Unusual Multicultural Subjects: On Being British, on Being Muslim

Abstract

This chapter turns to how converts, in their narratives, position themselves in relation to ‘majority society’, on the one hand, and to born Muslim communities, and Islam, on the other. In order to do so it develops a discussion that begins to unpack the complex dynamics in the religion-culture distinction drawing on the notion of the stranger and expanding it to include its positive as well as negative aspects. It thus also sketches how they navigate their sense of political ethics related to, and motivated by their religious conviction. This results in a nexus of social and political relations which are obscured by current emphases in multicultural thinking. As such it argues for a view of converts as strangers, where this is conceived as a mode of belonging sensitive to difference and that cuts across the dyad of religion and culture.