Abstract: Dominant social and cultural environments exert a decisive influence over the formation of Muslim identities and behaviors. Any analysis of Muslim religious practice has to take into account a particular challenge for Western Muslims: namely, the meta-narrative on Islam. The importance of public opinion and its impact on identity-formation in general hardly needs to be proven. More than any other religious group, however Muslims seem not to be the masters of their own identity in their adopted countries. An essentializing discourse on Islam, existing on every level of society, is imposed on them from the micro-local to the international level. This narrative, which is largely based on the idea of a conflict between Islam and the West, portraying Islam as a problem or an obstacle to modernization, has forced all Muslims, from the most secularized to the most devout, to examine their beliefs and think about what it means to be Muslim.KeywordsReligious GroupMuslim CountryEuropean ElectionMunicipal ElectionResident AlienThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Publication Year: 2004
Publication Date: 2004-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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Cited By Count: 1
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