Acknowledgements
Success has many fathers, an old saying goes. To paraphrase it, this monograph has many mothers. It could never have been written without the support, trust and engagement of Polish female converts to Islam who shared with us their life stories, invited to their meetings, and welcomed us as allies. At the individual level, our research has been facilitated by Agnieszka Amatullah Wasilewska in Poland, and Sandra Iman Pertek and Joanna Święcińska in the UK, and Monika Ben Mrad – the research assistant on the project. Dr. Michał Łyszczarz has supported the project by helping out with data collection and transcriptions, for which we are grateful. We also thank Aleksandra Malinow, who represents the community we studied, for the cover photograph. At the institutional level, we extend our gratitude to the Centre of Islamic Culture in Warsaw chaired by imam Nizar and Kobiety Wiary (Women of Faith) in the United Kingdom. Last but not least, our research has been supported administratively by Anna Senator and the Project Support Office at SGH Warsaw School of Economics. We are grateful for all their support.
It would not have been possible to publish this book without the support and patience from the Brill editorial team, especially Nienke Brienen-Moolenaar and Nicolette van der Hoek. We would like to also say thank you to the Department of Religious Studies at Northwestern University for offering Dr Anna Piela the opportunity to work on the project in their institutional space. The Expert Consultation Group supported us through the course of the project, and included prof. dr hab. Janusz Danecki (University of Warsaw), prof. dr hab. Halina Grzymała-Moszczyńska (Akademia Ignatianum in Kraków), Prof. Karin van Nieuwkerk (Radboud University), and Prof. Egdūnas Račius (Vytautas Magnus University). Other colleagues who supported us by reading and commenting extensively on our work include Dr Michael Woolf (Harvard University), Prof. Christie Traina (Fordham University), and Dr Dominika Motak (Jagiellonian University of Kraków).
The COVID-19 pandemic slowed down our research activities and delayed the production of this book. But the delay had another, much brighter reason – two babies, Ania and Zosia, were born to two of the authors in the course of the project. We would like to dedicate the monograph to them.