The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin

Front matter

The Religious Identity of Young Muslim Women in Berlin

Muslim Minorities

Editors

Contents

Acknowledgements iieis sni as xi TratroCCt OM stecasabsnssdessccsssceat teva aa a E a N 1 Research on Islam and Muslims in Germany/Europe—A Brief Outlitesiiminisniani uenn nn ERTA A Individualization of Religiosity Issties:atid Perspectives rininineneniisninunninnnais GOTCE PEL ANIZ AION cyssesscsectesastessccscevtschaecessstedsotocetsecsusiascsvsasontecasessveneshovesedscteestiats Islam as a Discursive Tradition COMUINTUTALEY. A AE EAR 21 Crafting the Selfiiisicidsasisicisiasaiaininitimition dian kiaial aiviasbnati 22 Outline asoan aiaia aS ra NTN aE IRENE Eaa 28

1 Situating the Field and Methodological Reflections Introducing MJD: A New Generation of Muslims...

MJD 'S Beginnings ssssecssastescsscestssnssevstdeusstiecesrs sdesessaésivesscoutsstascissisbeettvceersvaacevs The Structure Of MJD....csscsssssssssesssssscsscssssssecsssssscssssssesccseesssssccecsesccuceesesees Profile of the Participants... cessssssssscssecssessseccsseccasesssssesseessessseseseees Local and National Connections w....ccssssssssssssesssssessssseesssssessssssessseensseeess Coming Out in Public: The Scandal... ccssssssssssssessseesssessseesssees Entering the Fieldsa The Social Position of the Field Worker isisiiisrisssissiiisesiiassas Conducting Fieldwork in an Atmosphere of Mistrust sais Suspending JUdGMENE «0... eseseeesseesseescsssecssceesseecsseessseecsneceeseeessceessseessesssees 60 As Way of Conclusion: On Conducting Fieldwork ue eeesssesssseseseeeseee 64

Introduction

So tell the tale — perhaps they will reflect.

—Koran 7:176

Arriving in Berlin, Germany, in the spring of 2004 for my anthropological fieldwork on youth with immigrant backgrounds, it was impossible to avoid the heated debate about Muslim women in the newspapers, particularly the so-called headscarf debate: should Muslim women be allowed to work as teachers, administrators, or police officers while wearing a veil? I was struck by the media representation of Muslim women as oppressed, passive, or unwilling to integrate, at the same time as I observed headscarf marches in Berlin and in Paris (January and February 2004) where thousands of young women and men marched for women’s rights to wear the headscarf! In my multicultural Berlin neighborhood of Kreuzberg, I observed groups of young women laughing and chatting playfully at street corners, some with headscarves, others without. “How do they feel about this constant media attention?” I wondered. “What impact does the constant media focus on their well-being and inner thoughts have on their daily life?” “What does it mean to be a young woman Muslim in Berlin today?” During my fieldwork with Muslim youth, I gradually came to struggle with a situation in which the media depicted Muslim women as submissive and indoctrinated, whereas the Muslim women I knew were making sexual jokes, contemplating which color of headscarf to wear with what shirt, and reproaching themselves for neglecting certain religious obligations. The tension between the media representations and my ethnographic experience deepened throughout my fieldwork as I listened to the views the young women themselves had about what they were doing. The apparently zero-sum affiliations that the media and others constructed between Muslim and German, religious and modern, collective practice or individualization, have guided my fieldwork and theoretical framework.

The emergence, re-emergence, and transformation of religiosity and Islamic identity among young Muslims living in European societies have

1 According to the Guardian, between 30,000 and 40,000 Muslims marched against the headscarf ban at schools in Paris, Marseille, Lille and other cities in France (the Guardian 2004).

been the subjects of significant attention in the last couple of years. Women’s participation in, and support for, Islamic organizations in Western, liberal, “disenchanted” or “post-secular’” cities have particularly dumbfounded many, including scholars, media, and politicians. Young women who cover their hair with a headscarf have upset the public to the extent that political authorities in various European countries have codified regulations banning the headscarf from public arenas. For example, since 2001, anyone in France wearing the niqab or burqa in public has risked being fined. In Germany, after a Constitutional Court in 2003 opened the way for distinctive laws by the Land (federal departments), several Land have gradually adopted laws that ban veiled teachers from state schools.

Muslim communities in Western Europe deal with a greater range of new and diverse challenges in their everyday life compared to Muslims in countries where Islam is a majority religion. Each European country presents distinct structural, political, legal, and institutional approaches to how they deal with Muslim minority claims, which in turn presents both opportunities and limitations in establishing Muslim institutions and encouraging religious practices. The continuous interaction between Muslim minority populations and non-Muslim majorities and institutions in different European countries affects how Islam is institutionalized and practiced. It also has an effect on young people who seek to live as religiously devoted Muslims in European societies.

This book provides an in-depth empirical case study of young Muslim women who were born in Germany and who participate in one of the religious organizations in Berlin.? Previous research has thoroughly documented the plurality of ways of being a young Muslim: there are both intra- and inter-generational differences within the Muslim population in Germany and the relevance of religion in their everyday practices varies.?

2 The term “Muslim” should not be used in a reductionist manner. Generally, the media and often current social research consider all people coming from, or having a background in, a country where the majority follows Islam to be “Muslims.” However, one must not lose sight of the fact that individuals differ substantially, and that people from a Muslim background may consider themselves non-believers or adherents of another faith (see Spielhaus and Farber 2006 for a discussion about this). In this book, I use the term “Muslim” more narrowly to refer to those who define themselves as a Muslim.

3 Studies about differences within the Muslim population in Germany and France that are particularly relevant include Al-Hamarneh and Thielmann (2008) Babés (1997), Klinkhammer (2003), Maréchal (2003), Maréchal, Dassetto, Nielsen and Allievi (2003), and Tietze (2001; 2006). According to the study by Şen and Sauer (2006, 20) on the religiosity of Muslims with a Turkish background, in 2005, 28 percent considered themselves very religious, 55 percent considered themselves quite religious, 1 percent considered themselves not very religious, and 6 percent considered themselves not religious at all. In 2000,

Whereas some consider Islam to be part of their cultural and ethnic heritage, others confine religion to the private sphere. Yet others relate to Islam as a way of life, as part of both their private and public life.* This study concentrates on a representative group of religiously inclined young women who care about the place of religion in their lives. In the future, this group is also likely to represent a visible manifestation of a nascent German-Muslim identity. This book investigates how these young Muslim women seek to live a devout life in Berlin, in a context of increasing politicization and securitization of Muslims and Islam, and in an atmosphere of distrust in which the behavior, solidarity, and loyalty of Muslims in Europe are being questioned.

In the religious organization Muslim Youth in Germany (Muslimische Jugend in Deutschland e.V., henceforth MJD), young women from different national and ethnic backgrounds are engaged in the study of Islamic scriptures to appropriate norms and behavior that they believe are significant to the crafting of their religious Selves. The youth produce their religious identity through religious education, experiences of rituals, and other events that produce social meaning. This book explores the forms of religiosity among the youth and investigates one of the contemporary forms and religious orientations that circulate among young Muslims in Europe. I also examine how religious practices and beliefs take place both at an individual level and as part of a group socialization process. This analysis sheds light on the different paths and spaces that are available to individuals who seek to identify with Islam or act religiously, and avoids suggesting that they act homogeneously or inconsistently. As youth who participate in a religious organization or faith community are the main focus of this book, I ask not only why young people decide to participate in a religious organization, but also how this participation affects their religious practices and gender identification. As members of this religious organization, young people are presented with religious discourses and social expectations regarding their behavior: how does this affect how they construct or craft their Selves as religious subjects in this faith community? How do religious beliefs and practices shape the way they view the world the numbers were 8 percent very religious, 65 percent quite religious, 11 percent not very religious, and 3 percent not at all. However, statistical research on Muslims’ relationship to their religion tends to bring forth different numbers and therefore needs to be handled with utmost care.

4 Scholars frequently divide the plurality of ways of belonging to Islam and of being Muslim into different categories of religiousness. (See e.g. Karakaşoğlu 1999, 2000, 2003b; Klinkhammer 2000, 2003; Maréchal 2003; Nökel 2002; Schiffauer 2006b; and Tietze 2001).

and behave in public life, and how does their milieu affect religious beliefs and activities? What types of actions and practices do the people involved consider Islamically correct, and how are these legitimated?

The rest of this introduction provides a short outline of past research on Islam and Muslims in Germany/Europe, focusing in particular on research on Muslim youth, and the scholarly presumption of an ongoing individualization of religion. It then moves on to situate the themes of the book within past research, before it introduces the concepts Islam as a discursive tradition, “community”, “crafting the Self”, “social field” and “social identity.” The last part of the introduction provides an outline of the book.

Research on Islam and Muslims in Germany/Europe—A Brief Outline

The focus and the analytical approaches in research on Islam and Muslims in Europe have undergone a change in recent decades. Until the 1980s, social science inquiry into migrant populations in European societies tended to concentrate on how the ethnic and cultural heritage of these populations persisted or changed in Europe. In the late 1980s, questions of the religious identities of the migrant communities were increasingly included in migration studies (Vertovec 2000). In particular, this change took place in the aftermath of the Rushdie Affair in 1989 when, to the surprise of social scientists and British politicians, thousands of British migrants protested in the street against the publication of “The Satanic Verses” by Rushdie (in 1988). The vehement public response from migrants against the book’s allegedly blasphemous references directed migration researchers’ attention to the importance of ongoing and changed religious attachments in the socio-cultural life of migrants and in their assertions of a particular ethnic group identity within European societies.

Since the 1990s, the fact that youth with migrant backgrounds born in European societies seem to increasingly “turn to Islam” as a locus of identity has received increasing attention both in research and in the media. There has been a tendency to represent Muslim women as “passive victims of oppressive cultures,’ or as the “embodiment of a repressive and ‘fundamentalist’ religion” (Dwyer 1998, 53). Simultaneously, the religiosity of the migrant population has increasingly been a feature of debates on cultural diversity, which includes issues such as the provision of special diets to meet religious principles, the hijab, and the building of places of worship. The religiosity of young Muslims has gradually come to be understood as related to processes of social assimilation or segregation, questions about living between two cultures, or identity crises (Kepel 1994; Rogers and Vertovec 1998). The scholars in the edited volume “Muslim European Youth’ (Rogers and Vertovec 1998) rejected an understanding of Islam in Europe as a mere tradition relocated from the migrants’ home country to the new country, or as something that the youth either leave behind or embrace. With case studies from Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, and based on concepts such as hybridity, multiplicity, and cultural creativity, this work challenged the idea that Muslim youth in Europe embodied a “clash of civilizations” (a la Huntington's 1993 thesis). Instead, the studies argued that Muslim youth were creating hybrid and complex identities and establishing new models of religious and cultural expressions.

Post g/m research has increasingly focused on how religion itself changes as a consequence of experiences of migration and the transformation of religious groups in Europe. This research also examines the continuation and transformation of religious identities among youth with immigrant backgrounds.® The identification with Islam among youth in Europe has increasingly been seen as a solution to the youths’ social situation in European societies (Cesari 2003; Khosrokhavar 1997). Scholars have argued that Islam is one way that young people can shape, affirm, and situate their identity in a society in which they are not accepted as full participants (Venel 1999, 29). The religious identity of Muslim youth in France has been viewed as a solution for youth “who are more or less excluded from the society and who search for a sense of direction in life” (Khosrokhavar 1997, 39).’ In this view, by turning to Islam, youth can “recreate a social bond in light of the emptiness of immigration and frustration of integration” (Saint-Blancat 1997: 51).8

In these studies, Islam is frequently viewed as a cultural sub-system in relation to which youth can develop a strong identity. Importantly, scholars see religious identification as not necessarily leading to segregation,

5 Both Grillo (2004) and Vertovec (2000) offer a good overview of the development of the research agenda during this period.

6 See in particular the work of Amiraux (2003), Bendixsen (2005, 200gb), Cesari (2002, 2003), Fadil (2011), Khosrokhavar (1997), Jacobsen (2011), Jacobson (1998), Jouili (2009), Leveau (1988), Scott (2007), Tietze (2001, 2006).

8 Author’s translation from the original French: “recréer un lien social face au vide de limmigration et aux frustrations de l'intégration.”

but instead to potential integration (Kelek 2002).9 Youths’ religiosity or turn to Islam is often considered a response to a situation in which youths with migration backgrounds are “out of context” or discriminated against in Europe. Engagement with Islamic tradition becomes the starting point of an “identity politics” in which the youth not only reinterpret features of migrated traditions, but also start to oppose and assert specific identities. Conceptualizing the youths’ turn to Islam in terms of identity politics sheds light on Muslim youths’ efforts to demand rights and recognition within the various European states and the construction of new modes of political engagement and belonging. Yet these explanations consider Islam’s status as a minority religion and culture within democratic and secular European countries to be the main reason behind transformations of Muslims practices and youths’ relationship to Islam (Cesari 2005).!° Jocelyne Cesari (2005) suggests a more dynamic approach focused on the dialectical relationship between group resources and their social environment. This is pursued in the edited volume”European Muslims and the Secular State,” in which scholars analyze “both the cultural and political principles that structure the organization of religion within Western democracies and the influence of these principles on Muslims’ adaptation to secularized societies” (Cesari 2004, 1). Additionally, Oliver Roy (2004) has drawn attention to the role of globalization and transnational processes by arguing that we need to look beyond immigration and ethnic relations to understand the contemporary religiosity of young Muslims.

% Subsequent to her doctoral research, Nekla Kelek has altered her view of Islam as not necessarily leading to segregation in the German society, as signaled by her highly controversial and populist books “The foreign bride. A report from the inside of Turkish life in Germany” (“Die fremde Braut. Ein Bericht aus dem Inneren des tiirkischen Lebens in Deutschland”) in 2005 and “The lost sons. Plea for the liberation of the Turkish Moslem man” (“Die verlorenen Söhne. Plädoyer fiir die Befreiung des tiirkisch-muslimischen Mannes”) in 2006.

10 This study does not situate Islam within the Euro-Islam perspective represented by scholars like Bassam Tibi, or within Europeanized Islam. The Euro-Islam perspective highlights the pluralistic and democratic character of the European public sphere and is critiqued for de-legitimizing the mobilization of Muslims that deviate from this “enlightened’ European system of values” (Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003, 52). Euro-Islam, an Islam that is compatible with the Enlightenment, universal values, and Western ways of life, appears to be a normative term with little empirical basis (Thielmann 2008). The Europeanized Islam perspective stresses the transformative and pluralist characteristics of Muslim organizations and social life. It also argues that there has been a privatization of Islam due to its entrance into secular Western societies (ibid.). Cesari is one of the scholars who work within the latter approach. Such perspectives, which primarily situate Muslims and Islam in Europe within the context of the European public sphere, are critiqued both for being implicitly Eurocentric and for constructing a homogeneous view of the European public sphere (Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003; Peter 2006a).

They highlight that in their religious involvement and performance, young Muslims in Europe frequently call on the nineteenth and twentieth century reformist tradition and reshape it to the challenges posed by living as areligious minority in a contemporary European society. However, reforms of Muslim traditions are not limited to the modern or postmodern era. Rather, transformations of Islamic traditions have taken place from the beginning, as a consequence of Islam’s encounter with other competing traditions as well as of internal interventions in search for coherence in Islamic tradition (Amir-Moazami and Salvatore 2003, 55).!! Salvatore, discussing the public participation of religious groups in what he calls “European post-national and post-secular public spheres” (Salvatore 2004, 1029), argues that one should not talk about a sudden coming out of Muslims. Instead, the question of reform, renewal, or awakening of Muslim traditions needs to be understood as “entangled with colonialism, decolonisation, nation-state building, and class and gender relations in both their internal-metropolitan and external-colonial articulations” (ibid., 1015).

The idea of a “turn to Islam” can be seen as part of an Islamic process that not only occurs among Muslims in Europe, but also in several Muslim countries. The Islamic revival can be defined as “the reawakening of interest in Islamic symbols, ideas, and ideals subsequent to a period of relative dormancy” (Husain 1995, 4). Historically there is a long tradition of Islamic revival (tajdid) and reform (islah) in the form of religious, social, and political activism. The current Islamic revival manifests itself on three levels: the individual level (increased interest in Islam as a lifestyle and practice), the group level (Islamic grassroots or populist movements which seek to establish an Islamic system), and the national level (government-initiated programs that attempt to install Islam as the foundational ideology in society) (ibid.). The Islamization process brings with it social, cultural, and religious changes. One of these changes is a tendency to place emphasis on Islam as the basis for the construction of a collective identity.

This book seeks to understand the modes of interaction within a Muslim faith community in Berlin, and how individuals relate to the

1l Amir-Moazami and Salvatore draw on Asad’s understanding of Islam as a “discursive tradition,” which I discuss in chapter 1. Asad points out that “although Islamic traditions are not homogenous, they aspire to coherence, in the way that all discursive traditions do” (Asad 1986, 19). Thus, discussions and debates about what is “correct” are part of the establishing a “domain of orthodoxy.”

12 This has been discussed in various studies in the 1990s, including Barth (1994a); Jacobson (1998); and Saint-Blancat (1997).

Islamic discourse taught in this religious movement. In doing so, it examines how the modes of interactions within a faith community must be understood as formed in relation to various segments of a Western society, as well as in interaction with global and transnational processes. As such, this book recognizes the importance of the socio-political context in which the youth are situated and that identification with Islam should also be understood within the framework of identity politics. However, the focus of the book is on tracing how youth who turn to Islam pursue the crafting of a religious Self within a religious faith community. It does so by examining the broader set of meanings that the youth assign to their religious identification.

As the idea of individualization among young Muslims in Europe is an important framework for my study, I briefly discuss how scholars working on Europe approach this idea. The idea of an individualization process among young Muslims in the West is a complex one and a full discussion of the concept is outside the scope of this book.

Individualization of Religiosity

The perception that Western society has become increasingly individualized is widely acknowledged and frequently thought to have emerged with the modern individual, who is said to be disembodied from social relations (Friedman 1994, 215). The process of individualization does not describe autonomous decision-making processes, but that the subject has become the main social actor within the dominant societal discourse (Laermans and Verschraegen 2001).'* This social actor is assumed to act as an autonomous person. Charles Taylor has argued that in the modern age, religious experience has become part of “expressive individualism” (Taylor 2002, 83), which means that rather than merely pursuing a model imposed from the outside (by society, the older generation, or religious authorities), it has become important to search for one’s own way.!®

13 See Fadil for an extensive discussion about the individualization of religion and an elaboration of her understanding of religious individualization “as a particular form of governance, which regulates the relationship between the self and religion in accordance with liberal-humanist registers” (Fadil 2008, 54).

14 That said, sociologically or anthropologically speaking, the act of individual choice is always socially situated.

15 According to the structural explanation, this discourse of individualization is the consequence of processes of functional differentiation. Such a society is contrasted to the pre-modern society, namely the segmental differentiated society that is divided horizontally according to class or position (Luhmann 1986; Tönnies 2001 [1887]).

Several researchers have argued since the late 1990s that the Islamic religiosity of young Muslims in Europe is undergoing an individualization and privatization process.!® Scholars explain individualization as a consequence of migration and rural-urban mobilization (Schiffauer 1990). In the context of migration, individuals are thought to re-create the religious patterns of their daily life on an individual basis (Roy 2000).!” Individualization is also linked to transnational and globalization processes and new communication technologies (Mandaville 2004; Roy 2004). Young Muslim women’s participation in the individualization of religion as practice is thought to particularly relate to the dynamically interrelated processes through which youth choose to pursue Islam as a point of identification in a context of social and emotional detachment from their parents or extended family and a decline in the importance of traditional religious authority, including imams and Islamic scholars.'®

Several studies that see women’s individualization of religion as making it possible for them to “discover” Islam in Germany (Nökel 2002; Klinkhammer 2000, 2003) rely on these aspects of the individualization process. The individualization of religion, which is the process in which women are “discovering Islam and studying the religious sources [which in turn] offers them the chance to distance themselves from the parents’ generation, from prescribed Muslim identities and from the existing hierarchies in the mosque organizations” (Klinkhammer 2000, 281). According to Klinkhammer (2003, 269), large parts of what one may call second generation immigrants in Germany are only interested in an “individualised appropriation” of Islam. Youths’ preferences are characterized by individualization and recognition of secularity. The women’s rationalized and individualized religious identity opens up for individualized

16 This includes in particular the studies Babés (1997), Cesari (1997, 1998, 2002), Nökel (2002), Roy (2004), Saint-Blancat (1997), Schröter (2002), and Stauch (2004). Peter (2006a) illustrates how individualization has become a key notion in research on Muslims in Europe. This notion, he argues, is usually utilized to highlight that Muslims are integrating and adapting to European structures. Consequently, a narrative in which secularization and integration converge is established where patterns of secularization among the Muslim population is constructed as not only the result of their move to Europe, but the degree to which this happens also becomes indicative of integration. In short, a perception is constructed where the more secular a Muslim is, the more integrated they are seen to be.

17 Roy (2000) nevertheless admits that an individual relationship to Islam is not per se a new phenomenon, since all religiosity presumes a form of interiorization. Roy adds that the individualization of religious practice has not brought forth an individualization of the religious frameworks (2000).

18 Other scholars (Mandaville 2004; Otterbeck 2010) have argued that authority has continued to be important, but that it has been transformed within the context of international migration.

positions through which they can be situated as part of modern society (Klinkhammer 2000). Klinkhammer (1999, 2000) argues that the new dynamics in the migration context strongly shapes the religious identities that the youth’s parents brought with them to Germany. She considers that the conceptualization of a religious self changes due to a re-evaluation of religious practices and an increased emphasis on religious identity in Germany. Simultaneously, others stress that growing up in Germany strengthens youths’ belief in Islam, their willingness to criticize their parents’ traditional values, and also causes a re-interpretation and adaptation of religious rules to German daily life (Stauch 2004). The increased rationalization of everyday life affects youths’ moral inclinations, causing generational gaps and conflicts (Schröter 2002).

These studies frequently argue that the religious practices of young women born in European societies must be understood in relation to modernity, as the women combine a “modern life with the Muslim faith” as Karakaşoğlu (2003b, 108) argues for France. For example Nokel argues that Muslim women in Germany demand a radical equality by emphasizing visible differences, such as the headscarf, and that Muslim women become autonomous citizens through Islam, forming a culture of citizenship (Nökel 2002). The youth develop a strong identity and self-confidence by reinterpreting traditional norms, scientific interpretations of the Koran, and by independent Islamic study. In the context of this book, Islam is considered a latent resource from which to create a political and social identity. Furthermore, because Islam transforms the Self and everyday life, and provokes social changes, it can be compared to contemporary social movements.

In France, Jocelyne Cesari (2002) considers the Islam practiced by young Muslims an “individualized religious observance,” and she argues that this generation is distancing itself from their parents’ traditional piety and turning to a more individualized and privatized expression of religiosity (ibid., 41).!9 By “individualization,” Cesari refers to the appropriation of rights to personal choice in matters of religious belief and practice. Its logical outcome is a shift away from authoritative traditions — in both interpretation and practice — toward idiosyncratic

19 Cesari argues that the general tendency towards individualization that leads to a privatization of religion affects fundamentalism, which is “more often than not, a freely chosen identity, not something imposed by the community, tradition, or the family” (Cesari 2004, 54). By “privatization” she means “the restriction of religious practice to the private sphere and the relegation of religious values and rules to a secondary and compartmentalized role in the conduct of daily life” (Cesari 2005b, footnote 10).

constructions of religious life-style. It transforms institutionalized religion into a common well from which each person draws with his own vessel for his own purposes in accord with his own needs. (ibid., footnote 9)

Cesari emphasizes that this individualization does not mean that Islam has become private, but that there is an individual responsibility in religious choice and a distrust of religious mediation by religious leaders or religious institutions (Cesari 2005b). According to Cesari (2002), the increase in individual autonomy contributes to a weakening of Muslim ethnic and family ties within the West.?°

Likewise, Oliver Roy (2004) has called attention to how the believer has to make a conscious choice to follow Islam. Roy argues that:

Reconstruction of what it means to be a good Muslim in a non-Muslim society essentially rests on the individual. The first reason for this is that, as we have seen, neither the family nor the pristine communities suffices as a transmitter of traditional Islam. Traditional hierarchies, including that of age, are irrelevant. The second reason is the lack of social pressure that constrains believers individually to reconstruct for themselves what it means to live a pious life. (Roy 2004, 175)

Furthermore, Roy argues that “piety has become individualized; people practice their faith in a more personal way; they want a guide who preaches in term of self-fulfillment, like the Egyptian [Muslim evangelist] Amr Khaled; they are losing interest in the utopia of an Islamic state.”2! Similarly, Göle drawing on Taylor argues that “in the modern age, religious experience become part of ‘expressive individualism’, that is, it becomes important to find one’s own way as against a model imposed from outside — be it from society, the previous generation, or religious authority” (Göle 2006b, 124).

According to these studies, Muslim youth are distancing themselves from prescribed Muslim identities, and rely on a personal or individualized orientation in their religious practices, which are shaped by individual decisions, rather than by religious authorities or their parents. The Self is seen as autonomous and as constructed in relation to individual study of the scriptures. Accordingly, young people’s claim to live according to

20 Tt should be noted that Cesari’s early work differs from her later work with regard to the question of individualization. Her early work has a tendency to emphasize a decrease in religious behavior whereas her later work deals with more orthodox strict observers, for whom Islam embraces all areas of life (Cesari 2002, 2004).

21 From http://www.europeaninstitute.org/February-2011/qpost-islamic-revolutionq -events-in-egypt-analyzed-by-french-expert-on-political-islam.html, accessed August 1, 2012.

Islam implies a need to combine the religious basis of the family with “more modern lifestyles” (Karakaşoğlu 2003b, 114), and individuality is asserted through religion. Youth reinterpret religious norms using an intellectual approach, which results in a synthesis of the secular and the Islamic tradition. Such scholarly analyses tend to suggest that an individualization of religiosity is manifested in the independent interpretation of religious beliefs that young Muslims assert (individualization of religious beliefs).2 This presumes that individuals are independently choosing which part of Islam to make relevant in their life, and even suggests a cherry picking of elements of so-called Muslim, French or German and Arabic or Turkish behaviors.

In contrast, in this book I argue for a refocusing on the complex interaction between the religious actor and her (or his) religious peers and religious community(ies). I suggest that the idea that Muslim youth are undergoing an individualization process ignores the continued importance of old and new religious authorities, faith communities, and religious organizations at a local, national, and transnational level. Most studies conclude that young women’s Muslim identity is self-adopted and individualized, and that it permits emancipation from parental authority. My own research resists this interpretation. Instead, my research supports the argument that although there is an ongoing individualization process among the youth in their relation to Islam, the youths’ religious engagement must be understood as simultaneously situated in relation to group processes and religious mediations. Two intertwined processes are relevant here: First, the current public focus on Islam and Muslims in Europe creates a dynamic that daily puts pressure on the youth I worked with. This has direct consequences for how the youth craft their religious Self. Second, and partly as a consequence of this dynamic, the youth continue to feel a need to position their religious Self in relation to their faith community’s understanding and teaching of Islam.? The ongoing practice in which the youth distinguish between “tradition” and “pure” Islam makes it necessary for them to situate their religious practices and beliefs in relation to other religious actors, mediators, and to a religious discourse. Overall, this book fills in the lack of research examining how religion and