Islam as ‘Everyday Lived Religion’: The Case of Female Muslim Converts in Japan

This chapter focuses on Japanese women who have converted to Islam from the perspective of ‘everyday lived religion’. It aims to describe these relationships with their new religion and how they manage to be Muslim in Japanese society, where Islam is largely unfamiliar. The idea of everyday lived religion derives from French philosopher Michel de Certeau’s concept of ‘tactics’. This concept is used to explore how socially vulnerable people or groups read the rules given to them differently from the intentions of those in power and make use of them to suit their interests and concerns. Employing this theoretical framework, the chapter analyses the cases of two Japanese women with different orientations and attitudes to Islam but share challenges similar to those of Muslim converts in Japan. The findings indicate that using the resources available to them, these women struggled to bridge the gap between the Japanese society in which they lived and the values and practices of the new religion they had joined. For these women, Islam was not something to be indoctrinated by religious authorities or their Muslim husbands, nor was it something to be systematically learned through study circles; rather, it was a consequence of the agency they exercised in a given environment by mobilising multiple resources and means.