Author: Eliza F. Kent
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195165071
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
At the height of British colonialism, conversion to Christianity was a path to upward mobility for Indian low-castes and untouchables, especially in the Tamil-speaking south of India. Kent examines these conversions, focusing especially on the experience of women converts and the ways in which conversion transformed gender roles and expectations.
Converting Women
Author: Eliza F. Kent
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195165071
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
At the height of British colonialism, conversion to Christianity was a path to upward mobility for Indian low-castes and untouchables, especially in the Tamil-speaking south of India. Kent examines these conversions, focusing especially on the experience of women converts and the ways in which conversion transformed gender roles and expectations.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195165071
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 330
Book Description
At the height of British colonialism, conversion to Christianity was a path to upward mobility for Indian low-castes and untouchables, especially in the Tamil-speaking south of India. Kent examines these conversions, focusing especially on the experience of women converts and the ways in which conversion transformed gender roles and expectations.
Converting Women
Author: Eliza F. Kent
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198036951
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
With the emergence of Hindu nationalism, the conversion of Indians to Christianity has become a volatile issue, erupting in violence against converts and missionaries. At the height of British colonialism, however, conversion was a path to upward mobility for low-castes and untouchables, especially in the Tamil-speaking south of India. In this book, Eliza F. Kent takes a fresh look at these conversions, focusing especially on the experience of women converts and the ways in which conversion transformed gender roles and expectations. Kent argues that the creation of a new, "respectable" community identity was central to the conversion process for the agricultural laborers and artisans who embraced Protestant Christianity under British rule. At the same time, she shows, this new identity was informed as much by elite Sanskritic customs and ideologies as by Western Christian discourse. Stigmatized by the dominant castes for their ritually polluting occupations and relaxed rules governing kinship and marriage, low-caste converts sought to validate their new higher-status identity in part by the reform of gender relations. These reforms affected ideals of femininity and masculinity in the areas of marriage, domesticity, and dress. By the creation of a "discourse of respectability," says Kent, Tamil Christians hoped to counter the cultural justifications for their social, economic, and sexual exploitation at the hands of high-caste landowners and village elites. Kent's focus on the interactions between Western women missionaries and the Indian Christian women not only adds depth to our understanding of colonial and patriarchal power dynamics, but to the intricacies of conversion itself. Posing an important challenge to normative notions of conversion as a privatized, individual moment in time, Kent's study takes into consideration the ways that public behavior, social status, and the transformation of everyday life inform religious conversion.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 9780198036951
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 344
Book Description
With the emergence of Hindu nationalism, the conversion of Indians to Christianity has become a volatile issue, erupting in violence against converts and missionaries. At the height of British colonialism, however, conversion was a path to upward mobility for low-castes and untouchables, especially in the Tamil-speaking south of India. In this book, Eliza F. Kent takes a fresh look at these conversions, focusing especially on the experience of women converts and the ways in which conversion transformed gender roles and expectations. Kent argues that the creation of a new, "respectable" community identity was central to the conversion process for the agricultural laborers and artisans who embraced Protestant Christianity under British rule. At the same time, she shows, this new identity was informed as much by elite Sanskritic customs and ideologies as by Western Christian discourse. Stigmatized by the dominant castes for their ritually polluting occupations and relaxed rules governing kinship and marriage, low-caste converts sought to validate their new higher-status identity in part by the reform of gender relations. These reforms affected ideals of femininity and masculinity in the areas of marriage, domesticity, and dress. By the creation of a "discourse of respectability," says Kent, Tamil Christians hoped to counter the cultural justifications for their social, economic, and sexual exploitation at the hands of high-caste landowners and village elites. Kent's focus on the interactions between Western women missionaries and the Indian Christian women not only adds depth to our understanding of colonial and patriarchal power dynamics, but to the intricacies of conversion itself. Posing an important challenge to normative notions of conversion as a privatized, individual moment in time, Kent's study takes into consideration the ways that public behavior, social status, and the transformation of everyday life inform religious conversion.
Why Christian Women Convert to Islam
Author: Rosemary Sookhdeo
Publisher: Isaac Publishing LLC
ISBN: 9780996724524
Category : Conversion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Women are being attracted to Islam in increasing numbers. The author explores the reasons why they convert and highlights the problems that they face. She examines the issues confronting women who marry Muslims and addresses the long-term implications of conversion. This is an essential guide to a vital topic for parents and church leaders.
Publisher: Isaac Publishing LLC
ISBN: 9780996724524
Category : Conversion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
Women are being attracted to Islam in increasing numbers. The author explores the reasons why they convert and highlights the problems that they face. She examines the issues confronting women who marry Muslims and addresses the long-term implications of conversion. This is an essential guide to a vital topic for parents and church leaders.
Everyday Conversions
Author: Attiya Ahmad
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082237322X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Why are domestic workers converting to Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf region? In Everyday Conversions Attiya Ahmad presents us with an original analysis of this phenomenon. Using extensive fieldwork conducted among South Asian migrant women in Kuwait, Ahmad argues domestic workers’ Muslim belonging emerges from their work in Kuwaiti households as they develop Islamic piety in relation—but not opposition—to their existing religious practices, family ties, and ethnic and national belonging. Their conversion is less a clean break from their preexisting lives than it is a refashioning in response to their everyday experiences. In examining the connections between migration, labor, gender, and Islam, Ahmad complicates conventional understandings of the dynamics of religious conversion and the feminization of transnational labor migration while proposing the concept of everyday conversion as a way to think more broadly about emergent forms of subjectivity, affinity, and belonging.
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082237322X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
Book Description
Why are domestic workers converting to Islam in the Arabian Peninsula and Persian Gulf region? In Everyday Conversions Attiya Ahmad presents us with an original analysis of this phenomenon. Using extensive fieldwork conducted among South Asian migrant women in Kuwait, Ahmad argues domestic workers’ Muslim belonging emerges from their work in Kuwaiti households as they develop Islamic piety in relation—but not opposition—to their existing religious practices, family ties, and ethnic and national belonging. Their conversion is less a clean break from their preexisting lives than it is a refashioning in response to their everyday experiences. In examining the connections between migration, labor, gender, and Islam, Ahmad complicates conventional understandings of the dynamics of religious conversion and the feminization of transnational labor migration while proposing the concept of everyday conversion as a way to think more broadly about emergent forms of subjectivity, affinity, and belonging.
Stepping Into the Shadows
Author: Rosemary Sookhdeo
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780954783570
Category : Christianity and other religions
Languages : en
Pages : 125
Book Description
Why are increasing numbers of Western women converting to Islam? The author tells the true-life stories of women who have become Muslims, exploring the reasons for their decisions and illustrating the problems that they face. She examines the particular issues confronting women who marry Muslims and addresses the long-term implications of conversion. In these ways the book prepares parents and church leaders to guide women who are contemplating conversion or marriage with Muslim men.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780954783570
Category : Christianity and other religions
Languages : en
Pages : 125
Book Description
Why are increasing numbers of Western women converting to Islam? The author tells the true-life stories of women who have become Muslims, exploring the reasons for their decisions and illustrating the problems that they face. She examines the particular issues confronting women who marry Muslims and addresses the long-term implications of conversion. In these ways the book prepares parents and church leaders to guide women who are contemplating conversion or marriage with Muslim men.
Converting to Islam
Author: Amy Melissa Guimond
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319542508
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198
Book Description
This text aims to discover the shared lived experiences of white American female converts to Islam in post- 9/11 America. It explores the increasingly hostile social climate faced by Muslim Americans, as well as the spiritual, social, physical, and mental integration of these women into the Muslim-American population. In the United States, rates of conversion to Islam are rapidly increasing—alongside Islamophobic sentiment and hate crimes against Muslims. For a period of time, there was a lull in this negative sentiment. However, in light of the Paris terror attacks, the increased prominence of ISIS/ISIL, and the influx of refugees from Syria, anti-Muslim rhetoric is once again on the rise. This volume analyzes how a singular collection of female converts have adapted to life in the United States in the shadow of 9/11.
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319542508
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198
Book Description
This text aims to discover the shared lived experiences of white American female converts to Islam in post- 9/11 America. It explores the increasingly hostile social climate faced by Muslim Americans, as well as the spiritual, social, physical, and mental integration of these women into the Muslim-American population. In the United States, rates of conversion to Islam are rapidly increasing—alongside Islamophobic sentiment and hate crimes against Muslims. For a period of time, there was a lull in this negative sentiment. However, in light of the Paris terror attacks, the increased prominence of ISIS/ISIL, and the influx of refugees from Syria, anti-Muslim rhetoric is once again on the rise. This volume analyzes how a singular collection of female converts have adapted to life in the United States in the shadow of 9/11.
The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion
Author: Lewis R. Rambo
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199713545
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 829
Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world. Scholars from a wide array of religions and disciplines interpret both the varieties of conversion experiences and the processes that inform this personal and communal phenomenon. This volume examines the experiences of individuals and communities who change religions, those who experience an intensification of their religion of origin, and those who encounter new religions through colonial intrusion, missionary work, and charismatic and revitalization movements. The thirty-two innovative essays provide overviews of the history of particular religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, indigenous religions, and new religious movements. The essays also offer a wide range of disciplinary perspectives-psychological, sociological, anthropological, legal, political, feminist, and geographical-on methods and theories deployed in understanding conversion, and insight into various forms of deconversion.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199713545
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 829
Book Description
The Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion offers a comprehensive exploration of the dynamics of religious conversion, which for centuries has profoundly shaped societies, cultures, and individuals throughout the world. Scholars from a wide array of religions and disciplines interpret both the varieties of conversion experiences and the processes that inform this personal and communal phenomenon. This volume examines the experiences of individuals and communities who change religions, those who experience an intensification of their religion of origin, and those who encounter new religions through colonial intrusion, missionary work, and charismatic and revitalization movements. The thirty-two innovative essays provide overviews of the history of particular religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Sikhism, Islam, Christianity, Judaism, indigenous religions, and new religious movements. The essays also offer a wide range of disciplinary perspectives-psychological, sociological, anthropological, legal, political, feminist, and geographical-on methods and theories deployed in understanding conversion, and insight into various forms of deconversion.
Converting Cultures
Author: Dennis Washburn
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047420330
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 529
Book Description
This volume fundamentally improves our understanding of processes like the secularization of society, and the growth of mass ideological movements, by looking upon these transformations to modernity as a species of conversion akin to religious conversion. The geographical areas covered by the contributors—the Ottoman domain, India, China, and Japan—provide striking examples of the dynamic force of conversion as a reaction to the tremendous pressures exerted by colonialism and imperialism and by the types of transformations constitutive of modernity.
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9047420330
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 529
Book Description
This volume fundamentally improves our understanding of processes like the secularization of society, and the growth of mass ideological movements, by looking upon these transformations to modernity as a species of conversion akin to religious conversion. The geographical areas covered by the contributors—the Ottoman domain, India, China, and Japan—provide striking examples of the dynamic force of conversion as a reaction to the tremendous pressures exerted by colonialism and imperialism and by the types of transformations constitutive of modernity.
Women Embracing Islam
Author: Karin van Nieuwkerk
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292773765
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
Many Westerners view Islam as a religion that restricts and subordinates women in both private and public life. Yet a surprising number of women in Western Europe and America are converting to Islam. What attracts these women to a belief system that is markedly different from both Western Christianity and Western secularism? What benefits do they gain by converting, and what are the costs? How do Western women converts live their new Islamic faith, and how does their conversion affect their families and communities? How do women converts transmit Islamic values to their children? These are some of the questions that Women Embracing Islam seeks to answer. In this vanguard study of gender and conversion to Islam, leading historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and theologians investigate why non-Muslim women in the United States, several European countries, and South Africa are converting to Islam. Drawing on extensive interviews with female converts, the authors explore the life experiences that lead Western women to adopt Islam, as well as the appeal that various forms of Islam, as well as the Nation of Islam, have for women. The authors find that while no single set of factors can explain why Western women are embracing Islamic faith traditions, some common motivations emerge. These include an attraction to Islam's high regard for family and community, its strict moral and ethical standards, and the rationality and spirituality of its theology, as well as a disillusionment with Christianity and with the unrestrained sexuality of so much of Western culture.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 0292773765
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 309
Book Description
Many Westerners view Islam as a religion that restricts and subordinates women in both private and public life. Yet a surprising number of women in Western Europe and America are converting to Islam. What attracts these women to a belief system that is markedly different from both Western Christianity and Western secularism? What benefits do they gain by converting, and what are the costs? How do Western women converts live their new Islamic faith, and how does their conversion affect their families and communities? How do women converts transmit Islamic values to their children? These are some of the questions that Women Embracing Islam seeks to answer. In this vanguard study of gender and conversion to Islam, leading historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and theologians investigate why non-Muslim women in the United States, several European countries, and South Africa are converting to Islam. Drawing on extensive interviews with female converts, the authors explore the life experiences that lead Western women to adopt Islam, as well as the appeal that various forms of Islam, as well as the Nation of Islam, have for women. The authors find that while no single set of factors can explain why Western women are embracing Islamic faith traditions, some common motivations emerge. These include an attraction to Islam's high regard for family and community, its strict moral and ethical standards, and the rationality and spirituality of its theology, as well as a disillusionment with Christianity and with the unrestrained sexuality of so much of Western culture.
Conversion to Islam
Author: Ayman S. Ibrahim
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197530737
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
Why did non-Muslims convert to Islam during Muhammad's life and under his immediate successors? How did Muslim historians portray these conversions? Why did their portrayals differ significantly? To what extent were their portrayals influenced by their time of writing, religious inclinations, and political affiliations? These are the fundamental questions that drive this study. Relying on numerous works, including primary sources from over a hundred classical Muslim historians, Conversion to Islam is the first scholarly study to detect, trace, and analyze conversion themes in early Muslim historiography, emphasizing how classical Muslims remembered conversion, and how they valued and evaluated aspects of it. Ayman S. Ibrahim examines numerous early Muslim sources and wrestles with critical observations regarding the sources' reliability and unearths the hidden link between historical narratives and historians' religious sympathies and political agendas. This study leads readers through a complex body of literature, provides insights regarding historical context, and creates a vivid picture of conversion to Islam as early Muslim historians sought to depict it.
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197530737
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 321
Book Description
Why did non-Muslims convert to Islam during Muhammad's life and under his immediate successors? How did Muslim historians portray these conversions? Why did their portrayals differ significantly? To what extent were their portrayals influenced by their time of writing, religious inclinations, and political affiliations? These are the fundamental questions that drive this study. Relying on numerous works, including primary sources from over a hundred classical Muslim historians, Conversion to Islam is the first scholarly study to detect, trace, and analyze conversion themes in early Muslim historiography, emphasizing how classical Muslims remembered conversion, and how they valued and evaluated aspects of it. Ayman S. Ibrahim examines numerous early Muslim sources and wrestles with critical observations regarding the sources' reliability and unearths the hidden link between historical narratives and historians' religious sympathies and political agendas. This study leads readers through a complex body of literature, provides insights regarding historical context, and creates a vivid picture of conversion to Islam as early Muslim historians sought to depict it.