From a periphery to the Muslim centre. Raising children in religion in the experiences of Polish women converts to Islam

Abstract

This article explores the experiences of Polish mothers who have converted to Islam and are raising their children in the faith. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 20 Polish converts, we analyse how maternal and religious identities are co-constructed through everyday practices of child-rearing. Using the spatial metaphor of centre and periphery, we demonstrate how convert mothers navigate their position of limited inclusion within Islam and move towards an imagined religious centre. In this context, raising children in Islam serves both as a reinforcement of the mothers’ own religious identity and as a means of fulfilling culturally and religiously mandated maternal duties. We discuss the challenges identified by women aiming to transmit Islam to their children in a non-Muslim environment, the efforts they make to embody the ideal of a pious Muslim mother in everyday life, and their strategic use of the idea of ‘pure Islam’.

Introduction

Research on the complex and nuanced relationship between religion and family life is abundant (e.g. Bengtson et al., 2013; Smith, 2021; Vermeer, 2014), demonstrating that religious individuals tend to have more children (Buber-Ennser and Berghammer, 2021), that child-rearing patterns are closely tied to religious identity and participation (Pew Research Center, 2019), and that religion is a central force shaping relationships in many families (Boyatzis et al., 2006). An important cluster of existing literature examines the intergenerational transmission of religious beliefs and practices, which primarily takes place within the family unit (Vermeer, 2014). Mothers, regardless of their religious affiliation, play a central role in the religious socialisation of their children due to their generally higher religiosity (Ellison and Xu, 2014) and greater involvement in childcare compared to fathers (Craig and Mullan, 2011).

Islamic teachings and traditions include specific guidelines on family formation and child-rearing that reinforce traditional gender expectations and gendered patterns in children’s religious upbringing (Read, 2003). For Muslim women, who are regarded as the primary religious educators of their children (Oh, 2010; Scourfield et al., 2013), child-rearing is one of the areas where Islam is ‘lived out’ (Jeldtoft, 2011). However, as Irene Oh (2010) observes, although images of religious mothers are widespread, their voices remain largely unheard. With a few notable exceptions (Hermansen, 2006; Roslan et al., 2021), the mothering experiences of women who have converted to Islam remain understudied. Many existing studies on Muslim mothering make no distinction between experiences of women born into Islam and those who have converted. In particular, firsthand accounts of how convert mothers ascribe religious meaning to child-rearing, and how this affects faith transmission, are scarce.

In this article, we aim to address this gap by exploring the experiences of Polish mothers who engage in the transmission of the Islamic faith to their children from their socio-cultural position as converts to Islam. We analyse their experiences through the lens of the centre-periphery metaphor and argue that for convert mothers, passing on their faith to their children can be experienced as a movement from a perceived peripheral position towards a more central place within the Muslim community.

The interlinked processes of maternal and religious identity formation

To capture the experiences of convert mothers who strive to raise their children in Islam through their everyday mothering, we employ the ‘lived religion’ approach, which seeks to study religion as it is actually lived and experienced in people’s daily lives (McGuire, 2008). This perspective recognises that religious expression rarely fits neatly into the categories central to the official model of religiousness. Studying women converts’ views on raising children in religion from the vantage point of ‘lived religion’ sheds light on the complex relationship between mothering and religious beliefs, practices, and teachings.

For mothers who have converted to Islam, the responsibility of transmitting the faith to their children presents a unique experience, highlighting the interplay between the formation of maternal identity and religious identity. Both processes involve a profound shift in personal meaning-making (Hwang et al., 2022; Raja, 2014), intense emotional transitions (Carpinelli and Savarese, 2022; Charoenwong et al., 2017), the acquisition of new knowledge and behavioural adjustments (Chaudhry, 2016; Schmidt et al., 2023). Although there may be a considerable gap in time between the transition to motherhood and the symbolic moment of embracing Islam, the ongoing transformations in these two areas influence one another.

The interdependence between these two processes is enhanced by the adoption of Islamic beliefs about motherhood, which emphasise patience, devotion, and the importance of raising children with strong religious values (Badissy, 2016). In the Quran and Islamic tradition, motherhood is regarded as a sacred and revered role, with mothers holding a dignified position within the Muslim family and society. However, the idealisation of motherhood contributes to mothers ‘being objectified as symbols of willing and selfless devotion’ (Oh, 2010: 638) and burdened with high expectations. At the same time, the everyday practice of mothering – caring for and nurturing children (O’Reilly, 2016; Rich, 1995) – is largely absent from official cultural and religious discourses (Oh, 2010). This adds complexity to the individual translation of normative representations of motherhood to everyday mothering practices (Cheruvallil-Contractor, 2016; Pedrucci, 2020). Existing socio-cultural and religious ideologies of motherhood establish specific standards of the ‘good mother’, aligned with the broader normative understanding of gender roles. Muslim women who embody the prescribed ideals are seen not only as good mothers but also as devout believers because being a mother is inherently connected with the Islamic ideal of femininity. The pervasiveness of the maternal ideal in Islam inevitably influences, to varying degrees, the formation of maternal identity among convert Muslim mothers. They strive to align their daily maternal practices and personal experiences with an often unattainable ideal, navigating this challenge through negotiation and adjustment, which allow them to integrate their new roles into their overall sense of self.

The convert mothers in our study take on the role of their children’s first teachers of Islam while also navigating their own ongoing journeys of conversion and establishing themselves as legitimate members of the Muslim community. On a social level, their continued self-development as Muslims is expressed through seeking collective validation of their Muslim identity and finding community support for nurturing new beliefs and practices. Belonging to the Muslim community is, to some extent, externally conferred, requiring converts to actively cultivate and affirm their place within it (Sealy, 2022). In Europe, converts are often seen as occupying a ‘liminal’ space and acting as ‘bridges’ between born-Muslim communities and the non-Muslim majority (Moosavi, 2012; Suleiman, 2013). This suggests a peripheral position within the Muslim social spaces, where the centre is occupied by Muslims who inherit both religious identity and cultural practices from Muslim-majority regions with historical and linguistic ties to Islamic traditions. As a consequence, many women who embrace the religion in adulthood experience pressure to legitimise their place within the Muslim community. Their engagement with this subjectively perceived challenge is shaped by their social and cultural locations (Abdallah-Krzepkowska, et al., 2023; Zebiri, 2007).

The spatial metaphor of centre and periphery has been applied in Islamic studies across a wide range of contexts (e.g. Abbas, 2018; Contu, 2012; Israeli, 2023). In this article, ‘center’ and ‘periphery’ refer to positioning of individuals within the social space where universal principles of social stratification apply, and the more advantaged or legitimate social actors hold central positions, whereas the less advantaged or legitimate are relegated to the peripheries. In the following analysis, we use the centre–periphery metaphor as a conceptual tool to explore the dynamics and complexity of the relationship between religious and maternal identity formation and the social positions of Muslim convert mothers, influenced but not determined by their geographical locations (Le Pape et al., 2017). The outsider status linked to differences in ethnic or cultural heritage, lack of familiarity with certain practices, or doubts about the authenticity of religious identification often leads to Muslim converts being ‘troubled by the idea that other Muslims may not consider them as ‘authentic Muslims’ (Moosavi, 2012: 103). This is accompanied by intensified scrutiny over their motives for conversion (Franks, 2000) and results in experiencing tensions and difficulties in maintaining their sense of belonging, despite initial warm reception (Le Pape et al., 2017). Consequently, this contributes to converts’ subjective discomfort and a sense of exclusion (Galonnier, 2015; Le Pape et al., 2017) and increases the efforts taken by converts to legitimise their position as ‘true Muslims’.

As we will demonstrate, for Polish women converts to Islam, mothering, raising children according to Islamic principles, and transmitting faith to their children can serve as a means of gaining legitimacy, allowing them to move beyond the status of a neophyte or ‘new Muslim’ and secure a more central position for themselves and their children within the Muslim community.

Material and methods

This study is based on individual interviews with 20 Polish women converts to Islam who are raising children below school age, ¹ conducted between January 2020 and May 2022. The interview topic guide is available in the Supplemental Material. Due to restrictions related to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic at the time and the fact that many participants lived abroad, the interviews were conducted online. All interviews were conducted in Polish, audio-recorded, and transcribed. The extracts presented in this article were translated into English by the authors. To protect participants’ anonymity, names and any other personal data that could potentially reveal their identity have been removed.

We used a combination of convenience and purposive sampling to maximise the diversity of our sample. The women we interviewed were between 22 and 43 years old (mean age approximately 34). Eighty-five percent of participants were married, while the remaining 15% were divorced. Sixteen participants were married to a born Muslim, and one woman had a husband who was a Muslim convert. Nine women had been married for 5 years or less, four had been married for 6–10 years, and four had been married for more than 10 years. As this study was part of a broader project examining the relationship between religion and the transition to motherhood, we primarily focused on the experiences of mothers with young children. Each participant was raising at least one child below school age, and the majority (15 women) did not have any children older than 6 years. Ten participants were mothers of a single child, five women had two children, and another five were raising between three and five children. All participants resided in urban areas, and 80% held a university degree.

The composition of our sample reflects Suleiman’s (2013) observation that a substantial subgroup of women converts in the West are white, middle class, and well educated. Two-thirds of the study group lived abroad at the time of the interview – primarily in the UK, but also in France, Germany, and Italy. However, many had experience raising children both in Poland and abroad. This pattern aligns with broader trends among Polish converts to Islam, who often have some experience living abroad (Abdallah-Krzepkowska et al., 2023).

All participants shared the experience of being raised in Polish Catholic families with varying levels of religious commitment, and all were the first in their families of origin to convert to Islam. The participants were at various stages of the conversion process – while the mean number of years since conversion was 8.9, some women had been Muslims for less than a year.

Most participants converted to Islam before marrying their husbands, and described their conversions as more ‘rational’ than ‘relational’ (Allievi, 2006). Regarding identification with a particular branch of Islam, all our participants identified as Sunni Muslims, but were reluctant to describe themselves in terms of identification with specific schools of jurisprudence or communities. Our sample reflects the diversity of lived experiences among Polish converts, including Muslims who adhere to a traditional model of devotion based on literal readings of the Qur’an and the Sunna, as well as those with a more liberal orientation (Krotofil et al., 2022).

All respondents provided informed consent to participate, and the study was approved by the university’s Ethics Committee.

We used a qualitative, phenomenological approach to data analysis. By focusing on lived experience, phenomenological inquiry seeks to reveal the true nature and meaning of an event, perception, or occurrence as it is directly experienced (Douglass and Moustakas, 1985). Using MAXQDA software (VERBI Software, 2021), we first selected interview excerpts related to the general category of raising children in religion, including difficulties, dilemmas, and the practical implementation of religious upbringing in daily life. In the next step, we created more detailed codes corresponding to the content of the selected excerpts.

Results and discussion

All participants in our study internalised and reproduced the idea that a mother is the first teacher of Islam for her children. In their view, transmitting faith alongside traditions was a fundamental aspect of mothering. Aaliyah, for example, stated that ‘a mother is simply the foundation. (…) Usually, it is the mother who first imparts values through her daily life with the child’. Fatima expressed a similar perspective on a mother’s role: ‘Even if a man takes responsibility for raising the child, it is still the woman who carries the pregnancy and gives birth, which places a greater responsibility on her from God. She has a larger role and greater responsibility in this regard’. Although Islam traditionally considers religion to be inherited from the father, Fatima observed that, in practice, the mother plays the primary role in transmitting religious values:

Muslims often assume that the child of a Muslim man must also be a Muslim, as if the child inherits the religion from the father. But in reality, it’s the mother from whom the child truly learns the religion, because she is the one who cares for the child and explains the world to them in the simplest situations. So, to me, it’s a bit of a paradox that men often insist that their children must be Muslims because they are Muslims. In the end, not much comes of it, and the religion the child adopts and what they believe in comes from the mother.

We identified three interconnected processes in which the dialectic between the periphery and the centre of the ‘world of Islam’ emerged as an important aspect of raising children in religion by convert mothers: (1) mothering at the periphery of the Muslim world, (2) moving towards a Muslim centre through mothering, and (3) mothering and moving the religious centre. These three clusters of actions reveal close links between individual and social dimensions of convert mothers’ identity as a ‘true Muslim’ and a ‘good mother’.

Mothering at the periphery of the Muslim world

Our study participants described their doubly peripheral position: they are raising children in Islam on the geographical periphery of the ‘Muslim world’, and as converts, they are perpetually ‘new to the religion’. This is linked to how they are perceived by other Muslims and sometimes leads them to question their own competence in transmitting the faith to their children. In Poland, Muslims make up less than 0.1% of the general population (Abdallah-Krzepkowska et al., 2023), and the presence of Islam in the public sphere remains minimal. Consequently, in the Polish context, nuclear families usually bear sole responsibility for the religious socialisation of young children, with most Muslim mothers receiving little to no social support in transmitting their faith. Many participants acknowledged the difficulty of raising children in Islam in Poland, with the most frequently cited challenge being the lack of a Muslim community and familial support.

Several mothers noted that growing up as an isolated Muslim child in a predominantly non-Muslim environment presents significant challenges for their children (Scourfield et al., 2013). They believed that being surrounded by other Muslims fosters a sense of normality of the Muslim lifestyle and provides children with a peer group that does not marginalise them for being different (Hermansen, 2006). Aaliyah, for example, described Polish Muslims as a ‘micro-minority’ and pointed out that ‘there is only a small bunch of Muslims with kids more or less in the same age (…) and you already think that she [daughter] should have Muslim peers, so you also start thinking about organizing it in your head’. Maira expressed her perspective even more emphatically, stating that:

(…) there’s no one there! If others were there, everything would be closer and more accessible. If there were more [Muslim] children, maybe if it was more organized, then maybe it would be different. This is a problem; this is not a challenge, this is simply a problem that there is no such thing for children. (…) It’s not a challenge to raise them; it’s just a problem to raise them, because you just have to bring them up at home.

According to this mother, Muslim families ‘need to live by the mosque and belong to a community (…) How do you show your child a mosque? Wherever you turn, there are plenty of churches everywhere, crosses all around, but not a single mosque’. The participants’ subjective perception of living on the periphery of the Muslim world is supported by statistical data. According to the latest report from the Polish National Statistics Office (GUS, 2022), there are no more than 22 Muslim places of worship in Poland, and no information is provided on the number of Qur’anic schools or weekend courses for children.

Poland’s peripheral position within Muslim geographies is one of the reasons why some participants were considering moving abroad to countries with greater access to Muslim communities and educational infrastructure. Uzma, for example, explained her decision to relocate to the UK as driven by a desire to provide her son with the best possible conditions for religious formation and spiritual development:

I definitely want to raise my son in Islam. I also admit that this was part of the reason behind the decision to emigrate and settle permanently in a country where my son can be surrounded by a larger Muslim community, actively participate in halaqas, and attend Qur’anic schools. All of this is readily available [in the UK], which is not the case in Poland. (…) It’s very important to me, and I really want it. (…) I will do everything I can to ensure that my son grows and develops to be pious, because that is the most important thing.

For some mothers, another significant factor motivating the move was the proximity to their husband’s Muslim family. For this reason, Maira, quoted earlier, spoke about the possibility of emigrating to Egypt:

It will be easier to raise the children in Islam with family around, because they don’t have any family here. There are cousins, four boys, so my daughter is the only girl in the family (laughs). The family there is very close-knit, whereas I don’t have that kind of family here. I would like to teach my children the importance of family.

Later in the interview, Maira also recounted the difficulties experienced when she and her children lived for a while in Poland with her non-Muslim mother: ‘It’s difficult to raise them, especially when I lived in a house with my mother, who is Catholic. My mother did not approve of the children being Muslim. For her, it was like a terrible slap in the face. She thought that I was forcing them to be Muslims’.

Faiza, who came from a religiously indifferent family, observed that such a background can also hinder the religious upbringing of children by exposing them to non-religious lifestyles and behaviours, and by causing confusion or prompting them to question religious rules. According to this mother, the same applies to living in a society characterised by high levels of religious pluralism:

It will be very difficult. After all, my entire family considers themselves Christians, but they don’t practise, so she will see her family from Poland and notice that they are different. When she lives in Italy, she will be surrounded by people from different parts of the world. Italy is such a unique and beautiful country, with people of every nationality, denomination, and religion, and she will have all of this around her. Thus, it will be very challenging to keep her heart and faith focused solely on Islam.

This view echoes findings from other studies conducted in European and US contexts, which consistently reveal that Muslim mothers encounter numerous challenges in instilling Islamic values in their children due to cultural disparities between Western and Muslim societies (Chaudhry, 2016; Hussain, 2018). Kibria (2008), for example, demonstrated that as Muslim migrants in the UK and the US become minorities in societies where Islam is no longer normative or institutionally embedded – as it is in Muslim-majority countries – some begin to question the previously taken-for-granted assumptions about what it means to be Muslim. In line with these findings, many Muslims perceive non-Muslim societies as environments where there is a heightened risk of their children losing their Islamic beliefs and values (Alyedreessy, 2016).

In addition to the challenges of raising children in countries where Islam is a minority religion, mothers also grappled with the question of whether they were ‘good enough Muslims’ to serve as their children’s teachers of Islam. Many Polish converts share the experience of their status as Muslims being questioned (Abdallah-Krzepkowska et al., 2023) or find themselves confused by the diversity within Islam (Krotofil et al., 2023). The struggle for recognition and acceptance within the Muslim community was reflected in our participants’ concerns. Some mothers felt they had not fully embraced the religion and were still at an early stage of learning, which made teaching Islam to their children very difficult. Yasmina, for example, expressed concern that her slow progress in learning might hinder her ability to teach her son Islamic virtues, fearing that ‘he will grow up not knowing what he is, not practicing this religion, in a way… like abandoning religion in the worst case’. Though she converted 10 years ago, Yasmina still doubted her mastery of Islamic beliefs and practices, and her ability to pass them on. Voicing similar doubts, Aisha presented herself as a child-like learner, in contrast to the position of a teacher:

He [the husband] is my teacher, because in this matter he has two children – he has me and he has our daughter, whom he teaches. He always reminds me: ‘Remember, one day we will be questioned about everything – what we teach our daughter, the good and the bad – we will be asked about it’.

While accepting the religiously sanctioned, shared responsibility to teach her daughter to be a good Muslim, this mother emphasised her perceived shortcomings and reliance on her husband’s support.

Moving towards a Muslim centre through mothering

Concerns about their own competence in transmitting Islam to their children motivated many participants to deepen their knowledge of Islam and strengthen their connection to it. The presumed relationship between understanding and practising Islam and the ‘quality’ of religious childrearing was evident in the words of Maira, who had converted just 6 months prior to the interview. Before her conversion, Maira had been married to a Muslim man for 5 years, and they had two children who, according to their marriage contract, were to be raised in Islam.

The difficulty of raising children as a non-Muslim is that you lack the knowledge to guide them, you can’t explain much to them. I could only tell them what little I knew, like not eating pork and the need to pray. It was hard for me when they started going to the mosque, and when my son attended Arabic and Qur’an classes, especially since he’s already at an age where he should. Still, I wasn’t fully comfortable with it; it felt like I was forcing him, and I thought he was still too young.

Before embracing Islam, Maria did not practise her original Catholic faith and felt conflicted about her limited role in her children’s early exposure to Islam. Her conversion, driven by the desire to raise her children as Muslims, is a striking example of moving towards the Muslim centre through mothering. This shift, however, was not unique to those women who converted after becoming mothers. Another participant, Nadia, stated: ‘[motherhood] motivates [me] to pursue [my] own search and deeper understanding (…) In general, it’s our duty as Muslim women. A faithful Muslim has the responsibility not only to pass on knowledge to their child but also to acquire that knowledge themselves’.

Many participants viewed their primary role in their children’s religious upbringing as modelling piety and practicing Islam as a way of life. Asma, for instance, described what she felt was most important in raising her 2-year-old daughter as a Muslim:

Being Muslims, I don’t think I have anything more to add. If people are practicing, the child sees how the parents truly live Islam. It’s not just about performing the prayer five times a day or fasting, but about how Islam is also reflected in their morality, their character, their respect for others, and for the child itself. I think this can be helpful. (…) Being an example is the most important thing.

Asma perceived the transmission of religion as a process of situated learning, taking place in a community of practice (Lave and Wenger, 1991). She emphasised the importance of the authenticity of parents’ faith and the congruence between their beliefs and behaviour. For this mother, being a good example for her child was not only essential for effective religious upbringing but also a means of assessing her own level of adherence to Islam. This perspective stemmed from her sense of ‘responsibility to God for what kind of people our kids will be’. Another participant, Khadija, a mother of a 1-year-old daughter, also believed that raising young children in the Islamic faith should be deeply embedded in the parents’ everyday practices:

A child absorbs basic behaviours like a sponge. My child has been fascinated with a toothbrush since she was two months old because she sees us brushing our teeth and imitates it by scrubbing her mouth with the toothbrush. Similarly, she sees my husband praying five times a day. So, I think these behaviours give her a routine, showing that this is just what happens during the day, just like brushing teeth.

In a similar way, Aaliyah approached praying with her 4-month-old daughter in her arms:

For me, it’s important that… from a young age, she also sees the prayer at home. (…) I always tell her, I’m not sure how much she understands, but I always explain to her beforehand that now mummy is going to pray, describing what’s happening. And honestly, she has been able to sit through the prayer from the beginning. (…) It’s important to me that prayer is present around her from a young age, that it becomes something natural. That’s also why I take her, even as a little child, to the mosque, so she can get used to the place as well.

Some participants also noted that religion permeates daily life not only through prayer but also through acts of kindness. Zara, for example, emphasised that being a good role model for children is not limited to piety, but also involves acts of charity:

Religion and my faith aren’t just about showing that I pray, wear a hijab, and so on, but about being a good person. I often help different people, and I’m not always able to be with my children because I need to do something – like go to the hospital with someone to interpret, help someone with an errand, or cook a meal and bring it to someone. (…) Sometimes my children ask why I spend so much time and energy on others, and I explain to them that I’m a Muslim, and if I can help, I have a duty to do so.

The sense of responsibility was also evident in another part of Zara’s interview, where she reflected that becoming a mother had made her more aware and cautious:

I’m more conscious that I need to practise my faith in a way that my children can see what I’m doing, to set a good example. I can’t be a hypocrite and say, ‘I’m not praying because I don’t feel like it’, and then later tell my children, ‘You have to pray’. (…) So it helps me be more consistent and open in practicing my faith and showing my children what religion is really about.

The views expressed in our participants’ accounts align with the concept of the family as a ‘personal religious community’ (Cornwall, 1987), in which children, from a very young age, engage in situated learning through parental modelling, the induction of beliefs, discussions about faith, and reinforcement through rewards and punishments (Boyatzis et al., 2006). The mothers emphasised the importance of embodied practice in transmitting religion, consistent with the idea that the body is not only a marker of piety but also a means of achieving it (Mahmood, 2005; Rao, 2015). They saw becoming a ‘good Muslims’ as essential to fulfilling their maternal duty of teaching their children Islam. By making Islam a way of life, they sought to embody the ideal of an engaged and pious Muslim woman. In other words, they were searching for the imagined centre of religious and Muslim life.

Mothering and moving the religious centre

While many participants experienced a sense of not being ‘good enough’ Muslims and strove towards an ideal religious life, some mothers also rejected the inferior position ascribed to converts. Rather than seeing their knowledge and practices as falling short of the desired level of proficiency and embodiment of Islam, they saw themselves as better equipped to transmit the Islamic faith to their children than some born Muslims. For instance, when asked whether it was harder for her, as a convert mother, to raise children in the faith, Fatima responded:

No, I think it’s easier. I think that converts in general have a slightly different approach to religion and their own religion. And I think they also have a worldview that has been thought through several times in many different ways, so I think it’s a little easier. That’s how I think about myself, but of course converts are diverse.

Aaliyah, quoted earlier, emphasised the maternal autonomy she gained in teaching her children Islam from her peripheral position:

It seems to me that every place in the world, even where there is a Muslim majority, has its challenges related to how to raise children to be good people and Muslims. The culture of some circles where Islam dominates is not always hundred per cent consistent with what Islam teaches (…) and there is a need to separate cultural and religious influences. In this respect, I feel that it is easier for me to have a certain vision, because it is much easier to separate my culture from my faith.

In a similar vein, Khadija said:

I think that this is an added value for her [the daughter], that she will live away from some kind of Muslim culture, not in general, but in the sense of a local culture in a Muslim country. This is an added value, because she will be able to interpret Islam, which is always based mainly on your own interpretation. She will be able to interpret it in a way that she feels good about, and that she will have access to these various sources, because here [in Poland] there is a large mix of Muslims from different countries and different cultures.

Aaliyah and Khadija viewed living away from a Muslim countries’ cultural influences as an advantage, as it allowed them to adhere to Islam in its presumed ‘culture-free’ form. This distance gave them greater flexibility and autonomy in how they transmitted religion to their children. Our participants evoked the idea of ‘pure Islam’ to argue that their position as converts placed them closer to the imagined religious centre, as their practices were ‘untainted’ by cultural or ethnic customs. In this context, ‘pure Islam’ signified a more ‘conscious’ embrace of faith and a focus on returning to the ‘true’ tenets of the religion, free from cultural influences (Kibria, 2008). ‘Pure Islam’ also enabled convert mothers to reconcile their commitment to faith with concerns for their children’s well-being, particularly in relation to practices associated with Muslim identity that they did not fully accept. These mothers saw themselves as intentionally ‘appropriately subversive’ (Hartman Halbertal, 2003) in how they transmitted Islam to their children.

The idea of ‘pure Islam’, understood as a decultured and de-ethnicised version of the religion, attracts many converts coming to Islam form non-Muslim ethnic backgrounds. As ‘pure’ religion, Islam embraced by converts is constructed as: universalistic – transcending ethnic particularisms; intentional – based on personal reflection rather than passive inheritance; and balanced – in opposition to extremism and fundamentalism (Ewing, 2015). This framing of Islam also highlights individual agency in learning and adapting religious beliefs and practices (Jouili, 2019) and reflects the cultural tastes (Bourdieu, 1986) of converts raised in non-Muslim-majority countries. However, narratives about ‘pure Islam’ should also be understood within the broader struggle for the converts’ positioning in the imagined global Muslim community. Özyürek (2015) argues that the ‘purification’ of Islam, through the discursive separation of religion from culture, reproduces orientalist hierarchies. While the call for a tradition and culture-free Islam appears universalistic and inspired by Islamic revivalist movements, its implications depend on who articulates it. When expressed by mothers raising children in Europe, the concept of ‘pure Islam’ reflects the value placed on ‘Western rationality’ positioned in contrast to devalued Muslim-majority cultures and serves as a means of redefining the convert’s peripheral position in the world of Islam.

A further illustration of convert mothers’ attempts to reconcile the tension between distancing themselves from cultural accretions in Islam, while also seeking to place themselves and their children closer to the centre of the ‘Muslim world’, is the issue of teaching the Arabic language. This was particularly pronounced among women married to Arab men. Aaliyah, for example, stated:

We also want Arabic to be her [the daughter’s] second language, so we’re trying to make sure that when he [the father] spends some time with her, he speaks to her a lot, reads books to her, and even when he prays, he tries to pray out loud so that Arabic is around her and becomes her second natural language.

The focus on language transmission reveals that the separation of religion and culture is both contextual and strategic. It underscores the participants’ belief that religious instruction is most effective when complemented by immersion in a language intrinsic to Muslim tradition – a process that fosters a deeper connection to a broader culture. This finding complicates the notion of ‘pure Islam’, as these mothers simultaneously distance themselves from cultural elements perceived as ‘contaminating’ religion, while emphasising the importance of Arabic language acquisition. This apparent contradiction is resolved through the framing of Arabic as the language of God. As Uzma put it, ‘in the Arabic language, God is literally woven into every other word’. By refocusing on religion in this way, convert mothers attempt to connect directly to Islamic tradition while minimising the influence of ‘undesirable’ cultural practices.

Some mothers presented their ability to distinguish religious practice from cultural customs – central to the notion of ‘pure Islam’ – as beneficial in negotiating their children’s level of participation in the local non-Muslim culture. While some participants echoed concerns about the potential threat and negative effects of exposing their children to secularised lifestyles or cultural practices rooted in Christianity, others described different ways of navigating the presence of non-Muslim traditions in their children’s lives. When asked about participating in Christmas celebrations, Fatima responded:

I was trying to form my opinion on this topic for a very long time because it was very difficult for me to find my way around it, to be honest. Mainly because my ex-husband was against it. It triggered me so much, but why exactly? But on the other hand, I also felt some discomfort about it.

Despite facing these dilemmas, Fatima allowed for the selective participation of her children in Christmas customs. She explained:

I don’t convince them that he exists; I don’t create this whole atmosphere that there is Santa Claus, that he will come at night and give them presents. (…) They receive something from me, so it’s not like they will go to preschool and the girls will be telling each other what they got, and my children got nothing.

Fatima also acknowledged her continued participation in Christmas celebrations with her family after her conversion: ‘I never imagined that I just wouldn’t be there for Christmas Eve; I never wanted to demonise it simply because it’s what they believe in’. Fatima’s approach is not an isolated example and illustrates how converts navigate the balance between the expectations of their social environment and their religious beliefs. According to Rogowska (2018), nearly three-quarters of Polish converts to Islam participate in Catholic holiday festivities with their families, but on their own terms, demonstrating a high level of adaptability in negotiating boundaries and personal engagement.

The longing for affirmation of Islamic beliefs and practices by those surrounding their children, so evident in our participants’ narratives, is intertwined with their assertion of maternal agency and autonomy in raising children on the periphery of the Muslim community. By framing their position as requiring exceptional commitment and careful reflection in transmitting the faith, Muslim converts reinforce their identity as ‘good mothers’ – fulfilling their religiously sanctioned role as teachers of religion while simultaneously protecting their image as ‘good Muslims’.

Final conclusions

The experiences of Polish mothers who have converted to Islam and undertake the task of transmitting the faith to their children can be conceptualised as a movement between an imagined centre and periphery. Their peripheral location in relation to Muslim community is reinforced geographically by their residence in Poland – a predominantly Catholic country with a very small Muslim population and limited access to Muslim infrastructure – or in Western European societies characterised by strong trends towards religious pluralism and secularism. In addition, as converts, these women often face doubts about their ‘Muslimness’ whereby their motives and a level of commitment to Islam are questioned by born-Muslims. While these conditions present obstacles to raising children in Islam, they can also be framed as strengthening maternal agency and autonomy.

In the context of individual conversion journeys, the tension between centre and periphery reflects each mother’s self-evaluation of her commitment to a religiously led life and her subjective perception of being a ‘good Muslim’. The movement towards the centre is realised through continuous efforts to deepen their knowledge and understanding of Islamic beliefs, refine their religious practices, and integrate them into all aspects of daily life.

Our analysis highlights the complex relationship between religious and maternal identities. For convert mothers, being the first teachers of Islam to their children serves as a reinforcement of their own identity as ‘good Muslims’ and a confirmation that they have sufficiently mastered their new religious practices and beliefs. By framing their role in terms of setting a good example for their children, converts seek to integrate Islamic principles into various areas of everyday life. Through engaging in the transmission of religion to the next generation, these women also strengthen their identity as mothers, fulfilling both culturally and religiously mandated maternal duties.

Importantly, in carrying out the task of raising children in religion, some mothers exhibit a degree of subversiveness through their strategic use of the idea of ‘pure Islam’. This allows them to redefine the Muslim centre and relegate beliefs and practices perceived as mere ‘ethnic customs’ to the periphery of Muslim identity. The presumed ability to separate ‘religion’ from ‘culture’ also enables convert mothers to re-evaluate their own status – as Muslims who lack primary socialisation in Muslim culture and as mothers making careful, intentional choices regarding their children’s upbringing. These findings demonstrate the complexity of the ‘purification of Islam’, which, in the experiences of white Muslim convert mothers, functions not only as a strategy of racial and cultural distinction but also as a means of inclusion within the new religious community.

Supplemental Material

sj-pdf-1-scp-10.1177_00377686251393593 – Supplemental material for From a periphery to the Muslim centre. Raising children in religion in the experiences of Polish women converts to Islam

Supplemental material, sj-pdf-1-scp-10.1177_00377686251393593 for From a periphery to the Muslim centre. Raising children in religion in the experiences of Polish women converts to Islam by Joanna KROTOFIL, Dorota WÓJCIAK and Dagmara MĘTEL in Social Compass