The Challenges of Migration and the Construction of Religious Identities: The Case of Muslims in America

Abstract

This chapter examines the ways religion and religious identity are interpreted and adapted in facilitating the transition of American Muslim migrants to cultural, political, social, and religious landscapes that are often vastly different from those in their countries and regions of origin. It asks: how are Muslim migrants and faith-based groups interpreting and reinterpreting their religion to face the challenges presented by their new locales in the USA, especially in a post-9/11 context? How are they drawing on their faith to meet their social, economic, cultural, and personal needs in an Islamophobic context? This chapter argues that religious identity is in a continual process of construction and reconstruction that takes place in response to, and through interaction with, the broader public sphere. An in-depth focus on the understudied category of Muslim migration to the USA allows for the exploration of the formulation and expression of religious identity.