White privilege in the lives of Muslim converts in Britain PDF

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White privilege in the lives of Muslim converts in Britain - Leon Moosavi https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01419870.2014.952751?needAccess=true Abstract This paper explores how the whiteness of converts to Islam affects their post-conversion experiences. It shows how white converts are privileged because their whiteness functions as a marker of dominance and respectability. In attempting to go beyond well-established observations about the existence of white privilege, the limits of white privilege are also considered. It is argued that upon converting to Islam, white converts’ whiteness is jeopardized, thus showing the precariousness of whiteness. The paper also considers how converts’ whiteness can cause them difficulties rather than benefits due to the unique context that they find themselves in. Unlike white supremacists who portray white people as always a victim however, this paper seeks a more balanced understanding of the complexity of whiteness as often-but-not-always privileging. This paper is based on thirty-seven in-depth interviews that were conducted between 2008 and 2009 with Muslim converts in Greater Manchester.

Introduction “...origins in W.E.B. Du Bois’ discussion of ‘the wages of whiteness’ and has led to a realization that racism is not only about how non-white people experience society as outcasts, but also about how white people enjoy structural and everyday privileges for being racialized as a member of the supposedly superior race.” - p1918 “Melissa Steyn and Daniel Conway (2010) express a popular sentiment that although progress has been made in understanding how whiteness features in white peoples’ lives, whiteness is still not robustly theorized enough.” - p1918 “...established by Oishee Alam (2012) that white converts to Islam cause confusion to both nonMuslims and even lifelong Muslims because whiteness and Islam are seen as incompatible.” - p1918 “...for white converts who enter the ‘Muslim community’, race is not something they can ignore as is the case for many other white people.” - p1919 “‘the Muslim community’ in Britain is predominantly a postcolonial South Asian community and as a result, Islam in Britain is conflated with South Asian ethnicity and culture.” - p1919

‘They want a white face there’ “It is not uncommon for white converts to generate tears in lifelong Muslims’ eyes and for them to be regularly hugged and kissed by strangers. Part of this elation can be explained by lifelong Muslims’ belief that God has guided another soul.” - p1919 “However,... lifelong Muslims rarely welcome black converts in the same way that they welcome white converts.” - p1919 

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“… I’ll go to a mosque in Birmingham and people will say: “Brother Bakri!” and come shake my hand and I’m thinking: “I feel really bad because you know me because I’m a big white Muslim and I don’t know you.” (Bakri) “ - p1920 “I went to give Salaam to one of my wife’s relatives, he just completely ignored me! I walked into the room with another guy and I went to Salaam him and he completely walked past me and gave Salaam to the other guy … Maybe he doesn’t like black guys! … (Justin)” - p1920

“Whereas white converts are often paraded in the way that Bakri was, black converts are often shunned like Justin was. It is no secret that race is the key factor here, which is why both Bakri and Justin mention their race when explaining how they are responded to by lifelong Muslims.” - p1920 “white converts are considered as a prestigious achievement that should be displayed...” - p1920 “black converts are disinteresting and even avoided for fear of contamination.” - p1920 “It is also why white converts report being inundated with marriage proposals from lifelong Muslims, whereas black converts typically find it an arduous process to find a marriage partner.” - p1920 “...South Asian migrants who came to Britain after the Second World War because of the colonial relationship. The racial complexes that were systematized in the colonial era still inform perceptions of white people as noble and black people as worthless.” - p1921 “...white privilege can be understood as a postcolonial remnant, or to put it in Shannon Sullivan’s words, a ‘phantom’ that continues to haunt us from the colonial era.” - p1921 “In other words, white converts offer redemption for lifelong Muslims who are aware of their marginalized status. Lifelong Muslims lust over white converts rather than non-white converts, and that there is hope of touching white converts literally, emotionally and intimately, is part of the desire to seize their whiteness.” - p1921 – Can we reduce these actions to an inevitable desire to seize their whiteness? Denies agency?

‘You’re turning into a Paki now’ “White converts... undergo what I refer to as a ‘re-racialization’ upon converting to Islam.” - p1922 “The re-racializing of white converts is commonplace because we live in a ‘rigid discursive system… one that conflates “ethnicity” and race with religion, and that forces [people] to be either EnglishChristian or Pakistani-Muslim… white and Muslim don’t quite add up’” - p1922 

“Julie, a twenty-six-year-old mother, had the following encounter: ‘I was in Primark3 in Oldham [wearing a headscarf] and this little boy said to his mum: “Why’s that woman dressed as a Paki?”’ For the child, Julie’s headscarf meant that she was dressing like a Pakistani, showing how he conflates a Muslim and Pakistani identity.” - p1922

““Oh, you have just become a Paki.”’ These comments are not that far removed from another label that has been attached to white converts: ‘race traitors’” - p1922 “...’white Paki’... on occasion, white converts are not totally re-racialized as non-white, but are only partially re-racialized, whereby they are still considered as white to some extent, but as having a tarnished whiteness or being ‘not-quite-white’. This is similar to the way in which poor whites (‘white trash’ in the USA and ‘chavs’ in the UK) have also been considered to have a contaminated or polluted whiteness.” - p1923 “Re-racialization is only possible because race is a fluid, constructed concept that is created by an inconsistent categorizing of human bodies.” - p1923 “For example, Sumayyah, a twenty-four-year-old A level student, explained that re-racialization impacts on the way that her children see themselves: ‘I caught one of my daughters calling the other one a “Paki” and I was like: “Why are you calling her that?”, and she was like: “Well, we are Pakis” because people say it to them in the street.’” - p1924

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“If this is the case, then the intensity of reracialization is unmasked as having such force that it can even lead to individuals reracializing themselves.” - p1924

‘Sometimes I wish I wasn’t English’ “...white Muslims are disadvantaged by their Muslim identity, but also to suggest that they can even be disadvantaged by their whiteness.” - p1924 “Even if this racism experienced by white people is less frequent and less severe than that encountered by non-white people, this does not mean that it should be ignored, because it is still a form of racism, albeit of a lesser stature.” - p1925 “...white converts’ experiences, who often find that being white does not make them ‘invisible’, but rather means that they become racially visible in a manner that non-white people usually are” p1925 “Rather than provide a privilege, in such cases, whiteness prevents white converts from realizing the identity that they so passionately want to be ascribed with.” - p1926 “Amber, a forty-two-year-old university lecturer... talked about how her children’s whiteness led to them being attacked... Amber’s children are told by others that they are not welcome in the mosque because they are not Pakistani or Arab. The insistence that they should leave the mosque because they are white escalates to violence because they are regarded as intruders.” - p1926 “...a perception of white people as part of ‘the enemy’. This has been enhanced during the ‘War on Terror’ era as there is a common fear in Muslim communities that white converts may be spies sent to arrange entrapment.” - p1926 “the white converts had encountered lifelong Muslims stereotyping and mocking white people as sexually deviant, hedonistic, immoral, selfish, ethnocentric, having a history of exploiting others, not respecting human life, and developing civilized ideas later than other peoples. These negative stereotypes that circulate among lifelong Muslims about white people affect how lifelong Muslims treat white converts.” - p1927 “So, while I earlier mentioned that white converts have increased marriage opportunities because of their whiteness, in the contradictory world that we live in, there are other instances when their whiteness means that they are considered as unsuitable marriage partners.” - p1927 “In the act of converting to a religion that is so regularly racialized as non-white, all white converts jeopardize their whiteness but appear to be unfazed by this due to their awareness that whiteness is not paramount to success, at least not in relation to the lifestyle they want to live.” - p1929 “...there are significant numbers of white men and women in contemporary Britain who see prestige in blackness, seek to embody ‘black culture’ and distance themselves from their whiteness. While it is true to say that whiteness offers many privileges, blackness also offers cultural capital and therefore privilege in some contexts.” - p1929 – these actions may play out/be perceived as embodying black culture, but it is naïve and crude to assume white British individuals engage in “black” activities such as breakdancing out of a conscious effort to renege on their whiteness and acquire blackness for motivations of self-interest. Hip hop is a culture and a movement rooted in black history, but its ideals are not explicitly pan-Africanist/black power, it’s ideals are more universal arguably. Therefore, the manifestation of Hip-hop in Britain and the engagement of white people in it

reflects the multi-cultural nature of hip hop not a monocultural representation that perhaps Muslims communities continue to reflect largely due to demography (south Asian migrants) etc.

Conclusion “This article has sought to contribute to what France Winddance Twine and Charles Gallagher (2008) have called ‘Third Wave Whiteness Studies’, which is defined by the use of empirical research to showcase the complexity of whiteness in specific localities.” - p1920/30

Whilst I agree with Moosavi’s perspective aligning with ‘third wave whiteness studies’ I fear he on occasion indulges in generalisations that disregard difference of experience of which he is trying to avoid. This however, does not take away from the soundness of his argument and the evidence it is based upon....