Conversion as Refusal

This article examines conversion from Shia to Sunni Islam among the Arab minority in Khuzestan, a province in southwestern Iran. Although most Arabs in Khuzestan are Shia, since the mid-2000s a growing number have converted to Sunni Islam. This change raises a key question: Why would members of an ethnic minority leave a religion they share with the state and the national majority for a minoritized religion that is securitized and subject to state suspicion? Rather than approaching this conversion as a case of sectarianism or as part of the global rise of Salafism, I conceptualize it as a form of refusal through which converts withdraw from a perceived coercive incorporation that structures minority-majority relations. Drawing on multisited ethnographic fieldwork, the article traces the historical formation of this refusal and distinguishes between three modalities of conversion: healing, intellectual, and strategic. These modalities of conversion, despite their differences, show how conversion is tied to and transforms everyday experiences of citizenship, belonging, and political incorporation within an unequal ethnic order.