When ‘White Devils’ Join the Deen: White American Converts to Islam and the Experience of Non-Normative Whiteness.

This paper focuses on white converts to Islam as anomalous individuals in a world where race and faith have become closely intertwined. Because they disrupt classic understandings of whiteness and enter a setting, the Muslim community, where whiteness is neither unmarked nor dominant, I argue that white converts to Islam can be characterized as “non normative whites.” I show that, by virtue of their discordant racial and religious identities, white converts to Islam develop a form of reflexivity that sheds light on the underlying assumptions attached to white skin in America. Using ethnography and in depth interviewing with 42 converts, I thus explore how non normative whites relate to their own whiteness. I demonstrate that whites too are subjected to racial objectification, although in ambivalent and at timescontradictory ways. The last part of the paper examines the daily strateg ies used by white converts to maneuver their whiteness and defuse racial tensions within the Muslim community. The wide range of interpretive repertoires they employ presents a picture of whiteness that is more complex than what most academic studies make it seem

Conversion to Islam as religious and racial crossing

Conversion is frequently depicted as an inner reversal of the soul, a solitary gesture that marks the individual as free from social constraints. Such conception is found in conventional accounts of conversion but also in the narratives that converts themselves tell about their religious transformation. Notwithstanding the great diversity of trajectories and motives, conversion stories are often strikingly similar: they all put the stress on the individual and individuating nature of conversion, and rely on an exaltation of singularity and self-fulfillment. Yet, the reality of the social world is often different. Because religion is never just about the soul, but also about society and social boundaries, shifting religions places converts at the crossroads of many collective issues

L'islam des convertis

La figure du converti suscite aujourd’hui fantasmes et craintes. Par delà les préjugés, l’enquête de Juliette Galonnier en France et aux États-Unis révèle les difficultés quotidiennes auxquels font face les convertis qui, en l’absence de cadres sociaux établis, vivent souvent leur religion dans une grande solitude – tout en cherchant, souvent, à la réinventer

Cosmogenèse et chronocentrismechez Calcidius

Le mythe cosmogénétique ou cosmogonique exposé et développé par Platon dans son Timée pour faciliter la conception du monde et sa con­naissance, n’a cessé, au moins depuis Aristote, de susciter la glose. Il faut convenir que la phraséologie platonicienne, souvent ambivalente, com­pliquée par d’inévitables difficultés dans l’établissement du texte, est pro­pice à toutes sortes de confusions, amalgames, aménagements et raccour­cis, surtout lorsqu’elle fait l’objet d’un transfert linguistique. S..

Le discours juridique en France et en Angleterre

Par certains aspects, le discours juridique semble ne pas connaître de frontières. En France comme en Angleterre, on constate le fréquent recours à un jargon spécifique ainsi que l’emploi d’un registre élevé. De plus, la langue du droit de ces deux pays tend à donner une acception spécifique à certains mots usuels. Enfin, la présence de termes français rappelle le rôle joué par la conquête normande dans l’élaboration du droit anglais. Toutefois, la spécificité du discours juridique en Angleterre est indéniable : la common law a non seulement élaboré des concepts qui lui sont propres mais elle exprime au moyen d’un discours personnalisé et prolixe et par l’intermédiaire d’une langue imagée l’approche pragmatique d’un système de droit fondé non point sur un code abstrait mais sur un raisonnement inductif. Ainsi, cette langue de spécialité est bien l’émanation de l’âme d’un pays et de ses particularismes culturels.In some respects legal discourse seems to know no frontiers. In France and in England the use of a specific jargon and of an elaborate style is frequently noticed. Moreover, in both countries the language of the law tends to endow certain ordinary words with a specific acceptation. Finally, the presence of French terms reminds us of the part played by the Norman conquest in the making of English law. Nevertheless, legal discourse in England has its own distinctive features: not only has the common law elaborated its own concepts but it also resorts to a personalized, prolix and metaphorical language in order to express the pragmatic quality of a legal system which is not based on an abstract code but on inductive reasoning. Therefore it can be said that this language for a specific purpose is the expression of the soul of a country and of its cultural identity

Religion et catégorisation raciale aux Etats-Unis: le cas de l’islam

Le cas des convertis à l’islam aux Etats-Unis permet d'illustrer l'imbrication entre catégories raciales et religieuses

La métaphore dans les jugements anglais : nature et fonction

Un des traits distinctifs des jugements anglais d’un point de vue stylistique est le nombre important de métaphores souvent inventives tirées de la vie courante et de domaines aussi divers que le sport, la guerre, la nature, la technologie, les vêtements, etc. Cet article se propose tout d’abord de regrouper les métaphores par thèmes et de tenter de définir à quelle stratégie discursive répond le recours constant à cette figure de style. Nous verrons que le juge ne s’adresse pas seulement à ses pairs mais qu’il doit aussi communiquer avec la communauté des profanes qui légitime son pouvoir. Enfin, nous mettrons en évidence le fait que la métaphore, loin d’être un simple ornement, est indissociablement liée au raisonnement juridique anglais par analogie.One of the stylistic features of English judicial opinions seems to be the number of metaphors, often quite inventive, drawn from everyday life and such various fields as games, war, nature, technology, clothing, etc. The aim of this article is first to classify the metaphors and to determine what communicative strategy may account for the constant use of this figure of speech. We shall see that the judge not only addresses his peers but must also communicate with the community of laymen which gives his power its legitimacy. Finally, we shall illustrate the fact that the metaphor, far from being merely ornamental, is on the contrary the expression of the English legal reasoning by analogy

Conversion to Islam as religious and racial crossing

Conversion is frequently depicted as an inner reversal of the soul, a solitary gesture that marks the individual as free from social constraints. Such conception is found in conventional accounts of conversion but also in the narratives that converts themselves tell about their religious transformation. Notwithstanding the great diversity of trajectories and motives, conversion stories are often strikingly similar: they all put the stress on the individual and individuating nature of conversion, and rely on an exaltation of singularity and self-fulfillment. Yet, the reality of the social world is often different. Because religion is never just about the soul, but also about society and social boundaries, shifting religions places converts at the crossroads of many collective issues

The Islam of Converts

The religious convert is a figure of fear and fascination today. Looking beyond clichés, Juliette Galonnier’s investigation in France and the United States shows the daily struggles facing converts who, in the absence of established social frameworks, often experience their religion in great solitude – while at the same time trying to reinvent it