Islamophobia and Religiosity: Religion, ‘Race’ and Ethnicity

Abstract

This chapter develops the discussions of the preceding chapters to focus on the relationship between religion, ‘race’ and ethnicity as a key area in how conversions to Islam are politicised. It picks up debates on Islamophobia to address how converts fall outside of multicultural theorising on Islamophobia based on how difference is conceived. Relating this to recent shifts in Islamophobic discourse, it suggests how converts can be rethought back into multiculturalism’s terms. It then turns to address the charge from some recent scholarship that converts are necessarily Islamophobic themselves. While it suggests that converts can and do (re)produce certain aspects of Islamophobic discourses, this requires problematising and unpacking. As such, the chapter explores the boundaries emergent from converts’ narratives and argues that these are more complex than accounts of converts who are automatically Islamophobic suggest and reinforce the need to take religiosity more seriously in these accounts.