Race in the lives of white Australian converts to Islam

Abstract

This thesis explores the lived experiences of white Australian converts to Islam, and analyses the impacts of racialisation on white converts in a national context where Islam is broadly racialised as 'non-white,' and constructed as oppositional to the Australian nation. This research moved beyond previous sociological literature that deals with macro-level racialisation of Muslims deployed through institutions, legislation and policy, social structures and national discourses, to detail how racialisation is reproduced and experienced in everyday interpersonal encounters by white converts who move from an 'unraced' or invisible racial positioning to a highly racialised one. Qualitative data for this research were collected through semi-structured, in-depth interviews with twenty-nine self-identified white converts to Islam from Sydney, and underwent thematic analysis. This project makes substantial empirical contributions to research about Australian Muslim communities and converts in particular, and contributes to broader knowledge about the racialisation of Islam and Muslims in Australia through its discussion of the racialised frames through which white converts are understood. In interactions with non-Muslims, this was done by explicitly framing Islam as a non-white race, or through the more subtle approach of constructing Islam as antagonistic to the Australian nation, which is underpinned by a national construction of whiteness. Importantly, interviews with white converts revealed that non-white Muslims also had dualistic and reified perceptions of Islam and whiteness that constructed Islam as incompatible with whiteness, which led some non-white Muslims to either question participants' commitment to the religion or conversely, glorified them for having the will to 'abandon' their whiteness for Islam. The thesis additionally contributes to the sociology of race and the sociology of religion in Australia by highlighting how the production of contemporary Australian nationalism vis-Ã -vis the concurrent evocation of whiteness and Christian-coded secularism serves to position Islam as a religion that is not just antithetical to the Australian way of life, but to whiteness itself. These findings make an important contribution to the sociology of whiteness and national identity, which has not dealt sufficiently with the secular dimension of whiteness. It is hoped that this thesis aids in deepening and extending current theoretical understandings of racialisation, and of the operation of whiteness and Christian-coded secularism in the construction of Australian national identity.

Date of Award	2016
Original language	English