Muslim Youth in the Diaspora

Challenging Extremism through Popular Culture

Pam Nilan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781138121027
• eBook ISBN: 9781317309727
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

In a world where the term Islam is ever-increasingly an inaccurate and insensitive synonym for terrorism, it is unsurprising that many Muslim youth in the West struggle for a viable sense of identity.

This book takes up the hotly-debated issue of Muslim youth identity in western countries from the standpoint of popular culture. It proposes that in the context of Islamophobia and pervasive moral panic, young Muslims frame up their identity in relation to external conditions that only see 'good' and 'bad' Muslims, on both sides of the ideological fence between Islam and the West. Indeed, by attempting to break down the 'good' versus 'bad' Muslim dichotomy that largely derives from western media reports, as well as political commentary, Muslim Youth in the Diaspora: Challenging Extremism through Popular Culture will enlighten the reader. It illuminates the way in which diasporic Muslim youth engage with, and are affected by, the radical Islamist meta-narrative. It examines their popular culture and online activity, their gendered sense of self, and much more.

This original book will be of interest to students and scholars interested in the fields of sociology, cultural studies and social anthropology. It offers a particular focus on Islam for research in youth studies, youth culture, political radicalisation and religious identity. It will also be relevant to the sector of youth and social work, where practitioners seek to build cultural bridges with a new generation.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Muslim youth in the diaspora

Introduction

This book takes up the hotly-debated issue of Muslim youth identity in Western countries. It does so from the standpoint of popular culture. Given the pervasive moral panic about Islam in those nations, young Muslims frame up their sense of self, their identity, in relation to external conditions which ascribe a distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Muslims, on both sides of an apparent ideological fence between Islam and the West.

The core proposals of the book are as follows:

• First, not only do the prevailing conditions of Islamophobia shape the positioning of a Muslim youth identity in the diaspora, so too does the meta-narrative of radical Islamism.

• Second, the radical meta-narrative does not just come to them from Muslim sources, but from Western media reports and opinions, as well as political commentary, further driving the ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ Muslim dichotomy in relation to their subjectivity.

• Third, the process by which diasporic Muslim youth engage the meta-narrative is evident. It is – explicitly and implicitly – addressed, endorsed, contested, ridiculed, transformed and transcended in the ‘serious play’ of Muslim youth culture even as they simultaneously address and contest the intolerance they encounter every day.

• Fourth, the popular culture of Muslim youth in the diaspora is not only characterised by distinctions of piety, but is implicitly organised in forms of neo-theo-tribalism that articulate different relationships to the radical Islamist meta-narrative.

Throughout the Muslim world,¹ varying political positions are taken for and against radicalism. This seems inevitable. ‘Part urban myth, part grim reality, the Islamic terrorist reconfigures the frame’ (Back et al. 2009: 6). It affects ordinary Muslim lives, especially since 9/11. On the other hand, it is possible to sensationalise this impact. All over the world, young Muslims are just getting on their lives and enjoying youth culture. This is why Nasir (2016: 2) states firmly that young Muslims today ‘ought to be analyzed through the dialectics of popular culture and Islamic piety’.

Certainly Muslim youth of both sexes in the diaspora experience intolerance and prejudice to varying degrees, depending largely on their appearance, status, language and affiliations (Sirin and Fine 2007; Wise and Ali 2008; Poynting and Mason 2008; Kabir 2008, 2010, 2012; Mishra and Shirazi 2010; Allen 2010; Peek 2011; Sohrabi and Farquharson 2012; Zempi and Chakraborti 2014; Hervik 2015; Lynch 2015; Read 2015). Moreover, it is likely they will find diminished career opportunities, even with a good education (Read 2004; Hassan 2010; Tindongan 2011; Ryan 2011; Nilan 2012a; Lovat et al. 2013; Jakubowicz et al. 2014). Bhatti (2011: 82) argues that in the climate of fear and suspicion in Western countries, ‘young Muslims are disproportionately affected’. Muslim youth today may feel defensive. They are under scrutiny because of their religion. They must negotiate their religious identity and religious practice in a context that includes explicit or subtle themes of misunderstanding, fear, and marginalisation (Abo-Zena et al. 2009: 6–7). Yet above all, they are youth living out their lives in late modernity, and share much in common with all other young people living in a ‘24/7’ world. Like the rest, Muslim youth greatly desire appropriate ‘recognition’ from the society as they move towards adulthood. Yet they must struggle hard to achieve it in conditions of Islamophobia. Where there is any form of conflict, then as Honneth (1996: 1) points out, this is likely to be fuelled by the individualised ‘struggle for recognition’ that characterises de-traditionalised, modular lives in late modernity.

Youth in late modern Western society

The idea of young Muslims as particularly susceptible to radicalisation refers to some core beliefs about youth as a social category. As many have pointed out, there is a moral panic about youth per se that swings between fear of them – regarding young people as a threat, and fear for them – seeing youth as immature children in need of protection (Krinsky 2008). There is also considerable confusion about who they are in demographic terms, with age boundaries varying, for example, from 12–30 (in advertising) to 15–24 (United Nations). There is also an unproductive blurring of the categories of youth and children. This brings us to the question of who youth are and how they are imagined.

In one sense, there is no such thing as youth. Until relatively recently in human history there were only children (pre-puberty) and adults (post-puberty). In fact, ‘youth’ as a modern category of person was more or less invented during the Industrial Revolution in Europe, at the same time as the steam engine (Musgrove 1964: 33). Similarly, the ‘teenager’ was invented amid the youth moral panic of the 1950s (Gilbert 2014). By the late twentieth century, the stage of youth for both sexes had become characterised by distinct patterns of leisure, consumption, social bonding and courting, in the West at least, and in many other countries. During this extended period of ‘youth’, young people are understood to make the transition to adulthood. Reaching adulthood is signified by ‘completing schooling, beginning full-time work, financial independence, getting married, and becoming a parent’ (Aronson 2008: 60; see also Furlong and Cartmel 2007).

It is acknowledged that young people today are caught up in the kind of late modern individualising processes described by Giddens (1991), Beck (1992) and Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002). Giddens (1991: 81) calls this ‘de-traditionalisation’, the weakening of traditional foundations of identity derived from family, kin, class and locality. Thus young people come to understand themselves more cogently than before through the self-image they create in education, occupation, lifestyle and consumption. These are the individualising processes we cannot ignore in the lives of youth in Western countries, including Muslim youth.² The labour market is fragmented and precarious (Furlong and Cartmel 2004; Woodman 2012). Education and training periods are extended, and without firm job guarantees. Much is made of intimate partner ‘choice’ and the pressure to create a successful self that can be presented to a variety of social and economic markets (Brannen and Nilsen 2007; Nayak and Kehily 2008). Yet at the same time, class, gender and ethnic factors – as well as religion – can alter transition experiences and outcomes for youth (Aronson 2008: 79), in both developed and developing countries (Nayak 2003).

In the neo-liberal state that prevails in Western countries, much is expected of young people in terms of the choices they make (Nayak and Kehily 2008). The emphasis is on the individual, not the family or community as it was in the past (see Giddens 1991; Beck 1992; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002). So each young person – from any kind of background – is under pressure to consciously tailor-make his or her own life trajectory towards successful adulthood (Furlong and Cartmel 2007; Harris 2004; Kelly 2006). Individuals are subject to enhanced uncertainties as possible life options increase, since ‘we have no choice but to choose’ (Giddens 1991: 81). Young people grow up in a ‘risk’ society which did not exist for their parents’ generation (Beck 1992; Furlong and Cartmel 2007; Threadgold and Nilan 2009). Achieving a legitimate social identity has therefore become more complex and confusing. In such conditions, the ‘self’ becomes something to be consciously worked on by the young person to create a successful biography. A successful life trajectory is achieved by making the ‘right’ individual choices when young (Brannen and Nilsen 2007: 157). This choosing process expresses the need for the young person to find ‘ontological security’ (Giddens 1991: 44) – a symbolic place of safety and certainty. In late modernity, the self is reflexively understood in terms of a person’s ‘biography’ (Giddens 1991: 53). Thus all young people now live their lives more reflexively; actively planning or projecting themselves imaginatively as individuals into a positive adult existence (Threadgold and Nilan 2009).

Muslim youth in late modernity

Parlaying these insights into the situation of Muslim youth in the diaspora, they too are implicitly anticipated by the neo-liberal state to make individual choices that constitute a life trajectory towards successful adulthood. However, they must negotiate not one but two sets of norms, even beyond their ethnic affiliations (Drissel 2011). In human capital terms they are products of Western societies that reward economic achievement and educational attainment. Yet to succeed in these fields they must actively recast themselves as ‘good’ Muslims, given that the moral panic casts them as potential radicalised ‘outsiders’ and ‘dangerous foreigners’ (Lynch 2015; see also Kundani 2014). Spalek and Lambert (2008) report that in European studies, Muslim youth often describe themselves as victims of prejudice in the workplace. Moreover, in regard to their families, some choices entailed by contemporary education and work may take them beyond traditional expectations of a virtuous life. McGrath and McGarry (2014: 929) argue that we need to recognise the ‘complex intersections between religious-cultural ways of life and the dominant discourses of secular-liberal Western-European society’ for young Muslims (see also Jacobsen 2010). Youth labour markets in Western countries are already characterised by precariousness (Woodman 2012), and for Muslim youth they are even more insecure (Nilan 2012a). In the process of transition to adulthood, Muslim youth must struggle harder than most others to find a position of ‘ontological security’ (Giddens 1991: 44) – one that offers safety and certainty. For example, Song (2012) found that British Muslim students who joined Islamic Student Associations did so to include themselves – so they officially belonged. Thus formal membership mainstreamed their Muslim identity, endowing some ontological certainty.

Relevant to the general discussion of youth above, it is not clear that Giddens’ detraditionalisation thesis can be applied unproblematically to young people in Western countries from non-Anglo backgrounds (Nilan 2011), nor to youth from religious backgrounds. For example, as a counter-discourse to the individualisation trend, the transcendent discourse of Islam provides a collective sense of ummah, endowing a sense of ‘belonging’ to a worldwide constituency of believers. Yet there are two further shaping discourses that encourage the manifestation of Muslim youth collectivities in the face of individualisation and detraditionalisation. The first is the radical Islamist meta-narrative. The second is popular culture.

Even though the radical Islamist meta-narrative is endorsed by only a tiny minority, it has an extraordinarily galvanising exclusion–inclusion effect. Muslim youth are under pressure to show how they stand on radical Islamist precepts and practices. Media and political rhetoric on the non-Muslim side demands they position themselves against radicalism, and in support of the mainstream status quo. Families and the local Muslim community would like them to show themselves as good Muslims, manifested in pious, conservative behaviour directed towards prosperity – as a counter-discourse to radicalism. While these two sets of pressures might appear to have more or less the same goal, public expressions and professions of Muslim piety by youth in the diaspora tend to provoke a negative reaction in fearful and racist members of the non-Muslim majority (Ahmed 2003). So there are some troubling contradictions evident which complicate the making of a successful self.

The second shaping discourse is found in youth culture, both offline and online (see Robards and Bennett 2011). There is a pleasurably attractive youth culture world of fashion, music, gaming, product consumption and socialising which is highly compelling for Muslim youth (Herding 2013), just as it is for other young people in Western countries. However, within the foundation of Islam, this compelling world of youth culture should be negotiated piously, demanding the exercise of reflexivity (Giddens 1991; Threadgold and Nilan 2009) in choosing and filtering popular consumption and practices. Specific participatory communities of practice emerge (see Jenkins 2006). Thus Muslim youth engagement with popular culture pertains to the reflexive co-production of salient identities that fuels potential for mobilisation, whether political or cultural. Through the pleasurable constitution of a distinctively Muslim popular culture, young people are engaged in creative acts of reclamation (Willis 1990), of their faith and of their youthful independence and dynamism.

Their popular culture choices demonstrate a particular kind of ‘distinction’ (Bourdieu 1984), one that is not only about class, but about claiming a moral order of orthopraxy which bestows blessings. Halal consumption practices in popular culture constitute for the young Muslim a ‘sense of one’s place’ (see Bourdieu 1984: 468) – in the ummah. They are guided – by judicious advertising – towards the practices or goods which ‘befit’ their position (Bourdieu 1984: 469) – in a moral order. This is ‘serious play’ (Bloustien 2007: 447) which produces theological identity groupings. Throughout the book I refer to these groupings as neo-theo-tribalism.

The concept of neo-theo-tribalism builds on earlier youth culture theorising of neo-tribalism (Maffesoli 1996; Malbon 1998; Bennett 1999a, 2000; Sweetman 2004). For example, Bennett has argued strongly that the rather static term ‘subculture’ is inadequate to describe the cultural relationship between youth, music and style. In his view the term ‘neo-tribal’ much better captures the ‘unstable and shifting cultural affiliations that characterise late modern consumer-based identities’ (Bennett 1999a: 605). These dynamic cultural affiliations are linked to specific lifestyles – supported by selective consumption choices. Following Bennett, my contention is that the combination of shaping discourses described above drives a theologically informed neo-tribalism in the popular culture of Muslim youth. I describe this phenomenon as neo-theo-tribalism because its youth culture affiliations and lifestyle distinctions are arranged along a continuum of religiosity, from the near-secular to the overtly pious. Selective choice of popular culture products and restricted forms of ludic engagement signal Muslim theo-tribal belonging, but this is far from fixed and unchanging. It is within these different Islamic youth culture neo-tribes that diverse counter-narratives to the radical Islamist meta-narrative are expressed.

My use of the adjective ludic points to the spontaneous and undirected playfulness of young people as digital experts. In the current literature one scholar has declared that the twenty-first century is ‘the ludic century’ (Zimmerman 2014: 19). For example, digital networks are not catalogues of information but flexible and organic spaces, organised as modular, customisable, participatory resources to play with; a series of games enjoyed with others. Applied here, the term ludic points away from rational choice and ideological structures to the creative use of popular culture identified by Paul Willis in 1990.

The radical Islamist meta-narrative is detailed in the next chapter, and the interpretive discussion proceeds from there. The assumption is that young Muslims from all kinds of ethnic backgrounds in Western countries are under pressure to reflexively position themselves both individually and collectively in relation to that teleological epic. The meta-narrative itself constitutes them as actual or potential social actors in a compelling story of Armageddon and Utopia on a grand scale. Yet as the chapters demonstrate, it also serves as a discursive resource through which diasporic Muslim youth generate counter-narratives (Andrews 2004) as a kind of ‘counter-jihad’ (Wright 2012: 41). For example, in 2014 a British charity organised a #notinmyname campaign which gave millions of Muslim youth worldwide the opportunity to denounce violent actions of IS in their own words and images through social media. Through such tools they could actively shape new subject positions and identities that transcribed different directions through popular culture. This is a form of embedded critique. Butler (2004) argues that critique is an ethical mode of self-making that questions the limits of epistemology. This rather abstract idea is given an everyday reference point by the following account:

There are particular people, particular Muslims that call themselves Muslims but ain’t doing what is the way of life in Islam. What they’re doing is wrong. In our religion Allah said that taking the life of an innocent person is not right […] They’re the wrong Muslims.

(Ali, m, 16, British Bangladeshi, quoted in Franceschelli and O’Brien 2015: 702)

Here Ali criticises followers of the radical Islamist meta-narrative. He thinks they are ‘wrong’ in their choices. His view is shared by the great majority of Muslims in the diaspora. Yet the meta-narrative is hard to escape because it comes from many sides. At this point the concept of narrative needs to be explained.

Narrative

The word narrative is derived from the Latin word gnarus, which derives from the Indo-European root form gnu – ‘to know’. A told or written narrative gives knowledge to people in either a factual or fictional genre. First, the narrative setting evokes association with an already known or mythic time or place. Second, good and bad characters ‘play’ out dynamic action. Third, actions take place and plot consequences ensue. Characters react and further consequential actions ensue. Tension builds through plot sequences. There is a resolution of tension when the problem faced by the character(s) is solved. Relief occurs after the climax of the story. A denouement follows in which tensions are resolved and a new status quo prevails. Effective narrative must engage the self as a reader/viewer/listener/consumer by providing compelling characters and plot (Dégh 1995).

All narratives provide a ‘semiotic representation of a series of events, meaningfully connected in a temporal and causal way’ (Onega and Landa 1996: 6) through the plot. In ontological terms, the story is the ‘fundamental instrument of thought’ (Turner 1998: 5); a time-honoured strategy for dealing with the human experience. Rushkoff (2013: 13) argues that experiencing the world in narratives constructs a context for how people feel. It is ‘comforting and orienting’. A relevant story helps people imagine they are on the way to ‘some better place’. Bruner (1990) maintains that an important way people come to understand their world is through the ‘narrative mode’, which deals with human wants, needs and goals through the structure of plot. Thus a ‘big’ narrative has the potential to mobilise people (Polleta 2006). All cultures and societies have their own ‘big’ stories that represent issues of morality, the self and ‘the meaning of life’ (Braddock 2012: 115). Through them, people can look at how human actors have striven for provision and order over time, and how they have succeeded or failed. In that sense, epic narratives are inspirational.

Narrative analysis has increased in social science fields since the late 1970s. For example, Valentine and Sporton (2009) show how we constitute our social identities through narrative (see also Somers 1994; Dubnick et al. 2009). Yet despite rich promise, there has been relatively little direct application of the ‘narrative turn’ to the engagement of Muslim youth (or not) with Islamist extremism. Al Raffie (2012: 13) acknowledges that looking at narratives in this f...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: Muslim youth in the diaspora
• 2. The meta-narrative of Islamist extremism
• 3. Muslim youth radicalisation
• 4. Online extremism and digital counter-narratives
• 5. Counter-narratives of the new Muslim ‘cool’
• 6. Gaming and the young Muslim self
• 7. Muslim youth tribalism in popular music
• 8. Australian Muslim youth: A case study
• 9. Conclusion: Neo-theo-tribalism of Muslim youth
• References
• Index