Devenir(s) minoritaire(s). La conversion des Blanc‑he‑s à l’islam en France et aux États-Unis comme expérience de la minoration

Abstract

This article focuses on white converts to Islam in France and the United States as a fruitful case to explore the specificities of the minority experience. Using in-depth interviews with Muslim converts on the two sides of the Atlantic, it offers a dynamic and biographic understanding of minoritizing processes. The data reveals that, when donning the visible attributes of Islam, converts find themselves suddenly exposed to racial exclusion and discrimination – a process of otherization that was previously unknown to them by virtue of their belonging to the majority group. In national contexts where Islam as a religion has been « racialized », the minority experience stemming from religious conversion is therefore akin to a form of subalternization. In light of the often undesirable identities that people assign to them, converts resort to various strategies to maneuver their new minority selves, thereby revealing the diversity of the minority experience.

Keywords

• religious conversion
• Islam
• racialization
• whiteness
• France
• United States