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This chapter explores the place of Islam in Europe by focusing on Muslim immigration at the very time that the void of the European Union non-identity yawned open. Perhaps as a result of that void, Europe’s Muslim population, with its very distinct identity, became more visible than ever. With the Dutch, the French, the Germans and others feeling as though they were losing themselves, the newly emerging Muslim identity became amplified and appeared to be a greater threat than might have otherwise been the case. As Europe’s establishment became increasingly uneasy regarding what it perceived as the misplaced loyalties of immigrant communities, the status of the mosque was elevated within migrant communities.

This chapter covers relations between longtime Black residents and newly arrived West African Muslims. During their settlement, African immigrants try to reconcile their Black identity with their Muslim identity, but relations between them and their Black counterparts are often strained. Blacks view them as scornful invaders, and Africans see American-born Blacks as incorrigible slackers. Although Harlem residents have held a positive view of Muslims over the years, the Islamic identity of Africans is disregarded in their ongoing conflict. Some Africans are embraced as role models or cultural brokers, while other Blacks see their African clothing and religious practices as an opportunity to reclaim their African heritage.

Against the backdrop of intensified global flows, liberalization of national politics, and deepening economic crises, a state-controlled, ostensibly monolithic Islamic tradition has evolved into multiple modes of Muslim religiosity in Niger. Young men, as they negotiate their “youthfulness” through the adoption of distinct dress styles and practices, are often at odds with elders, who complain that youth should listen to religious sermons instead of rap music and exchange their foreign-made T-shirts and jeans for the less expensive jaba, the tunic of devout Muslims. To such admonitions, unrepentant young men generally reply that being Muslim has little to do with one’s choice of radio program or wardrobe. In exploring the generational basis of emerging disagreements about Muslim identity and what Islam is, this chapter focuses on youth as a “social shifter.”

This chapter explores the more pernicious applications of ICTs, which are used in many Muslim countries not simply for censorship but for actively managing collective identity. The first part of the chapter explores the ways that political culture is now produced and consumed in Muslim countries. It reviews the most recent findings about techniques for political censorship and the efforts of activists to overcome these constraints. The chapter then demonstrates how political elites have effectively used the new media to construct and manage a transnational Muslim identity for people with significantly different cultural backgrounds. Through digital technologies, social elites attempt more than news censorship and email surveillance. They work to manage particular domains of Islamic political culture and identity formation for youth.

This chapter addresses the questions about the formation of identities, contemporary experiences of Islamophobia and emancipatory politics in the lives of Muslims in Britain. It specifically presents an overview of current discussions among British Muslims about Islamophobia and its relationship to their complex identities to shed further light upon this debate around ‘identity politics’. Islamophobia provokes the constitution of assertive Muslim identities in the hegemonic public sphere. Britishness is only partly constitutive of modern Muslim identities. There was a sharp bifurcation of British Muslims into loyal moderates and disloyal radicals after 9/11, but it could not be sustained to the same degree after the emergence of a large, third space for democratic dissent that British Muslims helped to shape in the run up to the Iraq war. It is noted that Islamopobia merely creates anti-Islamophobia, and that it cannot permanently define the British Muslim experience.

This chapter investigates the intersections between politics, public space and Muslim and Arab identities, and complicates the relationships between Muslim minorities and public spheres and spaces of society. School controversies are indicative of the highly problematic position of Muslim minorities in public and in the collective imagination of western nation-states. The chapter states that religious claims are important with respect to political life and public space. The clear dichotomies that frame many western perceptions of Islam are explained. For some of the interviewees, Islam is an important motivating force for activism, and some see their religious faith as closely tied to their reasons for becoming involved in community organisations and affairs. The interviewees expressed that they felt that they could not escape the fact that Arabness is culturally bound up with Islam. For them, the multiculturalism of the Arab world is a precursor to European multiculturalism.

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 discusses how participation in hip hop culture could lead to recognition from non-Muslim peers. “Hip hopper” was for the Legendz a widely recognized and desirable identity that could momentarily precede and eclipse that of “religious Muslim” in an interaction with non-Muslim peers. In making meaningful social connections with other urban youth based on a shared engagement with hip hop culture, the Legendz were following a pattern observed by sociologists among other second-generation immigrants whose participation in hip hop music and style allowed them to gain acceptance and make social inroads among young people from outside their immediate ethnic community. In addition to employing hip hop as a way to gain acceptance and make connections with a broader urban American community of non-Muslims, the Legendz also actively adapted the genre's music and culture in creative ways to develop their own in-group Muslim American identity and style. The resulting identity performance—referred to as cool piety—tapped into broader African American urban cool while still exhibiting a close association with local standards of Islamic behavior to produce a nuanced and multifaceted presentation of Muslim American self.

It is generally believed that Muslims share all aspects of Islamic culture and that they are different from the mainstream British population. However, Muslims in Britain are ethnically diverse and heterogeneous in skin colour, language and culture. The only element they have in common is their religion. However, most Muslims feel a strong connection and association with the broader Islamic community (ummah) and have a constant desire for greater Islamic political unity within the ‘Abode of Islam’ (dar-al-Islam. The core of unity among Muslims is the Quran, the word of Allah. While the interpretation of the word of Allah differs across various Muslim groups, the Quran nevertheless provides the same message for all Muslims. This chapter examines identity theory and applies this theory towards an understanding of Muslim identity. It considers whether ‘Britishness’ has any impact on or conflict with the Muslim identity. It also examines the Scottish identity question as well as the debate on ‘Muslim identity’ raised by Channel 4. Before concluding with an overview of the research methodology used in this chapter, it investigates the geopolitical factors that could have an implication on British Muslim's identity.

British national identity or ‘Britishness’ has been defined as possessing fluent English skills, loyalty to Britain, integration with the wider community, belief in democracy, acceptance of equal treatment for all and respect for the country and shared heritage. For immigrants, it takes generations before they are admitted to the inner circle of the ‘nation’ and its historic culture through the national agencies of mass mobilisation. In the 2000 Parekh report, it has been noted that British society is marked by insidious racism and by the notion that Englishness and Britishness is akin to the notion of ‘Whiteness’. This chapter demonstrates the pattern of two hundred sixteen participant's response to their national identity. The chapter also assesses factors that have determined their diverse identities. The rationale behind the respondent's choice of distinct identity (national, ethnic or religious identity) is discussed as well. Final discussion centres on whether British national sports have a positive impact on Muslim's national identity.

This concluding chapter argues that the story of the Legendz suggests key conditions important to the cultivation of healthy Muslim American identities. The Legendz's deep and pervasive sense of themselves as Muslims and Americans, as well as their cultivated ability to skillfully navigate the cultural rubrics of American youth culture and Islamic religiosity, are attributable to three key conditions present within their social environment. First, the adults in the Legendz's community maintained an openness and understanding that allowed the boys room to engage in some measure of American youth culture without fear of harsh punishment or communal ostracism. A second important condition seems to have been the presence of a familiar and consistent group of friends located within the same culturally complex situation. The Legendz developed a sense of their ability to manage competing sets of cultural expectations as young Muslims together. A third condition that seems to have contributed to the Legendz's ability to effectively manage their culturally contested lives was a social and physical space in which these processes could unfold and take place. An underlying theme cutting across all three of these conditions is the need for a productive overall understanding of Muslim American teenagers as being in the midst of a process of identity development, cultural negotiation, and growing up.

This chapter presents a comparison between the Muslim minority community in 7th-century Mecca and the Muslim minority community in the United States, which brings to light some useful social elements that can serve as a helpful guide to American Muslim identity and behavior today. It identifies three significant points of comparison between the community of Mecca and that of the United States: the composition of the Muslim community, its relations with the majority, and its methods of coping with and promoting its identity as a minority. The chapter shows that amid American Muslims' appreciation for freedom of speech, and the American values of honesty and hard work, lies their dislike of what they regard as the social disintegration of the family, the community, and the society as a whole. Such a tension is very similar to that of the Meccan Muslim community, which on the one hand was against the rampant materialism and social decline of the society, but on the other hand benefited strongly from the city's position as a trade and religious center, both with regard to economic prosperity as well as the opportunity to interact with groups from around the peninsula.

This chapter discusses theoretical issues surrounding the politics of heritage, and analyzes them in light of the various configurations of culture and power evidenced in Cotabato from the precolonial period to the present. It considers how power in Muslim Cotabato has been both enunciated by rulers and questioned by those subjected to it, and discusses the problems concerning the nature of traditional Islamic rule in Cotabato and the derivation and prevalence of a transcendent Philippine Muslim identity. The chapter also proposes an alternative approach for analyzing ordinary and extraordinary resistance based on a radically reformulated notion of hegemony as public accommodation of power.

This chapter explores the historical, cultural, and religious dimensions of Muslimah identity in the Bahamas and Brazil. Muslimahs (Muslim women) are constituted within a changing network of power relations including the ideological practices of Islam and the social construction of the ideal Muslimahs. Jerusa Ali presents an overview of the histories and contexts of the growth of Islam and the presence of Muslims in the Bahamas and Brazil from the colonial period to the present day. Narratives of Muslim minority women and an analysis of their struggles for identity and belonging are offered. Ali draws from interviews conducted with Muslim women from Nassau, New Providence, the Bahamas, and São Bernardo do Campo, São Paulo, Brazil. Islam presents as a cultural marker and a boundary to local cultural cohesiveness and, as a world view, it provides the foundation of Muslimah identity and belonging.

This chapter presents an argument that Muslim identities are increasingly standardised and homogenised in the global postmodern requires significant qualification. In underscoring the significance of ‘being there’, pilgrims strengthened the idea of the holy places as a spiritual homeland and ‘one of the primal scenes of Islam’. The sacrifice of 'id al-'adha, sometimes known as 'id al-kabir (the ‘big’ festival), is the normative culmination of the Hajj. The increasing mobility and prosperity linked with international migration has meant that pilgrimage to Makkah and Madinah has become more affordable, convenient and democratised for Pakistanis in Britain than it was for their ancestors. British Pakistanis report pilgrimage not only as an emotional and testing personal journey from sinfulness to purification but also as a collective return to the mythic homeland of the umma and, ultimately, all monotheistic humanity.

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to explore the transition from being Muslim in America to becoming an American Muslim. In other words, how does “American” become a property of Muslim identity? It discusses the impact of 9/11; how Muslims experience the split between the nation and themselves as aliens most directly at the airport; and the hermeneutics of the immigrant as a subject of citizenship. It characterizes American Muslims and American Islam. An overview of the subsequent chapters is also presented.

In this chapter the consequences of the tendencies towards social fission which we look at in the previous chapter are investigated in detail. The emergence of Muslim identity consciousness is traced in Bengali Muslim newspapers and magazines. The childhood experience recorded in the autobiographies of Muslims is also examined to look at the origins of a deep-seated communal consciousness. Text books and historical works were also a site of contestation due to communal bias in those books. The spread of higher education and the growth of a new Muslim middle class are surveyed in this chapter. Finally the impact of inter-community conflict on Bengali language is also examined. This chapter aims to show that the roots of communalism are in cultural and social practices, not so much in political parties.