Joanna Krotofil

The article presents the results of research on sermons delivered in mosques belonging to three Polish Muslim organisations: Muslim Religious Union ( MZR ), Muslim League ( LM ), and Sakinah Foundation ( FS ). The analysis focuses on the strategies adopted by Polish Muslim preachers who, in their sermons ( khutba s), try to address issues that are important for the life and identity of the Muslim minority in Poland. Among these issues are: the embedding of Islam in Polish social reality as a fully-fledged part of the Polish cultural context; the relationship of teachings based on the Qur’anic revelation to the challenges of modernity; the links between minoritarian identity and universalism, religion, and science, or the precepts of Islam and the population management practices characteristic of modern societies. The detailed analysis suggests ways of resolving potential dilemmas that may arise for a Muslim from the tensions in these areas.

In this article, we explore two partially overlapping set of ideas on appropriate mothering that shape the experiences of contemporary Polish mothers. One is rooted in Catholicism, while the other aligns with the ideology of intensive mothering. In the first part of the article, we reconstruct the gendered concept of the ‘good mother’ foregrounded by these ideologies. In the second part, based on analysis of in-depth interviews with 46 mothers and observational data from a club for Catholic mothers with young children, we examine how the coexistence of various ideological constructions of motherhood in contemporary Polish society shapes mothering as an everyday practice and enables mothers to negotiate the cultural demands associated with these constructions. We analyse how Catholic ideals of motherhood and the ideology of intensive mothering become entangled yet are sometimes reflectively separated in maternal practices. This dynamic, we argue, both reinforces gender-traditional norms and creates space for the resignification of various gendered maternal obligations.

Narrative plays a key role in understanding and communicating individual experiences, as well as in the process of identity formation. The transition to motherhood is often seen as a crisis that requires the creation of a new identity. The traditional Catholic narrative, together with the enduring matka Polka (Polish mother) myth in the Polish socio-cultural context, promotes an image of motherhood as a woman’s “vocation” and as a role defined by self-sacrifice and complete devotion to the child. Alongside these historically and culturally rooted models, alternative models have also emerged. Faced with this multiplicity of social constructions and the erosion of the unequivocally positive image of motherhood, women reflexively engage with the traditional-religious model of mothering. The research presented in this paper, based on interviews with young women who identify as devout Catholics, demonstrates that three key concepts in the religious narrative – sacrifice, vocation, and miracle – remain significant for mothers as they seek to make sense of their experiences and construct their identities as women and mothers. However, the meanings of these concepts are being renegotiated. Young Catholic women neither wholly reject nor uncritically reproduce religious idioms. Instead of passively replicating models that conflict with contemporary culture’s emphasis on individuality and freedom, they actively transform religious ideas, confronting them with their everyday lives. Through this process, they create narratives in which motherhood becomes a self-project grounded in individual choice while also remaining a religiously sanctioned aspect of their identity as women.

This article explores the experiences of Polish mothers who have converted to Islam and are raising their children in the faith. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 20 Polish converts, we analyse how maternal and religious identities are co-constructed through everyday practices of child-rearing. Using the spatial metaphor of centre and periphery, we demonstrate how convert mothers navigate their position of limited inclusion within Islam and move towards an imagined religious centre. In this context, raising children in Islam serves both as a reinforcement of the mothers’ own religious identity and as a means of fulfilling culturally and religiously mandated maternal duties. We discuss the challenges identified by women aiming to transmit Islam to their children in a non-Muslim environment, the efforts they make to embody the ideal of a pious Muslim mother in everyday life, and their strategic use of the idea of ‘pure Islam’.

Artykuł omawia przenikanie się medycznych i religijnych perspektyw na aborcję w polskiej debacie publicznej. Uwzględniająca wypowiedzi lekarzy analiza dyskursu medialnego po dwóch śmierciach ciężarnych kobiet w 2021 i 2023 roku ujawnia zbieżności w medycznych i katolickich praktykach dyskursywnego konstruowania płodu jako podmiotu i ograniczania autonomii reprodukcyjnej poprzez definiowanie samodzielnej decyzji o aborcji jako wkroczenia w cudze (lekarskie lub boskie) kompetencje. Rozważania osadzone są w kontekście zjawiska medykalizacji ciąży i historii antyaborcyjnych sojuszy między Kościołem katolickim a polskim środowiskiem medycznym.

In this paper, we demonstrate how the figure of the Virgin Mary functions as an important element of the lived religion of contemporary Catholic and Muslim mothers in Poland. Based on the analysis of in-depth interviews and observational data we argue that the figure of Mary is recognized as a religious ideal and a role model by mothers identifying with both religions. We trace similarities and differences between Catholic and Muslim mothers in their reflexive engagement with ideas, symbols, and prescriptions attached to Mary and discuss how they reinvent the figure and ascribe it with personalised meanings: embrace some of the traditional attributes of Mary, challenge, and contest others, and construct new meanings firmly embedded in their daily life mothering experiences.

"Chapter 3 Old and New Connections: Religious and Cultural Belonging Post-conversion among Polish Female Converts to Islam in the UK" published on 15 Dec 2022 by Brill.

Compared to Muslim communities in Western Europe, in Poland there are Muslims of migrant origin and two different groups of autochthones – the Tatars and new Muslims. The chapter examines the evolution of new Muslims in the Islamic leadership and their position within the framework of Islamic governance in contemporary Poland. It focuses on the role of new Muslims within the two dominant Muslim organisations (Muslim Religious Union and the Muslim League) and the Association of Islamic Unity – an officially registered Shia Islamic community which was established and managed predominantly by converts. The chapter argues that the change of institutional landscape of the formal Islamic leadership in Poland has influenced the way in which new Muslims position themselves within Islamic organisation.

This article focuses on converts to Islam in Poland, taking into account the specific socio-cultural, political, and historical contexts and new trends that have emerged with the gradual growth of the Muslim population. We draw attention to the unique patterns of practices related to Islam and patterns of belonging. Eastern European Islam remains relatively under-researched and, as a consequence, there is little clarity whether processes identified in relation to Western European Islam are mirrored in Eastern Europe. In line with the current literature, we propose the concept of ‘Polish Islam’ as an analytical tool. Based on 16 interviews with Polish female converts, this article traces the way meanings of religious teachings and practices are negotiated and integrated into daily social interactions. We analyse participants’ views regarding the fit between Islam and the national culture. Expanding on the finding that Polish converts to Islam in our sample do not consider themselves to be outsiders, we explore the implications of this pragmatic stance and discuss that the majority of our respondents choose to amalgamate Polish cultural practices with their new religion and renegotiate the meanings of these practices.

This article addresses the question of how the racial habitus of Polish White female converts (PWFCs) to Islam is performed in different social settings. We draw from in-depth interviews with 35 PWFCs living in Poland and the United Kingdom. While the notion of habitus has been used to analyze socialization into Islam, racial habitus has not been analyzed in relation to White converts to Islam. We argue that White habitus is an important concept that elucidates racial positioning among White converts in multiracial Muslim settings. Whiteness, often indexed in the data as “Europeanness,” is foundational for the PWFC identity. Furthermore, we extend the understanding of how Whiteness operates in Eastern Europe through the analysis of the White habitus among those who occupy non-normative places in racial and religious hierarchies. Thus, this article contributes to a growing body of scholarship on decentering Whiteness in Eastern Europe.