Between Orientalism and anticolonialism: Leda Rafanelli’s Islam as a spiritual and political choice

Abstract

Leda Bruna Rafanelli (1880-1971) is known as an author and a social agitator, as well as an anarchist and a pacifist. The focus of this essay is on her conversion to Islam, about which very little is known, and whose path and process is analyzed in the light of her personal, spiritual and political biography. The complexity of her figure is here delineated mostly through her writings, that include positions that are strongly critical of European and Western colonialism and civilization, together with a vision that, however, is still linked to the Orientalist culture of her time. Her distorted image of the Orient, embodying an ideal, free world and the cornerstone of opposition to modernity and to contemporary society, nurtured her choice of Islam, the religion of colonized peoples, in very personal ways. Her choices drew criticism for their alleged contradictions, but the aim of this essay is rather to multiply the polyvocality and individual narratives, by placing case studies such as that of Leda Rafanelli alongside other “figures of the crossing”, and to contribute to deconstructing the imaginary about female conversions to Islam and radical political positioning (such as anarchism) that is still widespread in many fields.