Difference 203 6.2 Local Forms of Global Belonging 207 Summary 209 Samenvatting 213 References 217 Acknowledgements The journey that ends with completing this thesis began eight years ago, when I was granted the opportunity to re-engage with the field of anthropology. I started the research that informs this thesis in the context of a Master at the Free University (VU). Fortunately, I was able to continue my research at the stimulating environment of the International Institute for the Study of Islam in the Modern World (ISIM), under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Annelies Moors. When ISIM was closed, I relocated at the Amsterdam Institute of Social Science Research (AISSR), first working with FORUM, Institute for Multicultural Affairs, and later on, while writing this dissertation, with the support of the AISSR. I am enormously grateful for all these opportunities, and in particular to Professor Moors for her invaluable advice, encouragement, and support. Dr. Gerd Baumann’s inspiring research on multiculturalism, his Methodology Clinic, and his interest in my research, have been of great importance, too. His passing away has saddened many; he will be missed. To all my (former) colleagues and academic friends at the VU, ISIM and the AISSR: thank you so much, I have enormously enjoyed your intellectual company. During my research and while writing this thesis, I also worked at the Amsterdam (Historical) Museum. I thank the current Director Mr. Paul Spies and the former Director Mrs. Pauline Kruseman for allowing me to take up, and continue my research. I thank all my colleagues for their moral support. In particular, I thank Dr. Lodewijk Wagenaar for his encouragement to re-engage with academia. To all my colleagues at the Secretariat, in particular Yvonne Holdorp: thank you so much for your continuing interest and support. I also profoundly thank my parents and grandmothers. Their belief in my ability to complete this journey was of great importance. I love you all very much. A special word of gratitude goes to my friend Zakia Boucetta. Her unwavering belief in my ability to make this endeavor a success has been a driving force. I also sincerely thank my friend Robert Hammel for his invaluable help with the English language. To all participants in my research, I extend a heartfelt thank you for letting me into your lives and telling me about your choice for Islam. Your enthusiasm and confidence were a great stimulus to continue my research. From the heart, I thank my husband Benyounes Najem, for his patience, intellectual engagement, and critical ear. A final word to all I cannot name here, thank you all for your company. Without you, it would have been a lonely journey. 1 Chapter 1 The Politics of Belonging In May 2006, during one of the first weeks of fieldwork, I was hanging out with some Muslim girls. A couple of afternoons a week, they gathered at a location in Amsterdam-West to drink tea, talk with each other, pray together, or to have a private conversation with one of the volunteers. They were mostly teenagers and women in their early twenties, from different backgrounds, with Moroccan-Dutch girls and converts to Islam as the two largest groups. Although I was in my mid-thirties at the time, I was welcomed by the group and my research was met with curiosity and approval. As a consequence of the demographic of the group, many visitors were students and one of them asked if I could help her with a study assignment and answer a few questions. She had chosen the topic “living between two cultures.” Usually, this phrase refers to having an immigrant background representing one ethnic-national culture, and Dutch culture as the second.1 I explained to her that I was not an immigrant, nor were my parents, and that I might not meet her sample criteria. “No problem,” the girl answered, “You are a convert to Islam, right? Then you are in between cultures, too.” Where I had assumed she was referring to possible tensions between national culture and ethnic background, she changed the register and remade the dichotomy into a national/ethnic Dutch culture on the one hand and the culture of Islam on the other. It was quite understandable that the girl rephrased the dichotomy she was exploring in light of her studies to include possible tensions between being Dutch and being Muslim. In popular discourse in the Netherlands, national belonging and Muslims’ religious belongings are often pitted against each other. For instance, during the past few decades, politicians from several political parties have voiced their doubt about the 1 Following Baumann (1996), in this thesis, culture is written in italics as its meaning is distinctly situational and depending on context. From an anthropological point of view, I agree with Baumann that culture exists insofar as it is performed (ibid, 11). 2 feasibility of being Muslim-Dutch.2 This is the case in other European countries, too, and converts to Islam are therefore a topic of popular and academic interest, as their life-stories provide an opportunity to gain an understanding of how these two seemingly mutually exclusive forms of belonging are combined within one subject (cf. Van Nieuwkerk, 2004; Zebiri, 2008; Jensen, 2008). As, for instance Kate Zebiri, who researched conversion to Islam in Great-Britain, remarks: Western converts to Islam transcend the often invoked Islam-and-the West dichotomy simply by virtue of who they are. It is becoming increasingly difficult for non-Muslims living in Western Europe and North-America to maintain the image of Islam as ‘foreign’ and ‘other’ in the face of the growing number of indigenous people who choose to embrace this religion. (2008, 1) Zebiri’s reduction of converts to “indigenous people” does, however, not quite capture the whole range of backgrounds of converts to Islam in the Netherlands, nor in other European countries.