Marriage Conversions: Shari’a Courts, Romanian Brides and Palestinian Bedouin in-Laws

Marriage conversions are often assumed to have little to do with religion, yet they inevitably operate in the realm of religious categories, relations, and institutions. This paper focuses on the marriage conversions of Romanian women who have joined their Palestinian Bedouin partners, returning to the Naqab (Israel) upon completing their studies in Romania. While such marriage conversions are largely not religiously motivated, religion is nonetheless implicated in these conversion practices. Based on an ethnographic study conducted among the Naqab Bedouin, this contribution considers the way shari'a court officials deal with these marriages and the practices and interfaith relations that eventually emerge in the daily life of brides and in-laws. Religious courts in Israel are embedded in social and political contexts committed to keeping religious-national communities apart, and conversions itself seems to confirm and conform to religious divides. Conversion indexes Romanian brides' acknowledgment of religious difference, yet brides engage in discrete religious mixing, and with in-laws they cultivated a discourse of monotheistic affinity and shared values. This study reveals the production and reproduction of both religious categories and interfaith relations by both institutions and participants.