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Author: Eliza F. Kent
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 330
ISBN-13: 0195165071
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAt 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.
Author: Eliza F. Kent
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2004-04-01
Total Pages: 344
ISBN-13: 9780198036951
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWith 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.
Author: Rosemary Sookhdeo
Publisher: Isaac Publishing LLC
Published: 2016
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780996724524
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWomen 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.
Author: Rosemary Sookhdeo
Publisher:
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 125
ISBN-13: 9780954783570
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhy 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.
Author: Rosaria Champagne Butterfield
Publisher:
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 191
ISBN-13: 9781884527821
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Rosaria, by the standards of many, was living a very good life. She had a tenured position at a large university in a field for which she cared deeply. She owned two homes with her partner, in which they provided hospitality to students and activists that were looking to make a difference in the world. In the community, Rosaria was involved in volunteer work. At the university, she was a respected advisor of students and her department's curriculum. And then, in her late 30s, Rosaria encountered something that turned her world upside down -- the idea that Christianity, a religion that she had regarded as problematic and sometimes downright damaging, might be right about who God was. That idea seemed to fly in the face of the people and causes that she most loved. What follows is a story of what she describes as a train wreck at the hand of the supernatural. These are her secret thoughts about those events, written as only a reflective English professor could."--Back cover.
Author: Karin van Nieuwkerk
Publisher: University of Texas Press
Published: 2009-07-21
Total Pages: 309
ISBN-13: 0292773765
DOWNLOAD EBOOKMany 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.
Author: Amy Melissa Guimond
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2017-06-16
Total Pages: 198
ISBN-13: 3319542508
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis 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.
Author: Dennis Dennis Charles Washburn
Publisher: BRILL
Published: 2007
Total Pages: 530
ISBN-13: 9004158227
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis volume considers the concept of conversion as a tool for understanding transformations to modernity. It examines conversions to modernity within the Ottoman domain, India, China, and Japan as a reaction to the pressures of colonialism and imperialism.
Author: Simon Ditchfield
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Published: 2017-01-06
Total Pages: 419
ISBN-13: 1526107058
DOWNLOAD EBOOKConversions is the first collection to explicitly address the intersections between sexed identity and religious change in the two centuries following the Reformation. Chapters deal with topics as diverse as convent architecture and missionary enterprise, the replicability of print and the representation of race. Bringing together leading scholars of literature, history and art history, Conversions offers new insights into the varied experiences of, and responses to, conversion across and beyond Europe. A lively Afterword by Professor Matthew Dimmock (University of Sussex) drives home the contemporary urgency of these themes and the lasting legacies of the Reformations.
Author: Janet Testerman
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Published: 2014-06-19
Total Pages: 205
ISBN-13: 1443862002
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhy would a Western woman who is free to dress and behave as she pleases convert to a religion immersed in a culture that requires her to cover her hair, dress modestly and reassess her fundamental beliefs? These are personal accounts of eight Western women who radically changed their lives by converting to Islam or marrying a Muslim man. Some women assigned deep meaning to the headscarf, while others found dressing hijab to be freeing. In every case, however, peer pressure, social pressure and male pressure bore profoundly on their decisions, perhaps overpowering their ability to practice hijab purely from their hearts. Again, the dichotomy between voluntary, genuine devotion and conforming behavior influenced on the women’s actions and thoughts.
