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Muslim clothing and Swedish whiteness

Becoming Muslim and the mobility of white converts to Islam
Jakku, Nina

Published in:
Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies

DOI:
10.5117/TVGN2018.3.005.JAKK

2018

Document Version:
Peer reviewed version (aka post-print)

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Citation for published version (APA):
Jakku, N. (2018). Muslim clothing and Swedish whiteness: Becoming Muslim and the mobility of white converts
to Islam. Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies, 21(3), 265-280. https://doi.org/10.5117/TVGN2018.3.005.JAKK

Total number of authors:
1

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https://doi.org/10.5117/TVGN2018.3.005.JAKK
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https://doi.org/10.5117/TVGN2018.3.005.JAKK


 

 

Muslim clothing and Swedish whiteness 

Becoming Muslim and the mobility of white converts to Islam 

 

Nina Jakku 
 

Abstract 

This article discusses social positions of Swedish female converts to Islam who have 

previously passed as white majority Swedes, but whose experiences have changed, 

sometimes radically, since donning the hijab. It addresses their accounts of being treated 

and evaluated differently by teachers, co-workers, family and friends, and having their 

choices questioned by strangers. It also examines the double standards that white 

converts to Islam must negotiate when dealing with daily life in Sweden, and how 

becoming a Muslim leads to frequent exclusion from constructed whiteness and 

Swedishness and the privileges attached to those positions.  

 

Keywords: Whiteness, Muslim, Islam, Religion, Mobility, Secularity 

 

Introduction 

The exclusivity of Swedish whiteness has a long history. Through its intersections with 

other axes of difference such as religion, gender and class, whiteness functions as a 

system of privilege based on racist exclusionary practices, both in contemporary and 

historical terms. This study examines how inclusion in, and exclusion from, the category 

of Swedish whiteness is performed from the point of view of female converts to Islam, 

meanwhile considering the consequences of exclusion and the ways in which whiteness 

intersects with other markers of racialisation. This study thus adds to the growing 

number of studies that address the intersectional positioning of white converted women 

in Europe (Van Nieuwkerk, 2006; Jensen, 2008; Özyürek, 2010; Vroon, 2014), while also 

providing an alternative perspective to research that takes whiteness as a point of 

departure (Franks, 2000; Gallonier, 2015; Moosavi, 2015) in the context of UK, France 

and the USA. Racialisation operates differently in different European countries and in 

the USA (Goldberg, 2006), something which needs to be explored further.    



 

 

Hanna Bäckström, who has been conducting interviews with converts to Islam for 

her master thesis,1 recalls one of the interviewees telling her that she had been asked 

the question: ‘Were you Swedish before you became Muslim?’ (Bäckström, 2013). This 

reflects an idea of the improbability, or even impossibility, of a person being both 

Muslim and Swedish.2 On the other hand, Lena Sawyer (2000) notes in her dissertation3 

Black and Swedish how racialised constructions of Swedishness are preventing Afro-

Swedish youth from being included in the category ‘Swedish.’ Yet, as we can see from the 

quote above, blue eyes and blond hair do not in every case qualify an individual for the 

discursive qualities of white Swedishness. Discussing the many dimensions of the 

construction of Swedishness, Johan Cato (2012, p. 48) claims that it is often a matter of 

comparison in which religion tends to play a crucial part, alongside culture, values and 

appearance. Some of the interviewees claim that, since starting to wear the hijab, they 

often get the question, ‘Where do you come from?’. This is sometimes followed by, ‘But 

where do you come from originally?’, together with suggestions of Lebanese or Bosnian 

origins. These questions imply a perceived distancing of the questioned person from 

Swedishness and whiteness (Arbouz, 2012, p. 40). 

In this article I will address the questions: How does conversion and donning the 

hijab of previous white-passing people affect their daily-life mobility? In which ways 

does their whiteness, which is understood differently than in their past, lead to almost 

daily negotiations? Analysing whiteness, Muslim beliefs, and social positions from the 

point of view of converts will illustrate the women’s shift in positions, from white 

passing to re-racialised as non-white or not-quite-white (Moosavi, 2015, p. 52). Hijab-

wearing women in Sweden are particularly vulnerable to discrimination (Gardell & 

Muftee, 2017, p. 633) and are often targets of hate crimes (Doubakil, 2018, p. 74), which 

urges research on the topics addressed here. 

This article is based on qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with twelve 

female converts to Islam who were aged between 23 and 55 years at the time of 

research (September 2015 to June 2017).4 Four had converted to Islam between 2005 

                                                      
1 Lund University, Department of Gender Studies. 
2 Similar reflections have been made regarding the categories White and Muslim in 
Britain (Moosavi, 2015, p. 45) and Muslim and European (Jensen, 2008, p. 389). 
3 Mittuniversitetet, Department of Social Work. 
4 All interviewees are anonymised. I recruited the interviewees through snowballing 
sampling and social media.  



 

 

and 2007, four between 2009 and 2011 and four in 2012. I interviewed two women 

twice and the rest once; each interview lasted at least one hour, several up to two hours. 

All interviews were followed by discussions off-record, and in some cases by additional 

clarifying email correspondence.5 This method was chosen for two reasons: on the one 

hand, it allowed me to remedy the recognised absence of Swedish female Muslim voices 

from Swedish public discussions and media (Axner, 2015); and on the other, to gain 

access to the interviewees’ emic point of view on the racialisation of Islam through their 

daily-life experiences – a specific knowledge that is only accessible through qualitative 

methods (Fägerborg, 2011, p. 97). Naturally, the interviews cannot alone account for the 

complexity of the interviewees’ experiences, nor the topic at hand. However, they do 

offer fruitful starting grounds to further explore their personal experiences and the 

meaning making-practices that frame and shape their and other people’s understanding 

of themselves in relation to Swedish society. Furthermore, by building on previous 

research on the relation between religion and whiteness, and analysing Swedish media 

discourse on Islam, I have been able to access dimensions that are often taken for 

granted and therefore not spoken about in the interviews (Pripp & Öhlander, 2011, p. 

114). In this article, I quote five of my respondents, whom I introduce in greater depth; 

however, all interviews have had an impact on my understanding of the topic. 

The article starts with an overview of whiteness in the Swedish context, from both 

a historical and contemporary point of view. Thereafter it will focus on the role of 

religion within racism mainly from a historical perspective. Then it will describe and 

discuss how the positions of the interviewees have changed after the conversion and the 

donning of the hijab. The final part consists of a concluding discussion. 

    

Whiteness in the Swedish context 

‘A person is deemed visibly white because of a quite complicated interaction of 
elements, of which flesh tones within the pink to beige range are only one: the 
shape of nose, eyes and lips, the colour and set of hair, even body shape may all 
be mobilised to determine someone’s “colour”.’ (Dyer, 1997, p. 42) 

 

As Dyer’s definition implies, the concept of whiteness is both complex and diffuse. Ruth 

Frankenberg (1993, p. 236) has also noted that whiteness changes depending on both 

                                                      
5 The interviews were all conducted in Swedish. Thus, all translations are mine. 



 

 

time and space: a product of local, regional, national and international relations, both 

contemporary and historical. Thus, whiteness can neither be regarded as static nor 

assumed to be the same in different countries like the USA, Australia, France and 

Sweden – although similarities can naturally be found (Hübinette et al., 2012, p. 29). 

Some groups in Sweden, for instance Finns, who previously experienced being 

racialised as non-white, have increasingly been included in the constructed Swedishness 

and its accompanying whiteness on the basis of their phenotypical pale bodies. 6 Tobias 

Hübinette, Helena Hörnfeldt, Fataneh Farahani and René León Rosales (2012) claim that 

those immigrants and national minorities who are perceived as whites may, over tim e, 

become regarded as Swedes, while those perceived as non-whites risk remaining non-

Swedes. This suggests that Swedishness is a construction closely interconnected with 

whiteness.  

Whiteness consists of a complex set of practices and privileges in a similar way as 

heteronormativity and masculinity (Hübinette et al., 2012, p. 28). These categories tend 

to be normative and understood as neutral positions, futher similarities consist in the 

priviledges often being unaknowledged by those who possess them (Ahmed, 2011). 

Gender, class and sexuality tends also to play a part in the construction of privileged 

whiteness which calls for intersectional analyses in the understanding of the complexity 

of whiteness. Indeed, to be counted as, or able to pass as, white, is not only a matter of 

hair-eye-skin colour, since the boundaries for whiteness are continuously changing 

(Hübinette et al., 2012, p. 32). 

The exclusivity of Swedish whiteness dates back to the nineteenth and first half of 

the twentieth century when ‘scientific’ race-biology notions were born of the pens of 

scholars. In 1921 the Swedish parliament made the decision to establish the first race-

biology department in the world at Uppsala University. During the decades that 

followed, national minorities and indigenous peoples – Tornedalers, Sami, Jews, Sweden 

Finns and Romani people – became the target of a series of racist policies that prevented 

them from speaking their own language and exposed them to pseudo-scientific 

endeavours such as skull measuring (Svanberg & Tydén, 1999). While the situation 

today is not comparable – certainly not in terms of scientific backing – Hübinette and co-

authors argue that it is in light of those historical experiences that we may understand 

                                                      
6 Similar accounts from the USA can be found concerning Jews, Irish and Italians 
(Sullivan, 2006, p. 3). 



 

 

the contemporary role of language in difference making. They add that there is a clear 

racialising dimension to the idea of who can be expected to speak fluent, ‘correct’ 

Swedish: bodies coded as white are often associated with fluency in the language, while 

non-white bodies are not (Hübinette et al., 2012, p. 23). Several of the interviewees in 

this study have reported occasions when people either speak English to them or speak 

very slowly, using simple Swedish (c.f. Franks, 2000; Vroon, 2014). Hübinette and co-

authors argue that similar everyday occurrences indicate that the ability to speak 

Swedish and, hence, Swedishness are connected to whiteness. Indeed, as my 

interviewees’ narratives show, Swedish female converts are often subjected to 

exclusionary linguistic practices that frame them as non-fluent Swedish speakers, 

something none of them had experienced before starting to wear hijab.  

 While we cannot know the motivations of people asking questions like ‘But 

where do you come from originally?’, the impact of racialising structures is there 

regardless of intent (Habel, 2012, p. 46). When analysing these kinds of interactions, 

what matters is that they repeat themselves. ‘It may not be that one specific person’s 

questions are problematic; rather it is the fact that it has happened 20 times before’ 

(interview with Hanna; c.f. Molina, 2010, p. 79; Arbouz, 2012, p. 40). The uncoordinated 

repetition of the same questions by unrelated people proves the pattern.  

 

Religion and racism 

Even though the race-biology era has left deep scars, it represents only a short period in 

the history of racism. The intersection of race and religion can be tracked to at least the 

fifteenth century and the practice on the Iberian Peninsula of limpieza de sangre, which 

meant that a person had to prove a long genealogy of Christianity in order to claim 

purity of blood (Wasniowski, 2017, p. 29). And indeed, the racism targeting Swedish 

national minorities did not start with the establishment of ideas of biological race or 

resulting institutions. The respective histories of all the national minorities had long 

been paved with injustices and abuse, which were often connected to religion and, not 

infrequently, implemented by the Swedish church (Fur, 2016, p. 241). The hegemony of 

Christianity in Sweden goes back to the first half of the sixteenth century. Evangelical 

Lutheranism was declared the state religion in 1593 and beliefs deviating from it were 

forbidden (Gardell, 2010, p. 25). Mattias Gardell argues that the problem with Jews, 



 

 

Catholics and other deviant believers, from the hegemonic point of view, was not that 

they did not believe in God, but that they did not practice the right doctrine.  

In Sweden, Islam used to be considered heretical, and in some Christian circles it 

still is. However, today it is mainly read against the background of Swedish society’s 

normative secularity (Gardell, 2010, p. 84; c.f. Fernando, 2014). According to David 

Thurfjell (2015), the normativity of secularity is connected to the idea or narrative about 

Sweden and its progress and modernity, which has a self-aggrandizing evolutionary 

function. Importantly, one of the narrative’s components is the successive liberation 

from religion, now regarded as something that existed in our history but only lingers on 

among the ‘others’ in contemporary Sweden (Thurfjell, 2015, p. 111; c.f. Asad, 2009; 

Mahmood, 2009). In Europe in general Muslims have been made the outsider, a 

treachery first against Christianity and later against secularist leanings. David Theo 

Goldberg argues that Muslims have been perceived as contrasting to Europeans’ 

urbanity, rationality and spirituality within nineteenth century racial historicism.7 As 

this study testifies, however, dispositions dominate still today (Goldberg, 2006, pp. 344-

5).  

There is no population registration in Sweden since 1930 over religious 

belonging, which makes it impossible to give an exact number of Muslims in Sweden. 

Approximately 500,000 (5% of the population) is a qualified number often referred to in 

research within the field of religious studies. The number includes though everyone 

with assumed Muslim cultural background and does not state the number of practising 

Muslims. Some of the most common representation of Muslims in Sweden includes 

biases where they are presumed being connected with honour violence, oppression of 

women and as threats to security, often also represented as a contrast to ‘Western 

values’. There is also a risk of being exposed to hate crimes, both as individuals and for 

Muslim institutions, such as mosques (Cato, 2012; Gardell, 2010; Gardell & Muftee, 

2017).  

 

                                                      
7 Racial historicism refers to the prevailing presumptions on the historical immaturity of 
Europe’s others, understood as an internally coherent group. ‘The group is taken to have 
coalesced from the fragments of heterogenous dispersals in some distant past into a 
supposedly geographically bound coherence, with attendant physical traits and cultural 
habits’ (Goldberg, 2010, p. 95).   



 

 

 

A change in position 

Whiteness can be described as an unremarked and invisible position (Essed & 

Trienekens, 2008; Frankenberg, 1993), although, as Sara Ahmed notes, this invisibility 

only relates to those who possess whiteness (Ahmed, 2011, p. 136; Arbouz, 2012, p. 41). 

Ahmed goes on to describe it as a bad habit, ‘as a series of actions that are repeated, 

forgotten, and that allow some bodies to take up space by restricting the mobility of 

others’ (Ahmed, 2006, p. 129). Examples of how visibility and mobility can change for 

someone who went from passing or being regarded as white to wearing the hijab appears 

in my interviews.   

Jennifer is 24 years old and lives in a smaller Swedish town. At the age of 17 she 

converted to Islam and started wearing the hijab. It swiftly became clear to her that, 

following her conversion, her position in society had changed. Still 17 years old, she 

began an internship in a retirement home where the staff treated her in a condescending 

way, addressing her as ‘girl’ rather than using her given name: ‘Girl, come here; girl, do 

this’ (Jennifer’s interview). One day she was sharing a lunch break with several other 

staff members, who asked her if she was willing to talk about Islam with them. Jennifer 

agreed enthusiastically, but she recalls that their questions soon began to challenge her 

choices:  

Jennifer: ‘It started with, “What is Islam and why did you want to become a 
Muslim?” That's OK; they are questions I can answer. But then it turned to 
probing why I am following a man who lived some 1400 years ago: “How can 
you do that?” they asked. Then they said, “We don’t understand why you are 
doing this.” And they went even further. In the end, the way they were talking 
to me upset me so much that I told them I had to leave. […] They were over 40 
years old all of them and there were maybe three or four of them and they were 
kind of interrogating me.’ 

 

A similar event happened in class a short time after. Jennifer studies at Komvux (adult 

education offered by the municipality) and at the time she still considered herself newly 

converted. She was the only student wearing a hijab in the classroom, a question about 

the hijab was raised and was directed to Jennifer.  

Jennifer: ‘I didn't actually want to answer that question, because I was new 
[newly converted] and I knew there would be protests and I was not prepared. 
And I got plenty of counterarguments and many of them [other students] had lots 



 

 

of opinions. Some were trying to defend me, but out of 30, maybe 3-4 were 
defending me and 26-27 were against me. And the teacher was neutral and didn't 
say anything. … I just wanted to leave, and I did. I was upset, of course. I dropped 
out of the course and I didn't finish it until later, when there was a new teacher.’ 

  

Finally, Jennifer discussed her grades. She recounts how her Swedish language teacher 

started to take issues with her after she started wearing the hijab.  

Jennifer: ‘She graded me with an E. This was Swedish 1; yet when I finished 
Swedish 2, I got an A. It was very strange. […] Before she graded me, we had a 
final exam and she didn't believe that I had written my own paper. I had been 
working on it for two weeks to get it really good, because I was worried that she 
would fail me. She started questioning the vocabulary [in Jennifer’s test paper], 
asking me, “Do you understand this word? What is the meaning of that word?”’ 

 

Jennifer describes experiences that demonstrate that any everyday situation can turn 

into a defence of her choice to be a Muslim and wear a hijab. Her mobility in daily life 

has changed. She claims that before she started wearing the hijab, she had never 

undergone such questioning of herself as a person, or her choices, especially not by 

strangers. Now she has a feeling that she should always be prepared to defend her 

choice to be a Muslim. She also states that she has to perform much better now than 

before, in order to be seen as equally competent. This is a common experience among 

interviewees (Jakku & Waara, 2017). More than that, being presumed incompetent is 

also a common experience within academia among persons who differ from normative 

white, heterosexual, middle and upper-class statuses, also outside of Sweden (Muhs et 

al., 2012).   

Living in Stockholm, 32-year-old Lena has had similar experiences. She converted 

to Islam aged 20 and for a short while she wore the hijab but does not do so any longer. 

She recalls a situation similar to Jennifer's, when she was studying for her master’s 

degree wearing the hijab. 

Lena: ‘I remember, I came into the classroom wearing my hijab and he [the 
professor] didn't even try to hide his reaction. He was shocked and gave me a 
very strange look. Once he was talking about Islam in the classroom and about 
oppression and he looked at me and it felt very odd. […] Suddenly I felt like I 
couldn't talk as much as before in the class. I was that girl, you know, the weird 
girl. I am used to being treated as a talented student, an intelligent girl, I have 
been told so many times. […] It was such a difference.’  

 



 

 

Ahmed (2006) theorizes about normativity as a trajectory maintained by whiteness and 

heterosexuality, among other things. When a person diverges from normative 

expectations, it can cause disharmony and, if prolonged, might lead to disciplinary 

measures. When a trajectory is disrupted, answers are demanded: why has it happened? 

Jennifer’s experience in the retirement home is an example of this demand for answers 

in the face of what is perceived as an aberration, as well as a (conscious or unconscious) 

attempt on the part of the questioners to introduce disciplinary measures. 

In a study conducted in Britain, Myfanwy Franks researched the experiences of white 

converts to Islam and raised the question of whether the converting women are 

considered by others to be transgressing the borders of whiteness. In response to her 

findings, Franks employs the concept of hybridity when navigating the understanding of 

whether the women were facing racism or religious discrimination. She notes that: 

Making an all-time definition of racism is problematic because ’otherizing’ and 
subsequent discrimination and injustice which take the form of ’racism’ may 
overlap with discrimination based upon ethnicity, faith community, nationality 
and so on and is liable to shift. (Franks, 2000, p. 922) 

 

She also notes a racism by proxy, whereby white hijab-wearing women in Britain are 

called ‘white Pakis,’ reflecting racism against Pakistanis with whom the women are 

accorded an imagined connection because of the hijab. Similarly, some of the 

interviewees in this study have pointed out that people tend to assume they are married 

to an Arab and are wearing the hijab for this reason. Several of them have also 

experienced being regarded as traitors to the nation or ‘the Swedish race’, a popular 

trope among populist nationalists and racists (c.f. Franks, 2000; Van Nieuwkerk, 2006). 

For example, Bahaar is 55 years old and lives in a small town in Sweden. She converted 

to Islam in 2009 and started wearing the hijab a couple of months after her conversion. 

She tells that she was standing in line at a grocery store. A man behind her suddenly 

commented loudly: ‘These black people and these white people who try to dress up as 

blacks by wearing a veil are disgusting (Bahaar’s interview). In both this and Franks’ 

example, our informants are identified as white, yet both draw attention to how remarks 

on the hijab and Muslim clothing as markers of otherness contribute to distancing their 

wearers from whiteness. In some instances, there even seems to be a desire to force a 

connection to these ‘others’. The remark by Bahaar’s persecutor clearly introduces the 



 

 

notion that some clothes actually can or do instigate a crossing of the borders of 

whiteness by their wearers – at least in the eyes of some.8  

Several hijab-wearing interviewees mentioned the discomfort of being in 

public spaces after terror attacks, and the curtailment of their mobility this involves. 

Even before the attack on Drottninggatan in Stockholm on April 7 2017, Bahaar had told 

me that she prefers to stay at home when something negative has been perpetrated by 

Muslims, such as the terrorist attacks in Istanbul and Paris. She feels that she is then 

more than usually exposed to people's suspicions and biases. Bahaar even considers it to 

have become inevitable that when terror attacks take place she will be the victim of 

negative reactions, such as someone shouting, ‘Terrorist, go home’. This abuse also 

carries the idea that Bahaar does not belong in Sweden, that her home is somewhere 

else. Juliette Galonnier, in a study conducted in France and the USA, states that the 

‘Muslim terrorist’ is a prominent figure in the racialisation of converts (Galonnier, 2015, 

p. 576). 

  

Coming out as a Muslim 

For most of the women that were interviewed, coming out as a Muslim has been 

complicated in one way or another. Some of them have observed that even though they 

wear visibly Muslim clothing, ‘coming out’ moments still occur, for instance if they have 

made an appointment with someone over phone. One of the most remarkable of these 

was recounted by Hanna, who is 32, lives in Stockholm and converted to Islam in 

October 2012. She only wears the hijab on very special occasions, never on a daily basis 

or at work. Although she wears a Fatima's hand necklace, she remarks that it has 

become a fashion detail and, together with her appearance, she does not believe that 

people connect it with her being Muslim. In the beginning, right after her conversion, she 

had thought about the hijab a lot and she had wanted to wear it, but due to the stigma 

and opinions about the hijab as something negative among her family members, she felt 

that the disapproval would be too strong to deal with. She works with human rights and 

democracy issues and, initially, she did not tell many people about being Muslim, apart 

from her Muslim friends. At some point, however, she felt obligated to tell her boss, who 

                                                      
8 Moosavi (2015, p. 43) also accounts for instances where a conversion to Islam has been 
perceived in some sense as a ‘racial’ conversion. 



 

 

dealt with it in a positive way but then told Hanna’s colleagues without first gaining her 

permission. She does not have positive memories of the reactions of some of them:  

Hanna: ‘I sat at home crying before it was time to go into work, because I didn't 
know how to stand up for myself, then again I don't have very racist colleagues. 
But there is always a lot of discussion, because of islamophobia and the context 
being the way it is. […] I remember that I almost had a burnout, because I got in 
for having the best answers on every bias. […] To be honest, I believe this is why I 
couldn't make it; without the stigma I would probably practice the religion more.’  

 

Bahaar tells me that coming out as a Muslim was not a dramatic event for her close 

family until she started wearing hijab. Her explanation led me to follow up the issue:  

Nina: ‘I have found from previous interviews that converts feel they must ‘come 
out’ as Muslims; sometimes they use the expression themselves, or I use it and 
they understand what I mean by it. If I understand you correctly, the coming out 
was not so difficult for you, while coming out as a hijabi was harder?’  

Bahaar: ‘Yes, because it became visible that I was a Muslim. When I just told them, 
but it couldn’t be seen, it was like they didn't have to feel ashamed because of me.’ 

 

Thurfjell implies that attitudes towards religion in Sweden are in general sceptical and a 

gently critical approach is common in public discussion (Thurfjell, 2015, p. 29). As 

already noted, a common self-identification indicates that Sweden is secular, and 

religiosity is something that belongs to ´others’; it is, therefore, not a forced assumption 

that bodies that pass as Swedish and white are also read as secular or post-Christian. 

Coming out as having a religious identity other than post-Christian (Thurfjell, 2015) 

seems to cause a break in normative expectations, especially when declaring as a 

Muslim, due to the negative representation of Islam in Sweden (Thurfjell, 2015, p. 219). 

 

Moving in and out of whiteness 

Several interviewees have described a feeling of being in an in-between position: neither 

fully part of the Muslim community, yet no longer a member of the non-Muslim 

population. Among other things, this affects the issue of gender roles. Lena felt that her 

gender position had changed in other people's’ views, especially since she had started to 

wear the hijab.  

Lena: ‘Most of the classmates were nice. But – and this might be a subjective 
feeling of my own – suddenly with the hijab on I felt more like a woman, in a 



 

 

negative way. A bit more unequal. [… ] In some way I felt that the hijab made 
me more sexualized, that it was [interpreted] as a symbol of this.’  

 

Several other interviewees have also experienced questions, both from people they do 

not know and from family, friends and colleagues, which are at some level centred on 

their gender role: whether their husbands beat them, for example, or if their husbands 

have forced them to wear the hijab.9 In racialising discourses it is also common that non-

white women are exotified and sexualised in a way that contrasts to representations of 

women more common in the spectrum of normative whiteness (Hübinette et al., 2012, p. 

26), which might explain Lena’s experience of being more sexualised. 

Hanna points out that converting means in some senses a radical change in a 

person’s life: a break from an accustomed position of invisible whiteness. For her, the 

decisions to abstain from alcohol, read the Qur’an and pray, for instance, were choices 

aimed at enhancing her happiness. Yet she remarks that along with those choi ces come 

the interrogations that ultimately result in a feeling of not being accepted. This might 

also be analysed from the perspective of degree of Muslimness (Cato, 2012). Cato argues 

that Swedish political discourse accepts an interpretation of Islam that is liberal, 

moderate and secular; on the other hand, interpretations that fall outside the ‘good and 

accepted’ are portrayed as radical, conservative, patriarchal and deviant. Moreover, he 

argues that it is rare within European political discourse that the terms Islam and 

Muslim are used in a neutral manner, without connections to terms like ‘good’, 

‘mainstream’, ‘moderate’ or ‘radical’. In the European context it is also common that 

Muslim or ex-Muslim voices are promoted by the media when criticising Islam and 

Muslims (Cato, 2012, pp. 288-9). I have mentioned that for Bahaar’s close family, her 

conversion was acceptable as long as it was not visible to the rest of the population. In 

an interview, Hanna tells me about a colleague who was concerned about the conversion 

itself, but who also marked some sort of limit by asking: ‘But you don’t pray, right?’ She 

continues: 

                                                      
9 This impacts on gender roles of Muslim or ‘other’ men as well. The idea of Islam as an 
unchanging, violent and misogynist religion was a common figure during the colonial 
period. These representations are though older than that and they do in some form still 
operate today (Gardell, 2010, p. 67; Cato, 2012, p. 275).  



 

 

Hanna: ‘With intellectual people around me, who are not – I mean there are 
very few Sweden Democrats10 – it should be one of the best environments to be 
in as a practicing Muslim. But I believe my experience would be different if I 
had been born a Muslim and it were clearer that I am a Muslim. Then it 
becomes diversity [she laughs] [… ] So many things are encoded in social 
situations in which I take part – in which I am perceived as a white, non-
religious person, that it is what other people believe I am.’  

 

As we can see, Hanna encounters potential disciplinary measures or remarks, which can 

be connected to the discourse of normative secularity. Yet she also comments that not 

being represented as a ‘real’ Muslim means she cannot be regarded as providing a 

diversity alibi (c.f. Ahmed, 2011, p. 241). Diversity brought to institutions by bodies that 

break with whiteness, demonstrates the whiteness that is in place in them, thus the need 

for diversity (Ahmed, 2012, p. 34). However, while Hanna explains that she might be 

regarded as too white to function as the token ‘other’, 41 years old Rabia from 

Stockholm, who wears a hijab since 2012, observes that she often gets invited to public 

events (especially those with political content) to represent diversity. On the other hand, 

Rabia feels that she is often invited at someone else's expense, mainly because she 

believes that even other Muslims think that her whiteness gives her a different kind of 

voice than that of a less white-passing person. Commonly in white experience, whiteness 

is, in effect, not acknowledged as a privilege, however my interviewees are highly aware 

of the benefits their whiteness may accord them in some situations, if it is 

acknowledged. This confirms Franks’ assumption in her study, mentioned earlier, that 

the situation of her interviewees in England is generally likely to be easier than that of 

their sisters who never pass as white. Similar accounts has been made in the 

Netherlands (Vroon, 2014, p. 87) and Germany (Özyürek, 2010, pp. 173-4) Hanna, for 

example, notes that she has a choice in most situations, either to go with the flow or to 

stand up for who she is. She also acknowledges that many of the privileges her 

whiteness and Swedishness bestow are still there.  

Hanna: ‘I feel like I am bobbing in a position in between. Sometimes I feel like a 
hypocrite. I can select when to be visible; I can choose [to show] parts of my 
identity in a way that most people can’t, and it is a huge privilege to be able to 

                                                      
10 Sweden Democrats is a anti-immigration and anti-Muslim party with roots in white 
supremacy neo-Nazi movement. The party is represented in the parliament since 2010 
and they are for the moment among the three biggest parties in Sweden with estimated 
support from approximately 20 % of the Swedish voters.  



 

 

do that. As you say, I can choose to not say anything [about being a Muslim] in a 
job interview, yet in other situations I can say I am a Muslim and be part of a 
religious context.’ 

 

Conclusion 

Racialisation is common in Sweden on both institutional and structural levels, as well as 

on the everyday level of interactions between people (Hübinette et al., 2012, p. 17). 

Some of this racialisation is clearly visible in the experiences shared by my interviewees. 

If one element characterizing whiteness is its invisibility, for the most part, the hijab-

wearing women in this study no longer possess it. Meanwhile, becoming a Muslim but 

not wearing ‘Muslim clothes’ does not change the possibilities for passing as white in the 

same way, although it still gives rise to the often-actualized process of ‘coming out’, 

which, in turn may affect mobility. Some might argue, then, that it is all a matter of 

religion, but this over-simplifies the different ways racism operates. We have instances 

where whiteness is clearly at the heart of the issue: for example, when it is assumed that 

a woman in a hijab is unable to speak Swedish or is asked about her origin on the 

assumption of its being somewhere other than Sweden. A version of this is when the 

race-traitor discourse is brought to the fore. Then, informants are identified as white but 

inappropriate in assumed behaviour. Yet the dimensions of religion and secularity 

clearly relate to the theories of Swedishness and whiteness discussed in this article, 

since they obviously impact on how people are racialised; consequently, Franks 

suggestion of applying the term hybrid in analysis of multiple dimensions is a useful one 

in the context of this study. 

If we may conclude, as I do, that the hijab essentialises and highlights everything 

about the converts’ break with normative white Swedishness, what are the outcomes of 

this? The interviewees repeatedly made it clear that, with the profession of their new 

faith, but more specifically the donning of the hijab, they have lost at least part of their 

‘invisible’ mobility; this is illustrated by their references to obstacles in educational 

contexts, at work, in daily interactions with strangers and friends and family and so on. 

It is not seldom that these instances even carry components of violence – physical, 

verbal as well as psychological (Jakku & Waara, 2017). Racialising practices often 

incorporate the idea of categories through which we make sense of people, whether 

consciously or unconsciously, and the interviewees in this study seem to disrupt the 



 

 

discursive categories of Swedishness and whiteness as well as Muslimness. This in turn 

leads to confusion among the people they meet, a thing which curtails their freedom of 

activity and speech and, in the long run, often leads to otherising, discrimination and 

pure racism.  

 

About the author 

Nina Jakku is a PhD candidate in History of Religions with alignment to Islamology at 

Lund University. 

nina.jakku@ctr.lu.se 

 

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	The exclusivity of Swedish whiteness dates back to the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth century when ‘scientific’ race-biology notions were born of the pens of scholars. In 1921 the Swedish parliament made the decision to establish the first...
	Religion and racism