Being Muslim, Polish, and at home: converts to Islam in Poland

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on converts to Islam in Poland, taking into account the specific socio-cultural, political, and historical contexts and new trends that have emerged with the gradual growth of the Muslim population. We draw attention to the unique patterns of practices related to Islam and patterns of belonging. Eastern European Islam remains relatively under-researched and, as a consequence, there is little clarity whether processes identified in relation to Western European Islam are mirrored in Eastern Europe. In line with the current literature, we propose the concept of ‘Polish Islam’ as an analytical tool. Based on 16 interviews with Polish female converts, this article traces the way meanings of religious teachings and practices are negotiated and integrated into daily social interactions. We analyse participants’ views regarding the fit between Islam and the national culture. Expanding on the finding that Polish converts to Islam in our sample do not consider themselves to be outsiders, we explore the implications of this pragmatic stance and discuss that the majority of our respondents choose to amalgamate Polish cultural practices with their new religion and renegotiate the meanings of these practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Islam
• Muslim
• conversion
• Poland
• Muslim women
• lived religion

Introduction

The debate on Muslim identities in Europe has been marked by essentialist dichotomies placing Islam in opposition to the West, with conflict or clash being the main proposed mode of coexistence between the two categories. Although the alternative widespread narrative about difference promoted by multiculturalist discourses rejects the idea of conflict and substitutes it with the notion of ‘the right to be different’, it also plays a part in reproducing the singular identity and otherness of Muslims. In the last decade, a variety of critical approaches that integrate global, transnational, and local contexts and affiliations has emerged. These new perspectives include the concepts of ‘European Islam’ (Peter 2006) and a number of ‘national Islams’ described in the literature, e.g. ‘Swedish Islam’ (Roald 2001; 2004), ‘German Islam’ (Özyürek 2014), and ‘Czech Islam’ (Pirický 2018). These localised forms of Islam are conceived as the outcomes of a process of adaptation of a universal religion to particular national, geo-political, and historical conditions. While these frameworks acknowledge the problematic assumptions of the dichotomy-based analysis, they remain “a contested terrain which discloses an unresolved tension between transnational and national agendas, loyalties and identities” (Salih 2006, 996).

In this article, we focus on Muslims in Poland, taking into account the specific cultural, political, and historical contexts of the gradual growth of the Muslim population. By introducing the concept of ‘Polish Islam’ we take a closer look at this contested terrain and draw attention to the unique patterns of practices related to Islam and patterns of belonging emerging from our data. By engaging in the debate on Polish Islam we aim to capture the complexity of Muslims’ experiences in a particular socio-cultural context, rather than postulate the existence of essentialised Islam marked by national boundaries and defined by a closed list of fixed, reified features. Our analysis highlights some salient elements of the Polish socio-cultural landscape: the invisibility of Muslims in the Polish public space, the hegemonic position of the Catholic Church in Poland and its implications, and current dominant discourses on national identity and belonging. In the discussion that follows we focus on one group of Polish Muslims: Polish-born converts to Islam. We approach their experiences relationally, as localised in a complex structure occupied by the non-Muslim majority, born Muslims of immigrant origin, and the indigenous Polish Muslim minority group—the Tatars. We demonstrate how, in the process of embedding Islam in the local social, cultural, and historical context, converts to Islam skilfully navigate conflicting pressures and maintain inclusive identities. By doing this they challenge the dominant discourses on religion and ethnicity and negotiate their position among other Muslims in Poland and the non-Muslim majority. In line with current literature, our analysis explores the validity of the notion of Polish Islam as an analytical tool highlighting a localised Islam of “self-conscious” quality (Clough 2006, 265), where the mainstream views, practices, and values become merged with the religion that is perceived by many as distant and alien.

The strengths and limitations of Polish Islam as an analytical tool

Before we begin the main discussion, some critical remarks are necessary. The notion of Polish Islam has so far been used predominantly with reference to the Polish Tatars who dominated the Islamic landscape of Poland until the end of the twentieth century (Dziekan 2011). Currently, Polish Tatars constitute a minority group among Muslims in Poland, but for many remain synonymous with Polish Islam. They are a closely assimilated group which enjoys ‘established’ status. The Tatar-led “Muslim Religious Union” was the “organizational primus inter pares within the Muslim population in Poland” (Pędziwiatr 2011, 174) until the establishment of the “Muslim League” in 2001. While there is a significant body of literature on the Tatar Muslims in Poland (e.g. Borawski and Dubiński 1986; Warmińska 1999; Dziekan 2011), other Muslims—the ethnically heterogeneous group of born Muslims of immigrant origin and Polish converts to Islam—have so far attracted little attention in the studies of Polish Islam.

The underlying assumption in popular culture and some academic debates is that, if someone embraces Islam, s/he does it for religious reasons, which in turn makes him/her a religious person—at least at the beginning of the post-conversion phase. Following from that assumption, studies on conversion to Islam typically focus on the motivations, beliefs or value systems of converts in the pre- and post-conversion stages (see e.g. Ryszewska 2019 on conversion in Poland). Thus, the convert becomes a homo religiosus (Eliade 1978, 8; DuBose 2014) perceived exclusively through the lens of their religion. For converts, however, being a Muslim intersects with multiple other identities. In this article, we want to avoid the risk of overlooking the complexity of converts’ experiences and reducing their identities to the domains of religious beliefs and practice.

Because we strive to understand how Polish converts relate to Polish society, we pay particular attention to agency: the ways they negotiate their position as converts and practise their religion in the diverse and conflictual political and cultural realities of contemporary Poland. We want to avoid the risk of reifying Islam as the basis for the principal identity for Polish Muslim converts and making converts “all about Islam” (Jeldtoft 2011, 1135). Instead, we ask how and “where the larger frameworks of Islam are lived out” (ibid, 1138) and how meanings of religious teachings and practice are negotiated and integrated in converts’ daily social interactions.

By referring to Polish Islam, we highlight that the practice of Islam is embedded in the local socio-cultural, political, and historical context, in this case, Polish society, culture, and tradition (Neumuller 2012, 72). The new religious practice is negotiated with reference to the non-Muslim social environment and other Muslims in Poland. Day-to-day social interactions the converts engage in are shaped by their immediate social environments and institutions (significant others, friends, family, work), larger social structures operating at the national level (national history, culture, dominant political discourses), and global factors (secularisation processes in Europe, global migration, transnationalism, the rise of digital networks). Our analysis takes into account factors inherent in these different environmental and institutional contexts that seem to be most relevant and important to converts’ experiences. We look closely at the ways in which Polish converts “navigate among the expectations of the worlds in which they live and the traditions they have to draw on” (Ammerman 2016, 85).

In adopting the concept of Polish Islam, we also want to highlight that the experiences of Polish converts do not necessarily follow the patterns identified in studies on conversion in Western Europe. While Islamic conversion in Western Europe has received ample scholarly attention, Polish converts to Islam have remained relatively unstudied. In our analysis, we refer to the published literature on Western converts and the very few existing studies on converts from the A8 EU member states, adopting a comparative perspective in order to identify distinctive understandings of Islamic teachings and practices among Polish converts.¹

Note on methodology

The population of Polish converts to Islam is very small and relatively difficult to reach. There is no consensus among the leaders of Muslim organisations about the size of this population, local dispersion of converts (abroad or in Poland), and whether most of them are active on social media. It is, therefore, difficult to gather reliable statistical data and ensure the representativeness of the research sample. It seems that a small group of converts serve as ‘Muslims on duty’ in Poland; they repeatedly participate in surveys and small-scale qualitative projects or give interviews to journalists (Rogowska 2017, 86). Anita Harris and Shakira Hussein (2020, 3974) similarly note the existence of “everyday explainers” of Islam in the Australian context. This kind of sampling bias might produce an illusion of group cohesion, the prevalence of a particular understanding of Islam, and uniformity of convert experiences. It should therefore be acknowledged that we might be unable to reach the less visible ‘silent majority’ of converts who locate their experiences in the private domain and do not want to participate in research (Amiraux 2006, 40).

With these limitations in mind, we attempted to recruit participants from multiple walks of life through personal networks, social media, public events, and snowballing who reflect the diversity of converts’ life experiences. Despite these efforts, however, the following discussion on Polish Islam should be approached with caution, as a generalisation of patterns observed in our data does not necessarily contain the experiences of all Polish converts. The main sources of our data are 16 qualitative interviews with Polish female converts conducted as a part of our research project between June 2018 and September 2019.² The interviews were recorded and then transcribed by professional transcribers. The interviews were conducted and analysed in Polish. The extracts presented in this article were translated into English by the authors. In our discussion, we also use some secondary data from quantitative studies on converts to Islam in Poland (e.g. Rogowska 2017; Pawlik 2007) as well as publicly accessible social media sites.

The diversity of Polish Islam

Muslims comprise one of several small minorities in predominantly Catholic Poland. Contemporary Poland has undergone an intensive cultural transformation in recent decades, but it can still be described as a country characterised by relatively low cultural and religious diversity. In the 2011 Census, over 97% of respondents declared Polish nationality, while over 95% of those who answered the question about religious belief (over 91%) declared to be Catholic (Central Statistical Office 2013). The ethnic and religious homogeneity of Poland and the alliance between Catholicism and Polish nationality are legitimised as long-lasting historical phenomena (Zubrzycki 2016, 69). As we discuss below, it has important implications for Polish Islam.

It is estimated that the total size of the Muslim population in Poland is somewhere between 25,000 and 35,000 (Račius 2018, 162). This estimate includes Polish autochthonous Muslims—the Tatars (up to 4,500), migrants from Muslim majority countries (around 20,000), and Polish-born converts to Islam (between 500 and 3,000). The image of the Tatars evolved over the centuries and, although the historical imaginary associating them with fierce warriors persists, contemporary Tatars are commonly considered to be unthreatening and assimilated into Polish society (Cieslik and Verkuyten 2006, 80; Miśkiewicz 2017, 602). Their presence in Poland dates back to the fourteenth century. During the long history of their settlement in Poland they have been loyal to the Polish state and they supported the Polish armed forces, thus legitimising their patriotic stance and becoming an integral part of the Polish cultural landscape. In this process, the ostensibly alien religious tradition that the Tatars brought with them has evolved, adopted many local customs, and became domesticated. Tatar ‘folk Islam’ has been influenced by pre-Islamic Turkic traditions and some Christian elements (Dziekan 2011, 35). Many Tatars married Catholics or became secularised and thus their religion remained a marginal issue in the national politics and media. In this group, religion is strongly interlinked with ethnic identity; therefore it is not possible to become a member of the group through conversion to Islam. Some prominent Tatars distance themselves from the Islam of migrants and converts, which they perceive as radical or overtly influenced by the Arab culture (Włoch 2009, 62).³ There is, therefore, very little connection between Muslims of immigrant origin or Polish converts and the Tatars.

The other two groups of Muslims living in Poland—born Muslims of immigrant origin and Polish nationals who converted to Islam—attract more attention in the media and political discourses. They are often portrayed in ways that highlight the perceived incompatibility of Islam with Polish culture and society. The possibility of Muslim migrants settling in greater numbers in Poland has become a major item on the political agenda and a prominent media topic since the beginning of the migration crisis in 2015 (Krotofil and Motak 2018, 61). State-controlled media continue to portray Muslims as ‘the Other’ par excellence: backward, violent, and placed in stark opposition to Polish culture (Piela 2020, 287). These discourses and a general low level of knowledge about Islam in Poland shape national and local contexts of daily social interactions in which Muslims take part.

In spite of the intensification of transnational movements of people in recent decades, immigrants from Muslim majority countries remain a relatively small population in Poland, an important difference in relation to Western Europe. The group comprises former and current students, entrepreneurs and professionals, diplomats, economic migrants and refugees from Muslim majority countries. Born Muslims living in Poland are therefore a very diverse group in terms of country of origin, social status, and religious worldviews (Pędziwiatr 2011, 171). Some of them come in contact with Polish converts in larger cities where Muslim facilities have been established; however, none of the ethnic or national groups have been sizeable enough to dominate these centres, until recently. Most mosques in Poland are frequented by ethnically diverse congregations. It is an important factor framing the conditions in which a distinctly Polish understanding of Islam can develop with a strong influence exerted by converts.

The invisibility of Muslims in Poland

The small proportion of Muslims in the general population of Poland is reflected in the limited public presence of Muslims in Poland. There are only four purpose-built mosques in Poland. Some of the buildings housing other mosques bear only minimal signs indicating their purpose. Therefore, it can be argued that Polish Islam has so far not materialised in Polish architectural landscapes. A similar statement can be made with regard to Islamic clothing. The hijab is still a fairly unusual sight in Poland; it draws attention and provokes reactions, ranging from inquisitive looks or polite questions to harassment. In our interviews, the women who have experience of living abroad felt more at ease wearing the hijab in Western Europe; some of them were compelled to remove it when visiting Poland. Partly or completely concealing their Muslim identity allows some women to navigate hostile attitudes towards Islam and Muslims. For others, however, wearing the hijab becomes an element of the self-image of a strong and socially visible person, as illustrated by this statement:

I have always been somehow visible; simply I was active everywhere, and I always, how should I say, put this nicely … I wasn’t interested in what people were saying about me. So now it also does not bother me somehow. I do what I think is appropriate. (01 PL, 5 March 2019)⁴

The practice of the hijab (wearing it or not) is contextual, dependent on the individual circumstances of each adherent. Where the risk of stigmatisation of children or problems with finding a job might become significant consequences of wearing the hijab, our respondents were able to take a flexible stance and renegotiate the importance of that particular practice. In converts’ narratives, the decision regarding the hijab is always presented not only as a matter of personal choice, but also as an outcome of unique local socio-cultural conditions. The visibility of Polish Islam is, therefore, not only a consequence of objective factors, such as the size of the Muslim population, but also a dynamic outcome of the relationship between Polish Muslims and mainstream society.

Being Muslim and belonging

As stated in the introduction, converts to Islam are not ‘all about Islam’. They negotiate multiple past and present roles and social identities. The women we spoke to are a minority within the non-Muslim social circles in many contexts, such as work, extended family, and education, where they enter the framework of asymmetrical power relationships. The majority has the power to define who belongs to ‘us’ and who is placed outside the inner circle (Tajfel 1978; Amireaux and Simon 2006, 192). Social inclusion/exclusion is a dynamic process and the criteria used to position groups and individuals within the ‘us/them’ division can change with time. As Gerd Baumann (2006, 18) observes, “the grammars of identity and alterity” allow for a degree of flexibility in the acts of categorisation and inclusion of those who at a first glance seem perfect outsiders. The picture emerging from our data is in line with this statement.

Conversion to Islam among our respondents very rarely took the form of a radical break from previous social environments. Most converts maintain the relationships with their families and friends and remain present in various forms in their pre-conversion social circles. In Blanka Rogowska’s survey (2017), 56% of converts stated that the predominant group in their social circles were Polish non-Muslims, while 27% stated that born Muslims were the most significant to them. Polish women who embraced Islam are generally able to negotiate their place within the boundaries of the groups they belong to. Although the proscriptions that converts should follow in order to become pious Muslims include every aspect of life, such as dress, diet, ways of socialising, travelling, and sport activities, converts carefully negotiate these changes in interactions with significant others and work them into existing habits and preferences.

In our interviews we identified two main strategies used by converts to maintain their social relationships. Those who publicly manifest their Muslim identity are typically open to discuss their religion and religious practice. They are prepared to answer questions and explain some misconceptions that people less familiar with Islam might have. They focus on presenting a good image of Islam by exhibiting impeccable manners. Many women who adopted this strategy described ways of bringing religion into the work domain. These included organising awareness workshops for work colleagues, embarking on academic careers with a strong focus on subjects related to Islam, and launching businesses connected to Islamic contexts. Converts working in commercial settings tend to organise their work in a way that minimises tension between work commitments and religious practice. While finding employment in Muslim organisations in Poland might be difficult due to the scarcity of such positions, converts search for creative ways of bringing Islam into their professional careers, as the following quote illustrates:

I was wondering how I could combine Islam with what I do. I think that as my professional knowledge […] expanded, I could start doing things related to Islam. It could be short videos on different events. I want to combine it, because I want to fight the stereotyping of Islam. (13 PL, 28 September 2019)

Other participants adopted a different strategy, keeping their religion largely private. The public practices that they adopt are not unambiguously Muslim (e.g. change in diet), as this interviewee indicated:

Not much has changed in my life, even if we talk about dress or body. For many years, I wasn’t wearing any Muslim clothes. My life did not change much, let’s not exaggerate. The pork, and whatever there was…, I stopped drinking alcohol before conversion. (14 PL, 10 July 2019)

In this group, most women displayed very pragmatic attitudes towards restrictions related to sports or travel. Prohibitions such as the elimination of alcohol or pork were often constructed as changes independent of conversion, as illustrated by one of our respondents, who has a gluten intolerance and had been a vegetarian for many years before converting to Islam:

I cannot consume gluten, so all those cakes and biscuits […] life forced me before Islam to inspect everything. I inspect everything before I arrive somewhere. In general, for many years I have not been eating meat. (01 PL, 5 March 2019)

The image of Polish Islam presented by our respondents is not divorced from everyday life in Poland. Rather, it is embedded in it, often through careful negotiation taking place in interactions with those in the non-Muslim public sphere.

Converts as the familiar ‘Others’

One of the areas where converts have to negotiate their ‘otherness’ concerns relationships with the closest family. For many converts, the importance of family is reinforced by their religious views. Staying in touch with parents and showing them love and respect is seen as a particularly highly valued act in Islam.

Converts very often face dilemmas related to family traditions or cultural practices linked to Christianity. They have to decide, for example, whether to celebrate Christmas and how to do so, how to attend Catholic burials or how to celebrate the birthdays of family members and friends. In the survey conducted among Polish converts to Islam by Rogowska (2017, 98), 71% of respondents stated that they participated in Catholic holiday celebrations and 4.5% indicated that they wished to participate but were rejected by their families. Most participants in this study demonstrated high flexibility regarding boundaries, testing their individual limits of engagement in Catholic practice. In this process, they renegotiate the meanings of these practices, as the following statement about Christmas exemplifies:

My family are not extremely religious, I don’t really know how much they believe. So for us Wigilia [the Christmas Eve supper, important in the Polish Catholic tradition] is more of a custom; it’s about sitting together at the table sharing the supper. So I don’t have a problem with Wigilia, there is no pork on the table. (13 PL, 28 September 2019)

The patterns of involvement in celebrations vary: while some converts refrain from engaging in religious practices, others go to church with their families and sing Christmas carols (Rogowska 2017, 98). Notably, some converts expect their non-Muslim families to participate in their Islamic celebrations. They see this reciprocal engagement as an occasion to make their family members more familiar with Islam and demystify some of the ‘exotic’ practices and foster acceptance:

Last year we had this initiative to convince non-Muslims to fast with us. I, for example, convinced my sister. For her, it was a challenge. On the other hand, she knew why I was doing it and began to understand better. Because my sister was the most… She’d said, “So, you joined the terrorists?” (13 PL, 28 September 2019)

In some cases, the cultural and religious practices cultivated in the non-Muslim family are given new Islamic meanings. Thus, Polish converts transform the old practices and infuse the new religion with some elements of their local culture and traditions.⁵ One example of amalgamating different traditions was a suggestion made by one of our interviewees to her family with regard to the Christmas gift exchange. She proposed that the adult members of the family would not buy gifts for each other but collect the money they would spend for presents and donate it to charity. Charitable giving (zakat) is one of the pillars of Islam and therefore giving money allocated for presents to charity was in her view a Muslim practice, “a fusion of something from our tradition [Islam] and something from Christianity”.⁶ By renegotiating the meaning of these practices, converts bring their Islam home and remain comprehensible for their significant others.

In their wider social circles, converts call upon the familiarity and shared past to neutralise ‘the otherness’ created by the conversion, as the example provided by one of our respondents illustrates: a young woman in her early thirties who lives in a small town in the south of Poland. Although she is the only Muslim in her village and does not conceal her religion, she feels that she is still perceived as a regular member of the local community. People from the village have known her since she was a child, they know her parents and remember her active involvement in church groups and the volunteer fire-fighter unit. She is thus not seen as threatening or alien. This respondent juxtaposed her relationships with neighbours with the experiences of her Syrian Muslim friend. The friend was staying with her for a period of time and was confronted with more hostile attitudes of the local people:

In my flat there used to live a friend from Syria and her husband and they had many more problems than I had. For example, when she was on the bus and somebody started a conversation with “Do you live in the [respondent’s] flat? Are you a Muslim?”, she wasn’t sure who it was and did not want to talk. That’s where the harassment started. (13 PL, 28 September 2019)

While this interviewee was accepted as ‘one of us, although a Muslim’, her Syrian friend was rejected as ‘a stranger and a Muslim’. As this example demonstrates, local knowledge and language are important resources that Polish converts can use in their negotiation of social boundaries. These elements of cultural capital give converts the means to embed Islam in their local communities.

Virtual Polish Islam

The strategies used by converts to embed Islam in their local social worlds described above are developed collectively, in the convert communities. Face-to-face interactions with other converts are easier for those who live in larger cities where Muslim facilities have been established. For those living in smaller towns and rural areas, they might be quite limited. This is compensated by interactions in virtual space. The virtual Ummah functions not only as an important resource providing support and a sense of belonging, despite ideological differences (Górak-Sosnowska 2015, 344), but, by its exterritorial nature, it creates opportunities for making choices. Converts are able to participate in a number of “communities of knowledge” and choose virtual communities that help them reconcile their new religion with other aspects of their identity (Piela 2015, 378).

The topics discussed by converts on the Internet often encompass very practical, embodied aspects of Islam. Discussions focus on religious practices: advice is exchanged on how to pray, fast, dress, and take care of the body. These Internet discussions are often very vibrant; differences in opinion are expressed and defended passionately. It could be argued that these activities enhance converts’ agency, their commitment to learning about Islam and finding the best ways to practise their religion in the socio-cultural context they share. As one of our participants highlighted, the virtual space gives female converts autonomy in shaping their religious views and practice outside the male-dominated structures and a tool for actively participating in dawah—extending an ‘invitation’ to Islam (see Račius 2018, 159). The virtual interactions also help converts to develop a collective narrative about embracing Islam that is subsequently presented to non-Muslims. As we discuss in the next section, the shared national identity is of key importance here.

Nationalism and Polish Islam

Similar to other Western countries, in dominant discourses Polish converts are positioned as occupying the liminal space between the Islamic and the national Polish culture. Their contribution to society is defined in terms of being bridge builders who explain national culture to Muslim migrants and Islam to mainstream society (Zebiri 2008, 84). This position is relational and largely shaped by the particularities of the Polish past and the current socio-cultural landscape.

An important element of the socio-cultural landscape notably shaping Polish Islam is a very strong anti-Islamic sentiment which is prevalent in Polish society, labelled as “Islamophobia without Muslims” (Górak-Sosnowska 2016, 190) or “platonic Islamophobia” (Górak-Sosnowska 2006, 239). Polish right-wing commentators target the so-called “global Muslim” (Allen 2010, 98) and ‘Arab Islam’, but not the Tatars. ‘Tatar Islam’ is historically legitimised and justified, as a religion which the Tatars brought with them to Poland and preserved over the centuries. The converts’ Islam, on the other hand, is seen as a betrayal of the Polish tradition and religion of the nation’s forebears, a rejection of the Polish identity (Ryszewska 2019, 99). Conversion to Islam is considered to be a dangerous act associated with irresponsibility, gullibility or political deviancy. This narrative echoes the discourse of polarity and the idea of Islam and Europe as distinct cultural and geopolitical entities so prominent in the debates on the Christian character of Europe (Fadil 2019, 120.

While purely political motives of conversion to Islam seem to be rare (Zebiri 2008, 172), some studies suggest that converts gain a stronger sense of national identity (Rogowska 2017, 88; Wohlrab-Sahr 2006, 80–81; Younis and Hassan 2017, 30). For some, their nationality gains importance, while others relegate it to a marginal position in their identity structure. Similar to the study by Tarek Younis and Ghayda Hassan, we can argue that Polish converts to Islam demonstrate “a consciousness of the socio-political dimensions of the Muslim identity as embedded within Western contexts” (2017, 37). As Rogowska (2017, 88) observed, the more converts are rejected as Polish citizens, the more they emphasise their Polishness and patriotic attitudes. This process might be experienced as painful, particularly in a political climate dominated by the far-right, populist, and xenophobic discourses adopted by the current political élites, as one of our respondents noted:

All the time you feel like a stranger in your own country. Your close circles and friends accept you, but so what? If your own country … in your own country, officially and legally, Islamophobic discourse is coming from … even Gowin, not to mention Kaczyński, how would you feel? (14 PL, 10 July 2019)⁷

The discrepancies between the more positive attitudes within the immediate social environment and the hostility of the official discourse sanctioned by the political élites and society at large are a source of unresolved tension. Engaging with the national myths and politics, some converts actively appropriate the national history and mythology in a way that allows the inclusion of Islam in the notion of Polishness.⁸ In that process, Polish Muslims adopt inclusive strategies and reject the idea of Islam as a threat to the Polish nation. The presence of Tatars in Poland is used to argue that Polishness is not only about the relationship with the Catholic Church. The patriotism of the Tatars is highlighted as the basis for reconstructing the relationship between Polish nationality, patriotism, and Islam (Górska 2018).

While many Polish converts are repulsed by any public manifestations of nationalist ideologies, some are able to engage with these events. The annual “Independence March” taking place on 11 November to commemorate the anniversary of the restoration of Poland’s sovereignty is an example of social gatherings with a distinctively right-wing ideological flavour, including anti-Muslim slogans (Piela 2020, 286–287). Despite this hostile atmosphere, some Polish Muslims use social media to mobilise the convert community. A message on the Facebook group “Islam for Poland” read: “We invite everybody to the March of Independence in Warsaw! We will be there—will you?” (https://www.facebook.com/302590303212851/photos/a.304003023071579/312553962216485, 11 November 2013, accessed 12 March 2019, authors’ translation)

Plural identities

By embedding their religion in local contexts, highlighting the mundanity of everyday life as a Muslim and making Islam Polish, converts contest “the overpowering presence of the Orientalist gaze, which traps Muslims into a realm of Otherness” (Fadil 2019, 121). In the process of negotiating hyphenated identities and challenging mainstream discourses, Polish converts overcome the binary oppositions in many creative ways. They question what it means to be Polish and see themselves as loyal and honest citizens, fully participating in society, and able to maintain good relationships with their families, neighbours, and employers. The majority of converts assert that they share ‘the national character’ with other Poles. Converts emphasise positive traits, such as diligence and resourcefulness, and distance themselves from negative traits, such as stubbornness and xenophobia (Rogowska 2017, 108).

By adopting inclusive and pluralistic interpretations of Islam, many converts resist the simplistic dichotomies so often conjured up in the debates on Islam in the West, based on sharp divisions between the ostensibly liberal, modern, and non-religious and conservative approaches to Islam. For many, Islam is the framework through which they enact the ideal of a ‘good Pole’, based on openness to diversity and respect:

For me, Islam means first of all a respect for another human being or, in other words, worshipping God by showing respect towards everything and everyone. So for me, I don’t know, there are no exceptions. It doesn’t matter if it is an animal, an elderly person or a gay person or a lesbian or my husband. I will respect them and worship God in that way. (14 PL, 10 July 2019)

Although, for some converts, the sense of exclusion and social rejection might lead to the marginalisation of their Polish identity, the majority of Polish converts preserve their national identity and maintain a strong sense of social and civic responsibility.

Catholicism and Polish Islam

The strong position of the Catholic Church in Poland can be seen as an “opportunity structure” for Polish Islam (Włoch 2009, 64). Although Polish Catholic Church officials manifest ambivalent attitudes towards Islam (Krotofil and Motak 2018, 78; Piela 2019, 672), the Church might become an ally in advocating for the right of public expressions of religious beliefs and practice (Włoch 2009, 65). We argue that, although Polish converts contest far-right nationalist discourses portraying the Polish national identity as strongly bound with Catholicism, the mainstream religion is closely linked with Polish Islam. Polish Muslims construct and legitimise their place in Polish society by calling on some Polish Catholic authorities, including the (previous) Polish Pope. In one of the posts on the Facebook group “Islam for Poland”, the words of Pope John Paul II are quoted to highlight the shared religious values and the compatibility of Islam with the Polish cultural milieu (see https://www.facebook.com/pages/category/Community/Islam-dla-Polski-302590303212851/, accessed 27 June 2020).

The relationship between Polish Islam and Catholicism is also evident in the preservation of the Catholic habitus (see e.g. Shanneik 2011). It has been highlighted in studies on conversion to Islam that conversion is not only a process of converting ‘to something’, but also ‘from something’ (McGinty 2007, 479). Yet, this ostensibly trivial observation is sometimes omitted in reflections on converts’ experiences. In the case of Polish converts to Islam, it means that elements of the Catholic religion might be re-enacted, partly re-shaped, and appropriated in the new religion. In her study on Irish converts, Yafa Shanneik argues that Catholic upbringing “continues to manifest itself in converts’ present thoughts, perceptions and actions” (2011, 505). We observed many instances of similar manifestations of Catholic upbringing in converts’ narratives, including the translation of Islamic religious practices into those known from the Catholic past (e.g. descriptions of the Virgin Mary wearing the hijab). By highlighting both the distinctive features of Islam and the point of convergence between their new religion’s teachings and practices and the cultural and religious tradition they grew up with, converts manage the tension between change and biographical continuity.

Conclusions

The Polish Islam analysed in this article subverts the binary framework which places Islam in opposition to Polish culture and society. The experiences of converts to Islam in Poland examined here add to the growing empirical evidence that theoretical models based on essentialised views of Islam as a religion incompatible with ‘Western culture’ are inadequate. It could be argued that the relative homogeneity of Polish society and the attachment to nativist Catholicism form a particularly difficult context for the development and maintenance of an Islamic identity. It seems, however, that many Polish converts follow the pattern observed by Gabriel Pirický (2018) in the Czech Republic and Slovakia: by embracing Islam, they act on the assumption that their religion fits perfectly with their national culture and do not consider themselves to be outsiders. They are able to negotiate their place in society, even if some tensions remain unresolved. While they have to face negative stereotypes and politically sanctioned Islamophobic attitudes, they do not engage in conflict or become marginalised.

Thus, we argue that Polish Islam is shaped by the pragmatic and creative stance adopted by the majority of our respondents who amalgamate Polish cultural practices with their new religion, deftly negotiating the meanings of those practices. As one of our respondents aptly pointed out, the ways of practising Islam exist on a continuum, ranging from the invisible private ‘potato Islam’ (the potato being the Polish staple food) to ‘the Scheherazade complex’ (the most visible and externally apparent way of embracing Islam), with many variations in between.

No matter how visible or private their religion, converts continue engaging with non-Muslims in many social contexts. The women interviewed for this study provided numerous examples, demonstrating that converts are not ‘all about Islam’. They are able to draw on their citizenship rights, cultural knowledge, and linguistic skills to participate fully in Polish society. Polish Islam is therefore the product of developing inclusive identities containing both local and global loyalties, as summarised by a post in the Facebook group “Islam for Poland”: “I am Polish, I am Muslim, and I am very proud of it.” (https://www.facebook.com/302590303212851/photos/a.304003023071579/312553962216485, 11 November 2013, accessed 12 March 2019, authors’ translation)

Although concepts such as Polish Islam cannot really escape the double epistemological impasse in research on Islam in Europe, highlighted by Nadia Fadil (2019), it is an appropriate tool for exploring how particular modes of reasoning, performing, and practising Islam emerge locally. “The dual imperative to account for dominant social structures and individual resistance” (Fadil and Fernando 2015, 59) is a long-standing problem in sociology and not easy to overcome. By using the concept of Polish Islam and placing converts’ experiences in a particular dynamically approached socio-cultural and historical landscape, we have demonstrated the agency and resistance manifest in converts’ efforts to embed their religion in the Polish context. This approach advances reflections on the relationship between agency and local structures operating in the religious field and offers a more localised understanding of Islam.

Acknowledgements

We thank the referees of the Journal of Contemporary Religion as well as Dominika Motak and Michael C. W. Woolf for their helpful feedback on earlier versions of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Centre Poland (Grant 2017/25/B/HS1/00286). The fee for Open Access was provided by the Excellence Initiative, Jagiellonian University.

Notes on contributors

Joanna Krotofil

Joanna Krotofil completed a PhD dissertation on the experiences of Polish Catholics and Muslim converts in the UK at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, where she is now an assistant professor in the Institute for the Study of Religion. Her main research interests include the place of Islam in contemporary Western societies, particularly the ‘migration crisis’ in Europe and constructions of Islam in this context. She has published articles and book chapters on the relationship between religion, identity, and migration and is a co-investigator of the project “Managing Spoiled Identity: The Case of Polish Female Converts to Islam”.

Katarzyna Górak-Sosnowska

Katarzyna Górak-Sosnowska completed her PhD in economics at the SGH Warsaw School of Economics and her post-doctoral project (habilitation) in the study of religions at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, where she is an associate professor in the Institute of International Studies and head of the Middle East and Central Asia Unit. Her research interests are contemporary Middle East and Muslim minorities in Europe. She has published five monographs, including Deconstructing Islamophobia in Poland (2014), and an edited book on Muslims in Poland and Eastern Europe (2011). She is the investigator of the project “Managing Spoiled Identity: The Case of Polish Female Converts to Islam”.

Anna Piela

Anna Piela is a visiting scholar in religion and gender at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA. She has a PhD in women’s studies from the University of York, UK. She has published widely on female religious authority in Islam, including an article in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion and the book Wearing the Niqab: Muslim Women in the UK and the US (2021). She is a co-investigator of the project “Managing Spoiled Identity: The Case of Polish Female Converts to Islam”.

Beata Abdallah-Krzepkowska

Beata Abdallah-Krzepkowska completed an MA in Arabic philology at Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland, and a PhD in linguistics at Silesian University in Katowice, Poland, where she is an assistant professor. She is the author of several articles on Qur’anic semantics. Her research interests focus on the language of the Qur’an, contemporary Islam, and Islam in Europe. She is a research co-ordinator of the Nahda Foundation, which promotes cultural co-operation between Poland and Arab countries, and a co-investigator of the project “Managing Spoiled Identity: The Case of Polish Female Converts to Islam”.

CORRESPONDENCE: Joanna Krotofil, Institute for the Study of Religion, Jagiellonian University, ul. Grodzka 52, 31-044, Kraków, Poland.

Notes

1 These countries include the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia. They joined the EU in 2004.

2 For this research project, we also conducted interviews with nine active members of Islamic organisations (Muzułmański Związek Religijny or “Muslim Religious Union”, Liga Muzułmańska w Rzeczpospolitej Polskiej or the “Muslim League in the Republic of Poland”, and other smaller Muslim groups), but do not draw on this material in this article.

3 This argument was made by Selim Chazbijewicz, a well-known Polish Tatar (see https://natemat.pl/113477,polski-tatar-selim-chazbijewicz-islam-trzeba-odarabizowac-hidzaby-zlikwidowac-polscy-muzulmanie-przebieraja-sie-za-arabow#, accessed 27 June 2020).

4 The code “01 PL” and similar codes used in this article are interview ID numbers devised by the research team.

5 For a discussion of similar processes among German Muslims, see Özyürek (2014, 104).

6 See Krotofil (2011, 166) and also Rogowska (2017, 97) for examples of reading surah Al-Fatiha on Christmas Eve.

7 Jarosław Kaczyński is the leader of the right-wing party “Law and Justice” that has been in power in Poland since the parliamentary elections in 2015. Jarosław Gowin served as the Minister of Science and Higher Education in the cabinet of the Law and Justice party’s government.

8 This process is similar to the inclusion of Islam in the Czech and Slovak national mythology, as noted by Pirický (2018).