To explore the importance of death and the dead to the study of religious conversion, this article adopts an ethnographic and comparative approach to the lives and deaths of two male Muslim converts in the southwest Indian state of Kerala. Paying attention to the treatment of their dead bodies, which were donated and cremated, contrary to their wishes for an Islamic funeral, and the problematization of their proper names, it is argued that death is the point at which selves are made/remade. Death provides the opportunity for the dead, their kin, friends, and state institutions to make claims about religious identities and familial relations. I conclude that these multiple and often contradictory stances converted the dead into religiously indeterminate figures, though their belonging to their kin was successfully established.

为了探讨死亡和死者对宗教皈依研究的重要性，本文采用民族志和比较的方法来研究印度西南部喀拉拉邦两名男性穆斯林皈依者的生与死。关注他们的尸体的处理方式，这些尸体被捐赠和火化，这与他们对伊斯兰葬礼的愿望相反，以及他们的专有名称的问题化，认为死亡是自我被创造/重塑的时刻。死亡为死者、他们的亲属、朋友和国家机构提供了就宗教身份和家庭关系提出主张的机会。我的结论是，这些多重且常常相互矛盾的立场将死者变成了宗教上不确定的人物，尽管他们成功地确立了他们对亲属的归属。