Race and Religion in Everyday Life: Antisemitism, Islamophobia, and Christian Privilege Among Female Converts in the Netherlands

Abstract

Abstract This article analyzes how the intersections of race and religion impact the experiences of women converting to Judaism, Christianity, or Islam in the Netherlands. It builds on the innovative historical and philosophical work by scholars who call attention to the intersections of race and religion. In ethnographic studies of female converts such entanglements of race and religion have primarily been noted in the case of white converts in Islam. However, research into race and racialization among Christian and Jewish female converts is rare, and a comparative approach even rarer. A bottom-up comparative approach, I argue, has the potential to critically examine not only the positions of religio-racialized minorities, but also the mechanisms of religious/racial hegemony at work in Western Europe. The article thus explores how becoming a religious minority impacts one’s sense of belonging to the nation and how processes of racialization, specifically antisemitism and Islamophobia, impact the conversion process.