Abstract
The Hungarian war of independence was suppressed by the joint army of Tsarist Russia and the House of Austria, after which the well-recognized Hungarian and Polish revolutionary leaders and their less-recognized followers sought asylum from the Ottoman Empire. The arrival of the thousands of political émigrés aroused vehement protests of Austria and Russia. The Sublime Porte invited the refugees to adopt the creed of Islam to alleviate the diplomatic pressure. While some refugees voluntarily converted to Islam, others, including most of the leaders of the movement, bitterly declined the offer. The call found more appeal from the individuals in a vulnerable social situation, as conversion studies often stress the tendency of the socially vulnerable to convert is high. In contrast, the upper echelon denounced the converts, exacerbating the vulnerability of the lower ranks. This paper mainly deals with those who were ostracized from their social peers immediately after converting. Methodologically, the paper analyzes micro narratives through the interpretive approach of historical sociology to investigate the reasons of their exclusion. Accordingly, the conversion of compatriots to Islam was more than an individual act but perceived as a deadly attack on the imagined community, especially at the time when political nations were increasingly taking shape, while it continued to carry connotations of lost identity and communal dignity in the twentieth century, when the telos of historical studies was the nation-state paradigm. Ultimately, this paper proposes to go beyond ethno-religious dualities to inform political identities for the better of more inclusive approaches.
Presenters
Ilkay KirisciogluPhD Candidate, History of Europe, Sapienza University of Rome, Agrigento, Italy
Details
Presentation Type
Theme
2025 Special Focus—Fragile Meanings: Vulnerability in the Study of Religions and Spirituality
KEYWORDS
Conversion, Apostasy, Islam, Revolutionaries, NineteenthCentury
