Religious Conversions in the Mediterranean World.

• Author: Sakellariou, Alexandros
• Position: Book review

Religious Conversions in the Mediterranean World

Edited by Nadia Marzouki and Olivier Roy

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 208 pages, 60 [pounds sterling], ISBN 9781137004888.

RELIGIOUS CONVERSIONS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN WORLD is an edited volume focusing on a neglected issue within the social sciences, at least until very recently. Conversion was usually studied under the prism of history, especially in times of religious turbulence and conflicts (e.g. the expansion of Islam, the Reformation, the Ottoman Occupation, etc.) and mainly under its collective form. However, from the collective conversions of previous centuries we have been witnessing new types of conversions, especially from the '60s onwards; an observation that is underlined in the conclusions of the book (p. 176).

This well-structured volume is edited by Nadia Marzouki, a Research Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the European University Institute (EUI) and Olivier Roy a well-known scholar specializing in Islam and Head of the Mediterranean Program at the same institute. The book originates in a conference about conversions, organized in Florence (EUI) in 2011 (p. 2). It contains an analytical and well-informed introduction by N.Marzouki and a critical conclusion by O.Roy on the issue of conversions. Between them, nine interesting chapters written from scholars from the fields of anthropology, history, political science, and sociology are discussing the issue of conversion in the Mediterranean world (Lebanon, Algeria, Israel, France, and Egypt).

As it is stated in the introduction, social sciences have primarily focused on collective conversions, while individual ones represent a minor place in the social scientific study of conversion (p. 2). Nevertheless, as it is stated in the volume's conclusions even isolated conversions may carry strong political consequences, even in countries where freedom of religion is supposedly a given (p. 177), and this is a critical reason to study conversions today. As a consequence, this volume tries to fill this lack of knowledge and seeks to go beyond the common assimilation of the practice of conversion within a controversial or revolutionary act of protest or recession and in my view achieves this goal. The book also insists on the numerous resemblances between the everyday practice of converts and members of religious minorities in places as different as France, Algeria, and Israel (pp. 1-2).

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