What matters is the intenion: the reconfiguration of the “religious self” through the conversion of women To islam in the mesquita da luz

Abstract

This paper analyses the process of reconfiguration of the religious self of female converts to Islam in the Sunni Muslim community of Rio de Janeiro, represented by the Luz Mosque (“Mesquita da Luz”) through the embodiment of new ideals and moral dispositions informed by Islam. It also highlights the components of this process, such as “life crisis”, the affection for a Muslim man, the performance of the disciplinary practices prescribed by the Islamic tradition, as it is defined by the local community, and their effect over the embodied religious self of those agents