ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to introduce a queer perspective into the study of conversion to Islam and the study of conversion in a Western context in general. It draws its data from a four-year Ph.D. research project on the intersections of transgressive sexualities, Islam and migration in Flanders and Brussels which is financed by the Research Foundation Flanders and which started in October 2010. If Muslims understand homosexuality to be this kind of sexual behavior, it is due to the Ulema, the scholars who are heterosexual and interpret the story according to their heteronormative standards. The chapter considers further how Wout's sexuality plays throughout and after his passage to Islam, with specific attention towards what place sexuality takes up within the newly constituted religious self and how he negotiates his sexuality and religion in different social relationships. Queering conversion also stresses the political meanings around sexuality.
