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This chapter demonstrates how two competing methods for the presentation of Muslim identity at a time of potential stigma coexisted and sometimes conflicted at the City Mosque. Such internal cultural friction resulted from the fact that these methods for managing stigma were rooted in two distinct models of public Muslim selfhood, one developed by the Legendz through the in-group processes of their small friendship group, and one constructed by the mosque leadership as their ideal model for Muslim American youth. While the mosque leadership method of presenting young Muslim selves centered on leading with and explaining Islam, demonstrating vulnerability to harassment, and developing concern for non-Muslims' perceptions, the method cultivated by the Legendz prioritized the development of a low-key Islamic self, an emphasis on locally valued American teenage behaviors, and the expression of individual autonomy and self-sufficiency. These differing logics of public identity management represented a significant rift between the Legendz and the leadership and sometimes even undermined the boys' faith and trust in the mosque adults. This development was a surprising and emotionally intense experience for the Legendz.

This chapter details the everyday practices used by the Legendz and their friends to manage a specific cultural dilemma faced by Muslim American youth: how to participate in a religious tradition that carries expectations of deference to external religious authority and obligation within a modern American cultural landscape in which personal agency, autonomy, and reflexivity are core social values and widely held behavioral expectations. The Legendz responded to this challenge by engaging in practices associated with one particular cultural rubric (religious Islam) while applying discourses and behavior associated with the other (American individualism). In this way, they attempted to present themselves as agentive, autonomous, and self-reflexive American youth despite their regular fulfillment of externally imposed Islamic obligations. In altering the specifics of prayer through visible temporal delays, the boys attempted to demonstrate an autonomous yet Islamic self to themselves and each other. By invoking the specter of the “extreme Muslim” in conversation, they presented themselves as self-reflexive Islamic individuals—ones not unthinkingly beholden to strict religious requirements—while protecting the autonomy of their peers by displacing religious authority in interaction. In applying the speech patterns of urban braggadocio when recounting their participation in Muslim moral behavior, they attempted to infuse communally rooted norms with a sense of individual agency.