Making Sense of Conversion to Christianity in Twentieth-Century Pakistan: Two Muslim Women’s Co-Authored Autobiographies as Crafted Accounts

Madeline Clements

Making Sense of Conversion to Christianity in Twentieth-Century Pakistan: Two Muslim Women’s Co-Authored Autobiographies as Crafted Accounts

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Chapter

Abstract

Co-authored, Anglophone autobiographical accounts of conversion from Islam in Pakistan present readers interested in the perspectives they can offer of Christian lives in the postcolonial Islamic Republic with a number of interpretative problems. This is particularly the case when they are published under neo-Orientalist covers by foreign presses years after events recounted supposedly took place. Considering autobiographical accounts of conversion to Christianity in nineteenth-century India, Hephzibah Israel observes that ‘one’s life becomes... an object that acquires a life of its own and one which can be probed and investigated for “religious truth”, “genuineness” and “usefulness” both by oneself and others’ (2018: 400). Yet such testimonies, she goes on to argue, ‘cannot be treated as unmediated records of convert voices’, because of their colonial provenance: they have been ‘translated, edited, revised and extracted’ by European missionaries who would deploy them to support their own evangelising projects (400). Similarly, in a twentieth-century postcolonial Pakistani context, accounts of turning to Christianity “written” by Muslim women with the help of western co-authors or ghostwriters, demonstrate a desire on their protagonists’ part to make narrative sense of personal experiences of spiritual inspiration and affiliation, social exclusion, fellowship and home-coming. These have multiple uses: for the converts themselves, as they reflect on their experiences and bear witness; for publishers seeking to profit from the sale of their remarkable stories; for religious readers in search of guidance; and for academics seeking to understand the social and political implications of the public narration of religious translations. But they must always be read with a consciousness of their mediation by their near-invisible, Anglo-American co-authors into consumable, literary forms.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	South Asian Muslim Women
Subtitle of host publication	Genre Fiction
Editors	Haris Qadeer
Publisher	Routledge India
Chapter	tbc
Pages	tbc
Number of pages	25
Publication status	Accepted/In press - 2019

Bibliographical note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge/CRC Press in South Asian Muslim Women on [date of publication], available online: http://www.routledge.com/[BOOK ISBN URL]

Embargoed Document

Narratives of Conversion
Accepted author manuscript, 160 KB

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Cite this

Clements, M. (Accepted/In press). Making Sense of Conversion to Christianity in Twentieth-Century Pakistan: Two Muslim Women’s Co-Authored Autobiographies as Crafted Accounts. In H. Qadeer (Ed.), South Asian Muslim Women: Genre Fiction (pp. tbc). Routledge India.

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abstract = "Co-authored, Anglophone autobiographical accounts of conversion from Islam in Pakistan present readers interested in the perspectives they can offer of Christian lives in the postcolonial Islamic Republic with a number of interpretative problems. This is particularly the case when they are published under neo-Orientalist covers by foreign presses years after events recounted supposedly took place. Considering autobiographical accounts of conversion to Christianity in nineteenth-century India, Hephzibah Israel observes that {\textquoteleft}one{\textquoteright}s life becomes... an object that acquires a life of its own and one which can be probed and investigated for “religious truth”, “genuineness” and “usefulness” both by oneself and others{\textquoteright} (2018: 400). Yet such testimonies, she goes on to argue, {\textquoteleft}cannot be treated as unmediated records of convert voices{\textquoteright}, because of their colonial provenance: they have been {\textquoteleft}translated, edited, revised and extracted{\textquoteright} by European missionaries who would deploy them to support their own evangelising projects (400). Similarly, in a twentieth-century postcolonial Pakistani context, accounts of turning to Christianity “written” by Muslim women with the help of western co-authors or ghostwriters, demonstrate a desire on their protagonists{\textquoteright} part to make narrative sense of personal experiences of spiritual inspiration and affiliation, social exclusion, fellowship and home-coming. These have multiple uses: for the converts themselves, as they reflect on their experiences and bear witness; for publishers seeking to profit from the sale of their remarkable stories; for religious readers in search of guidance; and for academics seeking to understand the social and political implications of the public narration of religious translations. But they must always be read with a consciousness of their mediation by their near-invisible, Anglo-American co-authors into consumable, literary forms.",

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