Jewish identities in Iran
Subtitle: resistance and conversion to Islam and the Baha'i faith
By: Mehrdad Amanat
Series: Library of modern religion -- 9; Library of modern religion -- 9.
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Published: 2011
Place of publication: London; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 279
ISBN-13: 9781845118914
Subjects: Cultural assimilation; Bahai converts from Judaism; Jews; Muslim converts from Judaism; Identity
Description: "For minority faith groups living in nineteenth-century Iran, religious conversion to Islam - both voluntary and forced - was the primary means of social integration and assimilation. However, why was it that some Persian Jews instead embraced the emergent Baha'i Faith, which was subject to harsher persecution that Judaism? Mehrdad Amanat explores the conversion experiences of Jewish families during this time, and examines the fluid, multiple religious identities that many converts adopted. The religious fluidity exemplified in the widespread voluntary conversion of Iranian Jews to Baha'ism presents an alternative to the rejectionist view of religion that regards millennia of religious experience as inherently coercive, oppressive, rigidly dogmatic and a consistently divisive social force."--Bloomsbury publishing.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [259]-272) and index.