Crossing Boundaries: Ethnicity and Islamic Conversion in Belgium

In this article we examined the intersection between religious and ethnic border crossing. On the one hand we applied the interactional ‘boundary approach’ of F. Barth, and on the other hand we assessed the process of ethnic passing by the adoption of ‘surface pointers’ (Nash 1996). It appears from our study that for both groups of ‘converts’, from Islam to Evangelism, and from secular Christianity to Islam, the border crossing entails much more than a merely religious passing and the adoption of purely spiritual values and religious convictions. In both the categories of converts studied we can conclude that the religious ‘border crossing’ also contains ethnic components, without it actually being a complete ethnic transition. It is noteworthy that in both cases the converts also attempt to link their religious conversion process to an ethnic acknowledgement by the new community, in particular by taking on ethnic ‘markers’. The idea that a religious transition can be felt to be imperfect has to do with the connotation that exists between religion and ethnicity (or even nationality), especially in the case of Islam in Morocco where this connotation is given an official construal through the fact that the Moroccan king is also the country’s religious leader. Moroccan Muslims who convert to Christianity in Belgium remain bound to the Umma on the basis of their inalienable Moroccan nationality. By distancing themselves from Islam as a religion, these people enter an area of political and ethnic tension, which explains why informants in this category are extremely difficult to reach. With the secular/Christian converts to Islam, the connotation between religion and ethnicity leads to these converts adopting the cultural-ethnic characteristics of mostly Moroccan Islam, in order to make their religious conversion appear more complete to insiders (ethnic Muslims) and outsiders (secular/Christian westerners). Even though both Christianity and Islam are religions with a universalist message whereby religion transcends ethnic boundaries, yet it is an unavoidable fact that in the multi-ethnic environment in which the study was conducted, ethnic and religious boundaries in part coincide, so that each religious ‘transition’ also supposes an ethnic repositioning within the societal context. While the religious boundary can be crossed with ease, it appears that the ethnic boundary is much more unyielding, and that it is also the components of ethnic identity that ensure that the converts end up with an ‘in-between’ status. Historic case studies (Stallaert 2003; 2007) have shown that the status of ‘convert’ can take the form of a new religious-ethnic category, which in the first place is the product of the perception of outsiders (in this case, the ‘ethnic’ Muslims and Christians). In such cases, however, the ethnic profiling enters also clearly at median and even partly at macro levels, what is currently not the case in Belgium with new Muslims (with the exception of some median profiling, see Leman, Stallaert and Lechkar 2010, in JEMS, see Lirias) and new Christians.

Publication year:2010

Accessibility:Closed