https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1121-6240
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ABSTRACT
Unlike Western European countries, in Poland, there are two groups of native Muslim citizens: the Tatars and converts to Islam. They differ from mainstream society by their religion – Islam, and the Tatars, additionally, by their ethnicity. However, one of these groups – Islam converts – is racialised by the other. We argue that the Polish Tatars can use the repertoire of both sides – non-Muslim mainstream society and born Muslims – in order to otherise and racialise Polish converts to Islam. As autochthonous Poles, whose membership in mainstream society has never been questioned, they can employ strategies used by non-Muslims. As born Muslims they can build on the wide range of strategies against Islam newcomers. Moreover, the racialisation of Polish converts seems to be a strategy that aims to maintain the boundaries between these two groups and the positive self-assessment of the Tatars. This article contributes to the scholarship on racialisation of white converts to Islam by bringing out the local context with unique dynamics and power relations between different groups of Muslims.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank both Reviewers, whose comments helped us to significantly advance the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 See the Funding sections.
2 Due to procedural difficulties on the part of the Catholic Church, apostasy in Poland is a very rare practice (several hundred cases a year). More at: https://www.iskk.pl/badania/religijnosc/303-statystyki-nt-apostazji-w-polsce.
3 While there are 5–7 (depending on how we define their Muslimness) Islamic religious associations that have acquired the status of a church and have been registered by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the position of the MRU is dominant in terms of its legacy and relations with Polish state authorities – as stipulated in the Law of 21 April 1936 r. about the relationship of the State to the Muslim Religious Union in the Republic of Poland (Dz.U. 1936 nr 30 poz. 240). It made the MRU the recognised and formal representative of Muslims in Poland.
4 Until the end of the interwar years, the Polish Tatars were referred to as ‘the Muslims’ (Muślimowie). This ethnonym was evidenced by, inter alia, the first anthropological monograph dedicated to the Tatars of the lands of former Great Duchy of Lithuania (so including the Polish Tatars) published in 1924 by J. Talko-Hryncewicz, entitled Muślimowie, czyli tak zwani Tatarzy litewscy [‘The Muslims, or the so-called Lithuanian Tatars’]. Interestingly, the term Muślimowie – as opposed to an equivalent term referring to Jews – was considered positive. It was used to emphasise that the Tatars express patriotic attitudes and identify with Polishness, understood in broad cultural categories. As an archaism, the ethnonym Muślimowie disappeared after World War II and was replaced with the related term polscy muzułmanie [‘Polish Muslims’], because until the end of the 70’s the Tatars were considered to be the only Muslims in Poland (Łyszczarz Citation2017).
5 This is not to say that race plays no role in Poland. Just the opposite – it is one of the core features of so-called Polish-centrism framed into some racially defined elements such as biological racism, religiosity and language (Balogun Citation2020, 2). Being one of Europe’s least ethnically diverse societies, Poles consider whiteness as something natural, as (almost) all Poles are Slavic.
6 Depending on how one defines being a Tatar, official statistics differ. If one calculates the number by ethnicity there are 1916 Tatars in Poland according to a 2011 census (1070 males and 846 females; Gudaszewski Citation2015, 137). If one takes membership in the MRU as a reference (the Tatar-led religious organisation) there were 2585 people according to the 2011 census, and in 2018 only 523 (Ciecieląg Citation2019, 251). The first data is based on ethnicity-related self-identification. The second comes from an estimate of the MRU (there are hardly any MRU members who are not Tatars). The estimated 3–5 thousand Tatars usually includes persons of Tatar origin (Gudaszewski Citation2019, 92–98).
7 Thus the ‘religion versus culture’ divide prominent in discourse on Muslims in the Western context (Bolognani and Mellor Citation2012) seems not to be applicable here. There is no ‘versus’ in the Tatars case. Religion and culture bond together.
8 Until the beginning of the 1990s (the end of the era of socialist rule in Poland), Muslim converts were often perceived by the Tatars as spies tasked with surveillance of their minority community.
9 A motive of a Tatar terrorist can be found in a novel by T. Turowski, Egzekucja. Odrąbać łeb wielkiego szatana, [Execution. Chop off the head of the Great Satan], Wydawnictwo Melanż, Warszawa 2018, but paradoxically it is far from replicating negative stereotypes about the Tatars. In fact the Tatar terrorist finally understands the meaning of jihad and prevents an attack on the American President, but is killed by a guy from ISIS – see: Łyszczarz Citation2020a.
10 An example of this dissonance are activities of the Tatars of Bohoniki. On the one hand, Maciej Szczęsnowicz (chairman of the Muslim religious community in Bohoniki) and Ali Bazarewicz (a local imam) helped refugees – when it was still possible – and organised Muslim funerals at their own cemetery. On the other hand, the Tatars from Bohoniki provided support to members of the Polish services guarding the border with Belarus, and then hung a special banner on the fence of the mosque in solidarity with the uniformed services (with the text: ‘Thank you for your service and protection of our border’ along with the controversial hashtag #muremzapolskimmundurem).
11 This is not to say that the Tatars consider this type of religious knowledge important. In fact religious orthodoxy used to be one of the core arguments between the Tatars and Arab migrants who came to Poland in the Socialist era. Back then, until the early 90s, migrants from Arab countries collaborated with the Tatars hoping to teach them ‘proper’ Islam. In exchange, the Tatars were willing to teach them how to live in Polish mainstream society. Both communities decided to split after 9/11 – apart from the inability to collaborate, for the Tatars it became obvious that they needed to distance themselves from any accusation of religious fundamentalism.
12 Not everywhere have the Tatars been considered white. In Russia the Tatars have been racialised into black or Asian Mongol Tatars, who had also been considered dangerous. To counter this narrative, the Tatars claimed that they are an indigenous European population (Faller Citation2011).
13 With the exception of few local school bullying incidents – more: Łyszczarz (Citation2013, 123–124).