Pious Expats in Qatar : a study of Migration, Race and Religion in the Gulf

In 2013 Qatar TV broadcasted a series entitled Nuqta Tahawwul. The program drew attention to the increasing number of converts to Islam from around the world residing in Qatar. Bach episode presented the lives of couple of converts, their conversion stories daily lives in Qatar. Among those, there were the nationals of Western countries, who after becoming Muslim in the West, in various moments of their lives, decided to move down to Qatar. Much has been written about the challenges to identities, that Western converts to Islam face in their local and national communities, after converting to à racialized or 'brown' religion, as Islam is commonly perceived in the West. Obstacles to daily religious practices, feelings of exclusion from the mainstream societies, and hopes for 'new belonging', in other words, desires to find the comfort of their religious, Muslim selves drive some of western converts to migrate to a Muslim country. While the religious notion of hijrah continues to resonate among many of those converts who decided to migrate to Qatar, the encounters of their daily lives, problematize often idealized picture of what living in the Muslim country is like. Based on the interviews with 23 western converts to Islam living in Qatar, this thesis explores how the social identities and possibilities of belonging, are shaped by the system within which, rather than religion, the categories of nationality and race, and attached them different occupation, legal, social and lifestyle opportunities, determine the  chronically transient place of western Muslim expats in Qatar. Finally, this study opens up ways for thinking about the effects of neoliberalism on the religion in the Gulf region.