Alkhateeb, Ibrahim Ali;
(2022)
The Narratives of African-American and Black British Male Islamic Converts in Saudi Arabia.
Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).
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Abstract
Conversion to a different religion is a complex process that has been studied in a variety of domains in the social sciences. It is an area of applied linguistics that has received less attention. In my research, I explore Islamic religious conversion in Saudi Arabia's hyper masculine culture, where religiosity appears to overlap with hyper and at times toxic masculinity. My goal is to learn more about the experiences and identities of African- American and Black British male Islamic converts in Saudi Arabia. In doing so, I aim to answer the following research questions; how are these male converts’ experiences performatively enacted within the context of life story research interviews in the KSA? What are the commonalities that performatively emerge in their stories? What does this reveal about the complexity of male Islamic converts’ experiences, particularly with regard to the indexing of heterosexuality, masculinity and race that are invoked by these converts? Identity is understood in a Butlerian sense as performatively enacted by repeating, conforming to and sometimes subverting congealed senses of self in discourse (Butler, 1990). I use a multidisciplinary narrative research method which draws on literature from several domains (Bamberg, 2004; Baynham, 2014; Durante, 1994; Hill and Zepeda, 1992) in order to construct a data analytic model that I call performative narrative analysis. My research demonstrates how converts use various discursive and bodily acts to performatively construct their religiosity and sense of self as males in their narratives. It also explains how the differences and commonalties that are enacted performatively are relevant to their life trajectories and the racial discourses in the places from which they come. The data demonstrate how converts have constructed a sense of belonging to an imagined male Islamic brotherhood, which has no place in the secular spheres in which they live.
| Type: | Thesis (Doctoral) |
|---|---|
| Qualification: | Ph.D |
| Title: | The Narratives of African-American and Black British Male Islamic Converts in Saudi Arabia |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | Copyright © The Author 2021. Original content in this thesis is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0) Licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/). Any third-party copyright material present remains the property of its respective owner(s) and is licensed under its existing terms. Access may initially be restricted at the author’s request. |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Education > UCL Institute of Education > IOE - Culture, Communication and Media |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10159288 |
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