Overview

How do second-generation immigrant Muslims, born and raised in the UK, perceive themselves and present their identities in the post-9/11 social environment, where Islamophobia is pervasive? Muslim and British post-9/11 addresses this question through research in Muslim communities in East London and Coventry. Second-generation Muslims in Britain must struggle with negative discourses against Muslims and construct identities in response. In the process, using various self-presentation strategies based on religious knowledge, they demonstrate the model identity of 'British Muslim' – being civic by being religious – that multiculturalism can espouse. The author advocates that the identity and social integration of young Muslims in British society today can be better understood through the frame of reflexive modernization theory. From this perspective, he discusses diverse themes, including multiculturalism, women and agency, closed and open identities, information technology, the individualization of faith, and the semantics of the hijab to describe Islam as an 'everyday lived religion'.

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9781876843687

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Reviews

"""A thought-provoking study on British Muslims by an ""outsider."" From the perspective of non-British and non-Muslim, Satoshi Adachi unveils ambivalent identity of young British Muslims by combining social theories and his interviews with them."" ------- Yoshimichi Sato, Dean and Professor of Faculty of Humanities, Kyoto University of Advanced Science / Professor of Graduate School of Arts and Letters, Tohoku University. ""For many students of race and racism in the UK the academic canon is filled with studies focusing on the ""struggles"" of minoritized communities to integrate into the ""norms"" of British society. This was particularly prevalent in the sociology of race relations which held a dominance in shaping much learning across policy and practice in the 1970s and 1980s. More recently - and in response to the riots in British towns and cities in the summer of 2001 and the 9/11 attacks on New York City and Washington DC - the problematic framework has continued with the emergence of community cohesion. Both have stereotyped Muslims as a problematic and suspect community unable and unwilling to integrate into wider society. Adachi's study is a welcome and lucid break from this tired logic creating a space for young British Muslims to speak for themselves. Here being Muslim and being British is not a choice but a layered identity which young people navigate in the everyday space connecting with an increasingly multicultural society by a personal approach to Islam. In this way Adachi points the way to a much more nuanced and realistic understanding of race and racism which extends our theoretical and empirical knowledge that can inform policy and practice."" ------- Harris Beider, Professor of Communities and Public Policy / Head of the School of Social Sciences, Birmingham City University & Bye-Fellow, St. Edmund's College, University of Cambridge. ""This lively and readable account foregrounds the voices of British Muslims. Dr Adachi has the rare gift of engaging with both men and women of Muslim background in Britain as an outsider. His sensitive questioning encourages his informants to share their worldviews, their perspectives, and their experiences explained to someone previously unfamiliar with their communities and cultures. His scholarly analysis, undertaken with a rigorous sociological frame drawing on Giddens and Habermas, reveals the many ways of being Muslim in Britain and contributes to challenging stereotypes and Islamophobia."" ------- Hugh Starkey, Professor of Education at IOE, UCL's Faculty of Education and Society, London, UK."

Author Information

Satoshi Adachi, PhD, is a Professor of Sociology at Kwansei Gakuin University, Japan. He works widely in the areas of sociological theory, political philosophy, immigrants and ethnic minorities, and gender and religion. The Japanese version of this book won the JSS Prize from the Japan Sociological Society in 2021.

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